They did it. They actually did it.
In New York City, Democrats just nominated Zohran Mamdani — a self-described socialist — for mayor, running on a platform best summed up as "Amnesty, Anarchy, and Absurdity."
In a stunning upset, the 33-year-old Queens legislator defeated former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo by championing a radical leftist agenda that would make Bernie Sanders blush.
Al Jazeera hailed his win as the "rise of a new American Left," while The New Yorker magazine claimed he "just remade American politics."
But what’s happening in New York isn’t just a local curiosity — it’s a preview of the far-left urban experiment that’s spreading nationally.
From Los Angeles to Chicago to Austin, progressive politicians are pushing the same blueprint: regulate private enterprise into paralysis, criminalize success, and replace markets with government micromanagement.
What Mamdani proposes for New York — a permanent rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, and open hostility to police and federal immigration enforcement — is becoming the default agenda of America’s urban left.
Mamdani has referred to capitalism as "theft" and ICE as "fascist."
This isn’t a serious governing vision. It’s ideological cosplay at best — and economic ruin at worst. Unfortunately, too many cities are letting these ideas become law.
Take housing. Mamdani, like many in the New Left, wants to scare away private investors from participating in the housing industry.
Freezing rents, banning evictions, and regulating private property as if it were public housing — may sound compassionate.
But price controls don’t fix housing shortages; they cause them, and polls show that nearly every economist (even Democratic ones) know it.
If landlords can’t cover rising costs, they stop maintaining properties, stop investing in improvements, and ultimately stop building new homes.
The result isn’t affordability. It’s decay, disrepair, displacement, and a critical housing shortage in the most populous areas within the United States.
But don't tell that to the New Left. They care about ideology, not facts.
They often vilify private equity firms and institutional investors (just as they do just about everything that's not controlled by the government), but they play a crucial role in expanding housing supply — especially in underserved areas.
Contrary to activist talking points, research shows these investors often buy distressed or vacant properties, renovate them, and return them to productive use.
That improves neighborhoods, raises property values, and increases local tax revenue.
They’re also expanding access to single-family rentals — a critical stepping stone to homeownership for working families.
Longer leases, professional management, and consistent maintenance help create stability — especially in high-cost cities. If we want more affordable housing, we need more builders and more investors — not more bureaucrats.
But the New Left doesn’t just want to control housing. It wants to control everything.
A $30 minimum wage may sound generous, until small businesses fold. We’ve already seen what a $15 dollar forced minimum wage has done in limited experimentation in major cities across the United States and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned against such foolishness years ago.
Government-run grocery stores may seem helpful — until shelves go bare like we’ve seen in practically every socialist experiment in this hemisphere.
When government decides what you can charge, what you can pay, and where you can invest, you no longer have a free society. You have a command economy.
We’ve seen this playbook before.
It fails every time.
But that hasn’t stopped progressive politicians from turning America’s great cities into testing grounds for failed ideologies.
The real threat is not one candidate in New York, but an entire movement trying to turn socialism from a slogan into a system — one ordinance, one rent cap, one spending bill at a time.
It’s time for a course correction.
The answer to rising rents, stagnant wages, and urban decay isn’t more government — it’s more freedom.
We should be unleashing entrepreneurs, not regulating them into submission.
We should be making it easier to build, hire, and invest — not punishing those who try.
Mamdani’s rise should be a wake-up call. The path to prosperity isn’t paved with slogans. It’s built on supply, opportunity, and liberty. If we want American cities to thrive again, we must reject the fantasy of socialism and embrace the freedom that built them in the first place.
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, cybersecurity researcher, founder of ItFunk.Org, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations globally. Read More of His Reports — Here.
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