In his inaugural address as the new mayor of New York City, Ugandan-born Zohran Mamdani promised, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” The blatantly Marxist statement has generated a spate of controversy, but the reality is that Democrats have long embraced such a worldview — Mamdani is just the first to do it so explicitly.
From government health care to punishing high achievers, the left loves communism, but nowhere is it clearer than in its view of property.
Days into his tenure, Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver as director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver, like Mamdani, is a radical Marxist who once said: “For centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collectivized good. And … transitioning to treating it as a collective good … will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families — especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well — are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. “
The New York Post also uncovered old posts from Weaver in which she said, “Seize private property!” on June 13, 2018. Weaver also said, “Private property including an[y] kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy” in a post on Twitter in 2019.
Weaver’s worldview fits perfectly with Mamdani’s: If individualism is “frigid” and collectivism is “warm,” then property rights — which belong to each individual — are to be eroded rather than defended. And while Weaver’s comments are shocking and dangerous, she was hired precisely because of these radical views, the same way Mamdani was elected because of his Marxist convictions.
And what’s remarkable is that the American left and propaganda press are treating these explicit commitments to Marxism as normal rather than as a threat to America’s vitality and very existence.