Zohran Mamadani’s stunning victory as the newly elected mayor of New York was salt poured in the open wound of an even more titanic blue wave that swept aside any hopes that the nation had turned back to traditional sanity. He’s an old-school communist who made no effort to cloak his Marxist bona fides behind the charade of democratic socialism, and secured a victory that we could see coming from a mile away.

It's a turning point for the nation as a disciple of the deadliest ideology the modern world has ever known is empowered to beset this terror upon Americans in the nation’s largest city.

Which begs the question, how did he do it?

The answers from the conservative punditry ran the usual political gambit, but completely missed the mark, muddying the real risk that Mamdani’s win signals to America.

“It was a referendum on the government shutdown and the affordability of housing and life’s necessities in a less-than-thriving economy. Mamdani won a three-way race that diluted opposing votes in an election where Democrats always win.”

While true, it utterly misses this one draconian fact. Why the hell did Americans choose a communist like Mamdani in the first place to put him up in an election that was a sure-fire Democrat win?

The answer comes in two parts, beginning with the rise of equity in America.

Equity is a sleek euphemism that’s gained cultural rizz for Progressive Americans who believe the future lies in a virulent form of social Marxism that’s cloaked in woke cultural rizz of transgender rights, social justice, equality, fairness, tolerance, critical race theory, DEI, anti-racism, white supremacy, and systemic inequality. It’s an expansion of Marxist theory, transformed by critical theory and postmodern philosophy, which connects with the emotions of those who suffer the harsh realities of inner-city poverty and violence perpetrated by generations of Leftist policy.

Rather than take responsibility for the urban decay that undeniably spews from their liberalism, Democrats turned to equity’s neo-Marxist message, declaring that the suffrage in New York was the result genocidal oppression of America’s Western, Judeo-Christian, capitalist ideals (enforced by the fascist Trump administration) that created the endless inequalities of wealth, education, race, crime, incarceration, gender, sexual preference, patriarchy, and white supremacy that were systemically devouring inner-city New Yorkers. Equity was the only solution to end inequalities, because it would ensure comprehensive equal outcomes for all by imposing economic justice, tolerance, gender freedom, absolute sexual liberation, and anti-racism; it’s the last great hope of liberating humanity. Mamdani claimed his vision could deliver New York, which resonated with those who suffered from inner-city decay and despair.

Equity has captured the minds of New Yorkers because it offers a new moral vision of “hope” and unlimited freedom, as a nation facing an existential crisis leaves Christianity in record numbers. People who need a new secular religion to replace Christianity were drawn to equity’s promise to bring justice and deliverance of a progressive and permissive post-Christian society. Everyone who suffered the oppression of poverty, hunger, incarceration, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia would thrive in racial and economic equality. They would be equally free to choose the lifestyle they want and the pleasure they deserve, all without condemnation. And the rich are finally going to surrender their wealth to pay for it all. The Left, and many in America, are buying in.

It boggles the mind that this genocidal narrative that’s failed all through history has become truth in the uncritical mind. But the Left has abandoned reason for the post-truth world of emotions, a second critical point that led to Mamdani’s win.

We live in a post-truth world where feelings and emotions determine reality, and facts and reason no longer matter. Today, the feelings, preferences, and desires that confirm our pre-existing narratives and cognitive biases define our individual “truths.” It’s the consequence of the postmodern movement’s quiet destruction of reason and rational thought, which has successfully undermined our confidence that truth exists and that facts, data, logic, and common sense accurately describe the world.  Philosophers argued that rationalism could not intrinsically justify its claim that facts were derived from objective reality.  There was no objective truth; facts were simply beliefs and opinions in a world of moral relativism.

Postmodernism’s successful destruction of truth left humanity in a bind.  People needed another way to interpret the world once they left rationalism behind. Emotivism, which argued that preferences, attitudes, or feelings determined all our value judgments, replaced truth and reason as post-truth became the choice of a nation determined to bask in the glow of its emotions. Today, the death of facts has liberated the world from the inconvenience of verification or falsification; “truth” is whatever aligns with feelings, emotions, and preferences.

Ben Shapiro’s “Facts don’t care about your feelings” is a reaction to post-truth’s devastating effect on the nation.

What happens when you offer equity as liberation to a vast number of people who have little hope of escaping the suffering and rely on their emotions to confirm predetermined anti-Western narratives? They accept it as reality without critical evaluation because a post-truth world doesn’t rely on the facts of failed Leftist policies. Feelings convince them that their suffering is caused by the racism, greed, and religious bigotry imposed under decades of Republican fascism. It is a perfect storm to resonate within the hearts of those who suffer generations of poverty, violence, and the loss of hope.

This is how Mamdani won: his rise in New York followed the same path that brought Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot to power.

They promised to rescue the suffering masses, yet the masses didn’t understand political theory or have the capacity to comprehend what Marxism meant for their future. Critical thinking wasn’t part of the equation; they wanted an end to their pain and suffering imposed by the heavy hands of the Tsars and the oligarchs of their day. They trusted anyone who offered deliverance from oppression and the promise of unlimited freedom and prosperity. One can hardly blame them, yet they suffered beyond imagination for generations. Over 100 million died and nearly all experienced starvation, torture, imprisonment, and, most importantly of all, the near-total loss of their freedom.

We must come to terms with the implications of Mamdani’s victory. It would be easy to rationalize it as New York’s momentary loss of sanity, telling ourselves that the communist new dark age that tormented the USSR, China, and Cambodia could never happen here.

But, as Mamdani’s win shows us, anything is possible in a post-truth world of pain and suffering. Even here in America.

Chuck Mason (MDiv, Fuller Seminary) is a conservative Christian author and social commentator. You can read his perspectives at www.chuckmason.net.

Image from ChatGPT.