After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
From a unitedstatesian:
Genuinely, thank you, European politicians and public figures, for pointing out that reasonably socialized public services are considered de rigueur by the vast majority of the rest of the developed world.
It felt so weird when Tim Walz was lauded as a “gift to progressives” when he was running on a platform of “kids deserve food”.
I live in Colorado where we just passed a resolution to pay for school lunches by a small tax on individuals making $300,000 or more.
I swear to God, there were a ton of people complaining about it. My favorite was a Facebook friend of my brother who posted “Why are we allowing people to vote on this who don’t make more than $300,000 a year if it doesn’t affect them? That’s not how democracy works.”
These people are fucking insane.
Did you point out TABOR does require a vote for all new taxes, to include ones that don’t affect everyone?
No, since it was my brother’s friend, I just told my brother that dude was a moron - and left it at that.
if it doesn’t affect them
I wonder how the kids receiving school lunches would have voted and if that bloke would have liked the result. Do we have any clue how the vote was split among parents of school kids?
You suppose this guy thinks men shouldn’t be able to vote on women’s health issues? I bet he doesn’t see even the slightest conflict there.
Hypocrisy is not a bug, it’s a feature.
But I wasn’t asking about a reasonable perspective, just wondering out loud how a literal interpretation of his stance would turn out.
Is he going to skip off to Galt’s Gulch now? 🤣
The gift being that he was old and white with a proven political track record.
Politics isn’t just about policy, you have to appeal to enough voters to get elected if you want to implement those policies. Unfortunately, right now in the US, “kids deserve food” is a wild progressive idea.
Not just the developed world as quite a lot of developing nations strive to offer these services as well.
Which is even more insane.
But at the same time, 40 or so of our states have been essentially un-developing for the last couple decades. The US is essentially a dozen first-world countries supporting a few dozen third-world countries, and the latter constantly politically attack the former. Really would be nice if those of us who live in the actually productive regions could just cut bait on the regressive states and let them find out the hard way.
and we do it without wanting a revolution or supporting terrorists
it’s magic
Yes. Thank you.
The fact that even r/democrats has banned posts about Mamdani is shocking to me. (I found out from Bluesky, went to Reddit and checked and it’s true)
This dude is normal. Full stop.
EDIT: And yea, I was literally thinking these days “It’s nice to see Europe influencing the US for a change”
What why haha
Because Reddit is run by billionaires like any other enshittified format.
Head over there and promote a platform of free speech where Mamdami can be discussed. Like… this one?
Talking about Lemmy will also get you banned there. It’s best to treat Reddit like the plague house it is and stay far away.
I’ve done it on a few subs, so it probably depends on the mods. Haven’t been banned yet.
Nobody can hear you over the bots
I don’t really know, to be honest. The mods there never gave off a bad vibe before. I don’t know what’s gotten into them.
All of the original mods got kicked during the subreddit strikes. They are all replaced by stooges.
The fact that even r/democrats has banned posts about Mamdani is shocking to me.
I don’t see why it’s shocking. That sub is basically an enforced echo chamber for the netanyahu wing of the party.
“It’s nice to see Europe influencing the US for a change”
They’re even putting roundabouts in South Carolina cities!
How is he European influence?
“Europeans recognize his vision about free public transit and universal childcare. We expect our governments to make these kinds of services accessible to all of us,” said Verbeek. “We pay higher taxes and get civilized societies in return. The debate here isn’t whether to have these programs, but how to improve them.”
Yes.
Of course. Your Democrats are our conservative parties, and your Republicans are our rightwinger/neo-nazi parties. And we have parties, left of the American spectrum that are mainstream.
and dont forget to the right!
There is not much of a spectrum right of the Republicans.
As a foreigner I’ve been disgusted by all the American media surrounding Mamdani’s campaign. Even from so called “liberal media” like the Washington post; it’s been grotesque racist caricatures, overblown red scare taglines, and downright apocalyptic visions for a guy that wants, cheap fast buses and to tax the oligarchs.
I can’t believe the Ideological shit show that is America and it frightens me that they think it is their duty to export these ideas to other countries.
Just a heads up, the Washington Post is considered the an oligarch paper over here. It’s owned by Jeff Bezos and rarely is anything published which might try to push back on a finances first narrative that puts money before people. The people who still follow it are already million or multi-millionaires or believe that some day they will obtain that much money, and they might with the way inflation is going.
It’s “Liberal” only in that it pushes for business liberty which I think is the simplest definition of Liberalism in Europe. As a USian I read that and think, “Why would anyone think WaPo is Liberal?”
I would consider WaPo a conservative paper. But like with the definition of conservative we used until I was 25. Meaning a tight fisted, push for no spending, fewer taxes, if YOU want your kid educated YOU have to pay for it YOURSELF, but we’re cool with gays and blacks and other minorities, type of conservative.
But that type of thinking is now “Woke” according to our far right which currently controls our entire government. And that somehow makes WaPo a Liberal paper on comparison. Advertising works I guess.
If you want to know what progressives or really just what our big cities think I’d recommend googling smaller papers or magazines. I’m not saying there isn’t some crazy right wing stuff out there too but here’s a smattering:
Seattle: https://www.thestranger.com/
Denver: https://www.westword.com/
Chicago: https://chicagoreader.com/ https://blockclubchicago.org/
NYC: uhhh I never lived here so… Wikipedia has a list of print media! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_newspapers_and_magazines
I’m not sure Westword is the same as it once was or frankly any of these but they’re all smaller than Jungle Oligarch Daddy’s paper. Possibly owned by less agent oligarchs, I don’t know but it’s a place to start.
it frightens me that they think it is their duty to export these ideas to other countries.
It frustrates me that they have been exporting these ideas for a very long time.
American exceptionalism has been an underlying assumption in Hollywood movies and US television, books and music for longer than either of us have been alive.
Yes, it’s called Social Democracy and the countries that apply it always have the highest standards of life.
Don’t let the billionaires bullshit you.
There’s absolutely nothing radical about Mamdani.
All of his proposed policies are favored by the vast majority of Americans and normal in actually developed nations.
Exactly. The real radical ones are like the US who don’t give their own people affordable health care of all things.
I always found it absurd that in the richest country in the world, there is no universal health insurance, no parental leave, no public holidays, that a college education costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, that there is no protection against dismissal, that people are starving or working but still homeless because they cannot afford an apartment—all of this is inhumane, uncivilized, and a disgrace to the US, not its recipe for success; it is its downfall, as the current regime is demonstrating.
It’s the richest country in the history of humanity and all we did with it was oppress other nations, build a massive military, and sell the nation off to the rich. So far it’s not a winning plan for anyone outside of the top 1%. Same shit, bigger piles of gold.
Well, you have produced the richest man in history, who is a Nazi and, apart from his wealth, does not seem to be particularly intelligent—but all the more greedy for it.
The wealthy in the US got rich by exploiting the rest of the population.
the richest country in the world
Cite your sources please, unless you mean to suggest that simply a rich person entering my house that I’m rich suddenly
FOX is pushing HARD to paint him as a communist foreigner dictator.
Its working perfectly on my parents who swear he is the anti Christ. While they worship drumpf.
Help.
I would lead with your values and ask questions like why they think childcare or public transit are bad things.
Oh, it’s not that they think those things are bad, just that they want to be the arbiters of who deserves those things. They’re not against social programs, they just want to put their churches in charge of them so they can police behavior.
So (their) churches should run childcare facilities and public transit? In a country founded as a secular nation, no less. That must make for some wild conversations. I’d sure love to know more about how that would be funded, never mind the implementation.
Questions like: how do we decide which churches are worthy? There are approx 45,000 denominations of Christianity and that’s just Christianity…
There are approx 45,000 denominations of Christianity
Well, obviously that’s where the US Dept of Faith comes in and starts whittling that number down a little, by their denomination declaring the other 44,999 to be heretical. And because they’re with the government, they’ve got authority to stamp out heresy, violently, if need be. As for how it’s funded? Well, since we got rid of the IRS, taxes aren’t collected, but tithes are mandatory!
You put Mamdani, Bernie, or AOC virtually anywhere in Europe, and they’re slightly left leaning moderates.
not in Poland, Hungary, Turkey and few others
Perhaps on social issues, but economically it is true for the most part
I thought Italy went hard right wing a couple of years back?
Yes, the Italy is included in the “few others”.
The actual European policies the US is in dire need of importing, not the Orbán and Putin-style dismantling of secular democracies.
Am European; can confirm.
Extreme left as defined in US falls somewhere around center-center right in EU on most issues.
Even in canada, he’s considered extreme in some circles…
I overheard someone say today, “wow, don’t new yorkers know they already tried communism in russia, cuba, venezuela, etc.???”
like… even in fucking canada we’re calling a social democrat a communist
Shaking my fucking head… i hate being neighbors with the US
Nah conservatives wouldnt implement mamdani’s policies, definitely on the left.
As a European I’d see his policies as left wing but not as socialist, communist or whatever. And as a person who has been to New York countless times I would see anything that improves the quality of life such as public transport, childcare, food poverty as a generally good thing. Whether Mandani manages to pull it off and doesn’t go to the dark side like every single other New York mayor remains to be seen.
His policies are fundamentally socialist and I’m not sure if it’s possible to classify them as anything else. That said, you don’t necessarily need to be a socialist to support them.
