Copyright Slate
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Tuesday night was, by any reasonable metric, a disastrous night for Republicans. Democrats were elected to the governors’ mansions of Virginia and New Jersey. Pennsylvania kept their liberal Supreme Court justices. Californians backed redistricting to counter Republican efforts. Even Georgia elected two Democrats to statewide offices. But the greatest cultural shock to the class of Republican pundits and politicians who dominate social media conversations came from the night’s biggest news: A democratic socialist was elected mayor of the country’s largest city. Zohran Mamdani’s election was not as surprising as his primary win in June, and since then, Republicans have had time to adjust to the idea of a young, charismatic idol espousing a new and exciting message for the Democratic Party. On Tuesday and Wednesday, though, instead of responding with new policy ideas to excite their own base, they mostly responded by returning to old territory: bald, ugly Islamophobia. The Republican Party, which is currently roiled by debates over whether it should embrace the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, has in recent months increasingly tolerated and even espoused forms of bigotry that had previously seemed to be in cultural retreat. The identity-focused response to Mamdani’s historic campaign, fixated on his race and religion, is further proof that open racism has been normalized, and rhetoric that would have once pushed you to the margins of politics is now a route to advancement inside the MAGA movement. “We must stop the advancement of Sharia Law in its tracks,” Arizona’s Rep. Andy Biggs wrote. “It has no place in our Republic.” Much of the language from the night harkened back to the George W. Bush years, when politicians often asserted that Islam was inherently violent and incompatible with U.S. values and that it posed an existential threat to the nation. In fact, the Sept. 11 attacks were brought up repeatedly on social media, simply because the new mayor-elect is Muslim. “The campaign to elect Zohran Mamdani began here,” a writer for the Babylon Bee posted, with a photo from the attacks. “They forgot,” the commentator Benny Johnson wrote, in reference to the famous “Never forget” rallying cry from that time. “NY just pissed on the graves of every person who died on 9/11,” the right-wing commentator Lara Logan wrote. In recent years, as memories of Islamic fundamentalist terror have faded and cultural wars have focused more often on anti-Black racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobic language has been less politically dominant, driven underground. But Mamdani’s election may have signaled some kind of resurgence of this particular kind of bigotry, often taking the form of warnings about authoritarian Islamic law from among the elites of the party. “I’m selling Hijabs starting tomorrow,” former Rep. George Santos wrote. “NYC Ladies I’ll be available at your discretion!” “Legal immigrants who hate America elected a Communist Muslim Jihadist,” wrote Florida Rep. Randy Fine. “New York City has fallen. America is next if we don’t stop it.” The fault of immigrants was another key thread—the idea that real New Yorkers would have never elected a leftist Muslim, and that as a result, New York’s embrace of Mamdani could only be explained in terms of demographic change. Or, in Fine’s words, “invasion.” “America’s largest city will be governed by a Muslim communist largely thanks to mass legal immigration,” Texas Rep. Brandon Gill wrote. “They were conquered,” the commentator Tim Pool said of the city. Chaya Raichik, the person behind the influential account LibsofTikTok, shared a video: “Muslims explain how they’re going to conquer the West through immigration,” with New York as “just the beginning.” At least one person, Laura Loomer, a notorious conspiracy theorist, has carried the torch for old-fashioned Islamophobia through the years. Loomer, known for her influence over the president, used the moment to gloat about being correct. She described Mamdani as a “jihadist” and asserted that the Republican Party had lost because it failed to speak out “about the Islamification of America.” “If the GOP doesn’t start taking the threat of Islam seriously, we will lose in 2026 and 2028,” she wrote. “Islam is the biggest threat to our country and the GOP is silent about this threat. Are they willing to sacrifice our country to appease the Muslims?” There were other responses from the night. Some directed anger at the Republican Curtis Sliwa, whom they blamed for splitting the vote. Others, such as Rep. Andy Ogles, directed racism and hate toward Uganda instead, in connection to Mamdani’s early childhood years there. (“This is what New York will look like after he’s destroyed it. DEPORT HIM NOW!”) Some warned of Mamdani’s “communist” policies and promised that hunger and misery would come to the city. A few tried to evoke outrage by describing him as an antisemite. But on social media, it was still base racism that traveled the furthest. It remains to be seen if the rest of the Republican Party—the lawmakers with less of a presence on social media, perhaps—will see any lesson in Mamdani’s win. If they let the loudest voices win, they may commit their party to responding to a dynamic new movement with an antiquated set of fears.
