Copyright The Boston Globe
In Britain, where an emerging Green Party leader recently said he had been inspired by Mamdani’s campaign prowess, several politicians on the left celebrated the win. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has clashed with President Trump, cheered Mamdani’s victory as a win for “hope” in a column for Time, writing: “doubters have predicted the decline of London and New York. But each time we’ve faced a crisis of confidence, we’ve emerged even stronger than before.” Like Mamdani, Khan, who is from the center-left Labour Party, has faced Islamophobic attacks linked to his Muslim identity, including Trump saying in October that Khan is a “terrible mayor” who wants London “to go to sharia law.” Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour Party leader, campaigned for Mamdani in New York over the weekend. Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro, whom the State Department stripped of his American visa in September, responded to Mamdani’s win by posting a photo of himself with Mamdani. María José Pizarro Rodríguez, another leader from Petro’s party, tweeted that Mamdani’s win demonstrated that liberal ideas are not radical, but necessary. Meanwhile, Mamdani’s views on Israel were a flash point during his campaign. He has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He has said he recognizes Israel’s right to exist, but that he will “not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.” He also met with Jewish leaders in New York and visited synagogues throughout his campaign, and promised to address rising antisemitism in the city. Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, said Wednesday that Mamdani’s win would “be remembered eternally as a moment when antisemitism overcame common sense.” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, in an excoriating statement, accused New York City of “hand[ing] over its keys to a Hamas supporter.” “The city is marching with open eyes toward the abyss into which London has already plunged,” he said. “I call on the Jews of New York to seriously consider making their new home in the Land of Israel.” Should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visit New York, Mamdani has called for his arrest on war crimes charges under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who leads the Hadash-Ta’al legislative faction, called Mamdani a “worthy man of moral values” in a statement posted to X. On the campaign trail, Mamdani spoke of the Islamophobia and surveillance that Muslim New Yorkers faced in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In Mamdani’s political ascendance, Odeh said he saw hope for the kind of shift that would be required for peace in his own region. “After September 11th, if they would speak then about the possibility of electing a Muslim as a mayor, there is something truly remarkable about human nature,” Odeh said. “That it can embrace so quickly, ready to accept changes.” Left-leaning lawmakers in many countries hailed Mamdani’s win, drawing contrasts between his approach and Trump’s, or that of the political establishment. Budapest’s liberal mayor, Gergely Karacsony, praised Mamdani, saying he had stood up to Trump and the Republican and Democratic elites, and that Mamdani’s policies would serve the majority rather than the privileged. Karacsony — a key opponent to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a major figure in the Trump-aligned global right — told The Washington Post in June that he was watching Mamdani’s rise with interest. “I watch with a touch of envy how democracy can truly function,” Karacsony said at the time. French politician Manon Aubry, the co-chair of the Left group in the European Parliament, said Mamdani had overcome “the media, economic and political establishment that spent tens of millions of dollars to block his path … and without ever turning a blind eye to racism and Gaza.” Aubry and other European left-wing politicians, including some from Germany, had visited New York last week to take lessons from Mamdani’s campaign for future local elections. In Canada, Jagmeet Singh, who led Canada’s New Democratic Party until earlier this year, said: “At a time when the odds feel so stacked against working-class people, the people of New York made history.” Another NDP lawmaker, Heather McPherson, said Mamdani had shown that “change starts with us.” Opposition politicians in India cheered Mamdani, with Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a leader of the Congress Party, arguing that his victory showed that liberal values can still prosper in the Trump era and “youth, energy &dynamism matter.” In Mamdani’s victory speech, he quoted American socialist Eugene Debs and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, echoing the leader’s midnight speech of 1947: “A moment comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when a soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” Supporters of Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have accused Mamdani of being anti-Hindu for public criticism of Modi and his policies. In May, Mamdani called Modi a “war criminal” — remarks that drew widespread attention in India. Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to parents of Indian origin — one Hindu and one Muslim. The family moved to New York City when Zohran Mamdani was 7, and he became a naturalized US citizen in 2018, and gained a seat on the New York State Assembly three years later. Earlier this year, Mamdani married illustrator Rama Duwaji, an American who is of Syrian descent. He has drawn on his personal experience as a Muslim in New York, and the Hindu stories and traditions he grew up with, when talking to voters. And he has connected his passion for housing with his family’s experience of being evicted from their homes in Uganda in the 1970s, as the government expelled the country’s South Asian minority population. St. George’s Grammar School in Cape Town, South Africa, where Mamdani was enrolled as a young child, and a mosque he attended in the city both sent statements Wednesday congratulating him. “It is inspiring to see how Zohran’s early South African experiences, though modest, made a lasting impression on his political consciousness and helped shape his creative, community-based approach to politics,” the Claremont Main Road Mosque, known for its social activism and progressive vision of Islam, told the Post. Some of Mamdani’s overseas supporters praised the way he embraced his identity and cross-cultural upbringing during his campaign. Mahua Moitra, an Indian lawmaker from a regional party, said that Mamdani had not just won New York, but he had “given us hope that love & being brave & true to one’s self ultimately triumphs.”
