Years ago, an academic friend and I were sitting in a bar downtown, having slipped out of a conference to talk, when a bunch of guys came in, several wearing union jackets. Teamsters, if I remember right.
“There are my fellow socialists,” my friend said, happily. I had to tell him that of everyone in the place, they were the least likely to be socialists. They believe in the capitalist system, I said, they just want more of its benefits for themselves, as who doesn’t. They wanted power shifted in the direction of the workers, not a new system.
My friend was disappointed in not meeting real socialists. The American right has lately been thrilled to see a real socialist gaining national attention and then actual power in America’s most important city.
At last, a figure in whom to focus everything they think wrong with modern liberal America, summarized in the word “socialist,” a traditional dirty word in American politics, a word they use with the righteous conviction, and joy, of a judge condemning witches at the Salem witch trials.
Understandable, the way our politics works. (And for the left, too, which has its own devil-terms, like “fascist.”) But not helpful.
New York’s next mayor
Zohran Mamdani won election as the next mayor of New York City over the state’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, who has the political disadvantage of being completely dislikable, and an apparently nice but eccentric Republican, Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, popular radio host, and reportedly owner of 16 or 17 cats.
At least Pittsburgh had two candidates (in the Democratic primary, which was the real election) that people seemed to like and who seemed relatively normal, for politicians, and who as far as I can find out do not have an abnormal number of cats.
Though a progressive, Corey O’Connor would make a terrible political symbol for the enemies of leftist politics. Too white bread, too cautious and pragmatic. Mamdani, however, is perfect for the role.
He describes himself in a way to challenge his opponents, to push what I’m sure he thinks their buttons: “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” he said in his victory speech.
He is unusually charismatic and unusually assertive about his political convictions. He excites people, especially younger people.
He makes grand promises in utopian language. “This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed at odds with one another,” he said in the victory speech. “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”
That makes him a perfect target. He can be described as a genuine threat to the American way of life, either the camel’s nose in the tent, the point of the spear, or the sugar that makes the poison go down, or all three. He’s the Enemy Within. In fact, for many he’s not just a “socialist,” as bad as that is, he’s a “communist.”
As it happens, his economic policies aren’t actually socialist ones. He doesn’t advocate the government taking over whole industries, but adjusting the system, by freezing rents, free bus rides, universal child care, higher taxes on the very wealthy. But just call him a “socialist” and you don’t have to deal with his actual policies.
County Executive Sara Innamorato was a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but she’s become a more mainstream liberal in office. He may turn out like her.
The wrong symbols
History warns us against seizing on people as the symbols of everything we think wrong with people on the other side and the danger of devil-words. The charge of being “socialists” or “communists” — or “radicals” or “reds” or “agitators” or several other devil-terms — has been thrown at people whom almost everyone now respects.
Outside the principled libertarians and the reactionary new right, most people think these radicals of the past were right, or mostly right, and the people who labelled them generally wrong. They recognize that the American system doesn’t work out well for everyone. The Fox News watcher getting his Social Security and his Medicare thinks they got at least care for the aged right.
Who were the radicals of the past whose radicalism most Americans now think normal and commonsensical? The union workers trying to organize our region’s coal miners and steel workers, to save them from horrific working conditions, for example — the forefathers of the union guys in the bar. The political activists and nerds who created a social welfare system to keep people from starving or living on the streets or crashing into poverty when they get too old to work.
These people include those who demonstrated against American wars most Americans now recognize as horrible mistakes, though almost universally supported when they started; and people like Rachel Carson who recognized the damage industry was doing to the environment and fought to create laws and agencies to protect it; and the Civil Rights activists who directly challenged racist laws, by sitting in the white seats at lunch counters and in the white section of buses, and marched in protest, to get equal rights for Black and Brown Americans.
A better America
All these people were widely proclaimed “radicals” or “socialists” or worse. A lot of them were Pittsburgh’s ancestors. Calling them names gave people who wanted America to stay the same a way to try to push them out of the conversation entirely, to rule out policies like mine safety regulations and Medicaid without having to debate them.
They wanted America to be a better place than it was, and offered an expansive vision for the kind of nation it could be, a vision that included a government that did more than keep the law, a law that happened to serve the interests of the people who ran things.
That is a great vision, one that Mamdani articulates in an unusually radical way, but a dangerous one, because people are people and government is a poor instrument, even if the best instrument we have. He may prove to be a disaster. But he might get good things done. He shouldn’t be made a devil-figure because he wants a better New York City.
David Mills’ previous column was “The Salem witch trials describe Trump’s America.”
First Published: November 13, 2025, 6:47 p.m.
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