Progressive in Name, Dangerous in Practice: History shows that when leaders preach tolerance but wink at hate, the violence of the margins finds cover in the silence of power.
By Melanie Nathan, Oct 23, 2025
New York City, the world’s beating heart of pluralism, tolerance, and artful dissent, now faces a moral test disguised as a mayoral race. In that mirror stands Zohran Mamdani, a man who sells himself as a “progressive hero,” a “voice for the marginalized,” yet whose actions expose a hypocrisy so stark it betrays the very people he claims to defend.
Mamdani’s rhetoric is intoxicating to those hungry for revolution. He speaks the language of justice, solidarity, and liberation. Look closer: the words rot from within. His “solidarity” extends to extremists abroad and demagogues at home. He refuses to condemn terror slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” embraces figures known for antisemitic and anti-LGBTQI+ hate, and excuses it all as nuance. That is not nuance; that is duplicity dressed as principle.
Mamdani’s ally-ship is no accident; it’s a strategy to elevate others who will elevate him. That symbiosis reveals the duplicity: he appears with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Rebecca Kadaga, and streamer Hasan Piker, who said, “America deserved 9/11.” Wahhaj has called homosexuality a “disease.” Mamdani never disavowed either. The pattern is clear: spectacle when it helps, silence when it costs. Not solidarity, all opportunism in progressive clothing.
As Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue declared from the pulpit: “To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community.” Cosgrove’s words captured what many already felt — that Mamdani’s politics are not just performative but perilous. They expose the moral vacuum beneath his progressive branding, a sinister pattern of duplicity that extends far beyond one photograph. (The Full Sermon here.)
He rails against “imperialism” yet embraces Ugandan politician Rebecca Kadaga, infamous for championing the “Kill the Gays” bill. He preaches justice for refugees but ignores queer Africans persecuted under those laws. He wraps himself in the banner of equity while trafficking in the moral relativism of oppression tourism. Both Kadaga and Wahhaj have promoted extremist views that stoke the kind of right-wing violence Mamdani claims to oppose — the same ideological extremes reflected in Project 2025’s worldview.
It’s true that Mamdani has supported and helped pass LGBTQ+ legislation. But taken alongside his refusal to denounce Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, those votes read as strategic positioning rather than steadfast belief. Ally-ship is measured by consistency. Smiling with Kadaga while staying silent on persecution reduces local gestures to branding, not protection.
A politician who tweets rainbow emojis while staying silent on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, one of the world’s most brutal anti-LGBT laws, is not an ally; he is an opportunist. His refusal to condemn Uganda’s persecution, even as he smiles with Ugandan officials like Kadaga, strips his local gestures of all credibility.
To profess solidarity while legitimizing those who jail or execute queer people is not bridge-building; it’s gaslighting. It tells LGBTQI+ New Yorkers: You matter when it’s convenient. This kind of selective advocacy is the politics of performance — stroking the community for votes while signaling to foreign allies that hate still has a place at his table.
True ally-ship demands moral consistency. It is not enough to fund a center if you will not defend the lives that center represents. A leader who cannot name and denounce persecution abroad will not reliably protect at home. The contradiction is not complicated; it is revealing. Mamdani’s so-called progressivism is a brand that exploits identity while eroding trust.
Likewise, his approach to the Jewish community reeks of opportunism disguised as empathy. His statements after the October 7 massacre and during the Jewish High Holidays were not gestures of solidarity but sermons of condescension — preachy, moralizing lectures delivered to a grieving people rather than words of comfort or accountability. He invoked “peace” while refusing to name Hamas’s atrocities; he invoked “dialogue” while echoing rhetoric that denies Israel’s right to exist. To many Jewish New Yorkers, his tone felt less compassionate than calculated, a performance of tolerance to soften a record steeped in hostility. It is the same duplicity: loud empathy where it costs nothing, silence or distortion where courage is required.
Jewish and LGBTQI+ New Yorkers, long targeted and long resilient, have every reason to feel alarmed. When leaders flirt with hate under the pretense of inclusion, history warns us what follows: division, fear, and the erosion of the public trust that holds this mosaic city together. A mayor must maintain and build bridges. No amount of socialist poetry can disguise the fact that Mamdani’s alliances and evasions strip those bridges plank by plank.
The danger extends beyond one election. Mamdani’s brand of curated moral outrage mirrors the cult dynamics that brought us Trump: identity over integrity, charisma over character. If this formula succeeds here, others will follow—progressive in posture, authoritarian in instinct, moral only in marketing. New York could set the precedent for a new generation of demagogues fluent in the language of inclusion but faithful only to their own ascent.
History shows that when leaders preach tolerance but wink at hate, the violence of the margins finds cover in the silence of power.
Look past the performance. Look past the slogans. See the moral calculus beneath. New York can survive disagreement; it cannot survive duplicity that puts well-being and the vulnerable at risk. For the sake of the city — its safety, its soul, its sanity — say no to Zohran Mamdani.
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I am calling on Congressman Jerry Nadler to publicly revoke his endorsement of Mamdani. Please call his office, New Yorkers! https://nadler.house.gov/
Rep. Dan Goldman has expressed concern.
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have not endorsed.
Melanie Nathan, co- founder of JWORI, is a human rights advocate, country-conditions expert witness for – LGBTQI+ African asylum seekers, and founding Director of the African Human Rights Coalition. She speaks and writes on the intersections of justice, identity, and democracy.
commissionermnathan@gmail.com
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