By Katherine Tinsley
12:48pm PDT, Jul 1, 2025
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Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral race, but one communist refugee is fearful that the politician is a reflection of the country that he fled.
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Ari Kagan, who previously served on the Brooklyn City Council, is a refugee from Belarus, which was part of the Soviet Union. "After [the] Red October Socialist Revolution in 1917, Bolsheviks seized means of production, jailed or killed business owners, eliminated freedoms [and] took over private farms [and] food stores," Kagan wrote
on X on Monday, June 30. "I would never imagine NYC would consider this failed [and] dangerous government model."
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Zohran Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist, sparked concerns for his left-leaning political stance. "It's very chilling," Ari Kagan said. "It's dangerous and scary. A majority of New Yorkers have to reject this man. … I remember government-run stores in Minsk. There were long lines."
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Zohran Mamdani, who has been vocal about his support for Palestine, has been accused of being antisemitic. However, the politician has denied the assertion. "He's a Hamas sympathizer," Ari Kagan alleged.
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At the 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Zohran Mamdani argued that the "purpose" of "this entire project" is "not simply to raise class consciousness, but to win socialism" and elect politicians and leaders who are "unapologetic about our socialism."
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Zohran Mamdani
noted that socialists "firmly believe in" boycotting and divesting from Israel and that "the end goal of seizing the means of production" are unpopular but should be championed. "It is critical to the way that we organize, the way that we set up our work and our priorities that we do not leave any one issue for the other; that we do not meet a moment and only look at what people are ready for, but that we are doing both of these things in tandem, because it is critical for us to both meet people where they're at and to also organize for what is correct and for what is right, and to ensure that over time we can bring people to that issue," he said.
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Donald Trump accused Zohran Mamdani of being a "communist" on Truth Social, but he's denied that assertion. "No, I am not," Mamdani said on Meet the Press when asked if he's a communist. "I call myself a democratic socialist, in many ways, inspired by the words of [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] from decades ago, who said, 'Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism: There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country,'" he added.
