New York City has officially lost its mind.

Radical populist politics, new-age antisemitism, and moral posturing are reshaping one of the West's greatest cities.

A dark future awaits New York City following Tuesday’s mayoral election results. (photo: Jermaine Ee/Unsplash)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

It finally happened.

New York City, once the beating heart of American economics, creativity, and common sense, has elected Zohran Mamdani, a Far-Left anti-Israel (really, antisemitic) populist whose campaign was bankrolled and backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Google the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the first result you’ll see is an invitation to “Explore Islam.” Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that in 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a terrorist organization for its alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2008, the Council on American-Islamic Relations was named by the U.S. Department of Justice as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was convicted of terror-financing for Hamas. The Council’s Philadelphia chapter instructs teachers to avoid terms like “Islamic terrorists” when discussing 9/11 — despite the terrorists being directed by Al-Qaeda, a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni jihadists.

And this is the “council” whose support just helped put a man in Gracie Mansion.

For more than a century, New York was the living embodiment of the American dream. It was the place where you could arrive with an accent, a suitcase, and a will to work, and end up running a company, a newspaper, or a borough. The city rewarded hustle, not handouts. It was messy, competitive, merciless — and that was its beauty. Everyone was equal at the starting line, but what you made of yourself was up to you. It was a city built on grit and merit. Today, the same city has voted to punish both.

That New Yorkers would elect someone aligned with Islamist political movements less than three decades after 9/11 is nothing short of astonishing. A city that once vowed never to forget has apparently done just that. For years, American liberals mocked conservatives as the ones who “vote against their own interests.” After this election, that talking point should be retired permanently. There is no greater example of a people turning against their own memory, their own safety, and their own common sense.

Mamdani’s election isn’t just a political shift; it’s a psychological one. It’s the moment the city stopped believing in itself. New York’s DNA has always been about ambition: the dreamer who opens a corner store, the immigrant who becomes a landlord, the artist who turns a cramped studio into a career.

Mamdani’s socialism mocks that story. It tells people that success is theft, that wealth is evil, that envy is justice. It replaces enterprise with entitlement. And history couldn’t be clearer about where that leads. We’ve seen it in Venezuela, in Cuba, in every socialist experiment that promised equality and ended in despair. Socialism doesn’t work. It never has. It never will. You don’t need a PhD to see that, just a library card.

And yet, Mamdani’s campaign was cheered like a revival meeting. Free childcare. Rent-controlled apartments. Free subway rides. Free everything. It’s a toddler’s view of economics: the belief that if you shout “Mine!” loud enough, someone else will pay for it.

But that’s not how the world works. Nothing is free. Someone pays. Always. The question is who. And under socialism, the answer is always the same: the people who still believe in working, building, and saving. The city’s remaining middle class — what’s left of it — will foot the bill until they, too, leave.

It’s not just that New York has lost its mind; it’s that it’s lost its grip on reality. Crime is rising, the subways are filthy and unreliable, small businesses are suffocating under regulation and rent. And instead of fixing the basics, the new mayor is promising utopia. The police are demoralized, the tax base is shrinking, and the city’s answer is to double down on ideology. It’s like watching a patient bleed out while the doctors debate the meaning of blood.

And let’s talk about the Jewish piece of this — because we have to. I’m not even worried about “Jewish New York.” If the city wants to elect an “anti-Zionist” — which, let’s be honest, is just a polite term for an antisemite — so be it. The Jews will be fine. We’ve been here before. We’ll find another home. Miami is booming. Tel Aviv is thriving. Dallas still knows how to build. In fact, Dallas has more recently become a major draw for big financial firms that were born and raised on Wall Street, in large part because of Mamdani’s election.

The irony is painful, though: A city built in large part by Jewish immigrants has now elected a man who despises Jews and the Jewish state. When anti-Israel politicians go after AIPAC, it’s not a critique of politics; it’s an attempt to silence Jewish Americans whose voices defend the world’s only Jewish state.

Not to mention the nearly 600 Israeli-founded companies in New York City, which have created more than 27,000 jobs, generating an estimated $12.4 billion in direct value to the city’s economy and $17.9 billion in total gross economic output¹. Israeli innovation has made the city more dynamic, more prosperous, more future-oriented.

Yet the same city just elected a mayor who openly supports the Israel boycott movement, a campaign designed to cripple the Jewish state economically. The disease in New Yorkers’ minds does not merely corrupt moral judgment; it leads societies to act against their own interests. When a society becomes infected with moral hysteria, it begins to destroy itself in the name of virtue.

The real losers in this election aren’t the Jews and Israelis, though. They’re the New Yorkers who still believe the city can be saved by overly taxing success and subsidizing dependency. They’re the artists who will wake up one morning and realize their rent-controlled apartment is surrounded by chaos. They’re the small business owners who will drown under the weight of “free” programs they’re forced to fund. They’re the subway riders who will discover that when you make something “free,” it usually stops working. Every time a city tries this experiment, it ends the same way: The well-off leave, the poor suffer, and the middle class disappears.

No one is questioning that New York City is expensive. Cities like New York, San Francisco, and London have tight land use and zoning laws that restrict new construction, keeping supply low. They attract businesses, immigrants, creatives, and high-income professionals — everyone wants to be there, so prices rise. When there’s more demand for housing and amenities than there is supply, every square foot becomes more valuable. (It’s called supply and demand, basic economics.)

Cities on islands (like Manhattan) literally can’t expand outward. Limited land equals higher land values. The more jobs, headquarters, and career ladders a city offers, the more people are willing to pay to live there. High wages in finance, tech, entertainment, and law often drive up prices — because locals can afford to bid higher rents and home prices. The city’s role as a global economic hub gives it pricing power that smaller cities don’t have.

(Side note: I personally know two Mamdani voters — the same two who moved to and helped gentrify Brooklyn, and now think rent control will save them from themselves. You can’t make this stuff up.)

And cities like New York command high prices simply because of their reputation and lifestyle. People pay for the idea of New York (culture, history, prestige, energy, food, access, and global recognition). The more a city offers — theaters, restaurants, nightlife, universities, waterfronts, parks — the higher its “quality of life” score and the more people are willing to pay.

You know what other city is outrageously expensive? Tel Aviv. It’s one of the most expensive cities in the world, as a matter of fact. But you don’t see Tel Avivians electing pro-Hamas ideologues because the cost of living is high. In Tel Aviv, we work hard, get educated, try to find decent-paying jobs, build businesses, and live within our means. And if some of us still can’t afford it, guess what? People here do what grown-ups do: They move somewhere more affordable.

Unfortunately, what’s happening in New York is part of a broader cultural insanity: the idea that achievement is oppression and grievance is virtue. American society used to admire those who built. Now parts of this society idolize those who protest. The city that once made heroes of inventors now makes heroes of agitators. The energy that once fueled innovation now fuels outrage. The city that invented the skyscraper is now led by people who want to level everything in sight.

And so, the exodus will continue. The businesses will head to Florida or Texas. The artists to Nashville or Austin. The Jews to Miami or Tel Aviv. The city won’t collapse overnight; it will just quietly empty out. What remains will be a hollow museum of what once was: a city that traded its hustle for hashtags, its grit for grievance, and its mind for ideology.

New York hasn’t just lost its mind. It’s lost its melody: the rhythm of ambition, faith, and freedom that once made it sing. What remains is populism masquerading as justice, and decay disguised as progress.

---

1. United States-Israel Business Alliance