Raina Lipsitz on Mamdani, DSA, and the Rise of a New Left

Writer Raina Lipsitz joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Lipsitz explains how Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim politician supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), appealed to a wide swath of voters to upset three-term governor Andrew Cuomo. She talks about volunteering for Mamdani’s campaign, the racist and Islamophobic attacks he faces, his advocacy for Palestine and for immigrants, and the powerful response he got from 18- to 29-year-old voters, as well as many people who voted for President Trump. Lipsitz considers the DSA’s rapid growth on college campuses as progressives seek to build community, and reads from her book The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, and Janet Reed.

Selected Readings:

Raina Lipsitz

The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics •“The Little Super PAC That Could (Stop Andrew Cuomo)” | The New Republic  • “Sheriffs Already Have Too Much Power. Who Will Stop Them Now?” | In These Times • Media Obscure Message of Oscar-Winning Documentary No Other Land” | FAIR • “Lefty Groups Making It Possible for Families to Do Politics” – The Nation 

Others

“Republican Tells Zohran Mamdani: ‘Go Back to the Third World’” – Newsweek • “Mamdani: ‘So many of our victories’ were in Trump neighborhoods” – The Hill • “Trump Ramps Up Threats to Arrest Mamdani” – New York Magazine

EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RAINA LIPSITZ

V.V. Ganeshananthan: So interesting to listen to that and think about Mamdani walking the length of Manhattan, for example—our everyman campaigning for mayor. I really like this idea that the DSA and other progressive groups like the Justice Democrats or Sunrise or the Dream Defenders aren’t interested in “celebrity candidates,” and are instead offering members a form of community that has otherwise been lost in their lives. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Raina Lipsitz: That’s what was most striking to me. It’s actually a big part of what made me want to write my book, just noticing that it really is meaningful to people to have a place to go and connect with like-minded people who are around your age, who share a lot of your beliefs and who are working on a common project together, right? I mean, that is what democracy is at its best. That’s what we’re always saying we want to get back. That’s what we want young people to engage with. Zohran Mamdani won, in part, by expanding the electorate, right? He got a bunch of new people coming in. He got a bunch of 18- to 29-year-old people to vote, and they don’t usually vote, period, let alone in primary elections. So he really did this massive thing that so many people have wanted to do for so long.

And as I said in the book, religious communities are waning in a lot of ways, especially for younger people, many of whom identify as spiritual in some way, but are not part of organized religion. This really is a positive way to civically engage and to do something together for your community, and also where you meet friends. I’ve been involved in DSA for long enough that I know three different babies whose parents met in DSA and then got together and made these babies. I think that’s such a beautiful thing. It’s really one of the most touching things, and one of my favorite parts.

Whitney Terrell: The other thing you wrote about that I did not know about, but that my son, who is a sophomore at NYU right now, who suggested this episode, did, is the Young Democratic Socialists of America. There’s a youth organization specifically on college campuses and high schools. Could you talk a little bit about that and how successful that has been, and what do they do?

RL: I don’t have the numbers right at the top of my head, but there are chapters everywhere, all over the country. There are chapters in really conservative states, on really conservative campuses. I think the college organizing aspect is a really crucial part of DSA. I know there’s a woman in my book who’s now a leader in DSA. She was a college student when I talked to her. This really is funneling people into preparing them for leadership in a very serious way. Zohran Mamdani is a very young guy. He’s going to be one of the youngest mayors we’ve ever had, I hope, in November. You don’t get there overnight without any kind of preparation. So I think DSA is really laying the groundwork for that. I admire these students so much, especially because they are doing this work in places where the entire state government, local government and federal government is hostile to them, where there’s seed money for Republican groups. They’re up against corporately funded chapters of Turning Points, USA, Young Republicans. They don’t have any money. They just have true belief in a fairer world and in a society that works for everybody. So I think what they’re doing is very important

VVG: I’m inexplicably still on Twitter, trying to slowly move off. But I was following the election on Twitter and watching the way that right-wing posters, who were getting put into my feed by ads and things like that, were using a lot of scare tactics, things like calling him a communist, calling him a socialist, as though these were still effective pejoratives, which it seems they’re not.

WT: I saw a post—this is the post I was going to bring up, Sugi—that’s like, there was a picture of a college-age woman, and said, “We should send the Democratic Socialist to the countries that actually practice the policies that they’re doing and see if they like that.” That’s another kind of attack, but it’s an awareness. As Raina was saying, the Republicans have been organizing on college campuses and in churches and among young people for a long time. Traditional Democrats are not doing it, which drives me fucking insane, and so it’s good to have somebody doing it.

RL: I think that’s exactly right, and I think that those slurs are losing their power in a lot of ways, partly because we’ve seen that they don’t work on say, Barack Obama or Joe Biden, neither of whom are remotely socialists but they were both called socialists. They were both called communists. Kamala Harris was called a communist, and I don’t think that worked against them. Kamala lost for reasons, in my view, that were absolutely unrelated to being called a communist, which nobody believed in the first place. But I think one thing that Zohran does so well is that he does not back down, right? He’s very clearly defined himself. He’s explained what that is and what the word means to him. And he’s not exactly take it or leave it. He wants you to come on board with his program, but he does it in a way that is open and honest and candid and like a leader, right? He’s showing people what this could be and what it means to him.

VVG: It’s nice to see that again. Psychologically we’re so starved for any examples of politicians being decent. I’ve seen that video where he gives the press conference about the death threats that he’s received, and he’s so human and he also doesn’t back down. He’s capable of showing emotion while at the same time remaining poised and himself. He doesn’t seem like he’s performing in the way that I often associate with campaigning and with politicians.

So we’ve seen the follow-up from Mamdani’s election and the right wing scare mongering has followed two tracks and one has to do with his ethnic identity. He is the child of a professor and a filmmaker and and on social media, Texas Congressman Brandon Gill suggested that Mamdani should, “Go back to the Third World” in response to a video of him eating with his hands. I just want to point out here that Brandon Gill is married to Dinesh D’Souza’s daughter. Anyway, I have a lot of feelings about this, but Trump has threatened to deport Mamdani which is outrageous. And yet, as you point out in your book, the DSA has received criticism for being too white in the past. This is also a thing that was launched at Bernie when he was running. How effective do you think these attacks on Mamdani—“Go back to the Third World,” the Islamophobic attacks, etc—are likely to be?

RL: I am hopeful that they won’t be very effective. One way that I think we can tell that they won’t be is that I received, in the last week before voting closed in the election, 20 pieces of mail calling him a radical, basically a radical Muslim. Implicit was the word terrorist. There was blood-spattered lettering. One of them was in Hebrew, and it translated to something about “Thou shalt not spill the blood of your brother.” Lots of unhinged stuff—they can only be described as racist attacks, and they didn’t work, you know? They didn’t stop him.

The other thing that they kept saying about him is that he’s a nepo baby, which I find very, very funny in view of the fact that his closest opponent in the race was the three-term governor of New York and the son of a three-term governor of New York. That’s a much, much greater advantage, especially in politics, than anything that Zohran grew up with.

One thing I really admire him for, among many things, is his steadfast standing up for in support of Mahmoud Khalil, who was kidnapped, taken from his family, put in a God knows where—in a facility in Louisiana on the basis of speech, for what the federal administration decided was basically a crime against America, but was based entirely on his participation in pro-Palestine rallies and protests, and Zohran stood by Mahmoud Khalil. Mahmoud Khalil was eventually, after heavy pressure from organizers like Zohran Mamdani, released and united with his family. I think the lesson from that is that you don’t get anywhere responding to the racist, fascist, aggression of people like Donald Trump with a defensive crouch. You can only win by standing up for yourself, by being brave and uniting with other people, right? By having a large organization behind you, by having people behind you, and that’s what Zohran has done.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Rebecca Kilroy.