The news of Mahmood Mamdani’s stunning primary victory in New York has sent shockwaves through the political establishment. For those unfamiliar with the name, Mamdani is a Ugandan-born academic, a postcolonial theorist whose work has long questioned the very foundations of Western liberalism. His win, by a landslide, in a district that has been reliably Democratic for decades is not merely a political upset. It is a symptom of a deeper intellectual rot that has allowed foreign ideas to infiltrate the American body politic.
Let us be clear: this is not about immigration or racial identity. Mamdani is an American citizen, and he has every right to run for office. The alarm lies in the substance of his campaign. He ran on a platform that explicitly rejects the American exceptionalism narrative, calling for reparations not just for slavery but for colonialism, for a foreign policy that aligns with anti-Western bloc nations, and for a radical restructuring of the economy that echoes the failed experiments of the Global South. This is not the platform of a mainstream Democrat. It is the platform of an intellectual who has spent a lifetime diagnosing the ills of the West, and now seeks to prescribe the cure.
The parallels to the late Roman Republic are striking. As Rome expanded, it absorbed foreign cults and philosophies that eroded the traditional values of the Republic. The worship of Isis, the importation of Greek sophistry, the adoption of Persian luxury: these were not mere cultural exchanges but fundamental shifts in the Roman psyche. Similarly, the United States, in its globalist phase, has opened its doors to ideas that are fundamentally hostile to its founding principles. Mamdani is not an isolated phenomenon. He is the vanguard of an intellectual fifth column that has been nurtured in our universities, funded by foreign foundations, and now seeks to capture the levers of power.
Critics will call this hysteria. They will point to the diversity of American democracy and argue that Mamdani’s victory is a testament to the openness of our system. But openness without discernment is suicide. A society that cannot distinguish between a legitimate political debate and an existential threat will not long endure. The Founding Fathers understood this. They feared faction, but they also feared the influence of foreign powers. Washington’s farewell address warned against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” Today, that influence is not military or economic. It is ideological.
What is to be done? First, we must recognise that this is not a partisan issue. Mamdani’s primary win is a symptom of a broader intellectual decadence that affects both left and right. The Left has abandoned the working class in favour of identity politics and globalist abstractions. The Right has retreated into a performative nationalism that lacks intellectual substance. Both sides have allowed a vacuum to be filled by foreign ideas dressed in academic jargon.
Second, we must reclaim our educational institutions. The university has become a factory for producing anti-American intellectuals like Mamdani. We need a new curriculum that teaches the history of the West not as a litany of crimes but as a story of liberty, innovation, and moral progress. This is not jingoism. It is self-preservation.
Finally, we must demand that candidates for office pledge loyalty not just to the Constitution but to the spirit of American civilisation. Mamdani’s victory is a wake-up call. The alarm bells are ringing. Will we answer, or will we sleepwalk into the abyss?
