After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
Shout out to everyone who said his lofty impossible ideas are never going to happen in reality.
Somehow every country can do the impossible goals of “maybe the rich don’t own every store” and “let’s make it so people are paid better” but America, but somehow they’re the impossibility, never the one county that refuses to try it.
There’s absolutely nothing radical about Mamdani.
All of his proposed policies are favored by the vast majority of Americans and normal in actually developed nations.
Exactly. The real radical ones are like the US who don’t give their own people affordable health care of all things.
Yes, it’s called Social Democracy and the countries that apply it always have the highest standards of life.
Don’t let the billionaires bullshit you.
COMMUNIST EUROPE
Because they are.
What is normality?
Not treating your populace like animals.
We’re technically all animals
But yea apart from that, it’s never been the norm in the USA, therefore it is not “normal”
You can also think it’s a basic feature that any country should have. There are many definitions of what normality is
So I’m just nitpicking
Don’t know why I’m writing this comment
Ignore me
The actual European policies the US is in dire need of importing, not the Orbán and Putin-style dismantling of secular democracies.
Can confirm.
By the way my country has an actual Communist Party with some representatives in government (not enough for anything really).And FYI EU politicians are learning from the US: the EU, either at top level or at countries’ governments, is veering right as of late, towards the same fascism we now see in the US.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be so smug, not right now at least.Your countries (I mean France at least) will burn themselves to the ground before they let that happen. Something I wish the Americans would do. I don’t want to be caught in a house fire, but if Temu Hitler is at my door setting it and my options are limited I’d drag him into the flames with me without a second thought.
Fascism is extremely well-funded and these assholes band together just look at the bailout of Argentina.
They are veering right because of the blatant Russian propaganda that is trying to break up NATO and the EU by trying to make everyone more xenophobic.
Too bad for them EU countries have a much more robust political system that cuts out extremist views most of the time. We don’t have a “winner takes all” system. And plenty of political parties, even right-wing ones, want nothing to do with the fascists.
I’m hopeful, but I wouldn’t let my guard down.
Russia is bad but blaming everything on russia is ridiculous. Xenophobia is growing everywhere with or without russian influence
Far-right parties are winning in Europe because the European Central Bank forces countries to adopt ‘austerity’ policies. These policies destroy jobs and reduce people’s quality of life. So people vote for whoever promises to fix this - either the left or the far-right. But the ECB can’t permit an anti-austerity government, so they crack down on the left. The far-right is tolerated as long as it only targets random Syrian refugees.
It’s the other way around. It’s NATO propaganda that led us to the war with Russia.
Are EU politicians really learning from the US? Or are they just paid off pawns? Probably a mix of both, but I think it’s safe to assume that the majority is caused by American meddling, until confirmed to be otherwise.
They’re all puppets and traitors.
Oligarch meddling, they don’t see flags (and neither should we).
Overton window and all that.
As a European I’d see his policies as left wing but not as socialist, communist or whatever. And as a person who has been to New York countless times I would see anything that improves the quality of life such as public transport, childcare, food poverty as a generally good thing. Whether Mandani manages to pull it off and doesn’t go to the dark side like every single other New York mayor remains to be seen.
His policies are fundamentally socialist and I’m not sure if it’s possible to classify them as anything else. That said, you don’t necessarily need to be a socialist to support them.
My take has always been (regardless of living in Europe or anywhere else) that these type of issues is exactly why we have states and municipalities at all. I.e to help each other solve basic life more efficiently. Of course there’s different takes on best strategies for this but I have a hard time seeing how Mamdanis policies around infrastructure and housing are extreme in any way
It’s almost as if having a central government with deciding power over nearly everything is inefficient and only leads to problems.
Americans live in a world where their “left” is already pretty far right. Someone who isn’t that right but more centre / mildly left I indeed consider normal. It’s still kilometers (miles) away from far left.
Wait, wait, let me get my best accent going:
“If you want less crime, give people less reason to crime.”
But that would involve not shooting people, so I understand that might be a bit out there.
Hopefully this is not news to Americans, but I guess it may be. Seems the entire country is in its own bubble, separated from what Europe is doing.
We are just people, wanting mostly the same things.
We are just people, wanting mostly the same things.
nah, i used to think similar but i’m not so sure anymore. americans, from my perspective, really are more crazy than europeans, and it’s not just because of propaganda. it’s also from a learned risk-taking behavior that took centuries to build, whereas in europe that didn’t happen.
We are just people, wanting mostly the same things.
When one gets to the bottom of anything, the truth is in the words you typed above. You are so right. Thank you.
Thank you, takes someone like minded to see what I meant by that. 🙂
You put Mamdani, Bernie, or AOC virtually anywhere in Europe, and they’re slightly left leaning moderates.
not in Poland, Hungary, Turkey and few others
Perhaps on social issues, but economically it is true for the most part
I thought Italy went hard right wing a couple of years back?
Yes, the Italy is included in the “few others”.
Public transport is far from free here in the Netherlands. In fact I commute by car because it’s cheaper
I was in Brussels recently and learned that the subway there is basically free as seemingly all stations have broken gates 🤭
But jokes aside, I was indeed a little bit shocked about the state of Brussels coming from Switzerland 😅 so much broken infrastructure, so much unused real estate (like fenced in but nothing done with it), so much waste and so many empty giant laughing gas bottles…
Maybe I was just in the wrong sector, but damn… Never have seen something like this, and this is where main politics of EU takes place…
Username checks out :P
