That was the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, in his inaugural address, where he made headlines by going with a speech that made him sound like the caricature of an Ayn Rand villain.

"We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism," Mamdani said to his supporters, who got their first taste of collectivism in practice when their "block party" turned into a miserable affair without food or bathrooms.

Before Mamdani was sworn into office on Jan. 1 I wrote about some of his more radical transition team members who ran the gamut from simple ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio staffers, to police abolitionists, to Louis Farrakhan apologists, hardened criminals, to pretty much every crazy thing you could imagine.  

But that could have just been a few bones being thrown to his base before the real governing happens.

Now that Mamdani is signing executive orders and staffing up for real he's showing that he is exactly what he said he was. He really is going to give the 51% of people who voted for him exactly what they were asking for, whether they really knew what that meant or not.

In less than a week into office, Mamdani is showing his true colors, as a true believing socialist who sympathizes with left-wing South American dictators and aims to conduct a socialist experiment on what had been the financial capital of the United States.

On Saturday, as Americans woke up to the remarkable news that US special forces had successfully extracted socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro from his country to be tried in the Southern District of New York, Mamdani seemed less than thrilled.

I spoke to a Venezuelan in New York that morning, and I'll say that he was certainly affected by the moment. In fact, his joy was incandescent. Can you tell?

Mamdani's supporters were a little less thrilled. Some took to the streets in protest.

But it isn't just street protesters who've shown sympathy for outright Marxism.

On Monday, an old video of Mamdani's new tenant director Cea Weaver surfaced on social media. In the clip, Weaver called for the seizure of private property and said that white people will especially feel the impact.

This was apparently not a one-off incident. Weaver has frequently demanded the abolition of private property—which she has called a tool of "white supremacy"—and called for the election of more "communists" according to the New York Post.

This hardly seems like a vetting issue. After all, Mamdani at one point said he wanted to tax "richer and whiter" neighborhoods. It looks like he has someone in place very much willing to do it to the point of confiscation.

Fortunately, by telegraphing what they want to do, Mamdani and friends have given ammo to the Trump administration to block anything they do using federal law and the Constitution.

Here's US assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon on X.

All I can say is that it's going to be a long four years in New York.

Mamdani, his chief lieutenants, his army of staffers, and his most fanatical supporters are going to push the system as far to the Left as they can. Anything that even temporarily works in the city will be pointed to as an example of their shining success and will be quickly whisked away when it stops working.

Every failure will be blamed on billionaires and reactionaries. What began with giddy excitement will drown in the ocean of disappointed apathy.

It's a sad, self-inflicted disaster for one of the great cities of the world. Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past."

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