During Barack Obama’s floundering re-election campaign in 2012, a strategy was formed that would ultimately rip the country apart. Knowing that the “unity” message of 2008 rang hollow after a few short years of his administration, Obama shifted tactics and created the “coalition of the dispossessed.” Basically, he proclaimed everyone to be victims and then told them he would be their savior. This mentality has gripped an entire generation and has made victimhood the most powerful political currency in America.
This is why so many people state their identifications at the beginning of their speeches or articles and pepper them throughout their conversations. They think that their association within a supposed victimized group grants them power, prestige, and credibility to win an argument. This is why former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is always mentioning her race, gender, and sexual preferences in every interview she does. She thinks that by virtue of her skin color, she doesn’t have to answer questions about Biden’s cognitive decline.
Of course, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has perfected this art form. Born a wealthy, privileged son of a movie director and a professor who came to America and was given every possible advantage known to mankind, Mamdani is always five seconds away from weeping about how victimized he is.
This latest act of moral perversion came after radio host Sid Rosenberg pondered on his show what would happen if there were another 9/11 with Mamdani as mayor. Rosenberg joked that Mamdani would be cheering such an act. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s main competitor in the election, chuckled at the joke. This comment is based on Mamdani’s own stated allegiances to terrorist ideology, including chants of “globalize the intifada,” denying that Hamas must disarm, and posing for photographs with an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
When given an opportunity to respond, Mamdani did what he does best: made himself the victim. “On 9/12, my aunt got on the subway wearing her hijab, and her stomach started to churn,” he recounted, as if his aunt’s nervousness was a greater tragedy than the murder of 2,977 Americans by radical Islamists. For Mamdani, 9/11 isn’t a clarion call against radical Islam; it’s a sob story about “Islamophobia,” with his aunt’s queasy gut as the real casualty. This isn’t empathy—it’s erasure, an insulting sleight of hand that desecrates the graves of firefighters, office workers, and passengers who plummeted to their deaths. To recast the deadliest attack on U.S. soil as a tragedy of hurt feelings for the perpetrators’ co-religionists is not just insane; it’s a profane mockery of history.
This is comedian Norm Macdonald’s infamous tweet come to life: “Imagine ISIS nuking 50 million Americans—think of the backlash against peaceful Muslims!” Macdonald posted that in December 2016. Hilariously, or tragically, Mamdani was lying about his story. After reports that his sole aunt resided in Tanzania during 9/11—hijab-free in her social media pictures—Mamdani changed his story, claiming that it was actually a cousin of his father’s who passed away or something. It doesn’t matter, because he’s still the victim of 9/11.
This accusation against America post-9/11 completely ignores the massive steps taken by the federal government and the American people to separate radical Islam from practicing Muslims. In fact, the only ones conflating the two are those claiming that addressing the problem of radical Islam is Islamophobia. That is not Islamophobia any more than prosecuting Bernie Madoff or Jeffrey Epstein is anti-Semitism.
President George W. Bush knew this. On September 17, 2001—six days after the attacks—Bush went into the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and said, “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” Flanked by imams, he assured America’s 1.8 million Muslims (pre-9/11 estimate) of their unassailable Americanness: “These acts of mass murder were perpetrated by people who pervert Islam to do violence against innocents.” Yet in the same breath, he warned against scapegoating, declaring, “Women who wear the hijab... should be treated with respect.”
Despite his good intentions, Bush’s speech completely backfired on America. Not only did grifters like Mamdani ignore it, but opportunists like Ilhan Omar used it to gain power. Knowing that America was not ready to distinguish between Muslims who love and respect America and those who want to fundamentally transform it under Sharia law, the floodgates were opened—and we are seeing the results. Those who espouse bigotry and hatred are taking over cities like Dearborn, Michigan, and our universities. That is who Mamdani is, and he is poised to take over New York City.
While Mamdani decries Islamophobia, the data doesn’t lie. While it is true that after 9/11, hate crimes against Muslims did spike briefly (just under 500 reported incidents nationwide), they cratered to a fifth of that by 2003 and beyond. Only 200 anti-Muslim cases have occurred nationwide in the last 25 years. Compare that to radical Islamic attacks on American soil during the same period—160 incidents, leaving dozens dead.
Meanwhile, the Jewish population, which has been rhetorically targeted by Mamdani and his allies, regularly tops the FBI’s religious hate crime tallies, comprising nearly 70% of such incidents in 2023 despite being just 2% of the population. Antisemitic assaults hit record highs in 2024, surging 5.8% per ADL audits, mirroring the FBI’s grim ledger: vandalism, assaults, synagogue firebombings—not “reports,” but flesh-and-blood terror. In New York, the epicenter, 2023 saw 44% of all hate crimes and 88% of religious ones target Jews—a five-year surge of 300%, per Comptroller DiNapoli’s report.
Is the Jewish community proclaiming its victimhood to gain political power in the wake of these attacks? No. We are getting to work. We hire guards for the synagogues; we have volunteers posted at every entrance. We work with the police to ensure our safety. We work with local leaders to make sure these crimes are reported and prosecuted. That’s what we do. We may be victimized, but we are not victims. That is not a currency we want or respect. We would much rather get to work.
Mamdani may win this election on the backs of those who see themselves as victims and see him as their savior—but that is a fleeting victory. The backlash to that mentality in 2012 was Trump in 2016. Hopefully, the backlash to Mamdani will bring someone who strengthens New York, instead of continuing the degradation of what New York truly is.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.