Mamdani’s Father, Mahmood Mamdani, Postcolonial Scholar

Zohran Mamdani, the alleged candidate of the Democratic Party for the Mayor of New York, has radical roots – notably his father, Mahmood, an eminent postcolonial researcher at Columbia University.

Mahmood Mamdani was expelled, with his family, from Uganda in the 1970s, when the African nationalist regime of Idi Amin expelled the “Asians”-that is to say people of Indian origin, many of whom were involved in trade and professions.

Mamdani reflected in 2022 on this experience in a test in which he said that “Ugandan Asians are a bad adjustment as victims”, in part because they had been a commercial elite, and partly because the expulsion allowed them to register in Great Britain as refugees.

He also tried to distinguish them from the “settlers”, arguing that they were “immigrants” (the hostility of Mamdani in Israel is based in part on the idea of ​​the Israelis as colonists, not native).

Mamdani’s X flow is filled with radical pro-Palestinian declarations, such as defense of the use of terrorism:

We do not know to what extent Mamdani is involved in his son’s political career, but he proudly supported him in a “hunger strike” for New York taxi drivers in 2021. He also appeared to the campaign events of his son, on occasion (as in the main photo, above.)

Mamdani also wrote a lot about South Africa, arguing that the famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission was too forgiving in the granting of amnesty, and too limited by its accent on individual authors and victims, rather than broader oppression structures.