LARRY KUDLOW: Antisemitism is the root of Mamdani socialism, and it’s destroying New York City

So Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his socialists had a big night last night. And I believe the absolute worst part of those victories yesterday, was the sheer unity message of antisemitism, hatred, and bigotry aimed at Jewish people that animates and unites this Mamdani Socialist movement — and their hope that they will someday drive the entire state of Israel out to the sea. Destroy it. 

This Jewish bigotry is the worst part of the story. I’m gonna get to their crazy socialist economics in just a moment. Yet at the city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, this antisemitic bigotry is astonishing and heartbreaking. And demoralizing. And it has somehow got to be stopped.

We know millions of Jewish people immigrated here from Eastern Europe and elsewhere down through the years, along with Irish, Italian, Polish, Catholics, and people from all walks of life, all religions, and all ancestries. New York was a melting pot. New York City was a great vortex of tolerance. Respect for our differences. Now it has become a place of multiple hatreds.

In a recent voter survey, half the people said life in the city feels worse than it did just a year ago. Maybe that’s the Mamdani hatred factor. It’s astonishing that New York is trapped by these kinds of hatred. Democrats like Mario Cuomo and Hugh Carey would never have stood for this. 

Nor would Republicans like George Pataki or Rudy Giuliani. Mike Bloomberg, certainly not. Ed Koch, certainly not. Yet I think a lot of this antisemitism began during the Bill DeBlasio years, and the crazy left-wing socialist staff that he brought with him — and now yes it continues through Mr. Mamdani, and it must be stopped. It is the most corrosive factor eating away at the lifeblood of New York City. And this is a place where I have lived and worked for the better part of 50 years. I’ve seen the city at its greatest. I have seen the city in the dumps. Right now it’s in the dumps.

But you know what? More than the sagging economy or worries about crime, and education and other lifestyle things — it’s the daily losing ground to Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, and elsewhere, more than all of that is the Jewish hatred that is destroying our city.

To be sure, the Mamdani socialist platform of taxing wealth, alienating businesses, open borders, abolishing ICE, blaming cops, free-government everything, green new deals, packing the Supreme Court, rent controls, housing takeover, and all the rest, all of that is killing the economy and is wrecking affordability.

The Mamdani socialists don’t represent America. That’s a good thing. Republicans, to be sure, must emphasize their themes of freedom, free enterprise, and opportunity and tolerance. Yet it’s the antisemitism that’s destroying New York City. And that’s the part that hurts this New Yorker the most.