November 19. New York City. Park East Synagogue. A mob of Muslims and "leftists" block the entrance and terrorize Jews with shouts of "Globalize the intifada" and "Take another settler out." The protest took place two weeks after a self-declared socialist, Zohran Mamdani, won the New York mayoral election. His spokesperson said that he "discouraged the language" used by the protesters, but, she added, incorrectly, "sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law". She was referring to an event at the synagogue hosted by Nefesh b'Nefesh (Soul to Soul), a Jewish group that facilitates immigration to Israel.
The mayor-elect seems to think that Jews confronted with hostility and violence should not be helped to seek refuge in their homeland. He also seems to think that helping them violates some unnamable, non-existent "international law".
As for policies, Mamdani will not only be the first explicitly socialist mayor of the city, he will be the first to adopt communist rhetoric, such as "seizing the means of production". It is therefore a bit disquieting that he will be governing the city that has been for decades the world's capital of finance.
Mamdani, who will be the first Muslim mayor of New York, is also the first to associate happily with anti-American Islamists. During his election campaign, at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, he posed for a photograph with Siraj Wahhaj, an imam named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot. Wahhaj is quoted as having said:
- "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam." (Via Wall Street Journal)
- "If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." (Via Frontpage Magazine)
- "You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam." (Via the Investigative Project on Terrorism)
Mamdani praised Wahhaj before an ecstatic crowd shouting "Allahu Akbar," so it is also a bit disquieting that he will be governing a city so recently victimized by the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks.
Sadly, some of the organizations with which Mamdani associates appear so imbued with antagonism toward Israel that many observers think his statements are steeped in antisemitism. That the city with the world's largest Jewish community outside Israel should have elected such a mayor is bewildering, as is that a third of New York's Jewish voters cast their ballots for him.
It is necessary, unfortunately, to note that these trends present in New York can also be found, for example, in Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Texas.
Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that was simply socialist at the time of its founding and which has increasingly slid farther left. Twenty years ago, the DSA had little influence, but has since gained ground. It currently counts among its members more than 200 elected officials, including three U.S. House Representatives (among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose influence appears to be growing among the American left).
Many of the DSA's proposals are clearly communist: the party's platform calls explicitly for the "abolition of capitalism." The DSA is also radically anti-Israel, supports defunding the police, and advocates for abolishing prisons.
Socialism has been gaining ground in the United States. A September 2025 Gallup poll showed that 39% of Americans have a positive view of socialism and view it more positively (66%) than capitalism (42%). The disasters wrought wherever socialism was imposed seem to have been completely forgotten by, or never been taught to, a growing proportion of Americans. Support for socialism appears particularly strong among young Americans. A March 2025 survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov showed that the number of Americans aged 18–29 who hold a positive view of socialism now reaches 62%, and the number of them who hold a positive view of communism reaches 34%.
Muslims still remain a small minority in the United States (1% to 1.3% of the U.S. population). Two decades ago, Islamism was virtually absent from the US political landscape. Since then, Muslim candidates with Islamist views have increasingly been elected. Rep. Ilhan Omar was first elected US Representative for Minnesota in November 2018. Despite having close ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which the governor of Texas recently designated as a terrorist organization, Omar served from January 2019 to February 2023 on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, first elected in November 2018 as a US Representative from Michigan, is alleged to have extensive fundraising ties to Hamas supporters.
With the Muslim vote in the US remaining still too small to have a significant impact nationally, Omar and Tlaib, like Mamdani, were elected thanks to the "left-wing" vote.
Omar, starting in 2019, has published countless antisemitic posts on Twitter/X. Tlaib, another emitter of antisemitic remarks, had the honor in 2024 of being named "Antisemite of the Year" by the organization Stop Antisemitism. Both representatives have falsely accused Israel of "genocide" -- apparently with the support of the Democratic Party. A 2019 House Resolution to censure antisemitism was watered down to include "Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry." Democratic Party leaders know what these policies are, but most nevertheless support their candidacies. Senator Chuck Schumer quietly distanced himself from Mamdani's campaign, but the time when he presented himself as the "guardian of Israel" is clearly over. The Democratic Party is simply not what it was 30 years ago.
Support for Israel in the United States has long been both strong and bipartisan. It now seems to be weakening and is no longer bipartisan. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2025 showed that 59% of Americans have a negative view of the Israeli government. A recent poll showed that more American voters have a slightly greater sympathy for Palestinians (41%) than for Israelis (34%). Another recent poll showed that a majority of Democrats (54%) sympathize with Palestinians. Only 13% of Democrats sympathize with Israelis. 46% of all Republicans still say they sympathize with Israelis, but the percentage is lower than three years ago.
Support for Israel in the United States has recently become precarious. The horrors of the October 7, 2023, massacre appear largely to have been forgotten. The relentless propaganda falsely accusing Israel of "genocide" may well have had its intended damaging effect, even among American Jews. A September 2025 poll revealed that 48% of American Jews were hostile to Israel's actions in Gaza, that 61% of them said that Israel committed war crimes against Palestinians, and about 40% went so far as to say that Israel is perpetrating "genocide." Nearly one-third of them (32%) said that the US is too supportive of Israel.
In such a context, perhaps it is not surprising that so many Jews in New York voted for a mayor with anti-Israel positions and policies.
Israel, since October 2023, has been fighting for its survival, forced to fight not only Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi militia, but also Iran. It is mystifying why so many people cannot see how hard but also how carefully Israelis fought, how they were killed, suffered devastating wounds, and lost homes and livelihoods to safeguard the values of a West that cannot even bring itself to say thank you.
Antisemitism in the United States had, for decades, been marginal. It seemed difficult to imagine that it could actually rise once more from the ashes of World War II, yet here it is, rising again.
Islamic antisemitism has gained ground in recent years, not just in the US but also in Europe. It appears fueled not only by adversaries of the US such as Iran, but also by domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that appear to hide the identities of foreign donors.
Many anti-Israel protesters claim to support the Palestinian cause, but oddly none of them ever calls for the Palestinians' rights from their own leaders for freedom of speech, women's and children's rights, or even for a stop to entrenched corruption, arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against them.
Since 1992, when William F. Buckley, the political commentator and founder of National Review, took a stand against the presence of anti-Semites within the political right in America and published In Search of Anti-Semitism, that prejudice had become a fringe phenomenon among America's "right wing." Candace Owens was previously thought of as a "conservative," worked for the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA from 2017-2019, and was later affiliated with other conservative groups such as PragerU and the Daily Wire. Since shortly before her show at the Daily Wire was cancelled, she has been regularly making antisemitic remarks.
Tucker Carlson, also presumed to be a "conservative" had a popular nightly show on Fox News, but was let go in April 2023 for reasons unconnected to antisemitism and racism. Shortly after he began his independent podcast, he hosted, on the September 3, 2024 show, Darryl Cooper, a Nazi apologist and Holocaust-denier whom Carlson went on to describe as "the best and most honest popular historian in the United States." On October 27, 2025, Carlson hosted on his show Nick Fuentes, a proudly racist neo-Nazi who openly and enthusiastically admires both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, for a friendly, non-confrontational interview.
Some prominent conservative commentators, such as Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh, refused to disavow Carlson after his show with Fuentes. The problem was not, as some have tried to claim, simply that Carlson invited Fuentes, so much as Carlson's disinclination to question what he said. The veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow invited US Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for an interview but probed his statements. Carlson failed to indicate any disapproval of, or question, Fuentes's antisemitic remarks and later tried to explain that the Fuentes interview was an "effort to understand different perspectives." What Carlson did was simply to give Fuentes a platform to expand his influence, unchallenged. The interview has been viewed online more than 20 million times.
Carlson recently said that Christian Zionists have a "brain virus" and that "I dislike them more than anybody." According to US Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), Carlson is now the "most dangerous anti-Semite in America". Yet Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank in Washington, DC, called those who criticized Carlson's interview with Fuentes a "venomous coalition." He immediately faced a huge negative reaction, and then apologized for his "terrible choice of words," but refused to sever his organization's ties with Carlson. The legal scholar and Princeton professor Robert George resigned from the Heritage Foundation's board, as did several prominent members of the organization's "antisemitism task force."
A few Republican representatives also seemingly decided to follow the anti-Israel movement taking shape: US Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene used the word "genocide" to describe Israel's war in Gaza. US Rep. Thomas Massie was the sole Republican to vote against a resolution reaffirming Israel's right to exist.
Other conservatives showed rather more resolve. Fox News host and author Mark Levin denounced Carlson, and US Senator Ted Cruz said that Carlson "spread a poison that is profoundly dangerous". "Everyone of us," Cruz added, "has an obligation to stand up and say it is wrong." The anti-Semitic current within the conservative movement, which William Buckley seemingly had eradicated by 1992, has apparently resurfaced with a vengeance.
The increasing dissemination of socialist, communist and Islamist ideas; the hatred of Israel (meaning Jews); the Islamic and "left-wing" antisemitism; the transformation of the Democratic Party into a leftist party open to Marxism and Islamism; and the many American Jews distancing themselves from Israel, all appear to result from the transformation of many American universities into centers of anti-Western brainwashing. This hostile ideological campaign has been underway for decades, and since Hamas's October 7, 2023, massacres, has led to many demonstrations in support of the Islamist terrorist group, campus occupations, and the harassment and assault of Jewish students and faculty. These brainwashed alumni who now flood academia and the mainstream media simply keep advancing the harmful ideas instilled in them during their years of study.
The result threatens the fundamental values upon which the United States has rested for 250 years since its founding: the free market, private property, and freedom of speech, association and worship, without infringing on the rights of others.
There also seems to be a dangerous wish to erase the fact that the fundamental values of the United States are Judeo-Christian. The Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," meaning that these fundamental rights are given by a higher power. Christianity includes the Old Testament -- which is essentially the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh -- as well as the New Testament. Christianity essentially rests on the foundation of Judaism. The Hebrew language, in the first American universities, was a required subject.
This new hostility to Western civilization has also acted as a destabilizing force in major US foreign policy alliances. Israel, like it or not, is the United States' principal and most reliable ally in the Middle East. High-level intelligence cooperation with that tiny nation, the size of New Jersey (roughly 22,000 sq. km.), helps keep America safe in a seriously unstable world. As Israel is a world leader in technology, American investments there yield far more than they cost. Islamists and other enemies of the United States doubtless hope that if the US abandons Israel, this would lead to both a substantial weakening of America and other democracies, and a strengthening of tyrannies -- notably Islamist tyrannies.
The rise of these anti-Semitic, "anti-Zionist" and anti-American currents within the conservative movement has been called "a growing cancer" and it needs to be relentlessly fought. Americans who treasure the values of individual liberties and human rights shall have to assume the role of gatekeepers.
"A society that forgets its blessings becomes easy prey for those determined to dismantle them," wrote columnist Mark Weisman. America must not forget its blessings and become the prey for those determined to dismantle them.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
