Veteran human rights activist, political analyst and national organiser for the Black Alliance for Peace, Ajamu Baraka issues a stark warning to those celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s New York victory as a major win for the US left.
He argues that Mamdani’s comments on Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua offered ‘left cover for imperialist intervention’, exposing contradictions within social democratic or ‘democratic socialist’ politics.
Later, Baraka notes this unusual moment in US politics where figures on the right, such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, have taken stronger public stands against Israel’s genocide in Gaza than many Democrats.
He argues that as these criticisms spread among conservative audiences, they are fracturing the traditional pro-Israel consensus. The exposure of Israel’s actions, he says, has made it ‘impossible to re-legitimise’ the Zionist project — predicting that this growing loss of moral authority will eventually lead to a deeper political split inside the US.