After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
Can confirm.
By the way my country has an actual Communist Party with some representatives in government (not enough for anything really).
And FYI EU politicians are learning from the US: the EU, either at top level or at countries’ governments, is veering right as of late, towards the same fascism we now see in the US.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be so smug, not right now at least.
Your countries (I mean France at least) will burn themselves to the ground before they let that happen. Something I wish the Americans would do. I don’t want to be caught in a house fire, but if Temu Hitler is at my door setting it and my options are limited I’d drag him into the flames with me without a second thought.
Fascism is extremely well-funded and these assholes band together just look at the bailout of Argentina.
They are veering right because of the blatant Russian propaganda that is trying to break up NATO and the EU by trying to make everyone more xenophobic.
Too bad for them EU countries have a much more robust political system that cuts out extremist views most of the time. We don’t have a “winner takes all” system. And plenty of political parties, even right-wing ones, want nothing to do with the fascists.
I’m hopeful, but I wouldn’t let my guard down.
Russia is bad but blaming everything on russia is ridiculous. Xenophobia is growing everywhere with or without russian influence
Far-right parties are winning in Europe because the European Central Bank forces countries to adopt ‘austerity’ policies. These policies destroy jobs and reduce people’s quality of life. So people vote for whoever promises to fix this - either the left or the far-right. But the ECB can’t permit an anti-austerity government, so they crack down on the left. The far-right is tolerated as long as it only targets random Syrian refugees.
It’s the other way around. It’s NATO propaganda that led us to the war with Russia.
Are EU politicians really learning from the US? Or are they just paid off pawns? Probably a mix of both, but I think it’s safe to assume that the majority is caused by American meddling, until confirmed to be otherwise.
They’re all puppets and traitors.
Oligarch meddling, they don’t see flags (and neither should we).