Michael Powell on Mamdani, Anti-Zionism, and the New Socialism

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, a podcast featuring smart guests talking about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. And Sandeep, I just yesterday was like another seven hour drive back to Seattle from San Francisco with our kid who was working down there this summer. And we did something super touristy that I've never done before, which is to take the ferry to Alcatraz. And I bring it up not because it's related to today's topic, but it is related to Blue City Blues.

[00:00:40] In that it made me think I need to rewatch that movie Birdman of Alcatraz, which came out in the early 60s. I don't know if you remember this one. I don't remember it very well, but it was kind of like a pretty great criminal justice reform movie. But I don't really know much about the context for criminal justice reform in the early 60s. So it made me sort of think about it.

[00:01:00] Yeah, I only vague. I mean, I saw that movie as a kid. It's like Burt Lancaster, right? And he's like that sole like denizen of Alcatraz and he has these birds and... And a John Frankenheimer movie. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember it super well, but yeah, I've never been to Alcatraz. I haven't done that. I was just in San Francisco back in May for a homelessness conference. And I got to say, man, that town is booming right now.

[00:01:30] Like the Lurie... San Francisco's not dying. Well, right. The AI boom is... I mean, it's happening in Seattle, but it's really happening there even more so. I mean, North Beach, you know, the neighborhood, North Beach neighborhood on a Tuesday night was like rocking and rolling. I mean, you couldn't get a restaurant table kind of thing. And yeah, that kind of Lurie comeback seems... At least the vibe seemed really real around that.

[00:01:54] Yeah. It's just a great city. Although I will say our weather is much better in the summer than San Francisco's, which is kind of foggy and cold or can be. But we're not talking about San Francisco today. We're talking in part about the Israel and Palestine issue, not the conflict itself, but how that issue is dividing people on the left in blue cities, especially heading into the fall elections with Michael Powell, a journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic, who previously spent 15 years as a reporter and columnist at The New York Times, where he covered the fall elections.

[00:02:24] He covered a number of topics, including sports and the 2008 election. Michael Powell, thank you so much for joining us. Sure. My pleasure. So I just wanted to start out by asking you a little bit about this career transmission you made at The New York Times in 2020, when you went from sports to basically like the culture wars beat. You're covering all of the tough issues at sort of the toughest time.

[00:02:51] And I will say it just must have been a courageous. It seems like an incredibly courageous step to me, because at that moment, I actually started paying a lot more attention to sports so that I wouldn't have to think about those issues 24 seven because they were driving me completely crazy. But what possessed you to step into the fire of the culture wars in 2020 at The New York Times? Yeah, I called it like taking on the third rail beat, you know, subway terms. If it can electrocute you, it was something I should write about.

[00:03:22] You know, I had also five years earlier, I took on the job of sports columnist and I had never covered sports before that. So I kind of like this. I like shifting around and kind of seeing, you know, seeing if I can finally be found out for the fraud I am. And, you know, so I had done that. Five years was wonderful. Got to cover, you know, lots of great NBA finals and all that sort of thing.

[00:03:51] But I was, I felt, you know, my roots are very much in on news side, right? And less so sports. And I felt there was just this moment that we were in the middle of, you know, as a country around questions. I swear I would never use this word, but, you know, woke, right? I mean, that kind of, and I'm proud I never used that in a story.

[00:04:18] But, you know, but this sort of this sense of, you know, on a whole lot of fronts that there were things you couldn't talk about that you weren't supposed to look at. And as it, I was lucky in that the managing editor of the paper and I both had this kind of sense that, you know, we at the Times, but I think it was true of a lot of papers, weren't really covering it.

[00:04:44] And that it was, it was something that it was said something really important about our culture, particularly liberal, liberal political culture. So I just, you know, I, right, I guess it was, I had, I kind of gotten tired of reading stories that felt like they were stepping around it, dodging it, not really addressing it head on. And that isn't to say in every case people were wrong or right.

[00:05:14] It's just like, let's write about this. Let's go right at it. And, and I was very lucky that I had this senior editor who also was my editor. So she was willing to, if you will, kind of step in and help because those same, those same currents were affecting the New York Times.

[00:05:36] I mean, there really were a bunch of things that the New York Times was not writing about and they weren't writing about it because I think a lot of people were, you know, really, do I need that agita right now? You know, I don't want to touch that because there's going to be a lot of pushback. And that seemed kind of fun to me in a bizarre way. I mean, my, my wife had the same, same take as you. Stick with sports, you're fine there.

[00:06:05] I remember, I'm not, obviously, I'm an outsider 3,000 plus miles away from New York City at the time, but I was watching, I'm an avid New York Times reader and I was kind of watching all of this go down. This is the era of, you know, James Bennett gets ousted as the opinion page editor. Barry Weiss, you know, exits stage right, maybe, stage center right. I don't know where Barry went exactly, but exits the New York Times saying, you know, that it was a kind of hostile environment for her and she couldn't remain there.

[00:06:35] And I remember maybe a year after that, it might have been 2021 or so, I was talking to a prominent New York Times political reporter. And we were talking about some, you know, he was talking to me about some issue, but when we were done, I just said, man, what the, I think I said to him, what the hell has happened at the New York Times?

[00:06:54] Like, and he said, oh man, don't get me started, you know, but he said like, you know, it's just, we have this generation of 40 to 50 something white mid-level editors who live in terror of the 25 year old video, you know, kid is going to denounce them on the Slack channel for being racist. If they, we cover this or that, and it's really a thing, it's a problem.

[00:07:20] And, and, and that's certainly how it felt to me. Oh, and it was, it was a thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they teetered on the brink. I mean, David, we, David and I talk about this a lot about NPR and public radio even went further down the kind of woke road than the New York Times did, but they both kind of teetered on the brink for a while and then both have kind of come back. Yeah.

[00:07:44] I mean, actually one of the fun aspects of it was I could kind of write on anything because no one was writing. So if I wanted to write on a documentary maker that had been canceled, or if I wanted to take a look at, you know, race and, and, and, you know, what is white supremacy where this, I mean, I could kind of go anywhere and I would check with the, with the, you know, the, the, the desks and say, hey, is anybody writing on this thing? No.

[00:08:14] Yeah. And that usually meant it was like good for me. But it was, you know, in all seriousness, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a little depressing. I mean, I'm with that, that political writer you spoke to. I mean, I grew up very much, you know, I mean, I grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan politics.

[00:08:34] Politics, personal politics were, you know, certainly liberal and this kind of stuff, but it was, it just, it felt like everything it goes against being a journalist, which is that there were a whole series of things you weren't supposed to write on. Or if you wrote upon, about them, you were only supposed to come at it from one direction. And that just felt dreary. I mean, that's, that's not what we got into journalism for. So if there's time, it would be interesting to return to some of these stories.

[00:09:03] But one of which I wanted to ask about was one from 2020 when you wrote about Adolf Reed Jr. Because I'm hoping this could be a sort of a segue question. This guy is, if folks aren't familiar, a black Marxist professor. And he's invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America New York City chapter.

[00:09:24] And you write, you know, this seems like the perfect match because this is a guy who'd campaigned for Bernie Sanders and he denounces Barack Obama's neoliberal politics. But then the DSA decides to rescind this invitation. And maybe tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of what happened and what you think it reveals about the politics of the DSA, at least at that time and maybe now.

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[00:10:44] That's bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. And send along show ideas, guest ideas. Sandeep and I would really appreciate that as well. Okay, back to the show. Sure. I mean, he was, he's very much a Marxist and very much in that, you know, for him means class first, right? Kind of class analysis first. And identity politics really kind of caused him to recoil.

[00:11:12] Well, he doesn't, I mean, he's, he grew up in the American South. He's in his 70s. He's intimately aware of all of the, you know, kind of ravages of racism and the, you know, it's taken over the many years in the United States. But his, you know, his essential argument is you're not going to get change whether, unless you kind of look for class, you know, some class agreement, right?

[00:11:39] With, you know, with blacks, with Latinos and this kind of stuff. One could argue about this. I mean, I will, I confess, I find much of his analysis to make a lot of sense, but put that to the side. It certainly was, this is not an unusual analysis, right? I mean, certainly for Marxists to make. He was invited to speak at New York DSA.

[00:12:07] DSA is, you know, kind of endlessly, you know, has endless factions and factions within factions. So the factions, they were more class oriented. So, you know, come here and talk. But by no means, and again, that's, that's a good aspect of DSA. You know, there's, with the expectation that there would be real debate and, you know, back and forth.

[00:12:30] DSA, in fact, got such pushback for inviting him and saying that he was, you know, not sufficiently sensitive to questions. I mean, ironically for this African-American intellectual, to questions of race and identity. And they disinvited him.

[00:12:53] And that led, and I thought, I mean, in some ways, probably of all the pieces I did, it felt like the most, you know, good God. I mean, this is a prominent left-wing black intellectual, you know, really one of the top people, whether you agree with him or disagree with him.

[00:13:12] And the idea that a, and a validly socialist organization, you know, would say, nope, spoke, I thought, to, you know, kind of the malady that much of the left found itself in at that time around questions of race and class. Yeah. When, when DSA is canceling the Marxists, like, you know, like, what does that mean? You know, we've kind of gone through some kind of looking glass. Yes, exactly. Right.

[00:13:42] And I think, look, it's an amazing story and an amazing moment. And I do think it really highlights some of these roiling intellectual currents from the, you know, I do use the word woke because I can't think of a better word from the kind of peak woke era that really surged through cosmopolitan culture.

[00:14:10] The culture of kind of educated blue city America, for lack of a better term, particularly on the left. And, and that feeds into kind of what we wanted, the core of what we wanted to talk about today, too, which is, which is how this Israel, Gaza, Palestine issue has become so central to the worldview of certainly the kind of DSA left.

[00:14:39] And in particular, you wrote a piece back in March for the Atlantic about Zoran Mamdani. And the title of that piece is, you know, where's where Mamdani has refused to moderate. Right. And you point particularly to his position on, on Israel as being, hey, man, here's a guy who's coming to office. He's willing to moderate a whole bunch of stuff. Most prominently policing.

[00:15:05] He keeps Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner who represents all sorts of views that the left doesn't like. He's willing to do all sorts of other stuff to, to kind of govern a big city. But on this issue, Brooks, no compromise. Right. So talk a little bit about why you wrote that piece. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's, it's, it's the, the one issue that he places above all others. I mean, in his kind of personal cosmology, you know, personal politics. Yeah. And it's very, it's very odd.

[00:15:34] I mean, I, or not odd, I guess if one takes him at his word, he has always said, since the moment he got into politics back as a state assemblyman here, that the single issue that drew me to politics was Palestine and Israel. And, and he said this, you know, any number of times. And to the DSA, as you point out in the piece, he said, that's what drew him to the DSA. Was, was there. Yes, precisely.

[00:16:02] Because it was one of the few left organizations that, you know, didn't, to his view, kind of punk out on, you know, Palestine. I mean, here is one that was like, you know, they were firmly, solidly pro-Palestine. And, and it is kind of extraordinary. I mean, New York is what? The second largest Jewish city in the world, you know, just, you know, barely trailing Tel Aviv.

[00:16:28] Yeah, it's been actually kind of fascinating to watch the extent to which, I mean, he, you're absolutely correct. I mean, he is moderated on any number of issues, but not on that one, you know, and he keeps speaking out on it very loudly and insistently. And it's very, it's very popular. I mean, and I think we're seeing this play out elsewhere, right?

[00:16:51] I mean, Michigan, certainly there's a, you know, the, Saeed is in a, you know, a very close election there. And he talks about Palestine all the time. So it's a, you know, Platner did before he, you know, threw himself off a metaphorical cliff. Yeah. Yeah. The congressional races that where Mom Donnie endorsed in New York City, where, yeah, you know, that's. Yeah, right. I mean, very, very radical on the question of, right.

[00:17:20] One of the, one of the Congress, well, or soon to be Congresswomen that he endorsed up in Harlem. I mean, she went to this kind of infamous rally on, you know, the day after October 7th, in which they were celebrate, basically celebrating the slaughter. So it was, you know, and that was an interesting one because Mom Donnie has always distanced himself from that.

[00:17:50] Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't. And he's right. I mean, he didn't go to the rally. He was very careful around that. And therefore, it was a kind of a surprise to me that he would endorse this extremely radical woman who's really kind of claim to fame is that she had gone to this rally and, you know, spoken in defense, essentially, of Hamas. And I think that was an interesting moment.

[00:18:18] And you also bring up that he ends up hosting and supporting Mahmoud Khalil, who's that Columbia University graduate student who was detained by ICE. And a lot of people had a lot of sympathy for his cause and including certainly us and the way the Trump administration was treating issues of free speech.

[00:18:39] But you feel like Mondami kind of crosses the line in terms of not just advocating for his right to free speech, but really fully embracing his political views and sort of the cause. Yeah, I mean, inviting him to Gracie Manchin, the mayor's, you know, the mayor's house and serving him, you know, serving him dinner and like making a real point.

[00:19:04] And I do think that there's, you know, that was an interesting moment because there's a perfectly reasonable, which you just, you know, laid out a perfectly reasonable defense of him, which is that he was involved in free speech. I should say there's a complication because he also was involved in occupying buildings and shutting down speech. So I am by no means defending what the Trump administration has done in ICE.

[00:19:32] But I mean, it was a little more complicated than, you know, just this guy who's like trying to, you know, speak out on Israel-Palestine. But having said that, he did not deserve to be, you know, arrested and, you know, trundled off to wherever they wanted to trundle him, try to trundle him off to. I think they sent him to Louisiana for a while. Yes, right, right. And he was, I mean, I think he's got, Khalil has a green card, right?

[00:19:59] He's married to an American woman and they want to deport him basically for what he said. I mean, that's what the- A hundred percent. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They were not worried that, I mean, the cause of Spelly was not that he had, you know, you know, taken part in a momentary occupation of a building. It was that they wanted, you know, they wanted to make an example of him.

[00:20:25] We don't want to just focus this all on the New York mayor and his psychology, but this is a guy who's- Sure. He's not Palestinian. You know, I think he's of East Indian ancestry, grew up in Uganda. So why did he become so focused on this issue? Do you have any sense of why this is such a big issue for him? Maybe in a way that kind of illustrates why it's become such a big issue for folks on the left.

[00:20:53] You know, I think it is an interesting question. I mean, his mother is actually a Hindu, you know, and grew up in a upper class, upper caste family in India. His father is Muslim, also grew up in India, you know, came to Uganda, got, you know, expelled from the father from Uganda, actually on two different occasions.

[00:21:20] And Mandani was there until he was about seven years old. And it's interesting. I mean, you know, the Israel-Palestine issue for those on the left, you know, not, and also like, you know, the international left has become a, you know, a real, it's become a touchstone, right?

[00:21:45] I mean, that more than anywhere, anything else is kind of what you define yourself as. He was correct in that traditionally has not been the stance of the American left. There's certainly, the American left would be very critical of a Likudnik, you know, of a Bibi Netanyahu. I mean, that's, that's, those politics have existed, well, I don't know, you know, as long as I can remember.

[00:22:12] But this kind of very hard, hard take on Israel. I mean, you don't hear Mandani, but again, not just to focus on Mandani, but you don't hear DSA left and increasingly a kind of a larger swath left talking about a two-state solution. One we could debate, is that still relevant?

[00:22:35] I mean, all that kind of stuff, but putting that to the side, that was always the sincronon for kind of liberal left New Yorkers, certainly. You know, that you were in favor of a two-state solution. A few people, you know, a few intellectuals would favor a one-state solution, you know, but that was, that was, that was pretty much out.

[00:22:55] And also the, when they did stand for a one-state solution, it was in a, within a context of looking at the Palestinians more, again, in kind of class terms, right? I mean, you know, there were, right up through the 80s and 90s, a lot of the Palestinian groups in Israel and in other countries were Marxist. Now it's obviously, you know, it's vastly more religious-based, right?

[00:23:24] I mean, you know, defining themselves. So anyway, that, it's all a shift. I mean, there's, there's just been these interesting shifts and in that way, DSA was really at the, I mean, like, they deserve credit or blame depending on your view, but they, they more than anyone have kind of pushed that pretty hard line. You don't hear talk of a two-state solution, you hear river to the sea and, you know, Israel-APAC, Israel-APAC.

[00:23:53] And it's, that's, anyway, that, that is, for me, having grown up in New York, a dramatic sea change. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's strongly generational, right? I mean, in some sense, you know, Momdani's views, I think are emblematic of a certain kind of more broadly, more common view among the kind of progressive left of people under a certain age.

[00:24:18] I don't know, you know, you know, you know, 40, 40 and under kind of, kind of progresses now living in, living in cosmopolitan America tend to be pretty Momdani-like in terms of their, their, their view of the Israel-Palestine issue, which is obviously a huge sea change from, you know, the old liberal kind of, kind of consensus around, around Israel.

[00:24:38] And maybe it's because I'm getting a little, I don't know, long in the tooth myself, but I, I'm, I'm kind of struck by how much of a, a historical turn the left took in the woke years, right?

[00:24:52] And, and there was this kind of sense that happens over the last decade that there's nothing for us to learn from history, that, that previous generations were just kind of unenlightened reactionaries and apologists for, you know, crude forms of oppression and marginalization that, that existed before.

[00:25:11] And that in some sense, history itself, the weight of it was a, was an impediment to kind of creating this kind of brave new world that, where we were going to, you know, address the, the sins of the past and, and rectify them. And that sort of a historicity about it, you know, it strikes me as particularly true on the Israel issue, right?

[00:25:31] I mean, the, the, the DSA types, it seems to me don't have much sense of why in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, a homeland for the Jews seemed so necessary to so many people across the liberal world, right?

[00:25:51] And I, and I, and I don't know, one of the historical ironies for me about this is that so many people in the early days of the Israeli state, Zionism itself was in some sense inextricably entwined with socialism. Yeah, right. It was, you know. Socialism, absolutely. Yeah, it was, it was, and, and so this kind of sense that anti-Zionism now is a integral feature of whatever the new version of socialism is.

[00:26:21] It is, it's, that seems to me a kind of historical irony. So anyway, there's a lot in there, but, but, but, but Michael, yeah, speak to that, that shift. Yeah, well, no, I think that's, I mean, look, yeah, 100% agreement. You know, I, I mean, I remember as a, you know, I'm, witness the color of my hair. I'm of a certain age. Yeah, me too.

[00:26:44] And, and there was a sense that, you know, Golda Meir and all of this were, you know, the, the, the, that, a Israel was synonymous with socialism, socialist democracy. And, you know, I have a good friend of mine from, in fact, one of my best friends from childhood moved to Israel and, you know, and went to work for a business connected with the labor, the history of the, the labor federation in Israel.

[00:27:11] And that felt, you know, very, I mean, he remains a, a firm lefty, albeit kind of horrified by what he sees going on back here. And, you know, and I grew up, I mean, this friend was one of, I don't know, a half dozen friends of mine whose parents were Holocaust survivors.

[00:27:31] So, you know, it, it, it wasn't difficult to understand when you would listen to them tell their stories of what happened to them, why, why there's an Israel. And that isn't, that isn't to defend everything that happens in Israel or anything, but it's, it's a, it's really striking, you know, to be kind of a left liberal in New York when I was a kid or a teenager

[00:28:00] was very much to, you know, I mean, you were in favor of, you know, stock, you know, Sweden and Sweden, Norway and Israel. I mean, you know, it was like, these were sort of social democratic touchstones. And that feels as, and I think your point about, you know, history just getting wiped out, it's perfectly fine.

[00:28:25] And sure, turn on Bibi Netanyahu and Ben Gavir and all of these sorts. I mean, they're pretty, pretty ugly. And Israel's in a real battle for its own soul. Yeah. I mean, just to echo what you and Sadiq are both saying, it seems to me there's just this overly simplistic narrative where there's kind of the colonizers and the colonized. And a lot of the history gets erased. I guess I would disagree then slightly with Sadiq in saying that it's only about Israel.

[00:28:51] I think that that kind of narrative oversimplifies a lot of history and not just that history. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. But I wanted to, my argument I think would be for blue city politics that mayors should just shut up about international affairs while they're mayor. Because they've got potholes to fix and, you know, drug policy and homelessness policy, some really serious issues.

[00:29:17] And these kinds of divisive issues, I think, potentially like hinder their ability to do the jobs that people elected them to do. They, you know, this guy, Mondami, was not elected to solve the Israel-Palestine issue. So, you know, I wish he would just stay out of it. You know, but you point out that New York mayors have kind of a history of wading into these kinds of issues. So I wanted to ask about one thing in particular.

[00:29:41] This is Rudy Giuliani, 1995, throws Yasser Arafat out of a concert at Carnegie Hall, I think it was, for UN dignitaries. And what was particularly sort of troubling for the Clinton administration and a lot of people on the left who were kind of hoping at that time for a two-state solution was you just had the Oslo Accords a couple years before. Arafat was in the U.S. as a part of this kind of longer-term diplomatic initiative that the Clinton administration sort of is initiating.

[00:30:10] It doesn't – it's not successful, but, you know – and here's this jackass, Rudy Giuliani, throwing Arafat out of Carnegie Hall because he's a – you know, we later learn he's kind of a creepy guy with dumb politics, basically. But, you know, at the time, there was a lot of criticism of him for wading into a divisive issue. So I guess the question is I don't really see any difference, frankly, between the two. I think both – if you want to come up with a consistent policy, it's that mayors should just stay out of this shit.

[00:30:38] And, you know, Mondami's entitled to his opinions even if I disagree with them, just like Giuliani is, but just don't talk about it at all. But I think – I don't think we necessarily agree about that, so I'm curious what your take is. No, I think that – look, I mean, I remember very clearly when Rudy did what he – you know, what he did. And, of course, Koch had done similar kind of dumb things. Ed Koch, when he was mayor some years earlier, I mean, it plays – it's base-thumping, right?

[00:31:06] I mean, for Rudy, it was – you know, he was playing the kind of more conservative Jews. And also, I mean, Arafat was kind of easily caricatured as, you know, the Arab radical or whatever. And it was very destructive, what he did. I mean, I understand why the Clinton people – you know, they were constantly trying to herd cats on both sides and get them to an agreement.

[00:31:31] And for Mamdani, you know, the roots of this one was kind of his own stupidity. When he ran – and he's not a stupid man at all – but when he ran for mayor, you know, he said, I'm going to arrest him. I mean, that was one of the things he said. I'm going to arrest him if he comes to New York. Well, he knows you can't do that. I mean, there's – you know, you can't do that. We don't – we as a country do not even recognize the law that he's claiming that he would arrest him under.

[00:32:00] Whoever the president is, even assuming a far more rational character than Trump, is going to step in and say, no, you can't do that. You know, I mean, we're, for God's sakes, the home of the UN. If you start picking out excrucible sorts and saying, I'm going to arrest them, you know, you're going to fill up the, you know, Manhattan Detention Center pretty quickly. So he knew that.

[00:32:24] So the problem is once he got in – and, of course, then Netanyahu's coming to New York. He's forced to come up with this, you know, to consult with his lawyers when he knows what the answer is. And the lawyers are going to tell him, no, you're out of your mind. You can't – and they may not out of your mind. But they're going to say, no, you can't do it. So then he's stuck.

[00:32:46] So then he has to go into this and he gives this very kind of explosive two-minute, you know, two or three-minute talk on Israel, you know, in which he really comes down hard on Zionism, on Israel. And this is harder than he needed to. And that goes back to your point. Just he wasn't doing a bad job, you know, initially as mayor.

[00:33:10] He had some – there had been some bumps, but he was, you know, by and large governing pretty, you know, pretty reasonably. And he is a very bright guy. And I think this has really hurt him. Now, does that happen if a Plattner, you know, had become senator? If an al-Said had become, you know, become senator? I, you know, I don't know because there, at least the argument for these are kind of part of my – this is within my writ, right?

[00:33:40] If you're a U.S. senator, to talk about that is different than if you're a mayor. No, as a mayor, it's not your writ. Since you wrote that piece in March, obviously he came out with this video statement where he essentially backed off and said, I guess I don't have the legal authority to jail Netanyahu when he comes here, but I, you know, basically demand the U.S. government to do it when he does so. And, okay, he does that.

[00:34:06] But there's also just in the last, you know, couple of weeks, there's this, you know, terrible incident, this anti-Semitic hate crime stabbing in New York City. A couple of people get stabbed by this person in what looks like an anti-Semitic attack. And the New York Times has a headline just, you know, a few days ago that – a front page, after stabbings, a rise in Jewish fears and questions for Mamdani, you know, is the headline.

[00:34:33] And as they write, it's a – they say it's a highly emotional week in New York, which is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and highlighted the degree to which Middle East politics have become infused into Mr. Mamdani's young mayoralty. And so, yeah, I mean, obviously he's putting some strains, at least with the traditional Jewish community, by taking some of these stands.

[00:34:57] I guess my question, though, as I read the stuff is, given where things are going, not just on the DSA left, but the Democratic Party more broadly, I'm not sure it's actually unpopular, the stands he's taking right now. I mean, look at El Saeed in Michigan, Platner in Maine, you know, these New York City races, that Denver congressional race. And I don't know. You know, maybe this is – Mamdani's just, again, the tip of the sphere of where things are headed. I know, and I have the same question.

[00:35:25] I mean, I'm kind of taken aback by it. Not kind of. I am very taken aback by it. I mean, the stories I hear in New York from friends, from, you know, a year ago I went up with a basketball coach I know from an inner – real inner city high school. Great guy. And they played a yeshiva up in Riverdale. Nice. They've done it for years.

[00:35:53] But I got talking with the yeshiva kids afterwards. And, you know, like – I mean, they were getting – they all had tales of, like, you know, I was walking down the street and got punched in the head. I got punched here. I got like – I mean, this is New York City. You know, this is like the biggest Jewish city by far in America. And it's depressing to me.

[00:36:16] I mean, I – and I don't get – you know, I don't get the woman who – Chevalier? I'm going to butcher her name. Chevalier. Yeah, Chevalier. Yes. I mean, you know, she's – she's playing with the fires of anti-Semitism at times. And I don't – that's not a – you know, like, I think it's perfectly fair you want to have a – you know, Mamdani wants to – I mean, I'd agree. It doesn't matter, right?

[00:36:45] But it's perfectly fair to raise questions – big, hard questions about Netanyahu, about Likud, about, you know, where's Israel going. But I'm – but there's also stuff that goes beyond that. I find it very depressing. I also find it strange politics because it may work within the Democratic Party right now in certain, you know, states. I'm – I don't think it's going to work nationally. I mean, as a national politics.

[00:37:15] I hope not, actually, because I think it's destructive. And it's too bad because there's perfectly legitimate – as I'm sure we can read this – perfectly legitimate, hard criticisms to be leveled about, you know, at Israel and about, you know, its behavior on the West Bank. I mean, anyway, we could go on. But this is – this feels something quite different.

[00:37:42] So, yeah, just by way of follow-up, I've been saying this for a while now, and I don't think people understand me when I say it. But this goes to the conversation we've been having so far today, which is – my phrase is Zionists are the new turfs.

[00:37:55] And what I mean by that is kind of my first experience of this kind of woke shift, whatever you want to call it, identitarian shift that happened in the broader culture about a decade ago was – you know, David and I are both graduates of Reed College. We're part of this Facebook group of alumni and students from, you know, Reed College, small, very liberal, you know, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon.

[00:38:21] And, you know, all of a sudden about 10 years ago, the trans issue suddenly explodes in this Facebook group, right, and becomes this – almost immediately this kind of litmus test issue. And when there are a handful of kind of old school, what I would call second wave radical feminists, right, in this group who kind of spoke up and said that they had some issues with some of this new trans theory stuff and what it meant for women and, you know,

[00:38:49] and who's a woman and women's only spaces and those kinds of questions, right, they were treated like witches, right? You know, that we needed to be burned at the stake and, you know, heretics to be shouted down in silence, turf, you know, turf was this term of opprobrium, right? And it was just emblematic of this – what I would see as a kind of authoritarian and oppressive turn in the culture of the left in that period. And right now, Zionism seems to have taken on that kind of boogeyman status on the left.

[00:39:19] They're the new turf. They're the people that we denounce and shout down and, you know. So I don't know, Michael, am I pushing this too far or do you see what – No, I mean, I don't know. It rings true to me. I mean, I remember I wrote one story apropos of the last beat when I was at the Times on trans athletes, but at the elite level.

[00:39:45] And there there's simply, to my view, when you start looking at all the research, there's kind of no doubt that if you're a male who's transitioned to female, you have a distinct physical advantage. It's not because you're cheating. It's not because of anything. It's just in the nature of, you know, coming – having matured as a male. And I had all kinds of, like, you know, research in there.

[00:40:13] And I got, like, you know, there were posters of me put up around my neighborhood, you know. And it was probably the most explosive thing I wrote about in that beat. So – You got a lot of blowback. That resonates with me. Yes.

[00:40:31] And I am – it's interesting because now, like when I've written a couple of these pieces for The Atlantic, I've gotten DSA – a couple of DSA people I know, like, call me, you know, why are you a BB, you know, supporter? Why are you supporting this fascist regime? And it's just – it's – there's kind of no starting point for an interesting discussion there. It's just, you know, they're fascists.

[00:41:00] You're a fascist for supporting them. You know, catch you later. Yeah. Well, it's back to this kind of one-sided simplistic thinking. You know, you're a colonizer. You're a colonized. Which team am I on? There's just no nuance. So, I want to ask about then – because we're kind of dancing around this question. Like, where does legitimate or non-extremist criticism of Israel go? Like, on the left? Like, where does that happen?

[00:41:27] And it seems like there's a kind of emerging consensus among reasonable people that AIPAC is not really it. In some ways, that AIPAC itself has some problems. Like, they've made some big mistakes. Like, primarying that New Jersey congressperson earlier this year for basically saying that when it comes to aid to Netanyahu's government, it would be sort of case by case. You know, so he's a moderate person. He's been a supporter of Israel his whole career.

[00:41:56] And AIPAC spends, like, millions of dollars trying to unseat him. And it backfires and they end up electing this super anti-Israel candidate, right? So, I kind of wonder, you know, if we can take it a little bit to that question. I know there's this group called J Street. I don't know that much about them. I don't claim to be an expert on this issue. But where does this stuff go? Because I feel like that might be one of the problems is that kind of where does legitimate criticism of Israel go?

[00:42:25] Because on the right, on the sort of far right, there is no such thing. You know, and when, you know, our vice president talks about it, it's pretty clear that that's what his politics are, is that we want to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, right? So, how does that – how do we solve this problem? It's kind of a larger question on the left. Like, any thoughts? Oh, yeah. That's an easy one, Noah.

[00:42:53] No, I don't have any – I mean, look, AIPAC clearly had gotten used to being kind of the, you know, the bully in the schoolyard for a while, right? I mean, for quite a while, you know, and being – and could kind of make or break people within the Democratic Party. And that's gone. And look, in some respects, that's not a bad thing.

[00:43:18] I think the demonizing of AIPAC is a strange and unhelpful thing. I mean, I'd say, look, they've been a bully. You know, they've gotten their comeuppance. I mean, that seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to say. But, I mean, some of the – now the PACs that are coming forward for – that are Muslim, you know, basically Muslim American PACs. I mean, you know, there's a huge amount of money.

[00:43:47] And they, too, play – you know, I mean, PACs throw their weight around a lot, right? And, you know, that can be – so I don't know that I'm – I guess I'm not down with the demonization of AIPAC. But I don't know that it's the worst thing in the world that AIPAC, you know, gets – as I say, gets kind of, you know, spanked around.

[00:44:08] But what, again, I think is remarkable is the – I mean, AIPAC has become this word, right, that kind of stands for everything. You don't almost have to say Zionist, right? You can just say, oh, that's AIPAC. I mean, you see this in the Michigan race, right? She's AIPAC. You know, you see it in Maine. They're talking about Sue Collins as, like, she's AIPAC. Well, not really. You know, I mean, she's gotten money from AIPAC.

[00:44:38] For sure, she gets money from a lot of people. One can dislike her, like her. But she's not – you know, I mean, these are not AIPAC zombies. And I think that it's part of the polarization of politics, particularly in the Democratic Party. And I don't know, you know, where does that go? Like, the guy in New Jersey who won – you know, Hamawi won the primary. I mean, he won with 29% of the vote.

[00:45:05] It's not like this guy won, you know, going away. And I'm just not – I'm not clear. Like, what is the end – what is the end game here? And as I say, and I also can't escape that it's kind of ugly. I mean, I've been at a number of these, you know, marches when the war in Gaza was still very much a hot war. And, you know, I mean, I got asked if I was a Jew.

[00:45:35] I'm not. It doesn't matter. I mean, all my friends in the Upper West Side were Jewish. But I just found it like a repugnant question, right? I mean, like – and so I guess I worry for left liberals where they think they're going with this. I – yeah. I will say, I mean, I've problematized what you said, David, a little early because I think the Israel issue is getting increasingly fraught on the right as well these days.

[00:46:03] There is more of a kind of, you know, I don't know, Trumpist consensus or, you know, where they're kind of reflexively pro-Israel, though Trump has his – clearly has its frustrations with Netanyahu right now. But look at – just look at Tucker Carlson or, you know, Nick Fent.

[00:46:20] I mean there is a very hot streak of anti-Israel, I would say, border – you know, verging again towards something that is approaching anti-Semitism territory, right, that we're seeing. They don't even apologize for it in a lot of cases. Yeah. Well, the Nick – I mean some of those people are just blatantly anti-Semitic and openly so.

[00:46:46] But Tucker Carlson who – he seems very fixated on, you know, and basically blames Israel for every bad thing that's happening, you know, in ways that starts to look – it's very conspiratorial in his thinking about Israel. And, oh, and, you know, and Charlie Kirk was, you know, supposedly murdered by the – you know, his Mossad or whoever, right?

[00:47:11] So there's – it is becoming a kind of bipartisan problem in some sense. But to me it seems like what that says is that we're just seeing the old liberal order and the liberal consensus, small L liberal, like that covered, you know, the kind of normal mainstream range of political debate and discourse in the country falling apart to this kind of radical chic stuff on both sides of the divide.

[00:47:39] And, you know, I mean this goes beyond this issue in particular. It's just that the kind of – the liberal roots of the republic itself are in some kind of crisis maybe. Sorry, there wasn't a question there on Michael, but – No, I agree. I mean I find it a – it's a disorienting time to cover left liberal politics.

[00:48:08] And I'm just – and it's interesting. I think there's a lot of people kind of circling back to something we were talking about when I first did my other beat at the New York Times who are afraid to address this now. You know, they're afraid to speak out and that's problematic. And you covered – I mean we're kind of getting into some of the campus politics as well.

[00:48:33] I mean you covered some of these protests at Columbia and elsewhere at the Atlantic, right, and encountered some pretty troubling sentiments. I mean look, to me I used to be a political activist. I just think the politics are so freaking stupid. That's – you know, it's like if you want to reform what's happening in Israel, there's plenty of smart ways to try and do that.

[00:48:54] But these – from the slogans to everything else, it seems like these are self-defeating kind of fantasy revolutionary politics that, you know, remind us of kind of the late 60s, early 70s. And I don't know how to, you know, break the trance, but it seems like there's this kind of trance on the left right now that's just – I don't know where it's headed.

[00:49:17] I'm mystified by it, but I wonder if you have any insights into kind of the psychology of some of this from some of your time reporting on campus and sort of the campus protest movement. Well, no, I think it – look, I think it's exactly as you describe, and I certainly saw that up at, you know, Columbia. I mean I was struck by how just it's now a matter of fact that one is pro-BDS, your boycott divest in Israel.

[00:49:47] You know, there's just this sense that they are colonizers. I mean that language is chilling actually because it dehumanizes. It doesn't – it's not like you don't – you know, it's – Clinton is trying in 2000 to get, you know, knock heads and get, you know, the – you know, basically the labor government and the Palestinians to, you know, agree to something.

[00:50:13] Once you say that they're all colonizers, once you say that they're all – you know, that it's – that there's no use talking to them, that it's not – again, you don't even hear one state's solution. I mean that is in fact what they're saying when they say river to the sea.

[00:50:29] But by that they don't mean like, you know, Marcus to Queensbury, you know, sort of rules of engagement so you could have a, you know, a true, you know, meeting of kind of, you know, Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. They mean they want a – they want a Palestinian state. And if, you know, a few Jews can stick around, okay. But you don't hear that talked about. And I find that really – yeah, it's depressing.

[00:50:59] I mean, BDS, you know, look, some of my – some of the best sources, I mean, you know, on Israel, some of the hardest critics are left-wing Israelis, right? And that isn't to say – that doesn't buy all of Israel, you know, like some grace, right? Okay, you can do anything.

[00:51:17] But there was – you know, that is a vibrant, at times, cantankerous, you know, democracy where in fact also now, you know, Arab Israelis are also involved with it. So I just – I don't get it. I don't get what is the end game. And what I would hear when I was up at, you know, Columbia was – I mean, BDS was a given. You know, boycott them. Don't listen to them. Don't invite them anywhere.

[00:51:46] By the way, Momdani's mother, who's a wonderful filmmaker, had also spoken out about, you know, about the need for BDS in the film area. So that's, I mean, very much mom and pop and the son. But it's – yeah, I don't know where we go. I mean, I don't know. There's very little discernible dialogue among kind of more liberal Jews and the demonstrators.

[00:52:15] Now, having said that, the left-wing – more left-wing Jewish Americans, I mean, they're all in with Momdani and El Saeed, I mean, and all these folks. So it gets, you know, kind of complications woven within complications. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:36] The whole – I do find the whole idea of a one-state solution, which, you know, which to be very clear here is being pushed both by the Israeli right and the Palestinians. Both have their versions of what they want to – none of that seems achievable without some kind of horrific violent episode, right?

[00:52:58] I mean, we're talking about what there's 7 million Israeli Jews, some equal number of Palestinians living in close proximity to one another. So, you know, I think when you press some of the lefties, they say they do want some kind of democratic state that is not – you know. But one without – where Jews would be the minority, right? That would not be kind of seen as the Jewish homeland anymore. And so – Right.

[00:53:25] And if you believe that the leaders of Hamas were to ever be victorious and that they would go along with that, as the saying goes in New York, you know, I got a bridge to sell you. I mean, that's just – you know. And in fact, the Hamas folks have been admirably clear. They're not talking, you know, like, you know, oh, we could make room for the, you know, the Jewish Israelis. They're not liberal Democrats either, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:53:55] No, no. The idea that – I mean, Israel has been around now more than 75 years. It's a very established – the idea that it's going away in some fundamental sense seems to me to be that it's only conceivable – it's not conceivable without some kind of spasm of unimaginable violence. Yeah, Armageddon. Yeah. So that's kind of horrifying.

[00:54:21] But that's where – I do want to kind of bring it back or maybe as a way of close because it just fascinates me how this has become such a central emblematic issue for Mamdani, for the left increasingly more broadly for a significant swath of the Democratic Party.

[00:54:45] And it gets to this fundamental question, particularly for the left of what we mean by socialism, right? There are all these polls that show that, like, socialism among Democrats is more popular than capitalism or what have you. But I think there's this real question that this raises about what does that mean?

[00:55:04] And when we're saying we're democratic socialists but our prime issue is Israel and a one-state solution and not raising the material conditions of the poor, right? Then is this really – is this still a kind of hangover more of woke than a Marxist turn, right? I mean to put it crudely, right? I don't quite understand what socialism means anymore.

[00:55:33] No, I'm not really sure either. So I'm not – I mean you will in fairness. I mean some of the stuff that Mamdani is pushing, I mean not a big – I have my doubts. But, you know, he's like having these city-owned supermarkets, yeah, grocery stores.

[00:55:55] I mean there's, you know, kind of the means of production argument that, you know, we're going to have a role there in kind of making that, you know, in housing. I mean now there the irony is, I mean New York is in many respects has been a social democratic city for a very long time on a lot of these issues like housing. So he's essentially looking to continue that.

[00:56:21] I mean, you know, even Rudy Giuliani, who was no democratic socialist, I mean even he, you know, kept funding the housing, the low-income housing program. He had to. He realized that, like, you know, there was no room on that. But, you know, so I do think there's, you know, there are issues there.

[00:56:44] But it is striking to me that Israel seems now to have, like, seized the imagination in a way that – yeah, I mean it's – why is that a socialist issue? I mean I just – I don't get it. I mean, again, we're – you know, Hamas is anything but socialist. I mean that's a – you know, they're a theocratic, you know, theocratic group and fundamentalists.

[00:57:13] So we're not, you know – yeah, I'm not quite clear that I – I'm not clear on that. It seems to me there are contradictions there. At the same time, I mean, I will say, you know, housing, when Mamdani talked about that coming in and, you know, you hear – I mean that was very popular.

[00:57:36] I gather that Al-Sayed out in Michigan is talking a lot about a, you know, single-payer, right, you know, Medicare state. And I gather that's fairly popular. So, I mean, there are these issues that have been kind of, if you will, in kind of the Bernie, you know, the Bernie Canyon, you know, that are not just Israel. Yeah.

[00:58:02] I mean, you know, it does go back to the, you know, late 60s kind of left romanticization of third-world anti-colonial struggle. And this is kind of a carryover from that, it seems like, in a lot of ways.

[00:58:17] What I admire about your work so much and why it's so simpatico with what Sandeep and I are interested in here on Blue City Blues just has to do with the fact that you're always kind of digging in and finding the complexity in these stories that are so important for folks, especially in Blue Cities and on the left, to actually think about if they're willing to open their minds and kind of look at this work.

[00:58:37] And one piece you write about that I found particularly interesting, given your own background as a tenant organizer, has to do with Mondami's approach to housing. And you had a lot of super interesting things to say about that, you know, because he is somebody who decided to freeze the rent for folks that are living in rent-stabilized apartments.

[00:58:59] And I think I might have said it on this podcast, but I used to have one in the West Village, 500 bucks a month when I was a graduate student, which I didn't deserve. I got it because my brother-in-law had been living there and he managed to cut a deal because they wanted him to move out of this one apartment into another and he wanted to leave the city anyway. So anyway, I get on the lease. Admittedly, I had no money. I mean, I was living on a really crappy PhD program stipend in those days.

[00:59:24] So in that sense, you know, it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but I didn't deserve it. I didn't feel like then or now. And so, you know, like, and rent stabilization meant my rent went up every, like 3% or whatever it was every year or something, like went up the cost of living, which was not an unreasonable program. Mondami having frozen the rents, but you've got quite a bit to say in this article. So I wonder if you could speak to some of the problems with the way that he's been thinking about housing and rent and tenant rights.

[00:59:54] Yeah, it feels to me like a very, and I was, I was a tenant organizer in East Flatbush, which was a predominantly West Indian neighborhood in Brooklyn a long time ago. And I grew up in a rent control department, you know, so I'm certainly aware of, you know,

[01:00:14] that the role that rent stabilization, rent control play in keeping middle class, working class people in the city. That, you know, it's an unbelievably expensive city otherwise. At the same time, I mean, one of the things that, you know, Mondani has pushed for and has obtained a rent freeze. It's supposed to last several years.

[01:00:39] And this comes at a time when apartment owners in working class neighborhoods are in really rough, rough shape. And isn't there, they're all saints. They're not. I mean, there's some real crumbs. There's some perfectly good ones that try, you know, try to make it. But the cost of running housing is, you know, that is low income housing where you have a fixed, you know, a real fixed amount each nut that you've got each month.

[01:01:10] It has arrived at a point where many, many buildings now are running at a loss. That's a very dangerous thing to do. It's dangerous because that landlord, particularly when he knows that he or she knows they're going to get no money coming in, is much less likely to make even basic repairs, right?

[01:01:30] If you go back to when I was doing tenant organizing, there was a lot of arson that started to happen because buildings were not remotely, you know, able to sustain themselves. And these real creeps would take over and they would hire torches to go in and burn them. And, you know, there's also this combined with the with freezing the rent.

[01:01:56] There's also been a very strong bias towards developing rules against evicting anyone. And that's one of the things I found as a tenant organizer. I mean, obviously, we did everything we could to keep people from being evicted. But I remember in particular, there was one building is about 25 units. We the tenant association took it over, got the courts to sign off on a tenant run building, which you could do in extreme circumstances.

[01:02:27] And two of the tenants, both really sweet women, like like, you know, with kids and stuff. But just one of them was married to a drug dealer, a Rasta dealer in the, you know, who was just causing like all kinds of chaos in the building. And the other woman just wouldn't pay anything towards rent.

[01:02:49] And what happened was that eventually that the after many attempts to warn them, the tenant association moved and evicted them. Because what was at stake was the lives of 23 families that that had done everything they could, you know, that it like, you know, fix the boilers and like, you know, got an emergency and, you know, deliveries of oil and that kind of stuff.

[01:03:16] And there's a not to recognize, I think, for Mondani and for his group that this is just, you know, this is survival for folks. And that, you know, you can talk all you want about, you know, state run housing and they want to do social housing based on, you know, what's happening in Vienna. And, you know, like, great that, you know, you go work on that.

[01:03:44] But meanwhile, we've got like, you know, tens and tens of thousands of families living in buildings that are getting worse and worse off. And unless we figure out some way, you know, it's too easy to demonize landlords. Some deserve it. Let me be clear. You know, there's some real bastards out there. But there's also just a lot who are like, they're trying to make their way in this building.

[01:04:09] The guy who owned the building that I just mentioned that I was organizing in was a West Indian, you know, kind of entrepreneur, barely better off than the tenants. And we took the building from him. But I also felt, you know, you felt badly like he didn't set out to like, you know, run a lousy building. He thought he could, you know, collect rents and make it all work. And anyway, it just strikes me the housing question in New York City.

[01:04:38] And you see this elsewhere and in some other Democratic cities. It's just too simplistic. I mean, it's just, you know, like it's just simplistic. There's, you know, it's really hard making a go of it in these kind of working class and poor buildings. It's a huge problem. It's this issue of rental protection issues going too far is a big problem in Seattle right now.

[01:05:06] We've got affordable housing providers in Seattle who are selling off their buildings because they can't make a profit on them because people have stopped paying rent. And but there's been so many. It's so hard to evict anybody anymore that, you know, and often they have problem tenants who they can't even rent the apartments around them out because they're too dangerous. And but they can't evict the person.

[01:05:30] And so right now, the city of Seattle has been dealing with it because it's too politically unpalatable to roll back some of these laws. They just give them bailouts. Last year, I think it was a $29 million bailout that the city paid rather than using that to build new housing. They're just bailing out the existing affordable housing providers who can't survive otherwise. Right. So, yeah, not good. And that's happened here. There's yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:55] There's there's there's a lot of very, very good nonprofit groups that, you know, manage, you know, tens of thousands of units and they're in a lot of trouble. I mean, you know, you talk to them and they'll say it's just, you know, they too are kind of operating on on at a deficit. And that's, you know, that's not sustainable. Right. I mean, freezing the rent is clearly good politics in cities like New York City and Seattle.

[01:06:22] It's not really sound economics. I mean, it just doesn't really. Lemon socialism. Yeah. So I think we're at time here. So Michael Powell, formerly of The New York Times, now of The Atlantic and formerly of the the illiberal left beat is what I'll call the beat you used to have at The New York Times. A very Blue City Blues kind of kind of beat to have been writing about. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[01:06:49] It was a real pleasure to have you on and talk about Mamdani and Zionism and Israel and where we're headed on all of that. Well, thanks. It's been a real pleasure. I've enjoyed it. Thanks, Michael. That's it for another edition of Blue City Blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. And thanks everybody so much who's been supporting us on Patreon. We've gotten a fair amount of support, Sandeep, actually recently.

[01:07:14] But we're also trying to make the jump to video, which is going to cost us roughly three times as much as we are now paying for audio editing. So if you've been enjoying this podcast and are able to contribute, check us out on Substack so that we don't have to paywall the thing. I mean, that would suck. We don't do that. Right, Sandeep? I don't want to make threats, but yeah, nobody likes that. All right. All right. That's it. Yeah. Give us your money. Yeah.

[01:07:45] Thanks, everybody.