Mamdani and the Anti-Semitism Smear

Several weeks ago, the NY Times published a story smearing Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic New York City mayoral candidate.  Its report followed his stunning victory in the Party’s primary, in which he defeated Andrew Cuomo, member of the state political dynasty.  His campaign, based on a democratic socialist platform raised panic in the billionaire class, for which the Times is a media bullhorn.

Now he faces three center-right candidates including Andrew Cuomo and the city’s corrupt mayor, Eric Adams.  Both appear to be beating a dead horse in order to stay out of prison (Adams) and retain even a slight bit of political relevance in a career tarnished by sexual scandal (Cuomo). Despite promises by pro-Israel oligarch, Bill Ackman, to pour “hundreds of millions” into a campaign to defeat Mamdani (he dumped $10-million on the failed Cuomo campaign), he has an excellent chance to become the city’s next mayor.  His election will not end this series of smear attacks.  Once in office, the Israel Lobby efforts will harp on alleged policy failures to gin up mistrust for his agenda.

The far right has waged a constant, virulent campaign against Mamdani focusing on everything from his democratic socialist agenda, to his eating habits.  The goal is to chip away at his credibility in a political death by a thousand leaks:

Mamdani was pestered with question after question about Israel. Mamdani’s long-held views on the subject—he has accurately said that Israel is guilty of apartheid and genocide and he supported the BDS movement, among other things—were no secret.

Among other charges: he has refused to renounce pro-Palestine rhetoric  like “from the river to the sea” and the phrase “globalize the intifada.”  Both are anodyne phrases denoting support for Palestine and opposition to the genocide in Gaza.  But they have been criminalized as “anti-Semitic” in an orchestrated right-wing campaign funded by pro-Israel billionaires and their political toadies, to suppress the movement.

It is a backlash against the campus encampments of last spring, in which students pitched tents in schools around the country and the world in protest of Israeli genocide.  The Lobby saw this as a direct threat on its hegemonic control of the pro-Israel narrative in media, the academy and other key cultural venues.  The auto da fe began with Congressional witch hunt hearings leading the resignation/firing of three Ivy League presidents (all women).  Once the revanchists succeeded, they became ever more ambitious in their assault on American higher education.  Until we are where we are now: with US universities drowning in a miasma of capitulation and despair.

There is nothing anti-Semitic in opposing genocide or supporting Palestine.  Not to mention that opposing Israel and Zionism is not a “Jewish” issue, hence it cannot be anti-Semitic.  That phrase refers to hatred of Jews, not Israel.  The Lobby obsessively shouts “anti-Semitism,” because the public reacts with disgust to the latter, while it would yawn at charges of opposing Israeli apartheid and genocide.

Mamdani and Columbia

The Times story was based on Mamdani’s Columbia application submitted in 2007, when he was a 19 year-old high school student.  It obtained the document via a University database, hacked and stolen in a sophisticated cyber breach. The theft was orchestrated by far-right figures seeking to prove that Columbia was making admission decisions based on “racial preference,” in supposed violation of Court rulings and MAGA directives overturning affirmative action.

The stolen data exposed names, addresses, social security numbers, citizenship status, ethnicity, faculty salaries, and other private information.  Among other serious quesitons are why would the Times publish a story based on stolen private data.  Also, why it would base its story on a single source with an explicit far-right, racist political agenda (see below).

The thrust of the story implied that Mamdani dissembled in defining his ethnic identity on the application.  That he exploited racial preferences to promote his chance of university acceptance.  He checked boxes for Asian and African-American.  The then-high school student was born in Uganda to a family which had emigrated there from Gujarat (India) 100 years earlier.  Last I checked Uganda was in Africa and India was in South Asia.  Though Mamdani is not African-American, he is both African and American.  It is at best a slight stretch by an applicant eager to maximize his chances for admission during an era in which universities sought to maintain diverse student bodies.

Further, why would a minor infraction (if any) committed nearly 20 years ago have any relevance to a mayoral campaign? Unless, of course you want to join in the far-right smear campaign against him. Even if Mamdani made an incorrect ethnic claim in is application, he received no benefit, as Columbia rejected him.

The editorial decision to pursue this story is a major development in that campaign. It is the first time, as far as I know, that a “liberal” media outlet has joined with the New York Post and other right-wing rags who are baying for the candidate’s blood.

Jordan Lasker, “race scientist,” NYT Source

The newspaper’s source was a white supremacist “academic” known for publishing “race science.”  That is, research claimng that whites are racially, intellectually and socially superior to people of color; and that DEI and affirmative action are prejudical against whites. The Times published the Twitter handle of its source, but not his real name. Though that name has been widely reported for years.  Clearly, it either did no research into his background or did such research, but deliberately chose not to include it in the article.

The source was Jordan Lasker, a Jewish graduate student who lists his academic credentials as a PhD candidate at Texas Tech (among other proclivities are his avid participation in sex tourism).  He earned a 2014 Bachelors degree at the University of Virginia. Since then he has published an extensive collection of articles attempting to rebut established academic precedent, which affirms race is not a factor in intelligence. Most of his published work has appeared in low-ranked journals with little impact on academic discourse.

Nevertheless, he’s come to the attention of numerous white supremacist billionaires such as Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen, co-founder of the venture capital firm bearing his name.  Another super-fan is the far-right anti-education activist, Christopher Rufo, with whom the Times was in a race to publish this story. As a parallel, can you imagine a respectable German newspaper being in a race with Dr. Mengele on a story about race science? Lasker may not be the infamous Holocaust-era torturer, but he would fit right into Nazi ideological circles.

Astonishingly, Lasker and his cohort speak at academic conferences and prestigious universities like Stanford.

Among other claims he makes are that Jews have higher IQs, social status, which he supports with claims highlighting the numbers of Jewish doctors and Nobel laureates compared to ethnic minorities. He even titles one section of a paper, How Smart Are Jews, in which he espouses the anti-Semitic trope that only Ashkenazi Jews have “Jewish smarts”:

When people talk about Jewish smarts, they’re generally not talking about all the nearly fifteen million of the world’s Jews; they’re talking about the Ashkenazi (Central/Eastern European) Jewish population…

Jews are overrepresented among geniuses, innovators, and other significant figures. To witness such overrepresentation, you only need to look at chess champions, bridge players, Nobel and Wolf prize winners, Fields medalists, and the winners of basically any prize for objectively-important work.

This is pseudo-academic garbage.  Jewish intellectual prowess, if there such a phenomenon, would derive from a variety of factors.  There is no credible evidence that it derives from racial or genetic factors.  If the numbers of Jews in the above social categories are higher than for other groups, the cause is social rather than genetic.

Since the Enlightenment, Jews have pursued educational, economic, and social prospects which remain inaccessible to people of color. Most have chosen to assimilate into the prevailing social milieu, offering further such opportunities.  Further, IQ is not an unbiased or even accurate determination of intellectual ability.  Nevertheless, the race scientists use it as if it was the Holy Grail for their discipline.

The smears and lies outlined above, legitimized by academic pseudo-science, will continue throughout Mamdani’s mayoralty.  The charlatans, media flunkies, and political hacks must be called out and discredited.