Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won the mayoral primary, said the department was racist and homophobic in a social media post.
its true tho
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 in a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier.
The comments were made “at the height of frustration,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.”
Mr. Mamdani’s post from 2020 has been recirculated by his political opponents, who have used his previous criticism of the police to portray him as weak on issues of public safety. Mr. Mamdani, a New York State assemblyman, is far ahead of his three rivals, who include Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who has consistently placed fourth in recent polling.
When he was asked if he should apologize to the city’s police officers, he paused noticeably before answering. He then went on to explain how his views had changed. After he was asked again if he owed officers an apology, he said, “Yes.”
Mr. Mamdani’s statements on Thursday came amid recent attempts to reach out to the police rank-and-file, an effort to address one of his biggest political vulnerabilities. His past criticism of the police has fed the skepticism and even hostility expressed by many police officers, who are wary of the changes he plans to make to the department.
dude you have like a 20 points lead, stop capitulating
Fun Historical Fact
Louis Blanc was a popular French Socialist who advocated for the creation of State-run Stores & Businesses to benefit the Working Class
He would go on to condemn the Paris Commune for being too Radical, just before the Army violently purged the City’s Working Class
This dumbass is going to turn a blowout into a razor thin margin
EVERYONE knows the NYPD is racist, that’s not a far left fringe take in New York City
Democrats are so addicted to losing that everyone they touch becomes infected with it.
Black people’s skepticism being justified in real time. Right as he seems to be making heavy inroads too.
He should apologise for nothing. Ever. You gain absolutely nothing from doing it. You only lose.
Not a step back!
he should apologize for apologizing
you also have to understand that mamdani is running in a country where the overton window is far right enough to make socdems seem like leftists. to us it’s obvious that the police is a racist institution with a racist history, but most people aren’t involved in politics enough to understand where this stance comes from. you can’t afford to be inflammatory as a leftist in america. i hate the fact that mamdani’s done this because looking at his campaign and policies gave me a bit of hope, but when you think about it, it makes sense. a candidate cannot win in a vacuum. his only “allies” are two centrists and a war criminal. gotta work with what you have, y’know?
to us it’s obvious that the police is a racist institution with a racist history,
I think most New Yorkers can also see this pretty easily. The NYPD is notorious worldwide. All polling shows that he was incredibly popular before walking back anything, this is objectively an unforced error.
but it’s one of those opinions that you’ve gotta keep on the down low because “not all cops” and “one bad apple” or something. i don’t disagree with you, but just saying.
I just think there’s ways to downplay this without a complete pivot followed by an unqualified apology, even if you accept the premise that it needed to be downplayed (which I mostly disagree with).
i agree with that, there were definitely ways of reframing what he said to both soothe the moderates and stand his ground.
Yeah, I saw your other comment in the thread too and I think you’re right that he’s basically a microcosm of the limited potential of electoralism as a strategy.
But his saying this was already publicized well before the primary, where he didn’t apologize for it and then won.
I mean, that’s not inherently surprising, in itself. A primary is limited to members of the party which is why most politicians lean towards their base during it and then track back to the center in the general because they need more votes than just their own party.
Not saying that that strategy is more successful in NYC or anything (I do agree with most here that he could probably (easily) win without trying to get out the moderate vote) but just that winning in the primary isn’t necessarily evidence of anything.
This is oriented around Democrat conventional wisdom, but the more emphatic progressives tend to take a very different approach and focus on getting votes from people who wouldn’t vote otherwise due to being disaffected, at least to some degree (which often compounds with factors like poverty making voting harder if you’re stuck in an area where you’d need to wait in line for hours).
all we can really do is speculate. there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, but this was a major blunder regardless.
can confirm
holy hell
Absolutely no one, including other pigs and even the NYPD itself, thinks the NYPD is not racist.
“Yeah, I’m racist. You gonna do something about it, n-word lover?” - NYPD
Socialists Joining Democrats
Caving Under No Pressurecommon DSA L
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mostly, though it’s a broad spectrum, there are various caucuses that hold different tendencies
though as a big tent it does have a lot of clowns
sips tea
Come get em libs, y’all have been arguing with me about this guy for months
I’ll take my
. I wanted to believe. My heart has been hardened.Welcome comrade.
Jokes aside, there’s nothing wrong with being an optimist. We all want a better world, and in the belly of the beast even a single slit of light seems like something to hold on to. But we need a revolutionary, working class optimism, and the sooner people realise everything the Democratic Party touches turns to reactionary shit, the better.
he’s still promising objectively good things like rent control and cheaper groceries and is therefore objectively better than every other democrat. it’s not falling for it if you don’t expect outlandish things.
if anyone thought he was the revolution they made that up themselves; holding him to the standard of a party cadre was always and continues to be asinine.
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Is caving to this shit not indicative of a tendency which will likely continue to include the policies you want? “Of course the grocery store owners aren’t leaching off of the people of New York, I was just talking to the daughter of a store owner yesterday about how fearful she it for their livelihoods. Of course we won’t replace them with state-run grocery stores. We will just incentivize them to lower grocery costs”
I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but I’m in no way convinced by his recent moves that he has any strategy for pulling through. The pressure he will get for those is immensely, astonishingly stronger than for “NYPD is racist”. There’s an entire economic system he’ll be directly up against.
If the claim is that this is strategic to reach that end, then either I am useless at understanding the argument or it makes no damn sense because I sure can’t figure out how this helps the other.
no i don’t think this is strategic unless it’s directly in exchange for something from the party or the strategy is “please don’t assassinate me pigs”.
i think the difference between this and reneging on a policy is that the policies are actually material, i don’t care nearly as much about the politicking as i do about non-pig first responders getting funded and the police taking a cut (i.e. no increase is a cut because of inflation). He campaigned on endorsing the liberal myths about what cops are supposed to be “for”, so this apology is dumb if there isn’t a gun to his head but it doesn’t indicate a policy change.
and to be clear i think this and the previous capitulation to racism are bad moves. it’s also been like six years since a politician promised good things. democrats and DSA entryists should at least be forced to lie to people instead of doing what they’ve been doing for 10+ years other than bernie and a couple congresswomen.
if anyone thought he was the revolution they made that up themselves; holding him to the standard of a party cadre was always and continues to be asinine.
A lot of people clearly do though, because they keep insisting that he’s not conceding anything important, actually. Your post is correct, but I’m not sure it reflects what some people here think of him.
Well that’s good, he’d never break a promise lol
i expect politicians to break promises. things are so far gone that they usually don’t even bother to make them any more. not for good stuff anyway, they can step up to the gallows with their “most lethal military” and other fascist hits.
things are so far gone that they usually don’t even bother to make them any more
Not sure where you’re getting this from, biden ran on the promise to CURE CANCER
do you think anyone took that seriously?
based on the whack-ass reality we live in yeah I do think a lot of liberals who heard that believed him
people are fuckin stupid as hell! Either way tho I was arguing about whether promises are made not if people believed the promises
i think there’s a meaningful difference between a credible and non-credible promises. rent control is credible, municipal grocery stores are credible, freezing the pig budget is in the middle, arresting bibi is mostly not credible, “we’re gonna cure cancer” is obvious bullshit.
Nah, I think we got one more in us. One more election where we all lib out.
- This certainly has to be my last time.
This is what, the third mea culpa and climb down in a week over an objectively true and popular position to try and appease people who hate him?
As someone who watched this strategy destroy a left political movement, he’s cooked. Even if he eeks out a win, he’ll be part of the blob before he gets there, with a staff riddled with wreckers and party containment stooges.
dumb move, that’s how they started the sabotage on Corbyn, getting him to apologize for saying true things that made liberals uncomfortable.
It’s also just dumb to apologize at all in politics. It gets instantly clipped into sound bites makes you look guilty. The GOP figured that out years ago.
I can’t stress how dumb this move is, the minute you apologize for anything is when you open the door for constant FUTURE recriminations
Does this dumb fuck really believe the media or the elites really care about your personal contrition, does he think the NYPD cares
They want you to LOOOSE
Exhibit A is that this is like the third time he’s done this in the last week. He’s turning his campaign into an apology tour and showing weakness. Stop capitulating!
I remember a post on here that mamdani got a call from Obama. Since then he’s been doing real uncool things.
roll the film…
any questions?
So, motion to apologize to those in the third world that gave us Amerikkkans shit for electoralism?
Brother is triangulating straight into Bermuda.
I’m telling you, don’t back down, double down. Don’t back down, double down. If you show any weakness, if you apologize or try to explain yourself, they’ll see it as weakness, they’ll smell blood and down you’ll fucking go.Just tell the media “YOU weren’t there! YOU weren’t fucking there! This is fucking sick! Sick!, by the way!!” Just point to the NYPD, point to MSNBC, whoever the fuck it is. Point to Cuomo, point to Tucker Carlson, whoever’s there and say “This is fucking sick! It’s not fucking right! You know what?! Fucking vote me out! Where’s the door? Fuckin send me out! Hurry up c***s, vote me out right now! get me out of here!”
You run the chance of them going “Get him out of here — No wait. I like this guy. He’s got balls.”
“But sir, he swore at us”
“Maybe if some o’ you fuckin pieces o’ trash would start havin some fuckin balls, we wouldn’t be in this fuckin mess we’re in right now. This guy fuckin speaks for himself, He’s gonna get things done. How’d you like to work for me, Z?”
This is genuinely disappointing, I haven’t given up all hope that he will purge the police but this doesn’t look great
he was never going to purge the police, at most he might get a budget increase below inflation. A credible candidate who says they’re gonna purge the nypd will shoot themselves twice in the back of the head within a week.
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You do “balancing the budget” and “we can’t afford their vacations in isntreal, are you nuts”, doesn’t look too good on that front if he apologizes for nothing
another stupid move to say something he doesn’t believe in to capitulate to people who won’t vote for him let alone canvas. to think that he somehow unlearned this is silly, but that doesn’t change that it’s a dumb move. being within a 10 mile radius of a DNC operative must have like a crazy wit debuff or something.
I mean what did anyone expect? Dude is an upper middle class guy who has almost certainly been living off of the wealth and privilege of his parents and thought it was fun to play radical until it actually might have impacted him personally. Maybe the left should stop getting duped by these people.
The left needs to hard abandon anything with
Ok I admit it he got me at first
Does he not want to win? Nm he wants to
