Zohran Mamdani claims he has grown. But he has not budged from his extreme socialist past - except optics. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Zohran Mamdani claims he has grown. But he has not budged from his extreme socialist past - except optics.

In today’s New York Times, E.J. Dionne writes a love letter to Zohran's Mamdani's supposed redemption.

He casts Mamdani as a once-fiery socialist who has matured into a pragmatic reformer - a politician who fixes sewers instead of preaching revolution. It’s a story tailor-made for the weary center-left: the radical who grows up without selling out.

He emphasizes that Mamdani is not the same firebrand he was before.

It’s worth noticing that Mr. Mamdani’s critics are focused largely on the past: the 33-year old’s most incendiary statements, and the most extreme components of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization to which he proudly belongs and that initially powered his political career.
Those on the moderate left who see Mr. Mamdani’s upside look instead to the present and the future. They notice how he’s distanced himself from his more controversial statements (particularly about the police and the Middle East), insisted that he’s not running on the D.S.A.’s national agenda, and painted himself as a realistic visionary trying to solve the city’s current problems.

In short, Dionne thinks that Mamdani has modified his values and grown.

I've been thinking a lot about values in recent months, and in the course of my writings I came up with a moral analysis method I call "Derechology." It looks at a person's values and how or if they change over time - their "derech," or moral path.

By that standard, Mamdani’s “growth” narrative doesn’t hold up.

In Jewish ethics, genuine change - teshuvah - requires renunciation, reordering, and repair. Mamdani has done none of these.

He hasn’t withdrawn his most divisive statements or broken with the ideologies that produced them. He hasn’t offered moral clarity or taken responsibility for harm. What’s changed is presentation, not principle.

In other words, his derech hasn't changed at all. His optics have.

“The good thing about my youth,” Mamdani told The New Yorker, “is that I grow older every day.”

It’s clever. It invites every listener to project what they want to hear - to progressives, perseverance; to moderates, moderation.

But growth without repentance is adaptation, not evolution. Jewish ethics judges deeds, not vibes.

If you look carefully at his statements, there is no regret for his "youthful" positions. He regrets how they might impact his chances for election, not his opinions themselves.

Judaism teaches dan l’chaf zechut - giving others the benefit of the doubt - but it never asks us to suspend judgment entirely.

When moral recalibration arrives only on the campaign trail, skepticism isn’t cynicism. It’s accountability.

Optics aren't ethics. As a public figure, Mamdani’s words shape the moral credibility of the movements he represents. A politician who markets “growth” without showing teshuvah risks more than hypocrisy. He cheapens the very idea of moral change.

Dionne sees (or chooses to see) a young idealist maturing into responsibility. Derechology sees a consistent derech of committed far-Left principles and ambition where Mamdani will say different things to different crowds, and who will happily repackage his image for a wider audience without changing his actual positions in the least.

Until we see renunciation, reordering, and repair, “growth” is only a slogan, not a virtue. Mamdani's only real growth is in how to present himself to be more palatable to the center-left voters he covets.

His childish, simplistic and ultimately immoral and antisemitic socialist ideals have not changed at all.