Tag: Tyler Johnson

Column: Mamdani fights for the future of New York

by Tyler Johnson

Graphic by Tyler Johnson.

In our country, we’ve come to know the news as a cycle of proliferating madness. It can make the most minuscule events seem like the end of the world, and the most dangerous of people seem like strong leaders. Lately, there’s one man that media across the board seem to be going after. Fox News, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, just to name a few, have taken aim at state assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

The Democratic Socialist seemingly emerged from nowhere with a strong base of support and the rhetoric to stand against the other Democratic nominees in the New York City mayoral primaries. This is where he first started making waves for those outside of the city. Mamdani stood on stage and grilled Andrew Cuomo on a plethora of issues that plagued the former governor’s reign.

Cuomo’s stint in office was fraught with controversy. From sexual harassment allegations to hospital overcrowding during COVID to misappropriation of city funds for his own personal use, it’s a surprise he even had the courage to run again. In the Democratic primaries, Mamdani was the hardest on Cuomo, calling him out for many of the issues that arise with the idea of another term. It’s this type of aggressive rhetoric that we must show to politicians who have failed us. We can’t settle for corruption to fight corruption. 

One of the biggest issues that arose in the primary debate was that of Israel. In the most viral moment of the debate, the candidates were asked where they would go on their first trip outside of the city. Mamdani was the only person to insist he’d remain in New York, while almost every other candidate answered Israel, as well as Canada and the Caribbean.

This may be one of the most pivotal moments in American history regarding our relationship to Israel and the ongoing genocide, especially after Mamdani has come out on top in the primaries. He has been one of the key voices addressing the ethnic cleansing with its true moniker of a genocide. At the same time, he has maintained a good relationship with the Jewish population of New York, even being backed by “Jewish New Yorkers for Peace.”

In a country in which the consensus among politicians is that the conflict is “complicated,” a voice that assesses the situation for what it is might be the change we need. Beyond just this issue, Mamdani is gaining support for his rent control, public transport, and city-owned grocery store policies.

Do not get it twisted. These are Socialist policies, but they are not scary policies. The media and many establishment politicians have critiqued them for being good on paper but not realistic. Of course, we can’t say for sure that this will all come to fruition, but the plan that Mamdani lays out is quite strong.

Taxing millionaires and big corporations is a working-class dream. As we’ve seen across the country, even in Republican areas, people are tired of the 1% hoarding their wealth that they will never be able to entirely spend. This isn’t a baseless claim, either. Senator Bernie Sanders — who paved the way for this generation’s Democratic Socialist s— has been making waves across the country in his “fight against oligarchy” tour.

On the YouTube channel “More Perfect Union”, Sanders was followed around West Virginia as he interacted with the mostly Republican population. The reaction was astounding; the same problems that Mamdani is trying to address in New York are found all over the U.S. Billionaire tax breaks, health care, and child care, all in the heart of Trump country.

Simply raising the taxes on corporations to the same level as that in New Jersey, and putting a 2% tax on every dollar beyond that of a million would be fund many of the policies that Mamdani advocates. The argument here is that it would push corporations out of the city.

 In Cornell University Professor Cristobal Young’s book “The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich,” this myth is largely debunked, finding that just .3% of millionaires who do end up moving (which is an astounding 2.4%) do not find themselves in a lower-taxed state. 

These types of policies aren’t unpopular; they’re just demonized by the most elite of businessmen and politicians. The clearest sign of the policies not being unpopular is the fact that Mamdani did indeed win the Democratic primaries. Establishment Democrats are scrambling to cope with this. Cuomo and former mayor Eric Adams are both now running as independents against the nominee with a pathetic imitation of Mamdani’s campaign.

They cannot seem to catch on like Mamdani is, and why is this? People do not trust Cuomo or Adams. With Cuomo’s previously mentioned controversy and Adams’ history of bribery allegations, these are not politicians who are known to be trusted. Adversaries of Mamdani say that these two candidates are “more experienced,” but the question is, what are they more experienced with? 

Cuomo is shown to not be able to understand the word “no” not just from his sexual harassment scandals, but from his inability to back down when he loses an election. He fumbled the COVID-19 pandemic, understating the amount of nursing home deaths by a whopping 50%, and then using state funds to write a book about how great he handled the situation.

Adams, on the other hand, has been shown to be an incompetent and untrustworthy candidate. In 2024 the mayor found himself indicted on five corruption charges, which would be later  dismissed by Trump’s Justice Department. This corruption ended in the resignation of multiple federal prosecutors who had taken on the case.

The Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, has little chance of making any real headway in this race — albeit more than Adams. Probably the most absurd out of the candidates, he wears a red beret and insists that putting feral cats in rat infested areas is the solution to the pest problem. Of course, there’s more to him but those two peculiarities sum up the substance of his campaign.

Due to there being four main candidates, the vote may be more split then we’ve ever seen in the city, but frequent polls show Mamdani dominating the field. It seems he represents everything we’ve lost in this country and much we’ve dreamed of. 

A government that provides. Not a copy-paste centrist who provides marginal benefits to the working class, while giving the rich more tax cuts. Not a faux-populist who takes advantage of the working class to jumpstart an authoritarian regime. Zohran Mamdani isn’t just the future of New York, he’s the future of America. 

While the old guard dies off, remaining more loyal to AIPAC than American people, Mamdani pushes the left forward. He provides a framework for which the new left can emerge. With Governor Hochul’s support it’s clear that Democratic Socialism is going to be a consistent voice in politics. The only question now is if it can get nationwide working class voter support.

Editor’s Note: For an alternate take on this year’s election, check out Parker Vibbert’s column tomorrow.

by jhshyphen

Column: Palantir and Politics : We must prioritize peace over profit

by Tyler Johnson

In Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novelette “Minority Report” a group of psychics is used by the police department to predict future crimes. 

In J.R.R. In Tolkien’s classic “Lord of The Rings” the palantir stone is the magical crystal ball which allows the user to spy on others from distances. 

In our world Peter Thiel is the billionaire trying to bring these concepts from fiction to reality and it is anything but utopian.

Thiel founded the company “Palantir,” whose namesake is an on-the-nose reference to the fictional item. The function of the company is simple: Provide AI-powered software platforms to help organizations manage data sets. 

But these organizations aren’t the local computer store, and these data sets aren’t just any type of information. They are providing the systems that governments use to predict citizen crimes. They are the authors of an ai used to automate drone strikes. The United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, Canada, and Spain all have government contracts with this company.  

The entire shadow of our internet presence is to be collected and used against us. You may call it a surveillance conspiracy; they will call it marketing; and this is the problem with unchecked corporations. The U.S. government on our half has surrendered the information of Americans to Palantir and in exchange for what? We must ask ourselves , exactly who is this benefiting?

To understand who this benefits we must understand Peter Thiel, the Infamous billionaire who’s claimed “Freedom and Democracy are not compatible” and who has a passing interest in blood transfusions for eternal life.

 In a now viral interview with the CEO, he was asked the simple question: “Should humanity endure?” His answer to this was a vomit of stuttering and a plethora of pseudo-intellectual “Well, what do you mean by that” statements. 

Should we trust someone who can’t answer this question simply? Especially with the entire nation’s information? 

Current Vice President JD Vance thinks so. Vance had worked in Thiel’s venture capital firm and had 15 million dollars of his Senate campaign funded by Thiel. So whose interests does Vance really have at heart? Well, if we take the so-called “Philosopher behind JD Vance” Curtis Yarvin’s word for it, his interests lie in monarchy. 

Yarvin and the as well infamous British Philosopher Nick Land spearheaded “The Dark Enlightenment” movement. An ideology built out of an accelerationist view of the future. That democracy is dead and we must have a CEO monarch take hold of society. This belief also posits that humanity in fact will not endure and AI will create a singularity that we will not be able to come back from.

This may seem like something right out of another Philip K Dick novel but this is our current reality. We must not forgo our democracy to authoritarian lunatics. Palantir’s use of AI under these circumstances is even more alarming. While Thiel might not admit AI is bringing about the end of humanity, OpenAI (ChatGPT) CEO Sam Altman is, openly stating: “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.”

Prioritizing company and corporation over the survival of humanity is the goal of these people. They are not populists. They’re no longer neoliberals. These are radical monarchists who are ushering in an era of dying democracy. This is the New Right.

 But we must remember AI is not sentient, omnipresent, nor metaphysical. It lies in data centers. Data centers which could be torn down and replaced with almost anything better. With Microsoft recently investing 1 billion into datacenters in Indiana, the chance to counter is closer than ever. It isn’t over once they’ve built them as long as we have the strength to fight, to protest, and to speak. These democratic ideals are what they intend on taking from us and no one person living in this country should stand for it any longer.

A sort of dark nihilism has gripped the youth of this country. You know them, the “that’s just the system” or the “nothing ever happens” crowd. But we have to keep in mind that this is not the end and there is no end for humanity in sight as long as we keep our democratic spirit. No longer must we relegate the decisions of infrastructure, labor rights, and civil liberties to the will of a few profit driven maniacs. 

This isn’t to say we need to drive our force behind the Democrat Party; truthfully, it’s quite obvious that the Democrat Party has failed us. These are people just as disconnected from who they’re supposed to be representing. Hundreds of miles away from their home states, sitting in Washington, with the same corporations who bought the other side, buying them.

But hope is not lost. With grass roots and anti-establishment Democrats gaining traction in cities like New York and Minneapolis, the term Democratic-Socialist is something progressives are starting to warm up to. With Zohran Mamdani’s looming victory over Andrew Cuomo and Omar Fateh’s endorsement by the DFL against Jacob Frey, it’s clear there is a shift within the party’s values.

Going forward as a country we need to understand just who we’re supporting and who’s financially supporting them. We must become the free country we so often boast of being — free of tyrannical surveillance and corporate lobbyists. We cannot let them tear down our homes for  their data centers. We cannot have our peace destroyed for their profit. We must stand and shout louder for every voice they silence. There is a future for us, but we are the ones who have to build it.

by jhshyphen