When rhetoric, historical memory, projection, and political obsession collide

Every generation promises itself that it would recognize the warning signs before history repeats itself.

Yet history rarely announces itself with jackboots and concentration camps. It begins with something far less dramatic: words. Repetition. Obsession. The gradual normalization of viewing one people, one nation, or one movement as uniquely dangerous.

The lesson of the twentieth century is not that every controversial political figure represents the same historical dangers. Such comparisons are usually lazy, inaccurate, and insulting to the singular evil of the Holocaust. The warning worth remembering is more subtle.

Authoritarian movements do not begin with genocide. They begin by convincing ordinary people that one group is uniquely responsible for society’s problems. They cultivate moral exceptionalism. They create villains. They repeat the same accusations until they become accepted truths. Only later do rhetoric and policy merge into something far darker.

That is why words matter.

This is also why New Yorkers should pay close attention to the political career of Zohran Mamdani.

To be clear, I am not at all suggesting that Mamdani is like Adolf Hitler. Such a comparison would be historically absurd.

What concerns me is something different: the extraordinary degree to which Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, has become the defining foreign policy obsession of his political identity.

For years, Mamdani has made opposition to Israel central to his public persona.

He has publicly championed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose goal is to isolate Israel economically, culturally, and academically. While supporters describe BDS as a nonviolent human rights campaign, many Jews across the political spectrum see it as an effort to delegitimize Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Mamdani has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel strongly rejects and many supporters of Israel view as a politically motivated attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Critics of the accusation argue that the war began after the October 7 attacks and that Israel’s stated objective is the defeat of Hamas, not the destruction of the Palestinian people. They point to Gaza’s significant population growth over the past several decades and argue that civilian casualty........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)