Andrew Cuomo Is Going Out the Way He Came In: as a Vile Bigot

Cuomo’s strategy is a product of a distinct worldview: the multiculturalism of fear. The United States is an extremely pluralist society, which means that one path to power is playing up group divisions in order to divide and conquer. In his classic political study Nixon Agonistes (1970), Garry Wills offered a memorial portrait of one of the smartest practitioners of the multiculturalism of fear, the late political strategist Kevin Phillips who was a key player in locating the resentment of white ethnics to build up the Republican Party. Phillips told Wills that “the whole secret of politics” is “knowing who hates who.” One example, Phillips noted, was New York. “In New York City, for instance, you make plans from certain rules of exclusion,” Phillips argued. “You can’t get the Jews and the Catholics. The Liberal Party was founded here for Jews opposing Catholics, and the Conservative Party for Catholics fighting Jews. The same kind of basic decision has to be made in national politics.”

Just like Phillips, Cuomo is obsessed with “knowing who hates who.” This explains the curious fact that the Cuomo campaign has made the seemingly contrary argument that Mamdani is too Muslim to be trusted by non-Muslims and also not Muslim enough to earn the support of pious Muslims.

Mamdani is a secular Shia Muslim married to a Hindu. Guided by the philosophy of “knowing who hates who” the Cuomo campaign has made the bizarre and repugnant decision to stir up Sunni-Shia animosity.

On Wednesday, Cuomo posted an ad from a group called Muslims Against Mamdani. One of the people in the ad said, falsely, that Mamdani’s “not a Muslim” but a “self-proclaimed Hindu.”

During Wednesday’s mayoral debate, Cuomo explicitly tried to create a wedge between Sunni and Shia Muslims, saying, “To Zohran, I believe you have been a divisive force in New York, and I believe that’s toxic energy for New York. It’s with the Sunni Muslims when you say decriminalize prostitution, which is haram.”

If the Cuomo campaign is based on the multiculturalism of fear, Mamdani himself has taken the exact opposite tack, offering a pluralism of hope. Far from seeing New York’s diversity as an invitation to practice divide-and-conquer politics, Mamdani has brought his message of economic populism to all communities, showing particular adeptness by running ads in numerous languages such as Hindi and Yiddish.

In July, Al Jazeera reported,

The government of New York state estimates that New Yorkers speak more than 800 languages, and as many as 2.5 million struggle with communicating in English. Experts, however, say Mamdani successfully used his skills in multiple languages to appeal to voters who often are not targeted by mainstream election campaigns, highlighting policy proposals targeting voters’ biggest concerns, like affordability….

Among the areas Mamdani won by large margins were South Asian neighbourhoods such as City Line, Ozone Park and Jamaica Hills; Latino neighbourhoods including Corona, Washington Heights, Pelham Bay and Woodhaven; and Chinese communities in Flushing, Chinatown and Bensonhurst.

Cuomo and Mamdani both know that New York is one of the most ethnically and socially diverse cities in the world. Cuomo has used this diversity as the basis of a politics of fear, while Mamdani has offered a politics of hope. Mamdani is a pluralist who speaks to voters in their many languages, but with the same message of economic populism to build a more cohesive society. Cuomo relies on fear because he has no positive message to offer.

On Wednesday, Mamdani told an interviewer: “This is Andrew Cuomo’s final moments in public life and he’s choosing to spend them making racist attacks.” This is an all too true epitaph. Cuomo had one last chance to make his life amount to something more than a cynical exercise in the exploitation of bigotry. It is sad, but hardly surprising, that he refused the opportunity to redeem his miserable career.