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Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly insisted he is not a “communist” when asked by reporters despite a history of promoting communist ideology which has prompted many to place that label on him.
“No, I’m a democratic socialist,” Mamdani told CNN earlier this week when asked if he’s a communist, a label bestowed on him by many critics, including President Trump.
“I’ve said that time and again.”
Despite his several rejections of the communist label, a Fox News Digital review found several examples of Mamdani advocating and backing communist principles, including calling for the seizure of the “means of production.”
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New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani speaks to volunteers at a canvass launch in Brooklyn on Sept. 28, 2025. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” Mamdani told a Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021.
“But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”
The phrase “seizing the means of production” traces back to Karl Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto in which he promotes the idea of workers taking control of factories from private owners.
Lee Edwards, a former Heritage Foundation fellow and conservative scholar until his death last year, wrote in 2018 that Marx was an “atheist socialist who insisted that his was the only ‘scientific’ socialism based not on wishful thinking but the inexorable laws of history.”
“The whole of history, declared Marx and his close collaborator and friend Friedrich Engels, is the history of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The inevitable collapse of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat would end the conflict and usher in a classless society and pure socialism or communism (Marx used both terms interchangeably). He listed 10 necessary measures as steps along the way to his utopia, including a progressive income tax, the abolition of private property, free education for all, and centralization of the means of communication and transport in “the hands of the state.”
Private property has found itself a target of Mamdani in the past on numerous occasions, including in a resurfaced video Fox News Digital reported on in July where Mamdani said, “If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now.”
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New York City Democratic mayoral nominee, Zohran Mamdani, spoke to supporters at a canvass launch event in Prospect Park on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (Deirdre Heavey/Fox News Digital)
Mamdani’s platform also includes a progressive tax plan aimed at “taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers” that comes under the backdrop of his recent claim that he doesn’t believe billionaires should exist.
Communist sympathies can also be found in Mamdani’s inner circle based on reporting earlier this year that part of his campaign’s “brain trust” includes Cea Weaver, a housing activist with close ties to communist organizations.
Weaver is the former coalitions director of Housing Justice for All, a group that counts dozens of radical far-left groups as coalition members, including the Communist Party of the United States of America and the New York Young Communist League.
“Elect more Communists,” Weaver posted on social media in 2017, New York Post reported. “Seize private property,” Weaver posted in 2018.
When confronted by Fox News Digital in July on whether he is a communist and whether he intends to walk back any of his past communist-aligned statements to earn the endorsement of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Mamdani did not respond.
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Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that Mamdani is “absolutely a communist” who “repeats lines out of the Communist Manifesto and other writings by Karl Marx.”
“When Marxists today say they are socialists, they usually want to convey the impression that they believe in elections and not just in shooting your way into power,” Gonzalez added. “Of course, that election often ends up being the last free and fair one. Witness Venezuela.”
Mamdani’s platform also includes calls for the state to run basic operations in New York City, including bus lines and grocery stores.
“State stores are the bread and butter of communism, except they don’t contain either bread or butter and are usually empty,” Gonzalez, who penned an article in July titled, “Mamdani Is the Mayor New York Democrats Deserve”, told Fox News Digital.
In 1875, Marx famously wrote the phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
In 2020, Mamdani posted a similar version of that mantra, writing on X, “Each according to their need, each according to their ability.”
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Also in 2020, Mamdani openly called for a communist mayor of New York City in a post on X where he said the city’s next mayor should be like “Comrade Arya Rajedran”, a communist mayor in India.
Democratic Socialists of America, a group tightly aligned with Mamdani that the New York Post recently reported on is expecting Mamdani to back their agenda if elected, has long backed communist figures and regimes.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
