The real scandal of the interaction that went viral between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the city’s Sept. 11 memorial last Friday is not that two politicians appeared to snicker at the wrong moment. It’s that the resulting outrage stoked by the 24-hour news cycle and social media threatens to obscure more consequential realities.
Consider the ideological vulnerabilities of progressive politics; the public’s uneven understanding of the evolving geopolitical terrorist threat; and the emergence of a dangerous and disciplined socialist movement determined to leverage New York City’s elections into a launching pad for a national political initiative.
The cameras captured Mamdani and AOC appearing to casually smile and converse while the names of Sept. 11 victims were being tearfully read. We could not hear their conversation, so claims about what they were discussing should be treated cautiously. But the image was jarring, and the backlash was real.
Yet outrage over a few seconds of video might simply be politically convenient. It provides an irresistible spectacle, permitting Mamdani and AOC to plead guilty to the lesser charge of being hypocrites or “The Great Pretenders.” This distraction draws attention away from the larger and more malign forces surrounding Mamdani’s rise.
There is, for example, the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA has been unusually candid about the significance it attaches to Mamdani’s election. The organization called it a historic victory for American socialism and acknowledged that thousands of NYC-DSA members served as campaign staff and volunteers. NYC-DSA described the mayoral campaign as an opportunity to put its organization “at the center” of a broader movement and explicitly framed New York as a strategic platform for building political power.
Someone suspicious might wonder if the distraction might not be an intentional sleight of hand.
The DSA’s criticism of governmental structure, capitalism, borders and support of loyal allies like Israel are material threats to our safety and society. That is not a conspiracy theory; it is the organization’s own description of its strategy.
The second issue is terrorism. Twenty-five years after 9/11, New York’s threat environment has changed rather than dissipated. Intelligence officials with the New York City Police Department say the contemporary threat is more decentralized, and includes al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates alongside a much wider spectrum of ideological and grievance-driven violence.
When indifferent and ill-informed people elect leaders like Mamdani whose focus has been on post-9/11 Muslim victimhood, we must question how we came to forget the 3,000 Americans murdered on that day. When Michigan Democratic voters choose Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, allied with Hasan Piker of “America deserved 9/11” infamy, as their senatorial candidate, we must ensure that people do not drop their guard and allow naive virtue-signaling to distract them from the realities of a very dangerous world.
The 9/11 terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center chose airplanes as weapons. Each plane was a 350,000-pound projectile and carried about 10,000 gallons of jet fuel. It was what was available to them. Today, radical Islamic terrorists could be empowered by a potentially nuclear-armed Iran.
If this happens, then in a blinding flash, all of Lower Manhattan would disappear. Remember, each of the primitive 1945 atomic bombs that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the explosive force of approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. Today’s weapons are many times more powerful. This is why U.S. President Donald Trump has promised that “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.”
The third danger is the distraction itself.
The Mamdani-AOC controversy offers precisely the kind of media spectacle that consumes public attention: outrage, counter-outrage, accusations, apologies and partisan warfare. Meanwhile, harder questions are not faced. Someone suspicious might wonder if such a distraction might not be an intentional sleight of hand.
And so, it stops people from asking the more crucial questions: What political movements are gaining institutional power? What self-destructive ideas are being normalized? How seriously are officials taking radicalization? Are voters scrutinizing the organizations, coalitions and ideological networks helping shape their leaders?
9/11 memorials should remind Americans that symbols matter, but so does substance. The appearance of disrespect deserves scrutiny. It should not, however, become an excuse to stop examining the political transformation taking place in the background.
A good start would be a follow-the-money investigation of the billions of dollars spent by Qatar, China and various Islamic nations that influence academic and other institutions.
The most dangerous distraction is not a politician’s embarrassing moment on camera. It is allowing the reaction to that moment to become so overwhelming that people stop considering terrible possibilities and what is actually being pursued by dangerous forces that wish to harm America.
