New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made it abundantly clear: he loves collectivism and hates individualism, and intends to implement his collectivist vision as fully as he possibly can while he lives in Gracie Mansion. He has been marketed as an exciting new face, full of energy and brimming with new ideas, but in reality, he is fronting for ideas that are both old and discredited and that are responsible for the deaths of untold millions of people. On Thursday, a man from one of the populations that has suffered the most because of collectivism gently mocked Mamdani’s delusions and pretensions.
Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, on Thursday replied to video of Mamdani saying “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism” with this: “Dear Comrade Mamdani — just a friendly reminder that this has been tried before. For good measure, he added a gif from The Simpsons, depicting a zombie V. I. Lenin stalking out of his tomb and saying: “Must crush capitalism!”
Dear Comrade Mamdani — just a friendly reminder that this has been tried before. https://t.co/a2vEzkomqe
— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) January 1, 2026
Dmitriev wasn’t just needling Mamdani when he addressed him as “comrade.” This is a term Mamdani himself has used. As Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani details, in late Feb. 2021, Mamdani, who was then a member of the New York state assembly, was a featured speaker at the online Winter Outreach Conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, which on its logo presented three primary slogans: “Cancel Student Debt,” “Defund the Police,” and “Covid-19 Relief.”
Mamdani, who had been a member of the assembly for a few days shy of two months, demonstrated his deep Marxist convictions as he happily reported to the attendees: “I am very lucky in that I have five other DSA-endorsed comrades who are with me in the assembly and the state senate.” He explained that it was important to have such “comrades” because they made it “much easier to run a campaign that will be built around raising class consciousness.” That would involve showing that the various issues of the day were actually “an issue of capitalism.”
Mamdani lamented that “we clearly do not have the numbers, as they are at this moment, to win the radical legislation that we need to bring about.” Consequently, “we have to continue to elect more socialists. And we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.” He touted an academic boycott campaign that would prohibit students from studying at universities in Israel that he claimed had developed weapons technology for the Israel Defense Forces.
Related: Mamdani’s Inauguration Will Be a Big Socialist Party, Starring Two Socialist Top Dogs
He touted other socialist policies as well: “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.” That much was in line with the stated agenda of the American far left.
He emphasized the importance of moving from the goals of the day to the overall goal of the movement:
It’s critical, the way that we organize, the way that we set up our—you know, set up our work and our priorities, that we do not leave any one issue for the other, that we do not meet a moment and only look at what people are ready for, but that we are doing both of these things in tandem. Because it is critical for us to both meet people where they’re at and to also organize for what is correct and for what is right, and to ensure that, over time, we can bring people to that issue.
Mamdani maintained: “I sincerely believe in this political project. I sincerely believe in socialism…. It can be such a lonely experience to be a socialist, and it was for me.” Yet he exhorted his comrades to persevere, emphasizing that the conference attendees must understand “that it is socialism that we are fighting for.” Mamdani listed some pet issues of the left and reminded his audience of the overall goal: “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.”
With every passing day, Mamdani makes it clear that those are still his ultimate goals. If he were wise, he would heed the warning of Kirill Dmitriov. Whether he does or not, however, the socialism he brings to New York City will ultimately work as well as it did in the Soviet Union.
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