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New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s father, a longtime academic and Ivy League professor, said during a 2022 panel discussion about one of his many books that Adolf Hitler drew his inspiration for the Holocaust from Abraham Lincoln.
The younger Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist, has credited his parents with providing him a “privileged upbringing,” one that included frequent discussions on politics and global affairs, according to a New York Times profile on the mayoral candidate and his parents. Mamdani’s mother is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker.
During a 2022 panel discussion hosted by the Asia Society, Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, asserted that America was the “genesis of what we call settler-colonialism” around the world.
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“With the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln generalized the solution of reservations, they herded American Indians into separate territories,” Mamdani, Columbia’s Herbert Lehman professor of government, said. “For the Nazis, this was the inspiration – Hitler realized two things: one, that genocide is doable. It is possible to do genocide, that’s what Hitler realized. Second thing Hitler realized, is that you don’t have to have a common citizenship.”
New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani stands with his mother Mira Nair and father Mahmood Mamdani during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025, in Queens, New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The elder Mamdani also argued during the talk that the racist and antisemitic Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany “were patterned after American laws.”
Other comments included claims that there is no difference between “nationalism and colonialism” and that the Allied forces during World War II shared the same goals as the Nazis.
“The Nazi political project was shared by the Allies, and that political project was to turn Germany into a ‘pure’ nation. A ‘pure’ nation rid of its minorities,” Mamdani said at the Asia Society event. “When the Allies defeated the Nazis and went into Eastern Europe, they began to create ‘pure’ nations. To ethnically cleanse Eastern Europe of Germans – move them back into Germany. One crime doesn’t wipe out another.”
Following the political upset in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, critics began unearthing videos of the younger Mamdani espousing similarly radical views.
One of those moments came from remarks the NYC mayoral candidate made at a Young Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021, during which he told attendees not to compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.”
Zohran Mamdani raises hands with Al Sharpton during a campaign event at the NAN House of Justice in the Harlem on Saturday, June 28, 2025. (Bloomberg/Contributor)
A second included a video from The Gravel Institute, during which Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one. In the video, he called for luxury condos to be replaced with communal-style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing,” Mamdani urged in the video for The Gravel Institute.
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Meanwhile, other remarks by Mamdani’s father have raised concerns about how the Democratic mayoral candidate’s upbringing could impact his governing style.
In an interview about his book, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,” the older Mamdani asserts that the term “suicide bomber” is a misnomer because they are no different from “soldier[s] whose objective is to kill.”
Zohran Mamdani, Mira Nair, Mahmood Mamdani and Nishant Tharani arrive at the world premiere of Disney’s “Queen of Katwe” at Roy Thompson Hall as part of the 2016 Toronto Film Festival. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
Professor Mamdani has also reportedly argued that Israel is “the logical conclusion of Nazism,” according to an excerpt of a study chronicling his academic arguments shared by the Washington Free Beacon.
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Fox News Digital reached out to both Professor Mamdani and his son for comment.
