Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both have elite backgrounds but have crafted oppression narratives for political advantage
New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—two of America’s most prominent socialist politicians—have committed identity theft. No, they did not pilfer a Social Security number or swipe the digits of someone else’s credit card. They have done something more subtle: stealing the image of the oppressed for personal and political gain.
It’s an old trick. Just as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., claimed Native American heritage as she ascended the ranks of academia, Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez adopted the identities of the poor and downtrodden as they ascended the ranks of politics. Both built their political personas on a small kernel of truth: Mamdani claimed on his college application to be black because he was born in Uganda, despite being the son of two famous, affluent, and educated Indians; Ocasio-Cortez claimed to be a "Bronx girl" because she lived in the borough until age five, when she moved to a tony corner of Westchester County, New York. Both have structured their identities around grand narratives of oppressor and oppressed, which they hope to convert into power and prestige.
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Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal. He is the author of America's Cultural Revolution.
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