Excellent article, and I was particularly interested int the history of Idi Amin. I guess you could say I crossed paths with him once. In my wayward youth, while backpacking my way through a good-sized chunk of Africa in 1978, I happened to be in Nairobi during Jomo Kenyatta's funeral. Naturally there were many notables in town for the event. A friend announced at the local youth hostel that Amin was staying at the Nairobi Hilton. We rushed down there, cameras in hand, and joined a crowd of mostly white onlookers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man. Keep in mind his many crimes were very well-known by then. Sure enough, he strode through the lobby with his huge white bodyguards and identically dressed little boy, waving to the crowd, looking to all the world like a celebrity, cameras clicking away. I was one of them of course, but to this day the whole scene strikes me as very odd.
Thank you for sharing! That is quite the experience. He was something of a dark hero throughout Africa, and of course people are always fascinated by depravity.
You're welcome Brad :) I just remembered another very slight Idi Amin story. A couple of months later I was hitchhiking in South Africa (ahh...the delights of youth) and I was picked up by a white trucker outside of Kimberley. He had been a private in the British Army in Kenya in the 50's, commanded by none other than Sgt. Amin. One day as punishment, his unit was given many pairs of scissors to mow the parade ground.
lmao that is an amusing story I didn’t see anywhere, they more focused on his actual brutality, but apparently besides that he was a fairly good soldier for the British.
I've stayed away from almost all the writing on Mamdani and the situation in NYC, it's been maddening. However, this essay was fantastic. I too think he's simply too young, too inexperienced, and his policies would be bad for any city (I recently escaped SF and the SF Bay Area after spending 25 years there, I've seen what some of it does to a city) but the insanity coming from the right embarrasses me.
Interesting article, doubly so because I found it via a Taibbi restack when his own piece from last year on "oh noes the commies are coming" was completely off the mark. Couldn't agree more with this passage:
"The main reason he is likely to win is less his policies and more that he faces a split field between an incumbent with a ludicrous corruption scandal, a disgraced former governor who is a sexual harassing grandma killer, and my preferred candidate, a crazed vigilante who is most notable for being one of three people to have seemingly appeared in every documentary made about New York City in the last 40 years"
I voted against Cuomo in the primary, but did not give Mamdani my vote in the general. Unfortunately, living in NYC your only vote is really dem primaries and he was the only person on that debate stage who centered NYC over weird fealty to Israel, and therefore he had the best chance of being "not Cuomo". He's demonstrably more likely to be another Obama-type than a communist takeover.
But the main point of your article, yup. It's insane that in today's political landscape you will have the "anti-woke" right waxing about settler colonialism, immediately after trashing the left for doing so, and without realizing they are doing the same thing that the "Marx loving leftists" do when jocking murders of the past. Same story with the Zionist-censors, former "free speech warriors" (Ben Shapiro, Bari Wiess ilk) suddenly caring a lot about what people shouldn't be allowed to say when it comes to their favorite protected class, using nearly identical "safe space" arguments.
Basically everyone is full of shit and just says whatever is most convenient to trashing the current object of scorn. Also, I think the reason liberals refuse to acknowledge the "obscure forms of racism" that come with diversity, is the same reason they fail to acknowledge the existence of non-dem voting minorities: they don't actually know anyone who isn't exactly like them. I once dated a Chinese guy whose grandparents fled the revolution, and though he was second generation, his parents spoke only Cantonese. They, and everyone they knew in that community were obviously Trump supporters, lol. Also, if you want to see real hardcore anti-China racism, look no further than what some Hong Kong Chinese immigrants say about "mainland" Chinese... absolutely brutal ridicule over the bad manners/idiocy of Mandarin speaking tourists. The only concept liberals have of minorities is from their sociology text books, and guilt about Lyft drivers/landscapers.
Thank you for the comment. Yes, everything is very stupid in this country.
I somewhat inadvertently got really into Republican China last year, very interesting place. That is another funny thing you see in our retard race discourse is "China is 99% Chinese" or whatever. Sure, if by "Chinese" you just mean "Chinese nationals," its still a dizzying array of groups who speak different languages and have prejudices we have never heard of"
The China Lobby (Taiwan, ofc) was the first big really corrupt lobby in the US, before Cubans or Israel had nearly so much power and even worse. They funded McCarthyism. Truman tried to quietly look into it but because T. V. Soong had stolen like half of total US aid to China during WW2 his connections in the Treasury etc were so high that even Truman as President wasn't willing to confront him he basically just produced some reports, and then Soongs lived here with diplomatic status for a country that no longer existed for another 20 years. They still do live here but are just rich Chinese people of no specific fame now.
Took me a few days to get round to reading. Interesting essay. Surprised to learn (though I shouldn't be) subcontinental presence predates the British.
The term Asian is kind of flexible in the west. In the US it usually means someone from Aast Asia, mainly China. In Britain the term is usually applied to subcontinentals.
If not mistaken Mamdani grandfather on his maternal side was a british trained beauracrat who went on to serve in independent India. He's very much elite, less transnational than a child of empire imo.
Yeah I know who his mother is I just don't know her family history.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see how he does. It is total institutional failure that got him where he is and as ever the Boomers unwilling to step aside etc. I don't think he will actually be that disastrous for New York but it is hard to say. The city is by nature unpredictable and unruly but they have done incredible things keeping violent crime down over the last few decades so it will really be a shame if he steps back from that and lets the city get more dangerous.
Excellent article, and I was particularly interested int the history of Idi Amin. I guess you could say I crossed paths with him once. In my wayward youth, while backpacking my way through a good-sized chunk of Africa in 1978, I happened to be in Nairobi during Jomo Kenyatta's funeral. Naturally there were many notables in town for the event. A friend announced at the local youth hostel that Amin was staying at the Nairobi Hilton. We rushed down there, cameras in hand, and joined a crowd of mostly white onlookers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man. Keep in mind his many crimes were very well-known by then. Sure enough, he strode through the lobby with his huge white bodyguards and identically dressed little boy, waving to the crowd, looking to all the world like a celebrity, cameras clicking away. I was one of them of course, but to this day the whole scene strikes me as very odd.
Thank you for sharing! That is quite the experience. He was something of a dark hero throughout Africa, and of course people are always fascinated by depravity.
You're welcome Brad :) I just remembered another very slight Idi Amin story. A couple of months later I was hitchhiking in South Africa (ahh...the delights of youth) and I was picked up by a white trucker outside of Kimberley. He had been a private in the British Army in Kenya in the 50's, commanded by none other than Sgt. Amin. One day as punishment, his unit was given many pairs of scissors to mow the parade ground.
lmao that is an amusing story I didn’t see anywhere, they more focused on his actual brutality, but apparently besides that he was a fairly good soldier for the British.
I've stayed away from almost all the writing on Mamdani and the situation in NYC, it's been maddening. However, this essay was fantastic. I too think he's simply too young, too inexperienced, and his policies would be bad for any city (I recently escaped SF and the SF Bay Area after spending 25 years there, I've seen what some of it does to a city) but the insanity coming from the right embarrasses me.
The too young vs the too old, tough call, though 65 isnt really TOO old to be mayor, just old.
And yeah I oppose all of his policies which is why its ridiculous I'm spending all of my time defending him against this nonsense lol
Anyway, thank you
Interesting article, doubly so because I found it via a Taibbi restack when his own piece from last year on "oh noes the commies are coming" was completely off the mark. Couldn't agree more with this passage:
"The main reason he is likely to win is less his policies and more that he faces a split field between an incumbent with a ludicrous corruption scandal, a disgraced former governor who is a sexual harassing grandma killer, and my preferred candidate, a crazed vigilante who is most notable for being one of three people to have seemingly appeared in every documentary made about New York City in the last 40 years"
I voted against Cuomo in the primary, but did not give Mamdani my vote in the general. Unfortunately, living in NYC your only vote is really dem primaries and he was the only person on that debate stage who centered NYC over weird fealty to Israel, and therefore he had the best chance of being "not Cuomo". He's demonstrably more likely to be another Obama-type than a communist takeover.
But the main point of your article, yup. It's insane that in today's political landscape you will have the "anti-woke" right waxing about settler colonialism, immediately after trashing the left for doing so, and without realizing they are doing the same thing that the "Marx loving leftists" do when jocking murders of the past. Same story with the Zionist-censors, former "free speech warriors" (Ben Shapiro, Bari Wiess ilk) suddenly caring a lot about what people shouldn't be allowed to say when it comes to their favorite protected class, using nearly identical "safe space" arguments.
Basically everyone is full of shit and just says whatever is most convenient to trashing the current object of scorn. Also, I think the reason liberals refuse to acknowledge the "obscure forms of racism" that come with diversity, is the same reason they fail to acknowledge the existence of non-dem voting minorities: they don't actually know anyone who isn't exactly like them. I once dated a Chinese guy whose grandparents fled the revolution, and though he was second generation, his parents spoke only Cantonese. They, and everyone they knew in that community were obviously Trump supporters, lol. Also, if you want to see real hardcore anti-China racism, look no further than what some Hong Kong Chinese immigrants say about "mainland" Chinese... absolutely brutal ridicule over the bad manners/idiocy of Mandarin speaking tourists. The only concept liberals have of minorities is from their sociology text books, and guilt about Lyft drivers/landscapers.
Thank you for the comment. Yes, everything is very stupid in this country.
I somewhat inadvertently got really into Republican China last year, very interesting place. That is another funny thing you see in our retard race discourse is "China is 99% Chinese" or whatever. Sure, if by "Chinese" you just mean "Chinese nationals," its still a dizzying array of groups who speak different languages and have prejudices we have never heard of"
The China Lobby (Taiwan, ofc) was the first big really corrupt lobby in the US, before Cubans or Israel had nearly so much power and even worse. They funded McCarthyism. Truman tried to quietly look into it but because T. V. Soong had stolen like half of total US aid to China during WW2 his connections in the Treasury etc were so high that even Truman as President wasn't willing to confront him he basically just produced some reports, and then Soongs lived here with diplomatic status for a country that no longer existed for another 20 years. They still do live here but are just rich Chinese people of no specific fame now.
Pretty good essay!
Ma’amdami is the AntiChrist
Took me a few days to get round to reading. Interesting essay. Surprised to learn (though I shouldn't be) subcontinental presence predates the British.
The term Asian is kind of flexible in the west. In the US it usually means someone from Aast Asia, mainly China. In Britain the term is usually applied to subcontinentals.
If not mistaken Mamdani grandfather on his maternal side was a british trained beauracrat who went on to serve in independent India. He's very much elite, less transnational than a child of empire imo.
His mom is from India, he is only East African on his father's side, I dont know his mother's family history besides that though.
A lot of people tried to make a thing of his father being born in Bombay, but his grandfather was a student at the time and was born in Africa.
His mum is Mira Nair. She is a famous Bollywood director whose done a spot of Hollywood work and is well known in the City of Angels.
His policies aren't my cup of tea But an interesting chap running for mayor on an interesting city in an interesting country.
Be interesting to see Leftwing populism have a crack.
Yeah I know who his mother is I just don't know her family history.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see how he does. It is total institutional failure that got him where he is and as ever the Boomers unwilling to step aside etc. I don't think he will actually be that disastrous for New York but it is hard to say. The city is by nature unpredictable and unruly but they have done incredible things keeping violent crime down over the last few decades so it will really be a shame if he steps back from that and lets the city get more dangerous.