Who saw anti-Israel socialism arriving as the breakout political movement of 2026? When Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race in 2025, he prevailed over Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of the state (and son of a former governor) and the African American incumbent, Eric Adams. It was something of a shock to see a young assemblyman with almost no real work history rising to such a high office so quickly. Now, in the wake of a clean sweep of New York Congressional primaries by candidates endorsed by the young self-avowed socialist mayor, we have moved from a singular event to a broader phenomenon. Mamdani has very quickly managed to translate his platform into an emerging movement.
In 1989, the Soviet Union began its epic collapse as the Berlin Wall fell and satellite countries began to reclaim their independence. The disintegration of history’s most prominent Marxist state led to a change in American politics as Democrats tacked to the right. Arkansas Gov. and Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 as a centrist “New Democrat.” His platform was pro-business and pro-fiscal discipline. While he achieved re-election and successfully weathered scandals, the business-oriented New Democrats were short lived.
The next Democrat to win the presidency was Barack Obama, who, perhaps ironically, was often accused of being the Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani unquestionably is. While Obama did not run or govern as a socialist, it was understood that in his younger years he was attracted by the hard left and perhaps nurtured a continuing affection for it. What was not possible for Obama to pursue, assuming he had the inclination, has been increasingly normalized by figures such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mayor Mamdani and his slate of successful candidates now represent a kind of early culmination.
This week, Mayor Mamdani successfully pushed three socialist candidates to victory in their Democratic primaries, which will almost certainly take them to victory in November. Assuming the self-identified American socialists continue to knock off mere “progressives” in favor of their more frankly labeled objective, it is not difficult to foresee that there will be a day when we will observe the official formation of a socialist caucus or democratic socialist caucus in Congress.
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Hunter (J.D., Ph.D.) is the provost and dean of faculty at North Greenville University in South Carolina. He is the author of The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide and The System Has a Soul. His work has appeared in a wide variety of other books and journals. He is formally affiliated with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Touchstone, the Journal of Markets and Morality; the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy; and the Land Center at Southwestern Seminary.