DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s professor father claimed Hitler inspired by Abraham Lincoln.
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.
“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.”
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.
Good and hard, Fun City:
Zohran Mamdani’s father—a Columbia professor—believes:
– The Allies and Nazis had the same goal
– Lincoln inspired Hitler
– White people are oppressors, America is evil
– BLM is the resistanceThis is the worldview that shaped Zohran.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 4, 2025
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