Ben Shapiro
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Upon moving to New York City, he attended elite private institutions like the Bank Street School for Children,
Experiencing the ultimate in liberal dichotomy, the champagne socialists lived in extreme comfort while being taught how to advocate for radical redistribution.
Mamdani's education continued at the Bronx High School of Science, an institution known for producing Nobel laureates and political leaders through a highly competitive entrance process.
He then continued his radical formation at Bowdoin College, a hyper-elite liberal arts school majoring in Africana Studies, a department that faced scrutiny for its focus on radical anti-colonial history and political theater.
His capstone research project explored the works of Franz Fanon, a psychiatrist whose theories of revolutionary violence and the total break from colonial systems provided the intellectual basis for today's leftist movements.
Mamdani was not a passive student.
He co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a radical left-wing anti-American group, and used his platform as a columnist for the Bowdoin Orient to attack the college's administration for what he considered to be institutional bias.
Following his graduation from Bowdoin in 2014, Mamdani entered a period of professional failure.
he jumped from venture to venture, utilizing this period as the bridge from his elite upbringing to his radical political persona.
The most notable of these failed attempts was one at a rap career under the painfully cringe name Young Kardamom.
He appeared on the soundtrack to his mother's Disney film, released a track about Kampala nightlife and South Asian diaspora identity, and described his brand as being built around, and I am quoting here, authenticity, movement, culture, the street, and the youth.
Dude grew up on Riverside Drive.
Unlike yours truly, his rap career did not exactly set the world on fire, but it did leave one interesting artifact.
A 2017 track surfaced during his campaign, in which Mamdani raps approvingly about the Holy Land 5.
These were the leaders of an organization convicted of funneling money to Hamas.
So, not exactly Hamilton.
But here's what the rap career actually taught him, and this is what matters.