Mamdani’s salami tactics

The antisemitic mayor wants to gradually marginalize and ghettoize New York Jews.

My new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, is now available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

Salami tactics are a time-honored method of political warfare. Involving the use of policies that gradually undermine one’s enemies until they are completely disempowered, marginalized, or destroyed, Hitler used them to take absolute power and demolish the Weimar regime, the Soviet Union used them in an attempt to undermine American society and global influence, and Iran has used them to pursue its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions.

Such tactics are also effective at a much smaller scale, with subversion, entryism, and similar methods employed by extremist groups to conquer and colonize mainstream institutions and then exploit them to radical ends.

Today, it appears that this strategy of gradualism is being used to explicitly antisemitic ends, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his minions employing them to slowly but surely push the Jews out of municipal government and impose a regime dedicated to marginalizing the Jewish community, imposing systemic antisemitism, and taking every action possible against Zionism and Israel.

If there is no effective pushback against these tactics, it is entirely possible that New York Jews will soon find themselves powerless, ghettoized, and perhaps eventually purged from the city in which they have lived for centuries.

Purge

The first intimations of Mamdani’s strategy are already with us. For example, the New York Post has reported that the city’s Department of Health has established a “working group” dedicated to spreading and legitimizing the blood libel that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

One presenter to the Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group made this explicit, saying, “We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

Using the pretense of concerns with “health” in order to justify the otherwise ridiculous use of such defamatory incitement in a presentation to the ostensibly apolitical Health Department, the presenter said, “The working group aims to address the growing interests among the health department staff to learn about current and ongoing global oppression in its many forms and how it influences the advancement of health equity.”

The conquest and colonization of otherwise unrelated and legitimate organizations through entryist tactics could not be more clearly demonstrated.

The salami tactics have also directly targeted the unity and influence of the mainstream Jewish community.

For example, Mamdani has appointed a new executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism who is pointedly anti-Israel and appears to have little to no interest in Judaism at all.

The Post reports that Phylisa Wisdom, a former leader of the far-left organization New York Jewish Agenda, responded to a 2021 pro-Israel statement by mayoral candidate Andrew Yang by dismissing Hamas responsibility for a terrorist atrocity, saying, “As an American Jew and a New Yorker, I am floored by this tweet (although never surprised).”

She added, “NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence.”

One could argue, of course, that since Gaza was essentially a state at the time, it was Wisdom who was supporting “state-sanctioned violence,” though her concern for the terrorists rather than their Jewish victims appears to have made such a possibility unthinkable to her. This would seem to make Wisdom’s claim to be a “liberal Zionist” somewhat laughable.

In 2009, moreover, Wisdom remarked with some childish humor that she had skipped any observance of one of Judaism’s most sacred holidays, saying, “I totally missed Yom Kippur this year. Oh well, I’ll repent next year??? (What kind of Jew flakes on YOM KIPPUR).” Indeed, one wonders.

Wisdom’s appointment points to one of the essential aspects of salami tactics, which is that their gradualism is intended to avoid public shock and outrage, rather like the frog that does not realize it is being slowly boiled. Instead of simply eliminating the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism—which he will almost certainly do in the future—Mamdani appointed an apologist for antisemitic violence to lead it.

Undoubtedly, Wisdom will maintain her apologetics in office, allowing such atrocities as hate rallies outside synagogues, attacks on Jewish students at local universities, and the takeover of major thoroughfares by pro-terrorist antisemites to continue with indifference or outright support.

Unfortunately for Wisdom, these salami tactics will inevitably reach their logical end. They will eventually target all Jews, including herself.

As the Free Beacon has reported, this was recently proven by the targeting of Mamdani supporter and liberal Jewish writer Ezra Klein, whose apologetics proved useless at a recent appearance.

Klein was rhetorically attacked by protester-terrorists who charged him with being a “Nazi normalizer” after previously branding him a “Zionist pig” and a “genocide denier.” The protester-terrorists, with their usual asinine chants, shrieked, “Ezra Klein, you’re a liar, you set Palestine on fire” and “Every time Ezra lies, a neighborhood in Gaza dies.”

Klein’s response, of course, was catamitic. He begged for “dialogue” with his tormentors, whining, “Buddy, buddy, talk to me. I am right here,” perhaps not realizing that the protester-terrorists were not his “buddies” in any way, shape, or form.

Undoubtedly, Wisdom will soon be faced with something similar. She will be branded “genocide Phylisa” or “Zionist pigess” and find herself purged by Mamdani and his minions.

At that point, not only Zionist Jews and other representatives of the Jewish mainstream will have been purged, but also Jews like Wisdom, who have thus far been willing to bend the knee. The municipal government will finally be free to allow antisemitism whatever free rein it does not already enjoy.

Then, Mamdani will be able to realize what are likely his ultimate ambitions: banning Zionism as “racist,” ending all Zionist activity in the city, preventing mainstream Jews from contributing funds or resources to Israel, and cutting off any connection between Israel and the city of New York.

Resistance

The question, then, is what the Jews should do. In my view, they must use their own salami tactics with the ultimate goal of neutralizing the Mamdani administration’s antisemitic ambitions.

First, the mainstream national and local Jewish organizations should reorganize themselves into genuine civil rights movements. They should monitor and publicize antisemitic policies, educate the Jewish community and the public about what is occurring, file lawsuits against discriminatory policies, organize marches, and engage in civil disobedience in order to hold Mamdani’s feet to the fire.

At the very least, this will impede the mayor’s strategy of gradualism and perhaps grind it to a halt. At best, it will ensure that mainstream Jewish and Zionist voices are heard loud and clear, if not in the municipal administration, then at least in the local political discourse and on the streets.

Second, local Jewish communities should accept that the mayor’s salami tactics will inevitably lead to antisemitic violence. Thus, they should organize their own local self-defense groups that can eventually be united into a city-wide network of coordinated resistance to such violence.

This “iron dome” for the Jewish community will serve as its own form of pushback and interdict Mamdani’s tendencies to either ignore or engage in apologetics for the intimidation, harassment, and physical brutalization of Jews and the community in general. This, in turn, will foster the courage needed to further resist and break through the barrier of fear that currently impedes the local Jewish struggle. It will be the antisemites who are afraid, not the Jews.

All of this must be done, however, before it is too late. If Mamdani’s salami tactics are successful, New York Jews will likely have no choice but to leave, reenacting the tragedy and trauma that have marked Jewish history again and again. In New York and America in general, thankfully, this need not happen. The Jews have the numbers, resources, and influence to prevent it from happening. But they must use them.