Edward Steele is a filmmaker. His upcoming documentary is “White Guilt,” which challenges the whole narrative of public vilification, accuses William McGurn in the WSJ.
It’s pretty simple, writes McGurn, “All anyone need do is pick someone you can blame anything on and attack.”
In a city where most people have a landlord and renters outnumber owners 2 to 1, landlords are a fat target. If, like Marx, you believe rent is robbery, say so. Make a campaign of it.
You all remember Saul Alinsky, the community activist in Chicago who wrote “Rules for Radicals.”
For Mayor Mamdani, rule 13 offers a path forward: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Is there a method to Mr. Mamdani’s madness? Of course there is.
Even the barest acquaintance with the record of rent control and other government efforts to keep housing costs down by subsidizing rents or artificially capping them shows they usually end in failure. The mayor will need to deal with the coming failure or distract attention from it.
It’s a good plan with a method, Mr. McGurn continues. Anyone acquainted with the record of rent control and other government efforts to keep housing costs down by subsidizing rents or artificially capping them knows they usually end in failure. Mamdani will need to deal with the coming failure or distract attention from it.
During July, Mamdani released a report with 23 policy actions on everything from building inspections to combating mold. The report’s title gives away the game: the “Rental Ripoff Hearing Report.”
Reading it, you would think there isn’t a single landlord in the city who treats his tenants decently and keeps his buildings in good repair.
In the 1940s and ’50s, communist China landlords became “class enemies.” They were publicly denounced in “speak bitterness” campaigns. An estimated one million to two million of them were murdered.
Today’s Chairman Mao has morphed into the friendlier face of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Government isn’t murdering landlords, but even as Zohran Mamdani denies that the democratic socialism he champions is communism, he has embraced the same vilification and targeting of landlords.
