Last weekend, I wrote about New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s full-throated pledge to introduce New Yorkers to “the warmth of collectivism.” He proceeded to fulfill his pledge to govern as a die-hard socialist with the appointment of a new advocate for renters who has espoused communist policies favoring the seizure of private property. Cea Weaver, the new director of the Office to Protect Tenants, is the ultimate example of the young armchair communists coming out of our universities with little memory or understanding of past failures in socialist countries.

While the Administration just brought Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to New York, Mamdani appears intent on bringing some of his policies to the Big Apple. The fact that he reduced a prosperous nation to an economic basket case seems to be little deterrent.

Weaver, 37, is an example of the shallow sloganeering that masquerades as policies in these circles. Notably, her commitment to communist doctrine does not appear to extend to defending them. She deleted many of her most extreme calls for the seizure of property and racist statements directed against white people.

Weaver has called for Americans to ‘impoverish the white middle-class’ and called homeownership “racist” while demanding the seizure of private property. The videos sound like a college coffee klatch of junior communists, part of what I have called the “radical chic” of higher education.

“I think the reality is, that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good…And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently and it will mean that families – especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well – are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”

She has denounced homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy.”

These views mirror past comments by Mamdani himself who has called for “seizing the means of production.”

Mamdani had to be aware of Weaver’s past comments, which include:

• calling “homeownership … a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”

• “improvish the white middle class. Homeownership is racist/failed public policy.”

• There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrified, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t.”

• “seize private property!”

• “elect more communists.”

• “this country built wealth for white people through genocide, slavery, stolen land & labor. white supremacy built the north and the south.”

• “endorse no white men in office platform.”

Imagine how the press would respond to a Republican nominee who called to vote against any black people or to elect fascists.

In my forthcoming book, I discuss this shift toward socialism as a new generation replicates the same failed policies that marked a long line of collectivist catastrophes. Other countries are throwing off the yoke of socialism and communism. Yet, Mamdani and his aides herald some of the same failed policies.

Months ago, as Mamdani also tried to scrub his social media, I wrote that he was a hardcore Marxist. Liberal pundits then objected and said that he really was just a ramped-up welfare liberal.

Mamdani and Weaver prove the truth of Maya Angelou’s warning that “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.