Zohran Mamdani shows how Democrats can defeat authoritarians like Trump | Isabella Weber

“My friends, the world is changing,” Zohran Mamdani told supporters in the run-up to the New York City mayoral election. “It’s not a question of whether that change will come. It’s a question of who will change it.” Today, Mamdani becomes one of those people.

People are so fed up with the status quo that they opt for anything but continuity. But Democrats and most democratic parties worldwide have shied away from offering real alternatives. This has pushed voters into the arms of the extreme right, even fascist forces. Mamdani set out to break their monopoly over visions for a different future – and won a resounding and historic victory. The last time this many voters turned out to vote for a mayor in New York City was in 1969.

Democrats everywhere have a lot to learn from Mamdani’s astounding success. Centering his campaign on making life affordable again, Mamdani won because he offered hope. He won because he demonstrated that democratic representatives can stand up for their constituents’ most basic material interests. This restores democracy’s promise. As fascist movements gain ground globally, his victory provides something desperately needed: the beginning of an antifascist economic program that can win back people who have lost faith in democracy itself.

Mamdani’s playbook is deceptively simple: ensure all New Yorkers can afford essentials. A rent freeze on stabilized apartments paired with building 200,000 new affordable units. Free bus rides. Universal childcare from six weeks to five years. Pilot programs for city-run grocery stores in food deserts. Higher taxes on millionaires and corporations to pay for it all. That is the platform that mobilized a record-number of canvassers to knock on doors for Mamdani and propel him to victory.

Critics dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky socialism. But what they’re really objecting to is more fundamental: the idea that democratic governments should guarantee people’s basic needs, even if it means intervening in markets. What I call economics of essentials recognizes that housing, food, transportation and childcare aren’t ordinary commodities. When their prices surge, they trigger redistribution shocks that push vulnerable people to society’s margins.

New research I’ve conducted with colleagues reveals which prices matter most for inequality. We found that a small set of essential sectors – energy, food and agriculture, healthcare, chemicals, housing and wholesale trade – have a disproportionate capacity to trigger redistribution when prices surge.

The poorer you are, the more you spend on basics. When prices of essentials jump, the bottom income decile experiences much higher inflation impacts than the top decile. A petroleum price shock hits the poorest Americans with a 54% higher increase in inflation than for the wealthiest 10%. For farms and food products, the gap is starker still at 126%.

Meanwhile, as we show in our research the profit windfall delivered by price explosions in essentials goes predominantly to the rich. For the case of record fossil fuel profits in 2022 brought about by a spike in oil and gas prices, 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%.

Guaranteeing affordable prices of essentials, as Mamdani pledged, tackles inequality without pitting one group against another. There’s no conflict between unemployed and low-wage workers, people in working-class jobs and underpaid professionals, different racial or religious communities. Public services like free buses and childcare are accessible to all. It’s based on universality rather than exclusion – an economic agenda that unites people rather than dividing them into competing groups.

Public options for essentials are a form of price stabilization benefiting everyone, not just direct users. Our research shows substantial overlap between sectors that matter most for inflation and inequality. Policies preventing price shocks in essential sectors serve double duty: containing inflation risks while preventing sudden inequality increases. This is in direct contrast with conventional monetary policy – raising interest rates – which actively exacerbates inequality through higher debt costs for the poor and suppressed wage growth.

During the 2024 campaign, Joe Biden denounced corporate price gouging in his State of the Union speech, then did nothing. Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging by food suppliers, then backed away under pressure from the same quarters now attacking Mamdani. This equivocation opened the door for Trump’s return. When Democrats offer no solutions to existential crises, voters conclude the system can’t help them. The far right does name their suffering, even if the solutions are lies wrapped in bigotry.

Mamdani’s agenda treats affordability of essentials as democratic obligation, not market efficiency. The rent freeze doesn’t pretend markets will solve the housing crisis alone. The pilot grocery stores don’t assume private retailers will serve communities they have written off as unprofitable. Free transit doesn’t wait for philanthropy.

This is antifascist economics – not opposing any particular party, but addressing the material conditions that make fascism appealing. It’s a program restoring universal dignity rather than fueling divides and blaming scapegoats for the crisis. Democratic parties everywhere face versions of the choice American Democrats confronted in 2024: equivocate on bold economic intervention and watch voters embrace authoritarians, or fight for policies that materially improve lives.

Strategic price interventions to protect people’s basic needs, public options for essentials, aggressive investment in affordable housing and childcare – these are democracy insurance. They demonstrate that democratic governments can deliver tangible improvements. They offer hope for a livable life, the most powerful antidote to fascist despair.

It’s about reinstating democratic representatives’ basic responsibility: ensuring constituents can meet fundamental needs by all means necessary – including challenging the laws of free markets. This democratization of economic policy, putting essentials before profits, can counter extreme-rightwing threats not only in New York but in democracies worldwide.

If that sounds radical in 2025, it speaks to how far we’ve drifted from democracy’s core promise. The cost of inaction is measured not just in economic insecurity, but in the space created for authoritarianism to flourish. We’ve seen how this story ends. The question now is whether we’ll learn from history – or watch it repeat itself.

Mamdani’s victory is a much-needed step in the right direction.