By Slavoj Žižek
Francis Fukuyama’s 1990s end-of-history thesis was the last big narrative that united the liberal-democratic West. Western liberal-democratic welfare-state capitalism, he argued, was the best possible social system. The only remaining question was empirical: Precisely when and how would other parts of the world arrive at the same model? This narrative disintegrated after 2001, and we gradually entered the era of brutal pragmatism. The only consistent narrative was provided by Trumpian and European racist nationalists: The developed Christian West is an historical exception, a wealthy, freedom-loving civilisation whose survival is under permanent threat from immigrants, “cultural Marxists,” LGBT+ partisans, and self-blaming Europeans. Of course, the “woke” narrative that nationalists reject is even narrower in its appeal than their own. It focuses on a single racist/sexist enemy and doesn’t even try to mobilise the majority, because it is concerned with elevating select groups, like trans people, to the exemplary status of the oppressed. Since most people are not trans, this narrative offers the majority only guilt, rather than a broadly appealing positive vision.
But something new has emerged with the rise of so-called democratic socialists in the United States. In an address marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, one of their leading exponents, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, offered a radically different narrative about what the US is and could be. Mamdani won his office not by promoting academic woke purism but by focusing on local issues and the underprivileged, with calls for free childcare and buses, rent control, and accessible health services. And in his July 4 address, he translated his politics into a global vision:
“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else … The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed in place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence—that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalised. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel—the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.”
Mamdani’s vision is, of course, ideological. It presents a simplified picture, not the unvarnished truth. What matters most is that it challenges the populist narrative head-on, as evidenced by the right’s hysterical attacks on Mamdani. In his own July 4 address, President Donald Trump was obviously thinking of the New York mayor when, making a hash of history, he claimed that: “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbour, or even 9/11.”
But equally notable is that Mamdani has also drawn fire from some radical leftists. In response to his praise of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, Jacobin published a commentary with the headline: “Burn the Constitution Once Again.” As the tagline explained, “The Constitution didn’t stop Trump—it made his reign possible.”
There is obviously merit to such arguments. As the Federalist Papers show, the founders’ greatest concern was to curtail popular influence. That is why the Constitution established an Electoral College and other institutional impediments to political majorities. America’s founders were the oligarchic elite of their day. George Washington was one of the wealthiest men in the colonies. In the first couple of elections after the founding, only a small fraction of citizens voted. A decidedly WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) document, the Constitution protected slavery. Even Irish-Americans were long excluded from sensitive posts in the state administration.
For a certain brand of leftist, however, even the Frankfurt School was a reactionary plot. The dominant right-wing populist narrative blames woke ideology on Antonio Gramsci and especially on Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno. Yet some on the left, such as the Villanova University philosopher Gabriel Rockhill, dismiss Western cultural Marxism as a CIA-backed anti-Communist movement designed to discredit “actually existing socialism.”
In both cases, one should heed Jean-Paul Sartre’s observation that a text attacked by both sides—whether the US Constitution or One-Dimensional Man—is probably on the right track.
In this context, Mamdani’s address was a perfect example of ideology in the positive sense of that term. It overturned the rightist vision of the US as an elite bastion that is threatened by outsiders, and presents it instead as a place that is strong enough to accept and give a chance to the world’s poor, exploited, and oppressed. Mamdani sees the very feature that rightist populists perceive as a threat to American identity—openness to outsiders—as the source of American exceptionalism.
The US is a wealthy symbol of hope because it has given generation after generation of immigrants a chance to succeed. Some leftists would, of course, claim that this dream is a lie, that the oppression of the lower classes, racial minorities, and newcomers has never let up. But issuing that charge is like firing a blank round: it has no force beyond fueling a form of self-criticism that leads nowhere.
Mamdani’s vision may not reflect the full, unvarnished truth, but it is truer than the Trumpian alternative, and it has the potential to mobilise millions—as has already happened since his election. Such is Mamdani’s genius. He has made the poor and tired newcomers the only authentic agents of the American dream. Trumpian populists are primitive provincials and happy slaves to mega-corporations. Today, it is democratic socialists who embody the emancipatory core of the American dream. They are the true American patriots.
The writer is Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School.