For sure, but for better or worse, we’ve moved to a place where all politics is national if not global. And it’s hard not to look at him and see someone with higher aspirations. I find his non answer telling, and I’m not sure it’s saved him from the firing squad.
Well, sure, you're volunteering for the firing squad. You claim that "he got into this game" and "No one is asking him about something he hasn’t waded into", and yet I can find zero evidence that he wielded the phrase "globalize the intifada" before he was asked about it a week ago on a podcast.
I mean, he hasn’t used those exact words, yet he is part of empowering a movement that embraces that term
Right, you have to resort to guilt-by-association handwaving because he did not, in fact, "g[e]t into this game"; he was, in fact, "ask[ed] about something he ha[d]n't waded into". Allegedly the slogan's the cause for concern, but when it's pointed out that Mamdani didn't bring up the slogan...
...the goalposts get shifted to nebulous Oh OK Sure He Doesn't Actually Use The Slogan But Someone At A Rally For The Movement He's Part Of Used The Slogan smoke-blowing.
It’s not a one off at a rally it’s a prominent expression of a movement that he has made a part of his political brand. It’s an expression used to justify violence. It would be one thing if he hasn’t been involved since college, but he has, and it’s a loud part of a movement he is part of.
I'm sure someone somewhere has used the expression to justify violence, but you present no evidence that that's its dominant meaning, and I've marched & rallied ~ 10 times for Palestine alongside hundreds of thousands of people and don't recall ever hearing the expression during any of that.
We're not talking about something like "from the river to the sea", which I _have_ heard many many times with my own ears during rallies & marches, and which has _also_ been pointed to as a supposed endorsement of violence and even genocide. A genuinely common slogan like that might feasibly be...
...connected to a politician who speaks at a rally. But pointing to an expression that's clearly far more obscure? I'm afraid that really is guilt-by-straw-clutching.
I’ve heard it many times. The 2 prior intifadas were extremely violent. So I think my experience is different than yours which may shadow some of this. He himself said the word was used by the holocaust museum to describe the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Also he isn’t making the argument it’s obscure.
I've heard it many times, now, from people trying to use it to paint Mamdani as a threat. Which is a different thing. And I'm not claiming _he_ is making the argument it's obscure; _I_ am making the argument that it _was_ obscure (before podcasters & pundits lifted it out of obscurity)...