Mira Nair, New York mayoral candidate, state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji and Mahmood Mamdani celebrate on stage during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025, in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City. (Getty)
"Hitler learned genocide from Abraham Lincoln. I'm sure Zohran loves America though. Nice job NYC."
The clip stems from a 2022 panel discussion hosted by the Asia Society where Mahmood Mamdani asserted that America was the "genesis of what we call settler-colonialism" around the world, Fox News Digital reported in July.
"With the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln generalized the solution of reservations, they herded American Indians into separate territories," Mamdani, Columbia's Herbert Lehman professor of government, said. "For the Nazis, this was the inspiration — Hitler realized two things: one, that genocide is doable. It is possible to do genocide, that's what Hitler realized. Second thing Hitler realized, is that you don't have to have a common citizenship."
The video received strong pushback from conservatives on social media.
MAMDANI'S MOTHER IN UNEARTHED 2013 INTERVIEW: 'HE IS NOT AN AMERICAN AT ALL'
New York mayoral candidate, state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, stands with his mother Mira Nair, and father, Mahmood Mamdani, as they celebrate during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025, in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism," the elder Mamdani wrote in his 2004 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, Fox News Digital previously reported.
"We need to recognize the suicide bomber, first and foremost, as a category of soldier."
Additionally, Mahmood Mamdani sits on the advisory council of an anti-Israel organization, the Gaza Tribunal, that supports boycotts and sanctions of Israel and routinely accuses the Israeli government of committing "genocide"
The Gaza Tribunal's founder and members have deep ties to anti-Israel movements, with at least one being deported from the United States due to terror ties.
"He’s his own person," Mahmood Mamdani told The New York Times in an interview earlier this year headlined, "The Parents Who Helped Shape Zohran Mamdani’s Politics."
Mahmood Mamdani added, "Now, of course, what we do as his parents is part of the environment in which he grew up, and he couldn’t help but engage with it. That doesn’t mean anything is reflected back on us."
"I don’t agree!" Nair interjected in the interview. "Of course the world we live in, and what we write and film and think about, is the world that Zohran has very much absorbed."
In a 2020 interview, Mamdani suggested in his own words that he was influenced politically by his parents," Fox News Digital reported earlier this year.
"I think, honestly, growing up in the family that I grew up in, I was quite open to what would be considered being a radical from a very young age," Mamdani said on The Far Left Show.
"I mean, from the beginning, my identities are already considered radical by a lot of mainstream American political thought. So being a Muslim, being an immigrant, these are things that already kind of put you in the box of ‘other.’ And so it's not that far of a jump because whenever you... stand up to speak up for the rights of others who share the same identity as you, then you're a radical, right? So often people in this country are considered radicals if they stand up for Palestinian human rights."
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
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