Woke is back: The best memes about Zohran Mamdani’s win

At the beginning of his victory speech last night, Zohran Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs, a trade unionist and socialist who in 1920 campaigned for president during a ten-year prison sentence: “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”

Following a resounding win, Mamdani has become the first Muslim and youngest person ever to become the New York mayor. While some of his precursors have been left-wing – David Dinkins, for example, was a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America – he could also prove to be the most radical and transformative. His policies include freezing rent for more than two million rent-stabilised tenants, making buses free, delivering universal childcare, and introducing affordable, city-run grocery stores. He will face staunch opposition in implementing these goals – not least from Donald Trump, who has threatened to pull funding from America’s largest city – but if he pulls it off, life could be made dramatically better for ordinary New Yorkers.

There are lessons to be drawn from Mamdani’s victory. For a start, it shows that neither smearing someone as a terrorist loving antisemitism for supporting Palestine nor relying on endless donations from billionaires (who rushed to support his rival candidate, Andrew Cuomo) are reliable tactics. While the rightward shift of young men has been a dominant talking point in American politics across recent years, over 64 per cent of young men voted for him, according to NBC’s exit polls (although this figure rises to 80 per cent for young women, showing there is still a gender split).

Conservatives often argue that left-wing politics are a kind of “luxury belief” which appeals only to affluent elites, and that the Republicans are now the true party of the working classes, but yesterday's results tell a different story: people on low incomes overwhelmingly opted for Mamdani, while rival candidate Andrew Cuomo was favoured by the wealthy. According to analysis by the New York Times, Mamdani won more votes in areas with mostly Black, Asian and Hispanic residents, while Cuomo did better in areas with more white residents. Perhaps more than anything, what Mamdani’s victory shows is that people respond when you promise to meaningfully improve their lives, instead of insisting that such changes aren’t possible. He also won by refusing to give in to right-wing smears or diluting his principles. No one is perfect, but for the most part, he has remained steadfast in his support for Palestine, LGBTQ+ rights and the safety of migrants. 

Amid plenty of outrage and doom-mongering, the mood on social media is mostly ecstatic, with people describing themselves as “libbing out” or welcoming the long overdue revenge of “woke” — even outside of New York, or the US, it seems like a cause for hope. Maybe one day, we could have our very own Zohrani… Here are some of the best memes about the rare political event that isn’t extremely depressing.