After New York City inexplicably voted in favor of Zohran Mamdani — the sporadically grinning communist whose love for Hamas and other terrorist groups includes his outspoken desire to illegally arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — onlookers might be counting down until the Ugandan-born mayor who became an American citizen in 2018 is finally thrown out of his office.

But with someone like Mamdani in control, New York doesn't just have a leadership problem. It has a quickly developing foundation problem.

The rise of radical politicians such as Mamdani is not simply a case of one far-left ideologue winning an election in a deep-blue city. If Mamdani was merely another Democratic Socialist with an aggressive social media game, New Yorkers could just roll their eyes and wait him out. But Mamdani isn't waiting. He's building, he's embedding, he's institutionalizing his anti-American worldview, through a deliberate, generational effort to seize the institutions that define our cities, states or our nation in order to remake them in a way that will long outlast any single elected official.

The latest example of this sordid strategy? Palestinian-American and Democratic Socialist Aber Kawas, who has Mamdani's backing as candidate for the New York State Assembly, according to the New York Daily News.

Aber Kawas' qualifications? Well, according to The Washington Free Beacon, she holds a master's degree in "Islamic Liberation Theology" from a university in South Africa, and blamed the Sept. 11 attacks — committed by Islamic terrorists, lest we forget — on the West's system of capitalism, racism, white supremacy and (of course) Islamophobia that were used to "colonize lands" and "take resources from other people."

"The idea that we have to apologize for, like, a terror attack that, like, a couple people did, and then there is no apologies or reparations for genocides and for slavery, um, et cetera, is something that I kind of find, like, reprehensible," Kawas said in 2017.

Thanks to Mamdani, Kawas could soon sit in the state's Assembly. Make no mistake: His focus throughout his four-year term won't be making the buses fast and free, but to implant the New York City infrastructure with people exactly like Aber Kawas — people who embody his own Islamist hatred of the United States, Israel and the West.

The long-term goal? To replace Western values.

Radicals such as Mamdani will not just govern, and their trail of destruction won't just be limited to policies surrounding housing, crime and whether or not Jews ritualistically feast on the blood of children. They are actively curating their own political ecosystem and installing ideological allies in positions where they will influence not just budgets, education, law enforcement and other political policies, but also our culture. And once these foundations are deliberately rebuilt, Mamdani's damage will endure, and the system he and his comrades built will continue running to promote the noxious worldview he personifies.

This is why we cannot simply give up and wait until the next election, because ignoring Zohran Mamdani — and the countless Aber Kawases he will frantically elevate — is yet another luxury New Yorkers can no longer afford.

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Vihan Dalal at Unsplash