WATCH: Mamdani Called for ‘Abolition of Private Property’

Video has surfaced showing Zohran Mamdani, the socialist Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, calling for the “abolition of private property” during a previous campaign.

In a clip that made the rounds on social media Thursday, Mamdani said, “Every single person should have housing.”

“The system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right? For what?” Mamdani said in the clip, which was from a 2020 podcast interview when he was a Democratic nominee for the New York State Assembly, a race he went on to win.

“If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now,” Mamdani said.

“People try and play, like, gotcha games about these kinds of things, and it’s like look, I care more about whether somebody has a home,” he added.

The New York state assemblyman representing parts of Queens won the Democratic primary last month in an upset that threw the New York City mayor’s race into chaos.

Mamdani has described himself as a democratic socialist and has proposed controversial and expensive policies, including government-run grocery stores, free buses, free childcare, a rent freeze for more than two million New Yorkers living in rent-subsidized housing, and deploying mental health professionals rather than police in crises. He wants to raise both income and corporate taxes.

In another resurfaced clip, Mamdani talked about “seizing the means of production,” a key Marxist concept.

“We have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism,” he said in 2021 during a live-streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

“There are also other issues that we firmly believe in … whether it’s the end goal of seizing the means of production where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment,” he said.

He posted something similar on social media in 2020.

“If we want everyone to be full participants in the economy, we need worker ownership of the means of production,” Mamdani posted on X.

During the Young Democratic Socialists conference, Mamdani also referenced transgender ideology.

“The ramifications of victory here is the difference between life and death for so many of our brothers, sisters, and family beyond the binary and across this borough of Queens,” Mamdani said.

Current Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo are both Democrats running as independents, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is running against all of them.

Mamdani is currently statistically tied with Cuomo and Sliwa, according to a HarrisX poll this week. Mamdani leads at 26%, with Cuomo at 23% and Sliwa at 22%, all within the margin of error. Adams trails at 13%, while 15% of voters remain undecided, according to the poll.