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<\/a><\/p>\nThe meeting between President Trump, a Republican, and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, turned into what is being described as a \u201clove fest<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome of his ideas are the same as my ideas,\u201d the president said. \u201cHe wants to see housing go up, see a lot of housing created, apartments built\u2026 People would be shocked, but I want to see the same thing.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n \u201cThere were more New Yorkers who voted for President Trump in the most recent presidential election because of that focus on cost of living,\u201d Mamdani said, \u201cand I\u2019m looking forward to working together to deliver on that affordability agenda.\u201d. . .<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of my voters actually voted for him,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne in 10,\u201d Mamdani interjected.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019m OK with that,\u201d Trump responded.<\/p>\n Trump also noted<\/a> his agreement with another democratic socialist:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBernie Sanders and I agreed on much more than people thought.\u201d Trump said that he thought Mamdani had the potential to be \u201ca really great mayor\u201d and promised to help him.<\/p>\n The high point of this amiable exchange came when a reporter asked Mamdani if he still considers Trump to be a fascist.\u00a0 Trump, who had called Mamdani a communist, interrupted and said, \u201cThat\u2019s OK you can just say yes.\u201d\u00a0 Mamdani just said, \u201cOK,\u201d to laughter all around.<\/p>\n But, setting aside whether those terms apply to these two, there is not that much difference between Fascists and Communists.\u00a0 Mussolini described his Fascist ideology as nationalism plus socialism.\u00a0 \u00a0Communism is international, class-based socialism.\u00a0 Both were revolutionary, anti-capitalist movements.\u00a0 Both installed authoritarian, totalitarian governments.\u00a0 Both were allies of each other in the first phase of World War II, when they divided eastern Europe between them, though they then turned against each other.<\/p>\n More to the point of comparing Trump and Mamdani, they and their supporters are both\u00a0 populists.\u00a0 Both MAGA and the DSA are anti-establishment.\u00a0 Both claim to represent the working class.\u00a0 Both are opposed to free markets, Mamdani by wanting the state to own or at least control the means of production and Trump with his tariffs and protectionism.<\/p>\n Yesterday we blogged about Claire Lehmann\u2019s argument that critical theory offers a \u201cportable\u201d worldview that reduces issues to a \u201cmoral grammar\u201d of oppressors vs. oppressed, and that this worldview can now be found across the the political spectrum.\u00a0 She also argued that the new \u201cwoke\u201d preoccupation is being anti-capitalism.<\/p>\n Much has been said about how Trump has taken over the working class, which was once the Democratic base, while the new Democratic base consists of our highly-educated social elite.\u00a0 But while the working class has always struggled economically, today large elements of our highly-educated social elite\u2013especially young adults\u2013are also<\/em> struggling economically.<\/p>\n While members of Gen Z are not impoverished in absolute terms\u2014the average 25-year-old in the U.S. now earns\u00a0more than $40,000 a year<\/a>, outpacing Millennials at the same age\u2014many feel deprived in relative terms, as social media has opened up avenues for social comparison hitherto unknown to humankind. Where previous generations compared themselves to classmates or peers in their town or city, today\u2019s teenagers measure their worth against influencers and celebrities across the globe. . . .And despite relatively high household incomes, homeownership for those under 35 has been in decline across the Anglosphere, adding to a sense of relative deprivation. . . .In the U.S.,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the National Association of Home Builders, only 36 percent of adults under 35 currently own their own homes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Marriage in this demographic is also way down, as is having children.\u00a0 Many young adults feel they can\u2019t afford to<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even young adults raised in wealthy families are having problems.\u00a0 Despite their \u201cprivileged\u201d background, according to Rob Henderson\u2019s Free Press article, The Revolt of the Rich Kids<\/a>, \u201cfewer than four in 10 children born into the richest fifth of households stay there; more than one in 10 fall all the way to the bottom fifth.\u201d\u00a0 Such downward mobility creates bitterness, which creates radicalism.<\/p>\n Urban expert Joel Kotkin calls financially pressed but highly educated young adults the educated precariat<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0That latter term<\/a> means \u201cexisting without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological\u00a0welfare\u201d and is a mashup of \u201cprecarious\u201d and \u201cproletariat.\u201d<\/p>\n Kotkin describes the economic problems of our big cities, including high rents and an astronomical cost of living that means even high wage city-dwellers have lower disposable incomes than low wage earners in the small towns of the midwest.\u00a0 Despite their expensive education, they often can\u2019t find jobs in their fields but still have big college loans to pay off.\u00a0 Says Kotkin,<\/p>\n Other economic pressures are radicalizing the hipsters. They face a\u00a0job market that is\u00a0 getting tougher<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0barely half of workers<\/a>\u00a0under 30 have full time jobs \u2014 even for those\u00a0with expensive advanced degrees<\/a>. Their jobs are increasingly threatened by the rise of artificial intelligence, including in finance, business services, and even \u201ccreative\u201d professions that historically have clustered in cities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All of this, Kotkin says is the reason New York City voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani.\u00a0 And these economic problems are a formula for radicalism:<\/p>\n Burdened with astronomical college debt, these high-education-but-low-wage voters constitute the vanguard of the far Left in many cities. They have largely adopted radical positions hostile to Israel and are\u00a0seen as threatening to Jews<\/a>, especially older ones, who once played a dominant role in the city politics. Onetime rapper and Hollywood nepo baby Mamdani knows well how to appeal to this emergent class. His high-priced proposals for free childcare may seem family-friendly, but many of these voters are\u00a0unliikely to have children<\/a>\u00a0(a majority of Manhattanites<\/a>\u00a0are single and have never been married). Socialist campaigners thrive in those places that have\u00a0far fewer children<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 gentrified\u00a0 sectors of Queens and Brooklyn, Chicago\u2019s near northside and\u00a0trendy swaths of west LA<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So here is my thought experiment.\u00a0 What if the populists of the right and the populists of the left joined forces?\u00a0 This would have to be post-Trump, since progressives\u2019 hatred of the man blinds them to what they have in common.\u00a0 But what would happen if the working class\u2013whose lot doesn\u2019t seem to be greatly improved by the Republican regime\u2013went back to their earlier Democratic home and formed a coalition with disaffected urban college grads?\u00a0 They would need a Trump-like candidate with magnetism and the ability to whip up a crowd.\u00a0 The common theme would be anti-establishment, anti-business-as-usual, anti-capitalist, and pro-socialism.<\/p>\n