Zohran Mamdani Targeted by Islamophobic and Antisemitic Narratives after NYC Primary Victory
After Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win in New York City, online identity-based attacks followed with Islamophobic and antisemitic themes.
TLDR:
State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani won the June Democratic primary for NYC mayor, defeating a slate of contenders including former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.
A slew of identity-based attacks followed Mamdani’s victory, many of which featured Islamophobic themes, antisemitism, and accusations of antisemitism.
From June to July 2025, one third of all Mamdani-related posts on prominent alt-tech platforms contained Islamophobic and antisemitic keywords.
Background
On June 24, 2025, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, with runner-up Andrew Cuomo conceding the primary. As Mamdani’s story began rising to national and international prominence, Mamdani soon became the target of reactionary messaging and online attacks, with instances of overt hate speech from high-profile figures in government and media common among them.
Attacks against Mamdani, the first Muslim and South Asian candidate to win the New York City primary in the city’s history, have come from many different angles. In response to his primary victory and Muslim identity came Islamophobic rhetoric; from his support of Palestine came a range of antisemitic messaging and accusations.
Notably, the bi-partisan nature of the backlash engendered distinct strains of antisemitism-themed narratives against Mamdani: 1) that Mamdani is an antisemite himself for supporting Palestine (referred to “antisemitic allegations” in this investigation); 2) that Mamdani is a George Soros-backed operative platformed to propel Jewish mechanisms of control (referred to as “antisemitic targeting”). Some of these attacks have included secondary targets, with right wing (and non-Jewish) news anchors questioning the faith of Jewish elected officials who endorsed Mamdani.
Methodology
Researchers at Open Measures tracked how Islamophobic narratives and opposing messaging related to antisemitism related to Zohran Mamdani spread on alt-platforms Truth Social, Gettr, Gab, Telegram, and 4chan. Truth Social, Gettr, and Gab are alt-tech microblogging sites, similar to Twitter/X. Telegram is a private messaging app that also hosts large community channels and groups, similar to WhatsApp; 4chan is an image board where users can post anonymously and participate in threaded conversations. We chose these platforms as they are frequently the host of polarizing political content.
Among the narratives against Mamdani, three overarching themes of Islamophobia, antisemitism, and accusations of antisemitism emerged. Across prominent alt-tech platforms, these constituted a third of all mentions of Mamdani.
Themed Keyword Search
Our researchers used a series of structured queries to identify content where Mamdani might be mentioned alongside certain terms (as seen below).
Taking into consideration the platforms in question, the nature of the queries, and a review of the messages gathered from the Open Measures’ Content API, we believe this methodology successfully isolated most adversarial messaging without significant contradiction by any bycatch (i.e., messages captured only incidentally that were not directly or negatively targeting Mamdani).
Analysis
Mentions of Zohran Mamdani
Across our platforms of interest, our search for posts mentioning Mamdani alongside keywords of interest between June 1, 2025 and August 1, 2025 resulted in over 55,000 posts.
About one-third of all posts we found (18,386; 33.09%) espoused one (or more) of the three divisive narrative themes mentioned previously (i.e., Islamophobic targeting and/or antisemitic targeting or allegations).
Notable Activity Spikes
The data reveals that Zohran Mamdani received little to no attention across alt-platforms prior to election day on June 24. In the 48 hours following the election, mentions of Mamdani increased by nearly 345%, from over 1,700 unique posts between June 1st and June 23, 2025 to over 7,900 posts between June 24–25, 2025. On June 25, Zohran Mamdani’s victory elicited reactionary and inflammatory responses from President Donald Trump on Truth Social1 and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter/X,2 both influential individuals on those platforms.
A review of all conversations related to Zohran Mamdani across all alt-platforms showed a notable spike within an hour of Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social.
Greene’s post did not coincide with a spike in overall mentions as dramatically as Trump’s did; however, posts mentioning Mamdani contained Islamophobic and antisemitic terms 60.38% of the time (on average) in the 10 hours between Greene and Trump’s posts. For comparison (and again on average), Mamdani-related posts contained Islamophobic and antisemitic only 30.69% of the time in the 10 hours following the President’s post on Truth Social.
Reactionary Narratives Against Zohran Mamdani
Overwhelmingly, Islamophobic narratives related to Zohran Mamdani outpaced antisemitic narratives, accounting for nearly a quarter (24.42%) of all posts mentioning Mamdani between June and August 2025. By comparison, the two antisemitic narratives (antisemitic allegations and antisemitic targeting) made up only 13.21% and 3.23% of posts, respectively.
Posts that related to more than one of the three prevalent attack narratives at once were also observed, as shown below.
Messages containing terms consistent with Islamophobic targeting and allegations of antisemitism had the greatest rate of overlap, with over 3,300 occurrences. Conversely, the smallest overlap was between the two antisemitic narratives, which was found 183 times. Somewhat surprisingly, we found that 154 posts contained all three narratives.
In the days following the election, some of the identity-based rhetoric appears to have declined in favor of new narratives undermining the Democratic Socialist candidate. Among these, rhetoric related to Zohran Mamdani’s “communist” beliefs, which cast him as a “Marxist” and “Maoist,” gained considerable traction and prevailed as more overtly racist rhetoric slowed.
Conclusion
Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the June Democratic mayoral primary in New York City sparked widespread threats and Islamophobic and antisemitic attack narratives (both accusing Mamdani of being antisemitic and straight-forwardly antisemitic narratives that he was backed by a Jewish “deep state”). The rhetoric has made international headlines and will likely continue to spread as the November New York City Mayoral Election draws nearer. Researchers at Open Measures will continue to track the developments surrounding the election in the months to come.
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Troutman, M., & Propper, D. (2025, June 26). Trump blasts Zohran Mamdani as a “100% Communist lunatic” in scathing NYC mayoral rant: “Democrats have crossed the line.” New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/trump-blasts-zohran-mamdani-as-a-100-communist-lunatic-in-scathing-nyc-mayoral-rant/
Giljum, S. (2025, June 27). People can’t believe Marjorie Taylor Greene’s racist AI tweet is real. BuzzFeed. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/marjorie-taylor-greene-muslim-statue-of-liberty-zohran