Google has found a favorite in comrade Mamdani

OPINION:

I recently took a look at two telling online posts about Zohran Mamdani’s background. I then asked Google’s generative “AI Overview” about them and received sanitized replies.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas’ Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel and slaughtered and raped innocent men, woman and children, Democratic Socialists of America, Mr. Mamdani’s political home, whipped out a statement. The socialists backed the Palestinians and blamed Israel.

The statement referred to only one of its members, Mr. Mamdani, by name. It applauded him for his work to cut off American military aid to Israel (in other words, for trying to bring about a bloody end to Israel, which is attacked relentlessly by terrorist state Iran’s proxy assassins).

As the statement hit the internet, Israeli bodies lay where they were shot and butchered, at a peaceful music festival, at bus stops, in kibbutzes, in a home’s closet. Hamas was taking bloodied women hostages back to the Gaza Strip, handling them like shipping cargo, subjecting them to brutal rapes and menacing crowds. The second Holocaust recorded more than 1,200 dead.

There was no grace period for the Democratic Socialists of America. Not 48 hours of reflection and prayer.

Here is what the American socialist society said about the carnage as Hamas gleefully kept up the killing. The first sentence: “DSA is steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.” How touching.

The second sentence: “Today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime — a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States. End the violence. End the Occupation. Free Palestine.” The massacre, we learned from Mr. Mamdani’s socialist fraternity, was “today’s events.”

To continue: “We cannot forget that the Israeli state has systematically denied Palestinians the right to self-determination for decades. This was not unprovoked.”

Then came the tribute to Mr. Mamdani.

The statement said, “NYC DSA’s #NotOnOurDime campaign — led by DSA member & NY Assembly member Zohran Mamdani — provides an effective model for pressuring elected officials to stop providing financial support to the Israeli state. … Take to the streets to join a protest for peace and against funding the Israeli state.”

Take to the streets of New York they did. The next day! Oct. 8. As Israelis were mourning and collecting their dead.

The New York Post story: “Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, organized by the Democratic Socialists of America, rallied Sunday in the Big Apple — stomping on and burning the Israeli flag — as Islamic terrorists in the Gaza Strip continued their assault on the Jewish state.”

It was even too much for liberal New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

I asked Google AI Overview a simple question: Did the DSA put out a statement on Oct. 7, 2023? It said yes.

AI referred to the letter as controversial and noted that it was condemned. It summed up this way: “The controversy highlights the deep divisions within the organization and the broader political landscape regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Fair enough, but nowhere did it note that only one socialist member, Zohran Mamdani, is praised and cited in the bizarre statement. When I asked about him and the letter, Google AI came up empty.

This is important. We’re in the era of the public forming opinions based on AI summaries instead of source documents. AI Overview is seen by 1.5 billion people each month, Google says.

I was also intrigued by another 2023 post, this one by Mr. Mamdani on his X account.

He praised the Russian Revolution in a sneaky way, as if one event on March 8, 1917 — a women’s textile workers march — typified the unrest and set the stage for women’s rights around the world.

“A week later, [the czar] abdicated,” Mr. Mamdani wrote. “Women received the right to vote.”

It is not surprising that someone who goes gaga over a historically meaningless march also uses the communist war cry: “Seize the means of production.”

In fact, the march was smothered just months later by the October Bolshevik takeover, spawning a 70-year communist dictatorship, one of the darkest, most brutal in modern history.

The Soviet Union was an oppressive, murderous country. Unlike the Nazis, who industrialized the mass killing of Jews, Josef Stalin relied on mass famine, mass assassinations and mass incarcerations in faraway gulags to rid Russia of people.

Mr. Mamdani has joined the history of New Yorkers supporting communism. The 1930s Upper East Side loved Stalin. His photo hung in comfy town houses. Elite New Yorkers spied for the man Franklin D. Roosevelt called “Uncle Joe.”

Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks took power from calling themselves the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. Communists always mislead gullible media by claiming the “socialist” label. The Russian Communist Party quickly took control.

I don’t know what happened to those marching textile workers, but their “right to vote” became a party rubber stamp, if they survived Stalin’s purges.

I posted on X a blog critical of Mr. Mamdani trying to fool us with his “International Women’s Day” in Russia post.

I asked Google AI Overview about it. To my surprise AI’s answer focused on me. It said, “A social media post on X by Rowan Scarborough states that Zohran Mamdani, presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee for New York … offered a ‘feel-good spin’ on the 1917 Russian revolution in 2023. The post goes on to say that the revolution led to ‘70 years of tyranny, misery and mass death under Soviet communism.’ It is important to note that this X post by Rowan Scarborough appears to be a critical take on Mamdani’s views and frames them in a negative light.”

It continued: “It is worth noting that Zohran Mamdani is a figure with a background in political activism and has been described as a Democratic Socialist. … It’s crucial to consider these varying perspectives when evaluating information about his views on historical events like the Russian Revolution.”

OK. Google AI neutralized my post and praised Mr. Mamdani for his “political activism.”

President Trump has called him a communist, so I’ll seize on that production.

• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.