I'm not comparing Donald Trump to Idi Amin, I'm comparing the opposition.
Zohran Mamdani's family knows something about authoritarianism.
So Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor Democratic primary in a surprise upset for machine politicians. Fox News is hand-wringing about the win for socialism like baby baskets for new parents while the Republican party is trying to get rid of long and widely accepted socialism like public parks and healthcare and infrastructure.
Zohran Mamdani's mother was the director of the movie Monsoon Wedding. I saw that movie over 20 years ago and while I remember it being a good film, the only thing that really sticks in my mind is all those yellow flowers.
Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdami is a professor and has been described as a "public intellectual". Born in India, grew up in Uganda, and came to the US on a scholarship for East Africans to go to North American colleges during the JFK administration. He’d returned to Uganda in 1972 to teach there but was expelled by the Idi Amin regime in the ethnic cleansing of Asians. Mamdani's father was made stateless from criticizing the government that took over after Idi Amin was overthrown, run by Obote who was a corrupt prime minister both before and after Idi Amin. This is someone who knows what it's like to be harshly punished by corrupt people with power on multiple sides, where the people in charge constantly seem to really suck horrendously.
I found a Review by: Julius E. Nyang'oro, contemporary of the 1984 book "Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda" by Mahmood Mamdani, and there was a description of Mahmood Mamdani's assessment of revolutionary activism in Uganda that caught my attention.
“The second positive point of the study is the attempt by Mamdani to readdress the central question of the principal and secondary contradictions in the revolutionary struggle in Uganda. It should be recalled that the question of principal and secondary contradictions and the nature of their relationship occupied a central position in the debates amongst Ugandan exile groups in Dar es Salaam, Lusaka, Nairobi, London and other places. The issue was whether the overthrow of Amin should be viewed as the ultimate objective of the struggle, or the movement should look beyond Amin and seek more fundamental changes in Ugandan society. The latter position dictated that imperialism should be viewed as the principal enemy. The fact that there have been several changes in Ugandan leadership after the downfall of Amin is an indication that the issue has not been resolved.”
I hope Americans get our shit together and resolve this before we get crap worse than Cuomo and even more diabolically stupid than Trump. We don't want to get stuck in politics in an everlasting authoritarian context.
