National "Public" Radio loves the radical socialist Mamdanis. This is an easy exhibit in their dramatic ideological bias. On Tuesday's Morning Edition, co-host Leila Fadel offered a seven-minute softball interview with Mahmood Mamdani, including his new book Slow Poison, which argues Idi Amin wasn't such a bad dictator -- because he was against the evil Western colonizers and allied with the Soviets. From the Amazon blurbs:
“Mamdani tells the story of his family’s exile―and his own eventual return―in hopes of complicating our view of Amin, and of Ugandan politics. Mamdani is less interested in the jubilation of independence than in the turmoil that followed. Africa’s transformation proved far bloodier than many had hoped, yet Mamdani still insists that the continent’s independence leaders have something to teach the world.”―Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker
“The book is informed by a hardheaded recognition that nation-building is often an ugly business, and that Amin’s crimes should be evaluated in that context.”―Geoff Shullenberger, Compact Magazine
“For half a century, Mahmood Mamdani has been one of the world’s most influential and incisive analysts of African and Global South politics. Slow Poison reveals why....upending a litany of myths surrounding Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and modern Uganda. Mamdani makes for a compelling witness. Brilliant!”―Robin D. G. Kelley
Fadel referred to Zohran Mamdani as a "political superstar"....twice. He's just becoming a mayor, but NPR sounds like they're putting him on an Obama track. She began the segment like this:
LEILA FADEL: These days, Mahmood Mamdani is known as Zohran Mamdani's dad, the political superstar that felt like he came out of nowhere to win New York's mayoral race. But before his son's political rise, his father had long been a storied academic focused on colonialism and anti-colonialism in Africa. And that academic work stems from his own experience as a Ugandan citizen of Indian origin.
Later on, she focuses on the father and son:
FADEL: I can't help but make the connection to your son's recent victorious campaign in New York because so much of it and the attacks on your son were about belonging. And I just wonder if you think about the influence of your own academic research and the conversations you had at home that have turned your son into a political superstar in this moment.
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: I mean, look, these conversations were conversations that were there when he was 7, 8, 9 in Cape Town. They were conversations about who is a South African.
FADEL: Yeah.
MAMDANI: Who belongs and who doesn't? It is the precursor to what Zohran was saying in New York. New York belongs to all that live in it. It wasn't just a question limited to us as migrants from South Asia, but it was a broadly African question. And it was a broadly global question.
Fadel asked Mahmood about advice he's offered to Zohran, and he brushed it off, like that's something he doesn't do (until asked). But he was proud of the son's staunch opposition to Israel:
MAHMOOD MANDANI: There are some issues on which he has refused to compromise, and the biggest issue has been his critique of Israel and his pointing to genocide as genocide, refusing to change his vocabulary, refusing to denounce anything as the price of his freedom of speech. So he's done that and he has done it very successfully, and he has shocked his opponents. I mean, he signals a change. He signals the possibility of change.
Canary Mission points out Daddy Mamdani is all about dismantling the "Jewish state" of Israel, and not only compared Israel to the Nazis, but compared the American Indians to Jews in the Holocaust. “Zionists in Israel have long drawn inspiration from how Americans cleansed the land of Indians.” To NPR, this makes him a "storied academic."
