Have you heard about the scandal surrounding the social media footprint of Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City’s left-wing Mayor Zohran Mamdani?
If you haven’t, it may be because legacy journalists have exhibited scant-to-zero interest in the developing story, which is being pursued almost exclusively by right-leaning outlets. The Washington Free Beacon has done much of the heavy lifting in reporting out the sordid details of Duwaji’s years-long social media habits. The most recent installment revealed that the Big Apple’s first lady amplified pro-terrorism content, as well as posted homophobic and racial slurs during her teenage years and early 20s, via accounts that are now inactive.
Does this revelation constitute a legitimate news story? That question deserves a nuanced answer, including whether dredging up old social media content amounts to the sort of “cancel culture” tactics many conservatives have long decried. But the details of what Duwaji seemingly endorsed in her digital existence are relevant. A selection, per the Free Beacon‘s Jon Levine:
Duwaji, 28, posted a photo to her Tumblr account in September 2017, when she would have been 20 years old, of the infamous Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. Under the username “diimashq,” she echoed one of Khaled’s most famous statements. “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death,” the caption read. Khaled, a longtime member of the PFLP, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, participated in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 … Today, she is revered by terrorists and their allies as the first woman to hijack a plane.
Duwaji posted another photo on her Tumblr account in December 2017, this one showing a keffiyeh-clad Palestinian sewing a flag. “Photography: ‘A Palestinian demonstrator sews a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada’, February, 1988,” the caption reads. The First Intifada, a terrorist uprising during which Hamas was established, lasted from 1987 to 1993 and saw Palestinians kill about 200 Israelis and hundreds of other Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Jewish state…In December of [2015], she reposted another Tumblr user who said white people created al Qaeda.
Levine’s story also notes that in her teens, “Duwaji —who is not black—used the N-word in a post” on Twitter. She also appeared to employ the so-called ‘F-slur,’ which denigrates gay people. After this reporting was published, the Twitter/X account in question was quietly deleted.
The “news” media have been largely silent and strikingly incurious about all of this, seemingly taking their marching orders from Mayor Mamdani, who promptly declared the controversy a non-story because his wife is a “private person.” Respectfully, she is not. She is the first lady in our nation’s most populous and highest-profile city. She has also been the subject of various puff pieces, including glowing reviews of her fashion sense — authorized coverage that cuts against the ‘private person’ spin. The mayor also informed the press that his wife was unaware that a woman for whom she’d done some recent illustration work was a virulent antisemite. An unhappy coincidence, we’re told.
As for the social media posts, spelunking through someone’s teenage timelines to mine ‘problematic’ content is generally poor form, though it’s a pastime that was enthusiastically pioneered by the Left. They’ve called it “accountability” on countless occasions and weaponized such practices against preferred targets. Overall, most fair-minded people wouldn’t identify ill-advised or even offensive tweets, reposts, and likes from someone’s youth as disqualifying.
What does seem relevant, however, is Mamdani’s wife’s terrorism-glorification content, which does not appear to have been foolish behavior that she’s grown out of. Indeed, Duwaji has attracted negative scrutiny for her apparent social media endorsements of various celebrations of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist massacre that killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel, including dozens of Americans. She was even caught liking odious Hamas rape denial propaganda — not as a kid, mind you, but within the last three years. The online terrorist sympathizing isn’t ancient history for this woman, it appears; it’s her current worldview. That’s no small deal for a public figure married to the mayor of a city that lost thousands of innocent people on Sept. 11, 2001.
Relatedly, one of the most recent public glimpses we’ve seen of Duwaji was in a photograph that depicted her beaming warmly as she hosted an open terrorism supporter at her home during the recent Ramadan season. That man, Mahmoud Khalil, denounces questions about whether he’ll condemn terrorist butchers as “racist.” The radical campus organization he’s fronted posted “death to America” on X after the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime, published literature flagrantly promoting Hamas and Oct. 7, and proclaimed its commitment to the “total eradication of Western civilization” itself. This was Mamdani and Duwaji’s honored dinner guest. In short, the issue is not some online content shared by a teenager years ago. It’s that same person’s ideology right now, today, as an adult.
Most journalists are leftists, so they admire Mamdani. Many wish to pull their political party further to the fringe they occupy, and he’s seen as an avatar of success in that regard. They therefore may not want to cover this story because it’s deemed icky and unhelpful. Members of the press may not be bothered by the radical content Mamdani’s wife has amplified, but they likely also have a sneaking suspicion that many Americans might not be so nonchalant about it, so the story has been largely ignored or deliberately watered down. The limited coverage that does exist, like a recent CNN story, whitewashes the situation “scrutiny” over Duwaji’s “art and social media.” No mention of the slurs, and no mention of the terror glorification. These omissions are intentional acts of anti-journalism, designed to avoid informing an audience of relevant, nettlesome, unfortunate facts. In these “news” accounts, Duwaji’s content has repeatedly been euphemized as “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel,” which doesn’t remotely convey the nature of the overtly terrorism-sympathizing (at best) propaganda and material in question. Missing specifics and thorough context is the whole point.
CHICAGO’S DEADLY SANCTUARY POLICIES CLAIM ANOTHER INNOCENT LIFE
One might object that ultimately none of this qualifies as news because the mayor’s wife isn’t a public official. But that was not the collective view of the “news” media when it incessantly and breathlessly covered the slogan sewn onto a jacket once worn by first lady Melania Trump.
And such a standard most certainly did not apply to the flag-flying habits of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito at her private homes. That “story” sparked a multi-news-cycle firestorm, in which cherry-picked “experts” were invited to speculate how the flag was a totem of political extremism, or whatever. If Mrs. Alito’s flag etiquette and preferences constituted national news, why would Duwaji’s apparent terrorism glorification — past and present — be treated as no big deal, or even verboten as a subject for discussion?
And has she herself said one word about any of it? Has she even been asked? Finally, on that score, does Duwaji ever speak for herself, as a grown woman with personal agency, or are such things left to her husband in the Mamdani household?
