Zohran Mamdani claimed victory in New York City by taking to the stage to herald a new era for NYC: “a shining city for all.” His speech led with invoking Eugene Debs, the most prominent American socialist politician of the last century, before anyone knew of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The mere mention of Debs, which would be an obscure reference to any average American or a New Yorker without multiple college degrees, elicited an immediate roar of applause and hollering from the crowd. Mamdani’s coalition knows exactly what he’s talking about, and they know the revolutionary energy this Ugandan-born heir to millionaire parents is channeling.
If NYC is the financial center of planet earth and the hub of global capitalism, defined by the lions of industry, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation, then truly the “Pride Lands” have fallen. The hyenas are in charge.
Just a day before NYC went to vote, I rewatched The Lion King, the animated Disney classic that chronicles the murder of a king and the abdication of the throne by his rightful heir, Simba, to a sickly and treacherous uncle, Scar. Being a lion of royal blood and immense privilege was not enough for Scar. He felt unseen as the brains of the family and cursed with a “bad back” and a weak body. He allies himself with the resentful scavengers beyond the borders of the Pride Lands, the hyenas, and orchestrates a coup.
“We shall rise to greet the dawning of a new era,” proclaims Scar while assuming the kingship, “in which lion and hyena come together, in a great and glorious future!” The hyenas swarm the iconic Pride Rock, disrupting the delicate balance of life that ultimately sees every animal fed. A responsible lion is needed at the top to ensure the world is not governed by mere appetite, but Scar is a lion in name only, for he possesses the spirit of a scavenger.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from Ben Shapiro’s new book, Lions and Scavengers, is that you cannot identify either by looking within a certain group, class, race, or creed. Like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s line separating good and evil, this can only be determined within an individual’s heart.
Competitor Andrew Cuomo was no Mufasa, but when Mamdani roars to his audience that they’ve “toppled a political dynasty,” you have on full display the victory of scavengers in New York City, led by a mega-rich and highly educated ne’er-do-well whose first job will be running America’s most vital city.
Worse, the financial engine he will oversee is a system he intends to cut off at the knees. Capitalism has never been labeled, even by its champions, as the perfect system, but rather as one that has simply outperformed every alternative in meeting the most needs and rewarding the best ideas.
It’s no surprise that the people most opposed to this system, historically, are the most financially well-off and overly comfortable intellectuals who happily drink from the well but care little for how the water got there. NYC exit polls show clearly how Cuomo won the non-college-educated vote and Mamdani dominated among those with advanced degrees, as well as those with no longstanding ties to the city. Lifers went for Cuomo.
That didn’t stop Mamdani from claiming that power was now in the hands of the taxi drivers, delivery bikers, and line cooks, despite the winning coalition being defined by white, upwardly mobile women with multiple degrees.
The very fact that no one is mourning the downfall of Cuomo speaks to the sad state of American political leadership, which has empowered the scavenger coalition to rise to such heights by endless bad behavior and the abandonment of personal virtue.
You’d be hard-pressed to find worthy alternatives in New York who could have credibly challenged Mamdani. As C.S. Lewis said, “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
Unlike Mufasa’s kingdom, which was ruled benevolently and with a deep sense of duty to the circle of life, our political class has been hollowed out by octogenarians and hangers-on who get rich off the system and use government as a springboard to podcast stardom and bigger paydays. They keep that power by using government to dispense giveaways and bottomless welfare to their coalition, knowing that problems such as bankruptcy are problems for posterity.
It’s all corrupted, and the scavengers know it, only their plan isn’t to restore honor, solvency, or virtue to the system; it’s to fill their bellies.
Mamdani is no different in nature than Scar. They are weak, are feminine in temperament, and wield guilt and self-hatred to keep opponents in retreat. Scar cannot beat Simba in a fair fight once the prince returns to Pride Rock to set things straight, so his first move is to try to back Simba off a cliff by making him doubt his own worthiness. What better describes how Marxists captured American college campuses and the Democratic Party?
Their narrative of blood-guilt for America’s existence and success in the world has convinced multiple generations that its civilizational atonement means open borders and letting its stanchest enemies in to reform its institutions from the inside out. It’s a dark and culturally suicidal phenomenon canonized by Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and summarized by Shapiro’s appropriately titled bestseller.
The Mamdani coalition was raised on this ideology, and their bitter resentments mirror those of Scar. Palantir CEO Alex Karp put it best when he told Axios, “The average Ivy League grad voting for this mayor [Mamdani] is annoyed their education is not that valuable, and that the person who knows how to drill for oil has a more valuable profession. I think that annoys the f*** out of these people.”
That’s Scar: privileged, well-fed, exceptionally smart, and deeply annoyed.
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Resentment and scorn are the marks of the scavenger, nothing more. The almost immovable problem for New York City is that as a one-party metropolis in a one-party state, there is no clear avenue for a lion to emerge and take back what was just given away. The heart of the Democratic Party would have to change, and every available piece of social science on the entrenchment of political views suggests that Mamdani’s voters will only dig deeper into the the socialist pit in search of the promised cure for human nature.
They won’t find it, and the Pride Lands will most likely fade. The only hope for NYC may be a J.R.R. Tolkien truism: “The burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart.”
Stephen Kent is founder of Geeky Stoics, a YouTube channel dedicated to philosophy and pop culture. Follow him on X @stephenkentX.
