New Videos Show Mamdani Housing Czar’s True Socialist Agenda
Jarrett Stepman /
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing czar is back in the news for a resurfaced podcast episode, where she calls for the tanking of housing markets to usher in a socialist utopia.
“We decided that fighting for rent control was a strategic and critical first step in the fight for full social housing,” Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s tenant director and long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said in a video posted on X Tuesday. In the old video, as reported by the New York Post, she continued to explain how she would transition to a fully socialized property market.
Weaver has faced questions for other previously discovered videos where she, among other things, likened property rights to white supremacy, called for the collectivization of property, and cheered on the election of communists.
When pressed to answer for these past statements, Weaver said she regrets them. When she was pressed further about them by reporters, she cried about it.
But now more videos are coming out showing that Weaver didn’t just have a moment of injudicious exuberance for Marxism.
Marxism really is at the core of her belief system.
She said in the newly discovered video that “through a program like rent control, we are able to directly challenge the logic of unfettered profit in the real estate market.” By directly challenging “housing as a wealth-building tool,” and adding in a fair bit of regulation, Weaver said it was possible to “strike a blow to the entire real estate industry at once.”
That’s not all.
Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine also reported Tuesday on Weaver’s appearance on a 2021 podcast “Bad Faith,” hosted by former Sen. Benie Sanders, I-Vt., and press secretary Briahna Joy Gray.
“White, middle-class homeowners are a huge problem for a renter justice movement,” Weaver said.
Weaver bemoaned the challenge faced by those who want to socialize property ownership.
“Unless we can undermine the institution of homeownership and seek to provide stability in other ways, I don’t know—it’s a really difficult organizing situation we find ourselves in,” she said.
I’m somewhat relieved that the “renter justice movement” faces a few roadblocks.
Later in the podcast episode, as Levine reported, Weaver explained her plan to go after landlords.
“We need a national movement to pass universal rent control to limit landlords’ ability to endlessly profit on our homes, to give tenants the right to form a tenants’ union where they live, and to really block evictions,” she said. “But rent control is not enough: People need money. We need to tax billionaires and transform that into cash assistance for renters. And we need to chip away at homeownership, and that means—that means Medicare for All, that means, like, a deep investment in real social service programs.”
The leftist housing czar also said that landlords don’t really have a legitimate claim to property and mocked them for not wanting to let people stay in their rental housing for free.
“You know, if you piss off your landlord, you could be forced out, and something that really pisses off your landlord is not paying rent for a year and a half because you can’t,” she said. “Landlords really don’t like the idea that a tenant could live, that a tenant could be able and allowed to stay in something that they consider themselves to own.”
What strikes me now that Weaver’s ideas are being exposed is how boilerplate it all is. She’s been touted as this brilliant, “nationally recognized” housing policy wonk with maybe an unfortunate knack for speaking incautiously.
But what I’ve heard from Weaver seems to be little more than bog-standard leftist claptrap that’s been around since the time of Marx with a healthy dose of anti-white racialism to spice it up.
Weaver means to tax billionaires and seize property from the (mostly white) Kulaks to give it to the oppressed masses. Then all your dreams will come true. How original.
Mamdani, it must be noted, hasn’t budged from his support for Weaver. This makes sense. She’s a socialist, or really a Marxist, who wants to go after the “rich,” white middle class. That doesn’t seem all that different from statements Mamdani has made in the past.
Sure, Mamdani moderated his rhetoric a bit during the campaign, but he also defiantly stood by his socialist views in his inaugural address.
Mamdani and his administration are what we thought they were.
That doesn’t mean his administration will be all mistakes and disasters, but it does mean that every big decision he and his staff make is likely in service of their ultimate goals, laid out more frankly outside of campaign season.
Can the financial capital of the United States weather the socialist storm? Is New York City too big to fail? Is “true communism” really going to work this time? We shall see.