There are few general rules I relayed more often to my classes in political persuasion in my 50-plus-year teaching career at North Carolina State University and Towson University than this one: “Impressive intelligence does not equal impressive judgment.”
All my life I have seen people manipulated by super-smart high IQ persuaders, whose use of linguistic legerdemain and false premises convinces their audiences that they are hearing the “truth.”
There is no better example of this today than Zohran Mamdani, who surprisingly (to some of us, at least) won the mayoralty of New York City, and in doing so felt no compunction in making false charges against many targets, the most striking of which were in service of his demonstrated antipathy toward the Jewish people.
The New York Times reported that the International Criminal Court (ICC), unrecognized by the United States, “issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip … [and] also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas’s military chief, Muhammad Deif, accusing him, too, of crimes against humanity, including murder, hostage taking and sexual violence.”
Mamdani, during his mayoral campaign, vowed to enforce the ICC warrants and order the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu should he visit New York. This month, however, Mamdani admitted he lacked the authority to enact his threat: “My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.”
A victory for Israel in the persuasion wars? Nope. Mamdani never mentions Israel’s attempts to protect Palestinian populations or efforts to minimize deaths of their opponents’ supporters.
Regardless, Mamdani’s ugly and irresponsible rhetoric further hurts Israel’s reputation as a fierce but fair combatant that assiduously avoids needless deaths in answer to the behaviors of actual murderous fighters such as Hamas and Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, such as torture and sexual crimes.
And, there was no apology from Mamdani, of course, and the lesson for those who abjure irresponsible charges can be summed up by the famous quote by Ronald Reagan’s former secretary of labor in 1987 (having left the administration in 1985). Raymond Donovan had been falsely charged with larceny and fraud and later acquitted of all charges. He asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
Simply put, there is no evidence of Israel’s seeking to commit genocide.
Genocide, recognized in 1946 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” It was coined partially as a response to the horrific Holocaust enacted prior to and during World War II by Germany and its antisemitic allies who engaged in the most horrific crimes against the Jewish people, including mass murder, torture, rape, imprisonment and child extermination.
Additionally, although always denying that he is antisemitic, Mamdani’s attack on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel bipartisan lobbying group, is seen as classic prejudice against Jewish people. As Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer said of Mamdani’s rhetoric, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books. That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bull—- is dangerous.”
Antisemites like Mamdani apparently get a kick out of falsely accusing the victims of genocide of ironically committing genocide themselves. There is no public accusation by Mamdani of genocide against Hamas or others, also indicted by the ICC.
Contrary to many of my conservative friends’ responses to Mamdani, he is not a fool; he is not stupid. History is filled with intelligent miscreants, including now in the United States political commentator Hasan Piker (who recently spoke at a College Democrats event dressed in a Mao Zedong-style outfit) and formerly George Wallace, Henry Ford and many, many more.
And now, Zohran Mamdani.
IQ points and charisma have no correlation with evil. None. Only political expediency does.
Richard E. Vatz (rvatz@towson.edu) is professor emeritus at Towson University and author of “The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion: The Agenda-Spin Model.”