The evening of Sept. 11, 2001, I remember standing in a sea of stupefied university students clutching candles on the Yale campus. I was there with my roommates, one an erstwhile and still lifelong New Yorker. We were all trying to make sense of the unimaginable that had happened to her city, to America, to us, only hours earlier.
Twenty-five years later, in New York and across the country, a new cohort of candidates who express deep hostility toward Israel, fierce criticism of and contempt for the United States, and, in some cases, troubling associations with terrorism are running for office to ostensibly serve the nation.
Last Tuesday, three far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—himself with a radical agenda and a record of anti-Zionist antisemitism—won their primary campaigns.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a child of Caribbean immigrants who aspires to represent Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, has never held office. She cut her teeth in politics at Columbia University as the undergraduate leader of the hardline anti-Israel Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) student group (currently banned by the administration). This group proclaimed itself to be “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Chevaliar attended a rally on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel that left 1,200 people slaughtered and 215 others kidnapped to Gaza, that criticized Israel, sought to dismantle ICE and “literally abolish the border.” She has made harsh anti-American statements on social media. She called the United States “a f**king disgrace” and wrote: “I forgot to get napkins, so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
Claire Valdez, another DSA affiliate running in Queens, supports BDS, wants to end aid to Israel and eliminate ICE, which she has accused of terrorizing immigrant communities.
Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the senior statesman of the group with the most government experience, made opposition to Israel and defunding the New York City Police Department the key issues of his campaign.
In the New York State Senate primaries, Mamdani-backed DSA candidate Aber Kawas, a Palestinian American, told a podcast that the United States bore responsibility for 9/11 because of its legacy of white supremacy, capitalism and racism. He said, “The idea we have to apologize for a terror attack that a couple of people did, and then there is no apology or reparations for genocides and for slavery … is something I find reprehensible.”
Across the Hudson in New Jersey, Egyptian-born plastic surgeon Adam Hamawy won his Democratic congressional primary too, campaigning on an anti-Israel platform and seeking to abolish ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. He downplayed past associations that have raised serious questions, including his testimony on behalf of the convicted terrorist “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman and work in Gaza hospitals while the territory was ruled by Hamas.
Further north, in Maine, Graham Platner won his Democratic Senate primary. He’s caused controversy over his Nazi SS tattoo (which he eventually had removed, claiming that he didn’t know its history), mocked a Purple Heart veteran a decade ago, and, even more alarming, has been accused by several women of sexual misconduct. Even the Dems aren’t supporting him of late.
Over in the Midwest in Michigan, the son of Egyptian immigrants, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, is on the Democratic primary ballot for the U.S. Senate. He explained away the recent terrorist attack against a West Bloomfield synagogue by saying “hurt people do hurt people” and had a former campaign staffer who was charged in a conspiracy to violently harm the University of Michigan leaders.
Meanwhile, Texas Democratic hopeful Maureen Gallindo lost her congressional primary after threatening to turn a local ICE facility into “a prison for American Zionists.”
Something has gone deeply wrong with a generation of young people who will be the stewards of this country.
As a historian, I find myself asking what happened in the 25 years from 9/11 to 2026 that prompted the rise of a new generation of left-wing Democrats who despise and disparage America and her allies.
One possible explanation is the age cohort of these new candidates. Many are only in their 30s, were children on 9/11, with little or no personal memory of those events. Perhaps, having grown up in a safer America that has not seen another attack of that scale, their generation cannot fathom the danger America faced only 25 years ago or viscerally intuit the trade-offs between liberalism and national security that many grappled with a few decades ago.
It is also striking that many of these candidates are the children or grandchildren of immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The pressures their parents faced may no longer be paramount for their children and success in the American context seems to have empowered them to issue a strong critique of their own country. In some cases, this appears to have a nostalgic association with the “authentic values” of their countries of origin, even when those political cultures may include anti-American or antisemitic attitudes.
Last, but not least, is the influence of universities, student activism, community organizing and the DSA itself. There is little doubt that a deep undercurrent of anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment has taken root in such spaces over the past quarter-century.
Something has gone deeply wrong not just with the left-wing flank of the Democratic Party, but with a generation of young people who will be among the stewards of this country. What will be the ramifications of bringing these values and policies into our governance and institutions?
It is clear that as America celebrates its 250th birthday, the question is not whether the United States can tolerate criticism of its past. What is at stake is whether a politics built on contempt for the country, hostility to Israel and sympathy for America’s adversaries can responsibly govern the institutions it seeks to inherit.
