Zohran Mamdani’s feeding off Gen Z’s misplaced doomerism

Pessimism, confusion and vibes fueled young voters’ support for Zohran Mamdani in last month’s New York Democratic mayoral primary, experts told The Post.

Well-educated white progressives have been taught to feel guilty about their identity and have been fed an expectation that they’re up against so many challenges — climate change, student debt, AI, mental health struggles compounded by social media — that they can’t possibly get ahead in life. 

And it’s affecting their political POV.

“They perpetually think things are awful,” acclaimed author and psychologist Jean Twenge told The Post. “It’s ‘Vote the bastards out,’ no matter who is in office. Because [for Gen Z], things are always awful, even if they’re not.”

This bleak mindset, rooted in rising mental health struggles and economic illiteracy, drove under-35s to embrace Mamdani’s Marxist bombast — even if they’re unclear of what, exactly, they’re supporting.

Twice as many young adults are clinically depressed now compared to a decade ago, said Twenge, author of “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future.”

“Depression isn’t just about emotions; it’s about how you see the world. That has all these downstream implications, including for politics — that we need to completely start over, throw out capitalism, no more billionaires,” Twenge told The Post.

“It’s taking to extreme things that could be more reasonable reforms. This extreme reaction is consistent with the pessimism: ‘Let’s just burn everything down and start over.’”

Depression often impairs critical thinking. Academic performance, from elementary school to college, dropped sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic and hasn’t recovered, puzzling researchers.

Today, only 15% of teens read books — a slump encouraged by teachers, of all people. In 2022, the National Council of Teachers of English declared: “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing” as the foundation of English class.

“It brings to mind the decline in religion, particularly among young adults. Also, the decline in relationships among young adults. They are seeking something that gives them meaning, connections with other people,” Twenge said.

And Mamdani’s vibrant posters and free merch — tote bags, T-shirts, hats — appeal to that craving while also signaling a “one of us” membership. (Not unlike MAGA.)

“Some political movements give you a sense of belonging and rightness,” Twenge said. “And those things used to be satisfied via other means.”

Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, in the UK, also sees a religiosity in socialism’s young Western following, one in which Mamdani — a charismatic, Punjabi, Ugandan, Muslim polyglot — is an archetypal emissary.

“The symbol of the person of color is very important in the religion of what I would call progressive illiberalism,” Kaufmann, author of “The Third Awokening,” told The Post.

In large coastal cities, “white progressives are the ones voting all the time, because their politics is a big source of meaning in their lives,” Kaufmann added. “It falls flatter for Hispanic and Asian working-class people who want more bread-and-butter stuff … They don’t identify with the faculty lounge religion of anti-racism.”

That checks out with last month’s primary election results. Challenger Andrew Cuomo received his strongest support in the Bronx — New York’s poorest and least white borough — whereas Mamdani’s big boost came from gentrified Brooklyn.

Mamdani also led by 20 points among New Yorkers earning over $100,000, while Cuomo led by 34 points among voters making less than $50,000 a year.

“They’re seeing themselves as part of this almost worldly utopianism,” Kaufmann said of privileged young voters. “You had Marxism, anarchism, these other kinds of movements that appealed to intellectuals in the past. Now it’s moved on to a cultural version of the left, which is much more around identity and around being defined as ‘I’m one of the good whites.’”

While Mamdani’s ethnographic box-ticking catapults his appeal among Brooklyn’s Instagram Intifada, his central campaign message isn’t about race, but “affordability.” The candidate has called for free buses, a rent freeze, government-run grocery stores and de-commodifying the housing market in favor of government communes, and uses the classic Marxist trope of “seizing the means of production.”

Yet young people are doing extraordinarily well, if not emotionally then financially — a controversial fact to point out.

Millennials and Gen Z are wealthier than previous generations of the same age and, according to US census data, incomes for younger Americans are at an all-time high even when corrected for inflation.

This has economists shaking their heads over the financial doomerism of today’s youth.

Grim headlines and outrage-driven social media algorithms amplify negativity. The kids simply don’t know how good and fair the system is, even if there’s room for improvement, said Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University and editor of The Independent Review.

“When you think about what socialism is, it’s an entirely materialistic point of view,” he told The Post. “One of the core things in socialism is envy. It’s driven on you wanting to have the same kinds of things that other people have. And you just don’t see as much of that within true conservativism, where the material stuff is nice but not the end goal.”

According to data from the Higher Education Research Institute, 85% of college students in 2022 ranked financial success as “essential” or “very important,” compared to the 1960s when that number was only 43%.

Large families once signaled prosperity, but many born after 1990 view having children as a threat to their high material standard of living, fueling the “I don’t adult” trend of dodging grown-up responsibilities to hoard stuff and experiences, Whaples said.

While most Gen Z and Millennials attribute their own success to hard work, they see wealthier people’s success as undeserved.

All this has brewed a stew of contradiction and economic confusion.

One 2022 study found that 67% of Gen Z and Millennials agree that “I don’t like to use pressure to get my way.” Only 14% said that “the best way to get adults to do something is to use force.”

Another 70% agreed with the statement: “The way private property is used should primarily be decided by its owner.”

Yet three-quarters of those same respondents support outsourcing pressure and force to the government.

“It’s not your grandfather’s socialism,” said Whaples. “They think of socialism as another form of capitalism — turning this capitalist system into one that’s just a little bit nicer and gives you free stuff.”

The problem, he added, is that we already have that system in place. Whereas once it was shameful to ask for handouts, corporations helped train young people to expect it — and you can blame, in part, the online retail norm of free shipping.

“All those darn free apps get us in this attitude that there should be a lot of free stuff out there,” Whaples said.

Capitalism continues to take the moral high ground of being the nicest, most cooperative and least coercive system around — and income inequality isn’t nearly as bad as many people think, according to Whaples.

“If you look at the total amount of redistributive spending, it’s basically offset all the rise in inequality within the market,” he said. “Once you factor in the taxes and transfers people receive, the total amount of income inequality in the US is actually no higher than it was back in the 1960s.”

Gen Z swung heavily Republican in the 2024 presidential election, leaving some to wonder if Mamdani’s youth appeal signals a larger leftward jolt. Generational researcher Twenge doesn’t believe so — attributing his victory to feelings over ideology.

Politics professor Kaufmann agrees: “My initial take would be there’s a lot of vibe going on. That it’s form rather than substance.”