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The rise of Zohran Mamdani, who last week won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, the largest and most impressive city in the US, has jolted the American public out of their slumber, which had seemed endless since Donald Trump entered the White House.

To avoid drawing hasty conclusions, we must acknowledge that this young Afro-Asian Muslim who openly identifies as a socialist has only won a single round.

Just one round in the fierce battle that the moderate and progressive wings of Western democracies are waging with the rising far right in its conservative, fascist and racist iterations across Europe and its control over the world’s two largest democracies: India and the US.

On these pages, I have written about what a university professor of mine once told me: If the 20th century was the century of ideology, the 21st is the century of technology. His claim is that the incredible pace of technological progress in our era will, in practice, solve many of the economic and ideological struggles that once pushed humanity to develop theories and abstract solutions.

Of course, we cannot fully endorse or entirely reject this claim just yet. We are only a quarter of the way through the 21st century and technological progress continues at a truly astonishing pace. Achievements and discoveries that once took centuries or generations are now emerging in months, not years.

Even in Western democracies that have long found comfort in the stability of their institutions, everything is changing

Eyad Abu Shakra

The whole is no longer what it was, and it will never again be what it is today, given the pace of economic shifts, innovations, shifts in professions, evolving beliefs and interests, the tremors shaking the structures of societies and their interactions, and the limbo that politics and value systems have entered.

Our societies, all of them, are intellectually teetering between extremism and counterextremism, and between isolationism and the collapse of barriers to invasions that had stood in their way regardless of pretext.

In short, these are uncertain times. And the wisest among us are those who place no bets, believe no one’s rhetoric and take no risks backing any political project.

Even in Western democracies that have long found comfort in the stability of their institutions, unlike our own “young” states in the so-called Third World, everything is changing before our eyes and the eyes of their citizens.

The very notion of the nation state, although it seemed firmly entrenched and secure after the end of the Cold War, is now threatened by populist and racist politics. The Ukraine war has sparked immense fear across Europe, which has become terrified of a power that is still nostalgic for the era of czars and red banners.

Meanwhile, the UK’s exit from the EU was driven by the far-right isolationists who now threaten to dethrone the country’s two major parties, the Conservatives and Labour, with the rising proto-fascist isolationists well placed to replace them. At the same time, a resurgence of the Labour left seems to be on the cards, as the credibility of the current Labour government declines. The state of affairs in Britain is part of a broader pattern across Western Europe: moderate forces on the right and left are in decline, while the extreme right and, to a lesser extent, the radical left are gaining ground.

This is also obvious in France, where Marine Le Pen’s far-right and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s left-wing movements have gained ground. In Germany, it can be seen in the rising popularity of the Alternative for Germany party, while Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the leader of the Brothers of Italy party. In Portugal and Spain, the far right (Chega and Vox, respectively) are embracing the legacies of the fascist regimes, led by dictators Antonio Salazar and Francisco Franco, that imposed their rule for decades.

With its strategy for reversing the challenge posed by the far right’s upward trajectory, the traditional moderate left is losing its soul and ability to resist. Frankly, this outcome is not surprising at all. The most these anti-far-right forces can hope for is to build fragile, ad hoc alliances that have no credibility, principles or platform.

Yes, all the moderate Western left has done is evade honest conversations, buy time with empty rhetoric and seek to contain the rise of the far right, whose fervor drives its pursuit of wiping out its opponents entirely. The result? The far right is now dictating the political agenda and determining priorities.

In Britain, for instance, the far-right Reform UK party recently surpassed the ruling Labour Party in opinion polls. This is a telling message and a dire warning delivered to a party that has sacrificed its core principles in an attempt to appease powerful lobbies and temporarily broaden its appeal in the face of a populist force willing to ride any wave.

Mamdani has shown his party that victory is impossible without clear principles, no matter how risky sticking to them may seem

Eyad Abu Shakra

In the US, the Democratic Party has made serious mistakes, dragging its feet far too long and trying to cash in on empty slogans.

Democrats understood the nature of the battle they faced in 2016 against Trump and his populist “Make America Great Again” base. However, they have committed two grave errors. First, they underestimated the far-right’s capacity for stirring anti-immigrant sentiment among unskilled workers and the Rust Belt.

Second, they ignored the material demands at the heart of this struggle. The US’ most prominent left-wing politician, Sen. Bernie Sanders, did recognize this problem. He tried to appeal to disaffected working-class voters and bring them back into the Democratic fold to ensure they did not become easy prey for Trump and MAGA.

The Democrats repeated the same mistake later. This time, it was more egregious. The unconditional support of Joe Biden’s administration for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Gaza war cost the party’s 2024 candidate, Kamala Harris, tens of thousands of votes from the left, as well as the votes of Muslims and Arab Americans in key swing states … votes that could have gone her way, at least in theory.

Mamdani may or may not win November’s mayoral race in New York — a city that remains the hub of Jewish American life. Nonetheless, he has shown his party that victory is impossible without clear principles, no matter how risky sticking to them may seem.

Mamdani understands that the people of New York face urgent material crises that need solutions, not the empty slogans of opportunists and domestic and foreign lobbies that are amplified by Fox News and the like.

Even in the century of technology and virtual worlds, people still need bread, jobs, medicine, employment and social security.

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published. X: @eyad1949