#rhetorical analysis

This is not an evaluation of Mamdani as a human being, as a politician, or as a New York City Mayoral candidate.

It's not a critique of his politics or his character.

I'm limiting the scope of this analysis to less than three minutes of his interview on NBC's Meet the Press on June 29th 2025 in which he's asked three times why he will not condemn "globalize the intifada."

If you haven't seen it and you'd like to watch the three minutes for yourself before reading further, do.

Mamdani was asked three times on NBC News whether he condemns the phrase "globalize the intifada," and he never answered directly.

To many Arabs and Jews, "Intifada" evokes years of violence, including bombings and civilian deaths. So when a mayoral candidate sidesteps the question, people notice.

Let's take apart his three non-answer responses.

Response 1:

"That's not language I use" + pivot to human rights

What he said:

"That is not language I use... my intent [is] grounded in the release of human rights… for Israelis and Palestinians alike."

What he did:

Disassociated himself without denouncing the slogan.

Redirected to a general moral framework.

The problem:

It's a dodge. "Not my words" avoids judgment altogether.

Universal human rights sound nice but don’t address whether the phrase itself is inflammatory or threatening.

Fallacies/tricks:

Red herring. He changes the subject to broader values.

Confidence he's dodging:

High.

Response 2:

Empathy + policy pivot + free speech defense

What he said:

"I've heard those fears... we've pledged to increase anti-hate programming by 800%... I don't believe the role of the mayor is to police speech."

What he did:

Acknowledged Jewish concerns about antisemitism.

Promoted his campaign platform.

Changed the topic from ethics to legality.

The problem:

Personal condemnation of violent rhetoric isn't policing speech. He's being asked for a moral stance, not a legal action.

Again, no engagement with the actual slogan or what it represents.

Fallacies/tricks:

Equivocation: Dishonestly pretends personal condemnation would be government censorship.

Appeal to fear: Dishonestly suggests condemning rhetoric would lead to criminalizing speech.

Confidence he's dodging:

Very high.

Response 3:

Slippery slope argument

What he said:

"My concern is... walking down the line of language... putting people in jail for writing an op-ed."

What he did:

Pretended his personal condemnation of violent rhetoric would lead to authoritarian censorship.

Brought up Donald Trump jailing people for speech-related offenses.

The Problem:

Nobody asked for legal action, just moral clarity.

Comparing condemnation to imprisonment is misleading and inflammatory.

Fallacies/tricks:

Straw man: Distorts the request into something it's not.

False analogy: Moral disapproval ≠ state oppression.

Confidence he's dodging:

Extremely high.

After three questions, Mamdani still wouldn't condemn a phrase many interpret as a call to violence. His responses were all deflection, over-abstract framing, and rhetorical sleight of hand.

Possible explanations for why he won’t condemn the phrase

Maybe he's signaling to his political base

Many activists see the phrase as resistance and he doesn't want to alienate them.

Maybe he's maintaining strategic ambiguity

He wants to appeal to both radicals and moderates. Declining to answer lets him maintain flexibility.

Maybe he values radical rhetoric

Some believe provocative slogans shake the system. He may see them as useful.

Maybe he's performing ideological purity

In activist circles, rejecting establishment pressure is seen as strength.

Maybe he fears backlash from the left

Condemning the slogan could trigger protests or public criticism.

Maybe he personally supports the sentiment

These are all plausible.

When someone is asked to draw a moral line and instead draws a rhetorical circle...it tells us a lot. It's disgusting behavior from any political perspective, but it's particularly worrying from one end of the horseshoe.

If you aren’t constantly practicing radical empathy, the only thing you’re going to accomplish is creating more division and chaos. Your obsession with “bad person deserve bad things forever!” helps nobody and is nothing more than a hill you’re willing to die on and to drag everyone else to the edge with you. Yeah, it feels icky and wrong to reach out to that person who was super bad and mean. Big whoop. It’s not always about you. If that person could have changed and you did nothing, you made a deliberate decision that caused more harm for the rest of the world. That isn’t being “progressive” or “woke”; that’s being a regressive, small-minded bigot, which regardless of whether your anger is righteous, is the most dangerous kind of person you can be, especially when you’re young enough for it to become a part of your identity, and your own actions and your own relationships will suffer as a consequence, making you exactly the person you were so hellbent on destroying. Ask me how I know.

It’s also so important to me as a transfem because existing as a transfem in any space will very quickly make you realize that everyone is going to be looking for an excuse to hate you so they don’t have to admit to themselves that their disdain towards you is a purely spiteful, transphobic hatred any time you’re not 100% passing and mild-mannered/fem-socialized, but also that basically every story about being transfem—a very hard to find kind of story in the first place—is always about some narratively satisfying “overcoming adversity” story and not a “this is how shit actually is for so many people”, and it’s important to me that people understand this concept and it’s important to me that not every transfem be a completely self-actualized, morally pure, “perfect victim” type character, because all that accomplishes is creating more alienation for all of us (which everyone seems to not understand is kind of the hardest part about being tfem sort of across the board) because we are presented as this very monolithic archetype of “small, wounded, doe-like creature who needs to be comforted and rescued… by me, the resilient and powerful savior!” which then causes immediate backlash from the “baby woke” (???) crowd any time we don’t immediately and perfectly fit those expectations that were created of us. She’s complex, tragic, and most importantly to me, flawed, and she’s flawed in all of the most tragic and complex senses. She was deeply bitter and terrible to everyone for so long, but at the same time (as is the case in the real world), she’s a wounded inner child who knows nothing past survival and fear who really doesn’t want to die now that her entire perspective and her whole world has completely turned inside-out now that she knows who she is and what she could do. That’s how tragedy works. It’s painful and terrible because you know how truly heartbreaking it is and how truly terrifying it would feel from her perspective. And if you’ve never had that kind of experience, even something close to it, you’re either too young to have made those mistakes or you’re too blinded by your own self-righteousness to see that that’s you. Because if you think “oh surely I’d never do that, I’m a good egg!” then you almost certainly will become that kind of person if you haven’t already.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Anthropoids | Field Notes (Anthropologist’s Summary)

HOMO CAVICRANIUS (VERNACULAR: “CRO MAGANONS”)

ETYMOLOGY. From Latin cavus “hollow” + cranium “skull”; “Cro” used colloquially to denote an empty or hollow head

TAXONOMIC NOTE. Order Primates; Family Hominidae; Genus Homo; Species cavicranius. A contemporary, culture-bound morph of modern humans distinguished by behavioral, not anatomical, traits.

ERA: “Contemporary Pleistocene of the Internet.”

DIAGNOSIS (OBSERVER SUMMARY). Individuals exhibit a marked deficit in original ideation; novelty is typically outsourced to borrowed slogans or collective scripts. They are easily fooled by flattering narratives and easily offended by minor social friction, serving as fierce custodians of their own feelings.

• COGNITIVE ECONOMY: Original thought outsourced to tribal consensus; novelty triggers defensive postures.

• AFFECTIVE ARMOR: Feelings guarded like crown jewels; status rituals revolve around validation tokens.

• SOCIAL ENFORCEMENT: Minor norm violations can prompt full excommunication (“The Great Unfriending”).

• LANGUAGE USE: Prefers slogans to syllogisms; rhetorical volume inversely proportional to evidence density. Lexicon favors catchphrases, reaction tokens, and meme-forms over argument. Qualifiers and ambiguity are treated as contaminants.

HABITAT & RANGE. Dense in algorithmic echo-valleys ( Comment fields, group chats, migrates along recommendation currents.) Peak activity at dusk and during controversy cycles.

BEHAVIOR:

• FORAGING: Gleans from headline husks; high-calorie confirmation bites; allergic to qualifiers.

• MATING DISPLAY: Signal-boosting, badge-collecting, and ceremonial screen-captures.

• DEFENSE: Rapid offense on perceived slights; blocking/banishment as primary predator-deterrent.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: High in-group cohesion regulated by emotion-first norms. Status accrues through demonstrations of loyalty to shared feelings rather than through evidence or craftsmanship.

COGNITION & LEARNING: Epistemology is testimonial: truth = that which validates group affect. Novel inputs are processed through an offense filter; dissonant facts are rapidly quarantined.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Sanctions are swift and performative. Even trivial infractions can trigger total social excision, described by informants as “cleaning the camp.”

MATERIAL CULTURE: Screenshots (“receipts”), reaction badges, and curated lists of approved sayings. Long-form texts are displayed as status artifacts more than read for meaning.

ETHOLOGY (TYPICAL SEQUENCE): Cue (minor slight) → Surge (affective amplification) → Chorus (group resonance) → Purge (removal of offender) → Balm (mutual reassurance).

I'm thinking of making a segment where I highlight and break down rhetoric I come across online, and essentially teach the building blocks of critical thinking/analysis and making it free for the public.

If anyone has any resources on how to teach these tools or any advice on which direction I can head in that would be greatly appreciated!