After spending an hour with the newly-elected Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani last November, Donald Trump described him as “very rational” and predicted that he would do “really great” things. Mamdani has not disappointed the fascist president.

It has been barely a month since Mamdani assumed office as mayor of New York City. But in that short time, he has already accomplished a great deal—in comprehensively betraying and repudiating the oppositional sentiment that propelled him into office. Caesar, in Gaul, “came, saw and conquered.” Mamdani, in New York’s Gracie Mansion, has compromised, colluded and capitulated.

The latest in an endless train of disorderly retreats came on Thursday, with Mamdani’s endorsement of right-wing Democrat and New York Governor Kathy Hochul in the upcoming gubernatorial primaries. While still a lowly assemblyman, Mamdani described Hochul’s support for the genocide in Gaza as “disgusting” and denounced her political agenda as “Republican-lite.” That was just two years ago.

But in a statement published in The Nation, Mamdani, his disgust turned to admiration, justified his endorsement of Hochul by praising their “shared commitment to government that is equal parts competent and trustworthy.” Hochul, he wrote, “has chosen to govern” in the spirit of “transformation,” and he held up their collaboration as a model of effective government.

Amidst all the political pablum, Mamdani didn’t mention that more than 15,000 nurses have been on strike in New York City for nearly four weeks, demanding safe staffing, livable wages and basic workplace protections.

Hochul, a millionaire stalwart of the Democratic Party establishment, “has chosen to govern” by playing a central role in efforts to break the strike. Even before the walkout began, she issued an executive order declaring a “state of emergency” to allow hospitals to import out-of-state nurses without New York licenses. Since then, hospitals have spent more than $100 million on scab labor, while striking nurses have gone without health insurance or strike pay.

Earlier this week, hundreds of nurses marched through freezing temperatures to Hochul’s Midtown Manhattan office, chanting, “Vote her out!” and denouncing her for “putting our lives in jeopardy.” Just hours later, Hochul extended the strikebreaking measure, underscoring her contempt for the nurses and her loyalty to the millionaire hospital executives and the oligarchs who sit on the boards of the very hospitals the nurses are striking against.

Mamdani has staged photo ops on the picket lines while stabbing nurses in the back: working behind the scenes with Hochul and the leadership of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) to shut the strike down.

In endorsing Hochul, Mamdani has demonstrated his skill in slipping a stiletto into the back of a political ally. In the Democratic primaries, Hochul’s main opponent is Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who has selected as his running mate India Walton, a member of the DSA and former mayoral candidate in Buffalo whom Mamdani personally campaigned for in 2021.

The endorsement of Hochul is only the latest in a series of filthy betrayals and maneuvers that have defined Mamdani’s first month in office. Just 10 days earlier, Mamdani praised the police officers who shot 22-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Jabez Chakraborty in Queens. Chakraborty, who was experiencing a mental health crisis, was gunned down by NYPD officers after his family called 911 seeking help. As the family was detained, interrogated and denied access to their dying son, Mamdani chose to express his “gratitude to the first responders who put themselves on the line each day to keep our communities safe.”

This was followed by a crackdown on a peaceful anti-ICE protest in Manhattan, where the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG)—long denounced by civil rights groups—arrested multiple demonstrators. Mamdani had previously pledged to disband the SRG.

On Thursday, the same police agency arrested 13 nurses protesting outside a New York City hospital and a dozen faculty, staff and students at Columbia University protesting Trump and the actions of ICE.

These actions have been overseen by Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani reappointed as police commissioner as one of his first acts as mayor. A billionaire heiress and leading architect of New York’s vast surveillance state, Tisch was central to the NYPD’s crackdown on anti-genocide protests and the detention of immigrants in collaboration with ICE.

The Mamdani administration is also planning major cuts in response to a $12.6 billion budget shortfall in the city. While posturing as an opponent of “austerity,” he has established a network of “Chief Savings Officers” (CSO) across city departments tasked with identifying spending cuts under the guise of “efficiency.” Mamdani has already agreed in collaboration with Hochul to shelve talk of taxing the rich, one of his main campaign slogans. 

All the actions taken by Mamdani since his election as New York’s first “socialist” mayor are a continuation of the right about-face that he executed abruptly with his meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on November 21.

At the time, the DSA and pseudo-left supporters of Mamdani hailed his embrace of Trump as a tactical masterstroke to win the fascist president’s support for the “affordability agenda.” 

What a fraud. In fact, Trump, an old New York conman, sized up Mamdani and understood what he was dealing with: another petty-bourgeois political flunky looking for a pat on the head. Mamdani wanted nothing more than for Trump to pass the word to the Wall Street power brokers that they had nothing to worry about. The “Big Apple” remained in a safe set of hands.

Two days after Mamdani was inaugurated, Trump invaded Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, who was transported to a federal jail under Mamdani’s jurisdiction, in Brooklyn. He has claimed that he privately raised concerns about the operation in a phone call with Trump but has said nothing since. 

In his endorsement of Hochul, Mamdani wrote that the two “have fought to protect New Yorkers from ICE” and defended “our democracy,” These statements are lies. Since his meeting with Trump, Mamdani has refrained from issuing any substantive public criticism of a president who is waging war on the Constitution and implementing a presidential dictatorship. According to multiple reports, the two remain in regular contact, and Trump recently praised Mamdani for his budget plans, declaring that “Zohran is finally being honest about how bad it really is.”

When Mamdani was elected in November, the World Socialist Web Site understood the objective significance of the broad opposition that propelled him into office. But it did not pander to the prevailing illusions. The pro-capitalist class character of the new administration would quickly emerge. “But what will Mamdani do,” we warned, “when workers enter into struggle? Inevitably, the logic of class interests will assert itself. Mamdani will bow to the demands of the financial and political establishment.”

And so he has. Mamdani is conducting himself as a conventional, right-wing capitalist politician.

In doing so, Mamdani continues a pattern set by his political predecessors. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Left Party in Germany, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States—all promised to break with austerity and inequality; all capitulated to the financial elite they claimed to oppose.

Mamdani is distinguishing himself only by the speed with which he has cast aside whatever principles he claimed to have. Syriza took several months after coming to power in 2015 to repudiate its pledge to end austerity and impose the brutal demands of the European banks. Mamdani is matching Syriza’s “accomplishments” in just a few weeks. Before it is all over, Mamdani will be exposed as the most miserable scoundrel of all the pseudo-left.

But Mamdani has not been without a reliable chorus of political frauds: from the DSA, which proclaimed upon Mamdani’s victory, “socialism wins!”; to its affiliated Jacobin magazine, which declared that “Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Points the Way Forward”; to Socialist Alternative, which published a breathless editorial declaring “Full Steam Ahead To Fight Trump & The Democratic Party Establishment.” 

When the WSWS refers to the pseudo-left, this is not an epithet but an accurate political definition. They are bourgeois politicians of the second rank, who function as critical instruments of capitalist rule. In social terms, they represent layers of the affluent upper middle class, closely tied to the corporate and state apparatus, seeking only a more comfortable position within the hierarchy of wealth and power.

For workers and young people who voted or supported Mamdani, it is necessary to draw sharp political lessons. The fight for socialism requires a complete and irreconcilable break with the Democratic Party and the establishment of the political independence of the working class. The way forward lies not in illusions about reforming the existing system but in turning to the growing struggles of the working class and forging the revolutionary leadership required to put an end to capitalism, fascism and war.