Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Supporters of bourgeois-conservative or libertarian politics have had little reason to celebrate over the past decades. One could also say that the interim balance sheet of the 21st century will go down in history as a complete failure for patriots, sovereigntists, and friends of liberty.
The sparks of hope remain largely confined to a few South American beacons. Alongside El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s eccentric libertarian Javier Milei, the conservative politician of German descent Antonio Kast recently achieved an impressive electoral victory in Chile.
Yet with Antonio Kast’s family history, the similarities between South America’s political revolution and the land of his forefathers - Germany -+already come to an end. It is hardly far-fetched to say that Berlin politics and the EU doctrine it dominates resemble the left-Islamist politics of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani far more than they resemble the chainsaw-wielding libertarianism of Javier Milei or the conservative momentum represented by Antonio Kast.
Kast has undoubtedly succeeded in overcoming the National Socialist ideology embraced by his father and establishing himself as a conservative-patriotic politician. In the culture war against the socialist camp, maintaining a clear distinction between patriots, sovereigntists, and libertarians on one side and the radical right on the other is indispensable. European conservatives repeatedly fail because the ideologically socialist political spectrum and its aligned media apparatus successfully blur the line between conservative-patriotic politics and outright extremism, thereby severely obstructing any conservative revival.
Kast must look upon the bizarre developments in the homeland of his ancestors with profound bewilderment.
How must this aggressive European eco-socialism appear from the perspective of a conservative South American? Perhaps as a reminder of the ugly collectivisms of the 20th century. Or perhaps South Americans perceive Europe’s political decadence as a recurring cycle of barbarism—a warning to finally overcome the socialism that held their continent down for generations.
That task may prove far more difficult than many assume. Germany’s politically and ideologically dominant EU increasingly follows an Orwellian script in frightening detail, constructing a bureaucratic surveillance state layer by layer. Pillars of bourgeois society such as the family, Christianity, private property, freedom of speech, individual mobility, and cultural life itself are all coming under mounting media and political pressure.
And at times, New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani appears almost like an American offshoot of this European ideological confusion. Socialist to the core, climate activist, and by no means a moderate representative of Islam, he embodies the convergence that Europe has already advanced through mass immigration and the transformation of the economy into a green command apparatus with quasi-military features: the arrival of a new socialism.
His first four months in office already read like the platform of Germany’s Left Party—with establishment approval attached: rent controls, free public transportation, universal childcare, and even the bizarre proposal of government-run grocery stores—a Yankee version of the Soviet consumer cooperative—is still on the table. Mamdani sells a world without consequences, a fantasyland in which everything is distorted into a fairy tale for those unwilling to perform or produce. Perhaps the immense wealth of New York’s upper classes has clouded his judgment, but this socialist nightmare financed through vote-buying consumes staggering amounts of money.
Mamdani is about to learn his first hard lesson. Wall Street firms, investment banks, and major funds are already preparing their escape routes. Whether Citadel, Apollo Global Management, or Wells Fargo, many are actively exploring new headquarters. Will Miami become the great beneficiary of New York’s self-destruction? The top tax rate is set to rise another 2 percent, inheritance tax exemptions are to be sharply reduced, and corporate taxes have already been raised by 4 percent. As noted before: it all feels remarkably European.
Mamdani, who himself possesses no meaningful private-sector experience, now blames precisely those still investing in New York for the city’s decline: freelancers, entrepreneurs, and investors who create jobs and carry actual social responsibility rather than hiding behind socialist platitudes. Politicians like Mamdani in New York—or figures such as Heidi Reichinnek and Lars Klingbeil in Germany—thrive politically because few people take them seriously until the damage is already done. The situation in New York appears increasingly chaotic. Are we witnessing the rise of socialism inside a city deliberately captured by America’s radical left?
The creeping “Cubanization” of the capital of world finance was made possible primarily through a politically engineered wave of immigration that accelerated during the years of the Barack Obama presidency and never subsided. The Muslim share of New York’s population has now reportedly risen to between 10 and 12 percent. America’s far-left Democrats intentionally transformed New York into a destination for mass migration in order to send a message to their political opponents: your capital remains trapped within our power structure once we secure a demographic majority aligned with us.
The left effectively imports new voting blocs. From the perspective of increasingly pressured destination countries, this is cynical, dehumanizing, and civilizationally destructive. Europe knows this dynamic well. The EU has successfully defended its policy of open borders against all criticism up to the present day. A return to the historically conservative politics of native populations is thereby rendered increasingly impossible over the long term.
Political actors such as Mamdani in New York or former President Barack Obama - but also European figures closer to home such as Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen - capitalize with almost diabolical precision on a deep societal weakness. Our fate is that demographically exhausted, secularized, uprooted, and materially complacent societies no longer possess the strength to rediscover a forward-looking spirit of growth and renewal. Europe, much like Japan, finds itself in demographic retreat. European societies struggle hopelessly to preserve social equilibrium through overstretched welfare states, while only the bureaucratic apparatus itself continues to expand. Socialists like Zohran Mamdani skillfully transform that apparatus into an expanding vehicle of power deployed against the remnants of bourgeois society. The Green Deal is the practical implementation of this abstract tendency - a massive extraction mechanism that in the United States was halted only through the intervention of President Donald Trump.
New York’s mayor may well rank among the most prominent representatives of globalism, which repeatedly emerges like a rotten fungus from the decaying soil of our age. What is unfolding in New York on a smaller yet symbolically charged scale has already developed in Europe on a grand scale through the Brussels-centered EU power complex. The coming months and years will reveal whether European nations still possess the strength to escape the socialist trap and confront the von der Leyens and Mamdanis of this world with a cultural and economic alternative resembling a European version of South America’s conservative and libertarian revival.
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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.