With Turban or Hammer and Sickle, Cartoonists Tried to Make You Fear Mamdani
Hank Kennedy
Zohran Mamdani’s November 4 victory in the New York City mayoral election was precedent setting for numerous reasons: The candidate's youth, religious faith and political ideology were all decisive breaks from politicians locally and nationally. Mamdani’s win was also notable because the spouse of a political cartoonist (Comics Beat, 6/26/25) has been elected mayor of the largest city in the country.
Indeed, cartoons and caricatures played an important if under-reported role in the election campaign. They were, though, generally of a different—and worse—quality than those put out by Rama Duwaji, the mayor-elect’s wife.
He's a Commie—get it?
Right-wing political cartoonists, for obvious reasons, had a strong desire to see the young, Muslim, democratic socialist lose the election. They utilized a variety of attacks on Mamdani, usually evoking either the Red Scare or Islamophobic tropes.
The Statue of Liberty's association with immigration gives this Michael Ramirez cartoon another layer of meaning.
Pulitzer Prize–winner Michael Ramirez, syndicated by Creators Syndicate, has come under fire throughout his career over his depictions of Muslims (FAIR.org, 3/27/25). In 2007, he drew the country of Iran as an open sewer, with swarming cockroaches sweeping out to infest neighboring countries (Columbus Dispatch, 9/29/07). In 2023, a Ramirez cartoons showing a snarling, hook-nosed Arab labeled “Hamas” was pulled from the Washington Post (11/8/23) after readers criticized it as “racist” and “dehumanizing.”
Ramirez’s cartoons about Mamdani have been of similar quality. The punchline to many of Ramirez’s jokes is to simply link Mamdani with the Soviet Union, a nation that ceased to exist a few months after Mamdani was born. One pre-election cartoon depicted an uneasy Statue of Liberty wielding a hammer and sickle in lieu of a torch (Creators Syndicate, 8/26/25).
A few days after Halloween, Ramirez drew the candidate as a Bela Lugosi–esque vampire with a hammer and sickle pendant (Creators Syndicate, 11/3/25). (Ramirez’s lazy cartoon missed an obvious pun: Why not draw Mamdani as Marx’s “specter of Communism"?) Another recent Ramirez piece parodied the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with a Karl Marx balloon holding the by-now-ubiquitous hammer and sickle (Ramireztoons, 11/30/25).
A cartoon by Gary Varvel illustrating the disgusting threat of...city-owned groceries?
Gary Varvel’s Mamdani (New Hampshire Union Leader, 6/8/25), although not a creature of the night, was similarly inhuman: a rotten apple, filled with snake-like worms labeled “tax the rich” and “city-owned groceries.” One worm, labeled “global intifada” (a phrase Mamdani never uttered), appears to wear a turban—a cheap cartoon cliché for "Muslim." Varvel’s previous work compared pro-Palestinian protesters to Nazis (Daily Cartoonist, 11/2/23), so his animus towards anyone supporting Palestine has a history (FAIR.org, 3/27/25).
Varvel (New Hampshire Union Leader, 10/25/25) also took time to red-bait Mamdani, drawing him hoisting a hammer and sickle on the side of a U-Haul truck bearing the slogan "If he wins, call us!" Varvel’s cartoon fails to make its own point effectively: His intent is to imply that Mamdani’s election would lead to an exodus from New York, but a progressive reader could infer that Mamdani’s administration will be so successful as to result in an influx of new residents.
Discrimination deserved
Steve Kelly cartoon telling Muslims not to complain about Islamophobia.
Henry Payne, syndicated by Andrews McMeel (11/6/25), slurred Mamdani as a lethal antisemite, depicting him as a cab driver in a Red Army uniform with an “I [Skull] Jews” bumper sticker. Tom Stiglich’s imaginary TV viewer reacts to Mamdani by calling him “a Communist who hates America” (X, 10/30/25). It’s apparent that as the term “socialist” has lost its sting; as it's been applied to every politician to the left of Joe McCarthy, red-baiters have moved on to "Communist" and "Marxist" as their preferred terms of derision.
After Mamdani brought up a hijab-wearing aunt’s decision to stop using the subway due to post-9/11 fears of Islamophobia, Steve Kelley took the opportunity to dismiss such fears and bash Mamdani for bringing them up. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reported that after the attacks there was a major spike in hate crimes directed against Arabs, Muslims and those suspected to be, including three murders. But Kelley created a fictional New Yorker to stare Mamdani down and lecture him that “her aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she was incinerated in the North Tower” (X, 10/27/25).
Cartoons like Kelley’s, and others in a similar vein by Tom Stiglich (Creators Syndicate, 10/28/25) and Gary McCoy (Cagle Cartoons, 10/28/25), have an obvious point: Muslims like Mamdani should not protest any prejudice they encountered after 9/11. The implication is that all Muslims were in some way to blame for the attacks, and therefore deserved to be discriminated against.
'Really disgusting'
A.F. Branco wants you to know that the Communist Muslim will kill you.
Cartoonist A.F. Branco may have made the most tasteless attacks on Mamdani. One of his early efforts shows Mamdani as an unlikely combination of Stalinist and Islamic fundamentalist (Creators Syndicate, 7/21/25). Mamdani wears a turban in the cartoon, something he doesn't do in reality, and wields a hammer and sickle against "The Big Apple." This naked Red Scare/Islamophobic smear was a preview of the depths Branco would soon sink to.
In October, he drew a red plane labeled “Mamdani” with a Communist hammer and sickle on the side. The plane is about to crash into one of the Twin Towers, labeled “NY City.” The cartoon’s visibility increased after right-wing political pundit Larry Elder posted it on X (10/21/25).
Except for right-wing troll Laura Loomer, who responded to the image “100%,” most of the reactions were strongly negative. The cartoon’s evocation of the 9/11 attacks came in for particular criticism. Sports broadcaster Roberto Abramowitz said the cartoon was “really disgusting.” Other social media commenters called Branco’s work “sick” and “tasteless” (Independent, 10/21/25). A few days later, Mamdani himself blasted the cartoon at a speech before the Islamic Cultural Center in the Bronx (CBS, 10/24/25).
Branco’s work fit snugly with Andrew Cuomo’s Islamophobic campaign against Mamdani. On a radio show (New Republic, 10/23/25), Cuomo quizzed rhetorically, “God forbid, another 9/11—can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” When the host responded, "He'd be cheering," Cuomo laughed and added, “That’s another problem."
Election results indicated that this dark, paranoid worldview was rejected by the voters of New York City. Right-wing cartoonists had waged a relentless campaign through right-wing and corporate media to tar Mamdani as a dangerous political extremist and religious radical, but were unable to hoodwink the electorate with their smears and propaganda. Nevertheless, their images served to normalize both Islamophobia and red-baiting--a negative achievement that will make actually governing a diverse city that much more difficult.
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