Tremor in FIRE City

New York City is famously called "the Big Apple". The euphemistic phrase serves to depict the city as an edifice of success, and grandeur. This great metropolis is actually home to three powerful money making enterprises of modern capitalism-Finance, Insurance and Real Estate and their reign is supreme. Thus, the name FIRE was attributed to the city by Robert?Fitch, an author and labour organiser. While the soubriquet- Big Apple- obscures the machinations of an undemocratic control over the city by these three super powerful lobbies, the lesser known name FIRE precisely shows the dynamics of politics in this nexus of wealth, power, and influence.

In a city where skyline alterations are decided by billionaire developers and the sponsoring of subways is taken care of by private banks, Zohran Mamdani, a young and progressive activist and a New York State Assembly member, rose to the spotlight by scoring a stunning upset over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city's Democratic mayoral primary. Thus he secured the candidacy from the Democratic party for New York City Mayoral race to be held in November this year. Mamdani's victory was not just an electoral upset it reverberated the static political atmosphere of the city far and wide. The FIRE economy elites-Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate-have long determined the tempo of New York's politics, disbursing money for campaigns, policies, and narratives that uphold their common interest. But this time, their money did not triumph. With his grassroots-driven and unapologetically progressive campaign, Mamdani has put a dent on the elite consensus and outpaced their stooge, Cuomo. Mamdani very aptly stood up for New York city's angry populace who are tired of being ignored and pushed aside by the ruling elite.

Mamdani's platform-rent freezes, free city buses, universal childcare, public grocery stores, and 200,000 units of affordable housing--reads like an indictment against everything the FIRE establishment has propagated over the years ignoring the hard-working inhabitants of the city. To the corporate class, Mamdani's proposals are "unrealistic." To everyday New Yorkers burdened with a stressed life with high-priced groceries and rent, they are somehow common sense.

For too long, New York's politics has been a theater where elite interests hide behind "electable" candidates, centrism is coded language for corporate deference, and progressive policy is dismissed as naïve. Mamdani's win exposed that facade. He won by standing firm for people's choice.

As expected, the meteoric rise of Mamdani has sent shock waves through the ruling billionaire class and the Democratic Party establishment that supported Cuomo. A swift yet deeply shaken reaction came from this FIRE elite. For decades, they had relied upon a Democratic establishment that, behind a facade of liberal platitudes, had advanced their interests. Mamdani's emergence ruptures that illusion. It is not so much about one charismatic young politician as it is about the tectonic shifts in urban politics that foreshadows that working-class New Yorkers will no longer approve of exclusion, and technocratic excuses that stood in the way for a better life for all.

The elites of the city went wild at this unexpected development. All segments, liberal and conservatives, including their pet media, the New York Times, had the audacity not to endorse Mamdani. Instead, they unfurled an embarrassing smear of ridicule toward him, branding his campaign "magical realism." Cuomo very benignly wrote him off as "inexperienced. "Billionaire donors turned red-baiting into an art. Through virulent use of selective framing, economic fear-mongering, and class-coded language, they attempt to delegitimize Mamdani's redistributive reform efforts while protecting entrenched interests.

Right-wing media hysterically descended into Islamophobic hysteria, using 9/11 connotations and fears of immigration to portray Mamdani a naturalized U.S. citizen as a threat. Some right-wing commentators resorted to calling Mamdani uncivilized, because he was seen eating Biryani with bare hands. Trump joined the chorus with all his acrid convective, calling Mamdani a "lunatic communist" and threatening to deport him.

The smears channeled towards Mamdani were inevitable. Mamdani rejected vague slogans or the arts of appeasement with accusations. He spoke plainly about the need for Palestinian rights, housing justice, and economic inequality. His victory signals the weakening grip of the Clinton-to-Obama era establishment that championed Wall Street deregulation while offering crumbs to the working class. He treated his voters like adults, who responded not from skepticism but from trust. That trust is the real threat to the FIRE regime.

Even Indian elite joined the dogpile. Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Indian Congress Party and BJP actress-turned-MP Kangana Ranaut both attacked Mamdani in xenophobic and sectarian terms. They spread the poisonous innuendo of Mamdani's alleged loyalty to Pakistan and mercilessly smeared his denunciation of the genocide in Gaza as support for Hamas. These attacks reflect an unsettling international convergence: when a progressive challenges concentrated wealth and power, elite factions - regardless of nation - close ranks.

This portends that the upcoming electoral battle and percolating chaos orchestrated by the FIRE elite will be ugly. Adams, the current mayor, is now courting Trump after corruption scandals and re-branding as an independent. Wall Street huddles to regroup. Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman announced that he and his wealthy associates would pour "hundreds of millions of dollars" into the candidacy of anyone willing to run against Mamdani in the general election. The establishment has already shown it will use identity, fear, and misinformation as weapons to defend itself.

Still, Mamdani's win proves that New Yorkers - subway riders, housing activists, childcare workers, immigrants, young voters - are ready to reimagine and redesign the political landscape of their city. They have seen the results of decades of deference to FIRE interests: evictions, crumbling infrastructure, public disillusionment. Mamdani's ascendancy is their response. It is also a reminder that this city is not for the billionaires in glass towers. It belongs to the real people residing in rent-stabilised apartments, riding overstuffed buses, and organizing for better.

And for the FIRE elite, this realisation is the most destabilising tremor of all. So, they, with all their cohorts in the establishment and media, despite political variation, are coming out in full force to defend the neoliberal consensus. Their sole objective is to prevent a people's choice to walk the path towards victory and crush the embodiment process of people's power from taking shape in the capitalist core of the world.

The whole world is waiting to see how a choice of people can score a victory against the inhumane corporatism of the neo-liberal capitalism in its home ground.

The writer is Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Scholars

mamoon@ius.edu.bd