Rowan Emslie / Dec 2025
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Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York City has ignited a wave of retrospectives. The global nature of US politics means I'm hearing both about what Democrats should learn from this victory alongside takes from European progressives, with Germany's Left party studying his strategies and France Unbowed declaring it proof that "fighting economic liberalism tooth and nail" works. Reuters reported parties from London to Berlin cheering his "unabashedly radical agenda" as a roadmap against right-wing forces.
This rush to extract lessons from Mamdani sits within a broader genre. I spent the summer reading Roman Krznaric's History for Tomorrow, which promises insights from the last 1000 years of world history to tackle contemporary challenges. The book joins others, like Rutger Bregman's Moral Ambition, in mining the past for inspiration to address climate crisis, inequality, and democratic decay.
Both are fine reads. Well-researched, thoughtfully argued, packed with compelling stories. But something about them nagged at me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what that was until this wave of Mamdani retrospectives made it click.
Krznaric draws on slave revolts, suffragettes, and Extinction Rebellion. Bregman profiles abolitionists, civil rights leaders, and contemporary climate activists. The Mamdani analyses focus on DSA's grassroots organizing and affordability messaging.
All of these are examples of the "good guys" winning. These are lessons that tick the right boxes. They make progressives feel better about themselves and their work and the world around them.
This is probably an obvious point, but I think it's worth making some fuss about: there is a whole world of political organising out there that isn't progressive and doesn't make us feel good. Some of the lessons we need to learn will come from people, movements, and organizations we don't approve of. The trends are largely in the wrong direction, after all, with democracy on the ropes and civil society under threat. Ignoring examples that don't fit a preconceived progressive ideal means ignoring a huge chunk of the evidence base, possibly even the majority.
A feel-good approach amounts to a false historical narrative that is primarily designed to make us comfortable with our assumptions and approaches. Given the political direction of travel around the world, comfortable shouldn't be on the menu.
So let's cast a wider net.
Take the Heritage Foundation. It is hard to argue there has been a more impactful think tank over the past 50 years. Founded in 1973, Heritage shaped Reagan administration policy so thoroughly that the President implemented nearly two-thirds of its recommendations. The foundation remained influential through Bush, shaped welfare reform under Clinton, and has most recently been the driving force behind Trump's Project 2025. Achieving this level of influence over the government of the world's most powerful country is unprecedented, as far as I can tell.
Or consider "belonging before belief" as an organizing principle. This comes from the evangelical movement, which has arguably built one of the most durable organisational infrastructures of any social movement in the past 50 years. Turning Point USA have built their base by showing up where their target audiences are and "debate for as long as it takes". The emphasis is put on community, on making people feel included, and only later pushing for ideological alignment.
Nigel Farage offers another uncomfortable case study. I turned 18 in 2008, so Farage is easily the most influential British politician of my adult life. Despite barely winning elections himself until 2024, academics have noted his remarkable ability to shift political debate and force mainstream parties into his terrain. People like Trump and Farage and Berlusconi are easy to ridicule and dismiss as caricatures, but they have adapted to the new information ecosystem in ways that progressive actors struggle with.
Most of the EU policy bubble operates with a particular set of assumptions about how influence works. We believe in evidence-based policy, in technical expertise, in access and well-crafted reports. These things matter, but they're insufficient.
Learning lessons from ones opponents does not require abandoning progressive values or mimicking right-wing tactics wholesale - indeed, I would argue certain tactics are only available to those looking to tear down existing political systems rather than strengthen them. But I think it is hard to argue that there is still a lot to learn about what actually works in political organizing and communications, even if it requires a healthy dose of intellectual humility.
Policy professionals in Brussels face increasingly crowded attention markets and growing skepticism about traditional institutions. Learning from success, even uncomfortable success, is becoming less optional and more imperative as old certainties fall by the wayside.
We can learn what works without abandoning our principles. But first, we have to be willing to look.
