Appalling scenes from the fatal New Year’s Eve bar fire in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, were captured on camera phones by people there for the party. In video shared on social media, one sees dancers parading behind a man who progresses through the bar with a sparkler held aloft close to the low basement ceiling. Then you see a small area of that ceiling on fire; flames ripple out like shallow wavelets running up the sands of a beach.
Suddenly, the scene changes dramatically for the worse. The whole bar is filled with smoke illuminated by a red glow; then people are rushing for a narrow stairway to the only exit; immediately afterward, the whole building seems to be a mass of flame, and you hear screams from people panicked and perhaps trapped.
It is ghastly to behold the swift transitions from seasonal fun, through mild surprise and even an amused thrill at the outbreak of a small conflagration, to real alarm, then outright terror.
A striking thing in the video is the sight of people who, even after the ceiling is alight and the fire spreading across it, even after one or more revelers can be seen flapping clothing at the flames to put them out, nevertheless continue to enjoy themselves, merely looking, cheering, dancing, or capturing events on their phones rather than heading for the exit and encouraging others to do the same.
Many of those involved are not fully engaged with their present threatening reality. Doubtless, drinking dulled the crowd’s sense of danger to some extent. But was there not also a false sense of distance created by the fact that what were real events had been turned into something else, into spectacle or future online content, because of the ubiquitous use of phone cameras to experience them?
It will take a thorough investigation to know, but one cannot help sensing that people in the bar regarded the fire for a while more as something to be watched and amused by — a sort of movie in front of them rather than a reality that was engulfing them.
There is a similar failure to see the real threat posed by Zohran Mamdani, who has just been sworn in as mayor of New York. He is like the dancer with the sparkler, parading through the world’s financial capital while holding the flame of socialism dangerously aloft. Behind him dance the 75% of voters aged 18-29 who put him in office. They don’t realize, or don’t pay attention to, the fact that he is setting their ceiling alight.
They’re less interested in his policies than in the fact that he has some sort of glass ceiling to become the first Muslim and first socialist to move into the official mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion. They love what he describes as the “warmth of collectivism” and don’t realize that it is not merely a comforting warmth, but is rather an incendiary ideology that will burn down the prosperity they enjoy.
Not only will Mamdani be able to get around some of the technical limitations to his power, but he is also already regarded as a model for Democrats who want to win elections. While he ignites enthusiasm on the Left, some will head for the exits, but too many simply watch, entranced as the socialist flame ripples across the ceiling above them.
It is coming for all of them. Mamdani’s new adviser on housing, Cea Weaver, is an activist whose first target is private property. Private property is the institution that economist Friedrich Hayek identified in his final message to the world as the foundation of prosperity and modern civilization. It is what Tom Bethel in his 1998 book, The Noblest Triumph, argued is a prerequisite for the “four great blessings … of liberty, justice, peace, and prosperity.”
Yet Weaver is on record as thinking home ownership racist, a tool of white supremacy. Her belief, which will become Mamdani’s policy, is that “treating [property] as a collective good and [moving] toward the model of shared equity will require … families, especially white families … who are homeowners [to] have a different relationship to property than the one we currently have.”
“A different relationship to property” is a wordy way of saying the house or apartment you now own will no longer be yours and will instead be shared with those who do not own it. It, or a large part of its value, will be expropriated by the Mamdani government.
The city’s incoming administration intends to act on the Marxist maxim that property is theft. To believe this, one must ignore America’s and New York’s history over generations. To believe it involves a failure to recognize reality, wishful thinking rather than acknowledgment of the truth that surrounds them. Modern civilization and prosperity depend on private property, and yet it is the first target for destruction by the Mamdani administration.
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Like his followers, the new mayor may not recognize reality — that is the charitable explanation — preferring to operate within the warm illusions of collectivist theory. More dangerous are his supporters and those who, while not committed socialists themselves or not living in New York and thus outside his jurisdiction, respond to his irruption into the politics with nonchalance and an ironic smile.
They follow him delightedly, loving his bright white smile and his promise of sticking it to capitalists. It is akin to watching the Pied Piper leading the children away from civilization into the dark cavern under the mountain. All the while, the sparkling socialism he holds up high is setting the ceiling alight.