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Washington: Right-wing influencers in the United States have falsely connected New York City’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to the Daesh militant group. They spread a fabricated statement that quickly amassed millions of views across social media platforms. According to researchers on Thursday, Mamdani—who is the first Muslim and South Asian to be elected as the mayor of the biggest city in America—won his election decisively despite intense criticism targeting his policies and religious background.
A number of anti-Mamdani accounts on the Elon Musk-owned platform X circulated a fake statement purportedly from Daesh titled “Operation Manhattan Project,” which referred to an attack planned in New York City on Election Day, claiming it was in response to “American aggression.” Among those sharing this false message was Laura Loomer, a conservative influencer known to have close ties to Trump. Loomer wrote on X, “Muslims can’t think of a better way to celebrate a Muslim mayor’s victory than by carrying out an ISIS attack in NYC,”—a post that received over 200,000 views.
Other right-leaning accounts used the fake statement to falsely claim that Daesh had endorsed Mamdani for mayor. These posts collectively garnered millions of views across the platform. The letter, which displayed the logo of the Amaq News Agency, was confirmed to be a forgery by multiple researchers and watchdog groups including NewsGuard. Meili Criezis from American University explained that the supposed message didn’t resemble authentic statements from Amaq, which typically shares news and claims responsibility for attacks but doesn’t issue threats of this nature. The disinformation group, the Information Epidemiology Lab, also noted that the fake statement diverged significantly in language, style, formatting, and distribution from genuine Daesh communications.
The hoax initially appeared on 4chan, a well-known hub for conspiracy theories. Throughout recent months, Mamdani—who has long supported Palestinian causes—has publicly condemned antisemitism and Islamophobia, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. At just 34, he’s a state lawmaker who gained support by promising to address the rising cost of living. Nonetheless, he has frequently been the target of racist tropes and misinformation. Leading up to the highly anticipated election, AFP fact-checkers disproved several false claims online, including allegations that an non-citizen had illegally voted for him and that an aide posed for photos next to Nazi graffiti.
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