Rudy Giuliani uses 9/11 ghosts to target Mayor Zohran Mamdani
By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso ·
Krystal Davis was in second grade at Emma E. Booker Elementary when the world tilted. As she told ABC News, there was a moment when President George W.
When the smile died in a Florida classroom
Krystal Davis was in second grade at Emma E. Booker Elementary when the world tilted. As she told ABC News, there was a moment when President George W. Bush received the news from his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, that "America is under attack." Krystal saw it—the sudden, violent shift in his face, followed by a forced, hollow smile as he tried to protect the children in the room. That smile was the first lie of a new era. It was the moment the script of American normalcy was shredded, replaced by a frantic, permanent state of emergency.
We are told to remember the 2,977 souls lost at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Shanksville. We are told to honor the 343 New York City Fire Department members who ran into the heat. We see the "Steel Across America" campaign, where schools like Emma E. Booker receive beams from the fallen towers to hold the "gravity of that day," as Stephen Siller Jr. puts it. But we must also remember that 9/11 was not just a tragedy; it was a mechanism.
History shows us that a localized act of political terrorism can trigger a systemic, global shift in security paradigms. It is the same mechanism seen in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, where a single shot in Sarajevo rewired the international order and pulled the world into the meat grinder of a global war. 9/11 did the same. It didn't just change our laws; it changed our eyes. It taught us to look at our neighbors and see potential shadows. Like the sudden, world-altering surge of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the shock of that morning left a coastline of grief that never truly receded, but it also left a tide of suspicion that has been rising ever since.
Using the dead to bury the living
Twenty-five years later, that tide is being used to drown the very idea of a pluralistic city. As RTÉ reports, the anniversary in New York is being shadowed by a political crusade against Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The city’s first Muslim mayor is facing a campaign spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post, fueled by a petition of 100,000 signatures accusing him of being "insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies."
The strongest case for this campaign is one of vigilance. Its advocates argue that in a world where Al-Qaeda continues to release anniversary videos featuring the likes of Hamza bin Laden, a leader must demonstrate an unshakeable, unequivocal alignment with American institutional values. They argue that identity and policy cannot be separated when the threat is ideological.
But this is a hollow argument that mistakes suspicion for safety. To use the memory of 9/11 to cast doubt on a democratically elected leader simply because of his faith is not "vigilance"—it is the weaponization of trauma. Mayor Mamdani pointed to the real, physical cost of the era: the 9,400 people who died from 9/11-related illnesses because "leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air." When we use the anniversary to target a Muslim mayor, we aren't honoring the dead; we are using their ghosts to police the living. We have seen this pattern of sudden, systemic instability before, from the 2008 financial crisis to the smoke of the towers, where the chaos of a moment is used to justify the permanent exclusion of the "other."
The security state's endless bill
The pattern is predictable. As the anniversary passes, the security apparatus will demand more. We will see new intelligence operations triggered by Al-Qaeda’s propaganda, and we will see the political pressure on Mayor Mamdani intensify, likely moving from petitions to formal legislative challenges. The memory of 9/11 is being treated as a perpetual motion machine for the security state, a way to ensure that the "security" we buy always comes at the cost of our neighbors' standing.
The way we reach back through the decades to find meaning, much like the national reflection following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, is a way of trying to steady ourselves. But we cannot steady ourselves by building higher walls around our own identities. If the legacy of September 11 is to be anything more than a cycle of fear and a budget for more cages, we have to stop letting the architects of suspicion use our grief as their blueprint.
We must refuse to let the sacred memory of the fallen be converted into a political cudgel used to beat down anyone who doesn't fit a narrow, old-world definition of an American. The real way to honor those lost is not to hunt for shadows in the halls of City Hall, but to build a country that is actually worthy of the peace they were denied.