A young immigrant has delivered a crushing history lesson to New Yorkers about communism after the new mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial inaugural address.
Bogdan Laurentiu, a Romanian who immigrated to the US in 2011, warned that New Yorkers have no idea what they’ve voted for by electing a democratic socialist, saying Mamdani’s speech was exactly what communist regimes have preached in Europe.
Mamdani, 34, has drawn fierce criticism after claiming New York City’s new government would replace ‘individualism’ with ‘collectivism.’
Collectivism is a social organization in which individuals identify with a group. In this worldview, the collective takes priority over one’s identity, and it has historically served as the framework for economic systems such as communism and socialism.
Laurentiu, 38, has become a conservative influencer in America and claimed in a TikTok video that Mamdani’s hopes for New York were the ‘famous words spoken by every communist in history.’
He warned Americans that Romania’s communist regimes of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceaușescu had crushed his home country for over four decades, forcing farmers to give up their land and driving the nation into poverty.
‘First, they confiscated private land. Then they used terror to enforce collectivism. The regular Romanian citizens were arrested, beaten up, humiliated publicly, left to rot in prison, and some even executed,’ Laurentiu explained.
‘Romanian collectivism was forced, violent, economically disastrous, morally corrupt, and designed to control, not help.’
Bogdan Laurentiu (Pictured) is a Romanian immigrant who came to the US in 2011 and has been publicly speaking about the dangers of communism ever since
Zohran Mamdani (Pictured) spoke about the virtues of collectivism at his inauguration on January 1 while also condemning individualism
The Daily Mail has reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.
During his inauguration, the newly minted mayor pledged to govern the city as a Democratic Socialist.
Mamdani has claimed that individualism incentivizes greed, leads to obscene gaps between rich and poor and rises costs of living to the point where ordinary people struggle.
During his address, he said that his campaign demonstrated that New Yorkers yearned for solidarity and, regardless of their socioeconomic background, shared a defining characteristic: living in the Big Apple.
Laurentiu explained in his TikTok video, which has been viewed over 230,000 times, that Romania went from the number one exporter of grain in Europe to suffering regular shortages of food after communism took over.
Collectivism in Romania started by promising shared prosperity but quickly led to the government seizing private land from farmers, forcing them into state-run collectives where they lost control over their own work.
Independent farmers were seen as threats because they didn’t need the government to survive, so the regime labeled them as enemies and stripped them of their property to make everyone dependent on the state, starting in 1949.
Laurentiu, whose family lived under the oppressive state, added that free markets were banned under collectivism in the 1940s, meaning no one could sell or trade goods privately, which destroyed Romania’s economy and made everyday life even harder.
Former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu speaks during the closing ceremony of the Romanian Communist Party’s 14th congress in Bucharest, on November 24, 1989
Zohran Mamdani (Center) has maintained that he isn’t a communist, despite President Trump and other critics claiming his ideology of collectivism is the same thing
‘Collectivism wasn’t just economic. It was cultural as well. In Romania, they attacked the church and religious people. They replaced family authority with party authority, all with one goal in mind: replace faith and family with the state,’ he explained.
Mamdani has maintained that he isn’t a communist and instead believes in Democratic Socialism, a philosophy that US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also subscribe to, which opposes capitalism.
However, Mamdani has been caught making multiple comments before his 2025 mayoral election win, claiming that the goal of his campaign was ‘seizing the means of production’ and the ‘abolition of private property.’
Laurentiu has made headlines in the US for his fierce rebuke of communism, including receiving a standing ovation from late conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and his audience after saying, “If you don’t learn from history, nothing will save you.”
The Romanian native has previously admitted that he was only an infant when the communist regime of Ceaușescu was overthrown in 1989.
However, Laurentiu claimed in 2023 that he had yet to meet a single person in his home country who was in favor of communism.
‘Independence was, and still is, the biggest threat to communism. They made it in such a way that owning more than others was a crime,’ he warned in his new video.
President Trump has continually referred to Mamdani as a ‘communist’ and previously threatened to pull federal funding from New York City if he were elected.
Other members of the Republican Party, as well as countless critics on social media, have also blasted the use of the term collectivism as Mamdani’s hidden turn to communism and a philosophy that is not compatible with US society.
‘No, actually, we are Americans, and we don’t believe in that s***,’ Conservative journalist Megyn Kelly wrote on X.
‘Mamdani’s comments are antithetical to America’s values. We’re a country built on rugged individualism,’ another person posted.
