It is surely no accident that many of the twentieth century’s most beloved liberation heroes are men like [Martin Luther] King and [Mohandas] Gandhi, who retain their unsullied reputations in part because they never had to govern.
–From “Pan-Africanism and self-determination”, by Kelefa Sanneh, in the October 13, 2025 New Yorker.
Within his essay (which is actually commentary on several books on Pan-Africanism), Sanneh quotes Ali A. Mazrui, a Kenyan political scientist, who wrote, “I have a strange suspicion that it is relatively easy to worship a particular African dictator–provided he is someone else’s dictator.” Take out the word “African,” and the sentence supplements Sanneh’s observation in quite a universal way.
It’s all more than profound, actually. I keep thinking about this and the more I think, the more I continue thinking about it. Naming names, in my head, and carrying this thought back into centuries and territories other than the ones I’ve lived in.
It’s a reminder why I am scrupulous about stripping any instinctive desire I might have to worship a hero from my evaluations of political candidates.
Coincidentally, one of the political scientists Sanneh comments on within his essay is Mahmood Mamdani, the father of Zohran, who I believe will be our next mayor. The senior Mamdani sounds nothing like the campaign commercials working overtime to smear his son by smearing him. Indeed, he sounds like an erudite and complex intellectual. I think he’s pretty dazzling by himself, even without his son.
And I can’t leave out Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, whose wise and funny films I have enjoyed hugely.