Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Zohran Mamdani Supporters

Gen Z’s love affair with socialism has less to do with rent and more to do with resentment.

In a recent interview for The Free Press with Bari Weiss’s Chief of Staff Sean Fischer, Peter Thiel—the billionaire mastermind behind PayPal and Palantir—expresses his growing concern about the rise of socialist sentiment among young adults in the wake of the New York City mayoral race—a trend that he claims he predicted back in 2020. While Thiel was not incorrect in warning tech executives and other Silicon Valley gurus about the rise of socialist apologism in Gen Z—Gen Z certainly does lean socialist—he completely misidentifies the reason for this latest fad, claiming that “It’s extremely difficult these days for young people to become homeowners” and that “Capitalism is not working for a lot of… young people [in New York City].”

The problem is that Thiel is so out of touch with reality that he fails to perceive the actual cause of high Zohran Mamdani turnout among New York City’s youngest demographic.

According to Thiel, young people in New York City—the cohort that most consistently voted for Mamdani this past week—have embraced socialism due to personal financial struggles and difficulty in obtaining homeownership status. “I think you can reduce 80 percent of culture wars to questions of economics,” he goes on. “And then you can reduce maybe 80 percent of economic questions to questions of real estate.”

Thiel is not incorrect in identifying a pervasive gap in homeownership: according to Apartment List’s 2025 Millennial Homeownership Report, only 33 percent of Millennials became homeowners by the age of 30, compared to 48 percent of Boomers by the same age. Certainly, Millennials turned out overwhelmingly for Mamdani, but the majority of Gen Z voters are too young to be thinking about homeownership. As the oldest member of Gen Z (born in 1997), for instance, I only started to think about owning property this year at the age of 28 and am still several years away from that particular American Dream. I believe, furthermore, that many of my peers are not as concerned about owning a home as Thiel makes us out to be. Many young people living in New York City are not looking to buy property or to raise kids in Manhattan; furthermore, in an era of transience and remote work, the conversation has shifted from how to buy property to whether homeownership is even desirable. Gen Z—the most mobile generation—prefers renting over owning, citing flexibility, reduced responsibilities, and less stress when it comes to travel and job-hopping. Yes, perhaps New York City’s average homeownership age of 52—a statistic that demonstrates that even many members of Gen X who voted for Cuomo do not own property in New York City—is due to affordability, but this number can also be explained by the fact that many young people do not wish to be tied down.

So while it is true that concerns about homeownership—especially in New York City—might be driving an increasing number of people to become disillusioned with capitalism, if homeownership alone were responsible for increasing socialist sentiment, then we might assume that young people with lower incomes would overwhelmingly support Mamdani. After all, college-educated voters with six-figure incomes—especially those married who enjoy dual incomes—should be able to afford property in New York by at least their mid-thirties. StreetEasy tells us, for one, that “to afford a median-priced home in NYC, a buyer must have an annual household income of at least $211,970,” suggesting that those with six-figure incomes should not be as worried about homeownership as Thiel might suggest. Homeownership concerns in New York afflict primarily the “true” middle and lower classes—those making, say, below $100,000 a year—and if Thiel is correct, we might expect that particular demographic of young people to come out in support for Mamdani. We might also expect that voters with children—those with an increased financial burden due to childcare expenses—would be heavily in favor of Mamdani’s policies that purport to make the city more “affordable.”

Exit polls, however, tell a different story.

Among voters making less than $30,000, 47 percent preferred Cuomo compared to only 41 percent preferring Mamdani. Mamdani support, furthermore, was stronger among voters making $100,000–$199,999 than it was among voters making $30,000–$49,999, suggesting that there is a slight bias towards Mamdani not among lower and middle class voters but among those belonging to the upper-middle class—young adults who will make enough money to eventually afford property in New York City if they so choose. Similarly, among voters with children younger than 18, a majority voted for Cuomo—compared to voters without children who came out in support for Mamdani. The most telling split is the “age by gender” divide, with 82 percent of Gen Z female voters backing Mamdani as opposed to just 65 percent of young men.

Clearly, there is something more insidious going on here than just “homeownership concerns.”

What Thiel misses is that these young people who are disillusioned with capitalism do not care an iota for the economic systems that would purportedly make their lives easier—many of them, in fact, could not tell you the first thing about New York City’s economic policies. These young people are increasingly turning to socialism because “socialism” is a trendy buzzword in the broader matrix of leftist ideology taught to them in elite universities.

In other words, socialism is not, as Thiel claims, an economic issue but a social issue.

To explain Gen Z’s allegiance to socialism, let us turn to our friend Friedrich Nietzsche.

In The Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche suggests that the rise of humility as a God-given virtue is tied to a feeling he calls ressentiment or resentment. To be noble in our world, Nietzsche observes, is to be meek and cowardly rather than proud and powerful. It is thus that those with might, wealth, and aplomb are continually villainized by weaker parties, who are driven by resentment of the strong. Instead of working to better themselves, however, the meek and cowardly invent a system of morals in which their inadequacy becomes noble—and in which the power of the more successful members of the human race becomes fundamentally evil.

It is thus that we have convinced an entire generation of young people that billionaires are evil and that anyone aspiring towards financial success is not noble but immoral. Young people turn to socialism not necessarily because they want property for themselves but because they are resentful of anyone who has something they do not. Taught the ideology of ressentiment in elite universities through the words of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault, young people lean overwhelmingly socialist because they are fueled chiefly by bitterness; coming out into the real world, graduates of elite colleges—Mamdani’s primary base—who have spent the past four years being coddled by trigger warnings and safe spaces are not prepared to handle the ills of the real world and believe that they deserve more than a $100,000 salary and mounting student loan debt. They look upon the multimillionaires and billionaires of the world—many of whom attained their positions through years of hard work—and see a fundamentally unequal system that privileges certain people over others. What they do not realize, however, is that luck has little to do with success, and that the vast majority of wealthy people worked very hard to attain their riches; what they do not understand is that, rather than complain about a given societal system, successful people think about how to make it work in their favor.

It is no wonder, then, that the platform of The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—an organization that heavily backed Mamdani in the most recent election—has little to do with economic policy but everything to do with taking down top dogs—in this case, billionaires and the State of Israel. The moral system of left-wing resentment, after all, does not limit itself to wealth but instead targets all symbols of success and exceptionalism. Today in particular, Israel—with its high quality of life, bustling economy, and advanced military—has become precisely such a scapegoat. It is thus no accident that Zohran Mamdani’s socialism is so heavily intertwined with his hatred for the world’s only Jewish nation—both are fueled by resentment for those more fortunate than he is. In a 2023 statement, for instance, he blames the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) for capitalism and the supposed brutality of the NYPD. Similarly, in a meeting on November 2nd, Mamdani’s compatriots at the DSA met to discuss policy proposals focused not on socialism but on “Divest[ing] City pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities,” “End[ing] City contracts with companies that do business with Israel” and “Operat[ing] City-run grocery stores free from Israeli products”—among other Israel-centric policies.

(As Taylor Swift sings, “It’s honestly wild/ All the effort you’ve put in.”)

The obsession with Israel in Mamdani’s party is, of course, far from accidental. Hatred for Israel and love of socialism go hand in hand because they are both fueled by that same resentment—resentment for a group of people (the Jews) who, in just over seventy short years, have created a country that has surpassed many Western European nations in GDP per capita. Mamdani’s support for the so-called “pro-Palestinian” cause stems from the same reason that urges him to see socialism as the best system for the financial capital of the world: fueled by resentment and unable to hold down a single job, he cannot bear to witness a world in which individuals get ahead through hard work alone. In the eyes of Mamdani and his supporters, there must be something else holding people back—racism, oppression, colonialism, you name it.

And that is why Gen Z has come out so vehemently in favor of both socialism and “anti-Zionism”: both ideologies are overwhelmingly tied to a sense of general resentment on the left. The youngest members of Gen Z do not care about owning a house any more than they desire to see LGBTQ+ rights honored in the radical Islamic nations they come out to support—but they certainly care about putting down people who are more successful than they are.

So no, Mr. Thiel—the cause of socialist support on the left is not an issue of access but a matter of ideology. In the eyes of Gen Z, after all, the very idea that some people might be richer or more capable than others is tantamount to original sin. Taught to find fault with every nook and cranny of society, Gen Z would rather moralize failure than emulate success, finding greater satisfaction in tearing down cherished systems rather than building up their own livelihoods. After all, it is far easier to denounce rather than to build towards success.

But if we are to bring renewed prosperity to the greatest city in the world, no amount of wealth redistribution will cut it. The sickness that Thiel laments is not due to inequality but to worldview and character—and it will be cured only by a renewal of character in the vein of Nietzsche—a restoration of hope in the strong and the powerful that will encourage a new generation of bright minds to seek wealth and power for themselves rather than stealing hard-earned money from the rich. For the American Dream is not a zero-sum game—with the proper education, determination, and mindset, any American can realistically make their first million dollars.

I believe vehemently in equality. But I believe that equality should make more people wealthier rather than poorer. Socialism, as we know, makes more people poor. Capitalism is the only system in the world that has been responsible for booming economic prosperity, uplifting an increasing number of people into social classes their forefathers would have never dreamed of rather than flinging hardworking people into despair and poverty. In these difficult times, I hope that New York City will soon find its way back to capitalism and prosperity—the system that has benefitted it the most. In the meantime, we can only pray that Mamdani’s new socialist policies will highlight the atrocities of a system that only wishes to put people down and bring a renewed spirit of ambition to New Yorkers—the spirit that has kept the city afloat for decades and that will be its only hope for redemption.

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