In 2018, I hosted a comedy show called Holecialism. The name was a pun connecting Talk Hole, the comedy brand I created with Steven Phillips-Horst, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent congressional campaign in a post–Bernie bro New York. The flyer featured a clenched fist and used AOC’s labor-inspired graphics. A Bedford + Bowery headline alleged, “These Comedians Are Merging Queer Culture with Socialism,” but mostly we were just being topical and promoting our basement show.
Mamdani has bet big on hole filling, distributing “pothole politics” signs during his hundred-days address at the Knockdown Center and celebrating his 100,000th hole filled—a total not even Basement’s best tops can top.
Cut to 2026. Mamdani has votemogged Cuomo and exorcised ex-Mayor Adams’s ghosting of Gracie Mansion. Though holecialism has not exactly caught on, there has been another phrase circulating among leftists to describe Mamdani’s political stylings: sewer socialism. Originally coined in 1932 as a sneer at Milwaukee’s …
