Psychological warfare on aisle five: the hidden motives behind government grocers in NYC
New York’s push for subsidised government grocery stores is drawing fierce criticism for threatening small businesses and fuelling class and cultural conflict.
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Article by Rebel News staff
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: government grocery stores, the war on New York’s bodegas, and the psychological games behind radical politics.
What’s actually happening in New York City? Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office is floating a plan for taxpayer-funded grocery stores that will sell everything from steak to eggs at 30 per cent below cost. Not a discount, a permanent fire sale, subsidised by tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Unlimited, every day. Who stops people from simply clearing the shelves, reselling the goods, or gaming the system? The city’s 10,000 small bodegas could buy the cheap stock and flip it for profit. How does any real business compete with that?
City officials will claim there are limits: five steaks per person, or something similar. But what happens when a family of four walks through one after another, or returns several times in a day? New Yorkers have always been better at outmanoeuvring bureaucrats than the reverse. The real winners will be insiders, friends of staff, and anyone willing to pay cash under the table. Call it corruption or call it arbitrage. Either way, you cannot break the laws of supply and demand forever. It is a money pit, and everyone knows it.
Immigrant-led business group votes to sue NYC over Mamdani's taxpayer-funded grocery stores, alleging unfair competition https://t.co/nmKob2KT5W pic.twitter.com/FeEkarE892
— New York Post (@nypost) July 28, 2026
That is why the bodega industry is not merely complaining. It is preparing to sue, arguing this is textbook unfair competition bankrolled by taxpayers and designed to crush small business.
Here is the real kicker: none of these stores are scheduled to open for years, if they open at all. Delays and cancellations are the safer bet. Five stores are planned, one in each borough, and even that looks optimistic. When (or if) they appear, they will almost certainly resemble the failed Kansas City prototype.
Zohran Mamdani promises food that's 30% cheaper at his $70M government-run grocery stores.
— Lance Gooden (@Lancegooden) July 28, 2026
Here's how a government-run grocery store worked out in Kansas City:
"There's no meat, there's no vegetables, there's no nothing."
If the shelves are empty, it doesn't matter how cheap… pic.twitter.com/tU0NvadAlm
Which raises an obvious question: if these stores are unlikely to exist anytime soon, why make them such a centrepiece of the political agenda?
Because this was never primarily about groceries. The point is not simply to feed eight million people. It is about psychology. It is about changing what people think New York is, who belongs in it, and where it is headed.
New York built its identity on finance, entrepreneurship and the belief that anyone could make it through ambition and hard work. Mamdani’s rhetoric increasingly targets that identity.
Jordan Schachtel has cut through the polite analysis: the affluent class still thinks this is some kind of negotiation or shakedown. That is a total misread. Mamdani does not want to negotiate. He wants the people who built and financed the city to leave. He is willing to make their lives difficult until they do.
There's an interesting disconnect between the super affluent class in NYC and their perception of what Mamdani wants. They think it's some kind of negotiation or shake down, but it's a total misread of what's obviously happening.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) July 29, 2026
The mayor wants all of you to leave as soon as…
Watch the pattern. A foreign policy speech condemning Benjamin Netanyahu in a city that was once the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish city in North America, despite Mamdani having no foreign policy authority. A personal attack on Ken Griffin, a major philanthropist, followed by a published list of wealthy residents and their addresses for a proposed wealth tax. An 18-lawyer advisory committee for selecting judges that somehow contains not a single Jew in a city where nearly half the lawyers are Jewish. These are not isolated controversies. Together, they signal a rejection of the New York built on Wall Street, entrepreneurship and open ambition.
Versions of the same campaign are visible in Canada. Toronto is the most obvious example, with sustained pro-Hamas protests alongside violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. Even cities like Edmonton show similar currents.
The goal is not primarily policy outcomes. It is about changing what people think their city and country are, and who belongs in them.
The grocery scheme is simply one visible front in that campaign. It echoes what Yuri Bezmenov described decades ago as demoralisation: convincing people that their city is no longer theirs, that the rules they once trusted no longer apply, and that resistance is futile. Then the people with the means to leave quietly do so.
In Canada, the new NDP leader, Avi Lewis, has proposed something eerily similar to that of Mamdani in New York, with plans for taxpayer-funded, government-run grocery stores on a larger scale: $300 million a year and fifty stores.
This is not a local spat over food prices. It is one theatre in a broader campaign to reshape how people think about cities like New York, and by extension countries like Canada. The stores may never open. The message is already being delivered.
GUEST: Ross McLean, former Toronto police officer on the rise of violent crime across Canada amid terrorism against the Jewish community.
COMMENTS
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-07-30 12:05:18 -0400Two red diaper nepo babies—Mamdani and Lewis—are pushing for government grocery stores….. -
Tony Salotti commented 2026-07-30 06:33:53 -0400Boy are we being screwed .
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Debbity R commented 2026-07-30 00:39:12 -0400I watched that Yuri Bezmenov interview some years ago, and thought of it many times over the last few years as I saw it all being enacted around me. Very chilling.
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Silver Feet commented 2026-07-30 00:03:15 -0400The psyop of the gov grocery stores (which will never exist) creates outrage from the existing grocery industry and the convenient resolution will be the NYC gov funneling tax dollars to partner with some existing groceries to deliver the subsidy. Be on the lookout for the grocery company with a back door connections to this Charlie Cox wannabe (daredevil from the pre-woke era).
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Paul McCulluogh commented 2026-07-29 22:31:22 -0400I remember seeing a few things from Yuri Bezmenov. His warnings turned out to be very accurate.
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Paul Scofield commented 2026-07-29 22:15:06 -0400P.W.: Well-put, sir.
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Peter Wrenshall commented 2026-07-29 21:53:28 -0400Evil does not have to come with fangs and horns. It does not even have to come with thin lank hair, bulging eyes and a pencil moustache, as it did to Europe a century ago. It can come to a great American city with a handsome face, well-trimmed beard and a ready white smile.
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Bruce Atchison commented 2026-07-29 21:24:00 -0400As for Mr. Bezmanov, the Islamists are demoralizing the west. Leftist infiltrators are allowing this chaos to demoralize the people. A few decades ago, this shooting spree would be shut down quickly and the terrorists punished extremely. Now it’s just another Jewish place being shot up. And if a hot head was to even look at a mosque the wrong way, all hell would break loose. And regular crime further demoralizes the public. Adding to that is the hopelessness of no action by the authorities. But there is hope in the rise of resisters in the youth against Marxist dogma.
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Victor Farrell commented 2026-07-29 21:13:14 -0400Thank You Ezra.
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Jane Vandervliet commented 2026-07-29 21:06:28 -0400It appears that Canadian judges are either amoral or bribed. What do you think, Ezra?
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Paul Scofield commented 2026-07-29 20:38:39 -0400Mamdani in the only child of Indian-born professionals who managed to carpet-bag their way to the United States by way of Uganda, where they enjoyed being in the upper percentage of the population, in terms of wealth and luxury. The idea that this fool is the product of privation and suffering is, pardon my language, horseshit. Then, to lecture Americans and the world about the evils of the Joos (spelling intended) and the poor Palestinians is beyond the pale.
There is no such thing as a Palestinian, just a bunch of marauders and thieves who the Jordanians wisely kicked out of their country 50-60 years ago and who the rest of the Middle East does not want in THEIR countries. These terrorists purposely construct their underground labyrinth of tunnels to come out at hospitals, schools and the like. Then they bitch when the IDF goes after them and there is collateral damage.
A reckoning is coming for this breed of the Communist/Liberal/Islamist trash, in both Canada and the States. Keep poking the bear, guys. Don’t be surprised when you see another Crusade heading directly towards you.
