Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York state assemblyman, shocked the political world last month with a primary win over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned his position in 2021 after several women accused him of sexual harassment.
The Times noted that on the campaign trail, Mamdani touted his Muslim faith and South Asian ancestry. He was born in Uganda in 1991 and moved with his parents to South Africa five years later. Two years later, the family moved to New York.
The Times report cited a figure who goes by the name Crémieux on X and Substack:
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Last month’s cyberattack appears to have been carried out in order to see if Columbia was still using race-conscious affirmative action in its admission policies after the Supreme Court effectively barred the practice in 2023.
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While Mr. Mamdani was not a target of the hack, the information about him was included in a database of millions of student applications to Columbia going back decades. The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X. He provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race.
One of the speakers at the conference is billed under a social media alias, Cremieux, but the Guardian has corroborated that the account is apparently run by Jordan Lasker, a long-time proponent of eugenics.
The @cremieuxrecueil X account has been boosted or engaged with dozens of times by that platform’s proprietor, Elon Musk, often on the topic of falling birthrates.
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On 27 November, Musk reposted a Cremieux comment on falling birthrates, adding: “With rare exception, all countries are trending towards population collapse.”
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On 29 April, Cremieux posted: “Only about a third of the world even meets replacement rate fertility. This is the biggest problem of our time.” Musk responded: “Yes.”
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Musk has also boosted or responded favorably to Cremieux posts on other rightwing hobby horses such as crime in Portland, Oregon, and allegations that Democrats had created loopholes in the asylum system.
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Away from X, Cremieux runs a Substack also featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and IQ. A prominently featured post there seeks to defend the argument that average national IQs vary by up to 40 points, with countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia at the high end and countries in the global south at the low end, and several African countries purportedly having average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment.