As New York City heads into its next mayoral election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is doing few favors for the campaign of Zohran Mamdani — at least not for those who value coherence. Her remarks at a recent rally could serve as a Logic 101 case study in contradiction.

The problem isn’t limited to her message. The Democratic platform itself, and Mamdani’s campaign in particular, now rests on foundations so incoherent that one almost blushes to analyze them.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing.

Behind AOC, a man waved a sign that read: “Free Buses.” A perfect summary. She may imagine the crowds came to hear her and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thunder against injustice, but the truth is simpler: Promise free things to people indifferent to truth, and you can fill any arena.

As a logic professor, allow me to walk through the highlights of her address. Think of it as a guided tour through the labyrinth of leftist reasoning — or rather, unreasoning.

The new party of contradiction

AOC’s positions directly contradict what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi said 30 years ago about immigration and public safety. The irony? In attacking Donald Trump, she’s also attacking them.

Her first contradiction concerns ownership. AOC claimed that New York City “belongs to the people of this country” but moments later insisted it “belongs to immigrants.” Well, which is it? Either she contradicted herself within two sentences, or she truly believes the city belongs to citizens of other nations. That would make sense only if you’re an international socialist calling on the “workers of the world” to unite.

She also called herself “a fascist’s worst nightmare” because she defends immigrants. Yet the fascists of the 1940s didn’t allow people to leave their countries. Republicans are merely asking migrants to follow the law. No fascist ever demanded less government power. Conservatives do. Fascists didn’t defend free speech; yet Elon Musk — whom AOC routinely attacks — is now a hero of speech and open debate.

Lessons for the willfully ignorant

Next came her invocation of the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Someone should tell her: The Confederates were Democrats. The segregationists were Democrats. The architects of slavery, redlining, and resistance to civil rights — all Democrats. Why should anyone believe the same party now represents moral progress? The left ruins the cities it governs and then blames everyone else. It’s the political version of DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

Then came her favorite populist line — that her opponents are “funded by billionaires.” Public records tell a different story. Plenty of billionaires bankroll her and her fellow radicals. How does she say it with a straight face? Remember our friend with the “Free Buses” sign: He’s not there for philosophy — he’s there for freebies.

The left’s new theology

AOC then delivered a sermon on intersectionality, the academic creed of Kimberlé Crenshaw: all “oppressed” groups united by one great villain — the white, Christian, heterosexual male.

Picture a wheel: The hub is the white Protestant man, the spokes are every “marginalized” group on earth. AOC’s list was textbook: “This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, Native people standing for themselves, Asian Americans coming together.”

For AOC and the radical left, grievance is the very air they breathe. Humanity divides neatly into identity blocs, locked in eternal conflict — and at the center of every injustice stands the Christian West. She closed the circle by declaring that American history is defined by “class struggle,” the dialectic Marx demanded.

AOC contradicts herself, defines ‘the American people’ as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance.

Her introduction of Bernie Sanders confirmed it. “Senator Sanders,” she said, “is the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States.” At least she’s honest. Sanders is an international socialist — otherwise known as a communist — and AOC’s crowd now wears that label proudly.

But a 1990s-era Hillary Clinton would instantly see the contradiction: You can’t be both pro-American worker and pro-open borders. Clinton was a national socialist (minus the genocidal agenda); Sanders and AOC are international socialists. The alternative to both isn’t fascism — which is also a species of national socialism — but the American republic: constitutional rule, checks and balances, a Bill of Rights, and a government that protects its citizens from threats foreign and domestic.

‘Acceptance’ without love

For those wondering whether any theology slipped into AOC’s secular revival meeting — it did, but only in parody.

In older times, an evil spirit could be tested by whether it could quote scripture correctly. By that standard, AOC’s spirit fails. She told the crowd we must “accept our neighbor as ourselves.” Not love — accept. The difference is enormous.

To love your neighbor is to will his good. To “accept” your neighbor, in AOC’s lexicon, is to affirm whatever destructive path he chooses. When a neighbor wants to mutilate his body for a sexual fetish, love warns him against harm. AOC’s “acceptance” cheers him on. Her mercy kills.

The Christian calls sinners to repentance and faith in Christ. The radical left calls that “hate speech.”

RELATED: Why Gen Z is rebelling against leftist lies — and turning to Jesus

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

The logic of the new faith

By now, any logic student would have learned the lesson: AOC contradicts herself, defines “the American people” as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance. Her creed depends on intersectionality — a doctrine that scapegoats not just white men, but all Christians who refuse to bow before the new secular orthodoxy.

If that student left disappointed by the quality of public rhetoric, he’d still leave wiser. Over the gates of hell, Dante wrote: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Over the platform of the radical left, one might inscribe a similar warning: Let none who expect coherence enter here.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. It despises reason as a tool of “European colonialism.” Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing — free buses for all.

The American republic will not survive if its citizens trade reason for rage. To preserve it, we must expose the incoherence at the heart of the left’s new religion. Free buses to a ruined city are no substitute for freedom itself.