Who’s Actually Practicing Taqiyya?

Shaun Maguire—venture capital partner, SpaceX bet winner, sophisticated bigot—wants you to know that Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything.” That it’s “literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda.”

Let’s examine who’s actually practicing strategic deception here.

Mamdani ran on rent freezes, free buses, and universal childcare. He won decisively. He gave a victory speech promising to freeze rents, make buses free, and deliver universal childcare. He’s now mayor-elect preparing to freeze rents, make buses free, and deliver universal childcare.

The horror. The deception. The taqiyya of—checks notes—saying what you believe and doing what you promised.

Meanwhile, Republicans campaign on helping “working families” and pass legislation their own campaign officials admit is “deeply unpopular”—64 percent unfavorable according to polling. When caught, do they change the policies? No. They rebrand them.

The Trump campaign holds a briefing titled “Love at First Vote”—already Orwellian enough to make one retch—where they tell House Republicans to stop calling the president’s signature legislation what the president called it. “Don’t call it the One Big Beautiful Bill,” they plead. “Call it the Working Families Tax Cut.”

The problem, you see, isn’t that the law cuts a trillion dollars from Medicaid while giving tax cuts to the richest Americans. The problem is branding. Messaging. The failure to properly conceal who the legislation actually serves.

Representative Lisa McClain captures the entire strategy with one perfect sentence: “We have to do a better job of correcting the truth with the other half of the truth.”

Let it settle. This isn’t a gaffe. This is the method.

Correcting the truth. With the other half of the truth. When a member of Congress says this out loud, we’re past the point where deception requires shame. We’re watching language itself weaponized against meaning in real time.

But Shaun Maguire wants you afraid of the Muslim who says what he believes.

The actual taqiyya—the strategic concealment of true intentions to advance an agenda—is Republicans campaigning as populists while governing as oligarchs. It’s Peter Thiel funding politicians who run on draining the swamp while filling it with crypto donors. It’s venture capital cretins performing as defenders of ordinary Americans while calling those same Americans “groundlings” who fail “the marshmallow test.”

It’s campaign officials telling lawmakers their legislation is unpopular but don’t worry—”once people find out what’s actually in it, they’ll be very supportive”—while simultaneously telling them to rebrand it because people hate what’s actually in it.

The contradiction doesn’t bother them because the point isn’t coherence. The point is saying whatever works at any given moment to maintain power while serving interests directly opposite to their rhetoric.

Troy Nehls—Republican congressman from Texas—lights a cigar at nine in the morning and declares: “We’re winning, and the Democrats hate it. You’re nothing but foolish if you think the American people do not support what Donald Trump has done.”

He said this immediately after being told the signature legislation polls at 64 percent unfavorable. That his own campaign needs him to stop calling it what Trump called it. That the “branding” is so toxic they need emergency intervention.

That’s not confidence. That’s performance trying to become reality through assertion. It’s strategic deception about strategic deception—lying about the need to lie better.

This is what Maguire’s accusation actually reveals: the projection is complete. The people systematically practicing strategic concealment of their true agenda have convinced themselves that honesty itself is suspicious. That the Muslim who says what he believes must be lying because—in their world—everyone is always lying.

They cannot imagine someone actually meaning what they say because they never do.

Mamdani won by being explicit about his democratic socialist agenda. He refused to apologize for being young, Muslim, or socialist. He told Trump to turn the volume up. He’s implementing exactly what he promised.

Republicans won by pretending to serve working families. They’re governing for billionaires and crypto donors. Their own campaign is begging them to rebrand before voters notice. And they’re accusing the Muslim of practicing religious deception.

The taqiyya is coming from inside the house. And it’s not the Muslim mayor delivering on his promises.

It’s the venture capital partner calling him a liar while his coalition renames legislation to hide who it serves. It’s the congresswoman “correcting the truth with the other half of the truth.” It’s every Republican who campaigns on populism and governs for extraction.

Maguire’s accusation tells you everything about Maguire. Nothing about Mamdani.

And that—that inability to recognize their own systematic deception while projecting it onto others—that’s the sociopath problem made explicit.

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