A volunteer video editor for the Mamdani campaign was revealed to be a CCP supporter who downplayed the Uyghur genocide

An aspiring left-wing YouTuber who claims to have volunteered for the campaign of New York City’s democratic socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has certainly left the United States “for good” and is now residing in China.

Eric Hovagim describes himself on LinkedIn as a “[g]”Eopolitical commentary YouTuber” while listing his location on the site as Brooklyn. The pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) micro-influencer who uploaded several videos in support of Mamdani, in addition to working on the video team of his successful campaign, however, claims to have moved permanently across the Pacific Ocean to China. From there, he posts content downplaying the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim indigenous minority group.

“I volunteered to help film and/or edit 3 videos about Zohran’s plan to make New York more affordable. I was NEVER paid by the campaign, or any PAC, or anyone around it. All three videos were completed before the primary election,” Hovagim wrote in response to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s (DCNF) request for comment. He added that he had only been in contact with Mamdani’s video team and not with the rest of the socialist mayor-elect’s campaign.

Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to DCNF’s request for comment.

“As a guy, I’m sorry that the Uyghurs are being used as a pawn by the CIA to foment unrest. I feel bad for the people of Taiwan who, overwhelmingly, do not want to be independent but are caught in the crosshairs of America’s violent foreign policy. And I feel the worst for the people of Tibet until their recent liberation,” Hovagim said in a YouTube video posted September 22 titled “Why I Left America for Good.” (RELATED: Members of the Chinese Communist Party are studying at campuses near you)

Eric Hovagim was a video editor on the Zohran campaign.

He recently moved to China as an outspoken supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

He posts pro-Chinese military montages and films a Uyghur restaurant in China in an attempt to pretend there is no Uyghur oppression.

He claims… pic.twitter.com/OdLI4H3Pfz

– Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) November 16, 2025

He continued in the video, appearing to call the idea that the CCP is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, as well as acts of aggression against Tibet and Taiwan, “revisionist CIA propaganda that just got its own Wikipedia pages.” The Uyghurs are a Turkic people who live in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan, renamed the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the CCP.

“I believe that the Uyghurs and other Chinese minority groups in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region are victims of decades of the CIA wasting taxpayer dollars to fund violence in the Middle East. “The CIA openly engaged in opium trafficking in Afghanistan, making it a drug regime right on China’s border. I am glad that China acted more peacefully and sensibly than the United States after various terrorist attacks in the 1990s and 2000s.”

“To call the situation a genocide is to ridicule the actual genocides happening in places like Palestine with our tax dollars. Of course, this all comes on the heels of the greatest cost of living crisis in U.S. history, as we now prepare to invade Venezuela while the overwhelming majority of young Americans will never be able to own their own homes,” the YouTuber added.

Hovagim responded in an article on Saturday

Rather than presenting concrete evidence, this report uses drawings (!), screenshots from Google Maps and a handful of random images of Chinese police officers.

Alternatively, this is my friend Gerald, who was thrown in prison 30 years ago without a fair trial in Louisiana https://t.co/Q5dWX8oO1Q pic.twitter.com/3AIyn191QI

– Éric Hovagim (@EricHovagim) November 16, 2025

“Rather than presenting concrete evidence, this report uses drawings (!), screenshots from Google Maps, and a handful of random images of Chinese police officers,” the content creator wrote.

“Zohran’s campaign will go down in the history books, but don’t let that fool you. This wasn’t just a masterclass in video production or social media, but rather a disciplined campaign, passed down across generations, focused on affordability, the simple idea that New York is the best city in the world but it’s too damn expensive,” Hovagim said in a Nov. 4 video titled “How Zohran’s Videos Won the Election.” (RELATED: ‘Those Who Can Quit the Will’: Mamdani, ‘Partner in Hammer and Sickle’ for a Rude Awakening, Says Country Vet)

The young content creator, however, was no longer a resident of New York, much less a resident of the United States, at the time of Mamdani’s victory on November 4, his posting history indicates.

“It’s official, I’ve left the United States, I’ve caught the last helicopter of the great American century of humiliation,” Hovagim said in the September 2025 video announcing his move to China.

“I suffered enough under the repressive two-party system. I wanted a place where I felt at home, where I felt safe, where my income allowed me to live with dignity, and where I could feel motivated to get out of bed every day. Somewhere where I felt like things were going in the right direction,” the YouTuber said in the video.

“I know what you’re thinking: ‘He’s glassing China’, ‘he’s [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s number one foot soldier. And the truth is that I want it. That would be really crazy,” Hovagim continued, after a bizarre 13-second montage in Xi’s video, showing Chinese soldiers, tanks and planes marching to rap music.

Eating Uighur kebab in Shanghai with my friend Jim 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/e48xMAmDnx

– Éric Hovagim (@EricHovagim) November 1, 2025

“And I hear what you’re saying, too, Eric, in a few months Comrade Mamdani is going to transform New York City into the socialist caliphate you’ve been praying for. Why would you want to leave now?” » added Hovagim, pointing to a Mamdani campaign poster hanging on his wall.

“I decided to cross the Atlantic because I wanted a better life. The United States is cooked,” Hovagim wrote in the video’s description. “The situation will probably only get worse over the next ten or twenty years as it becomes more violent and flails like the dying empire that it is.”

In the same video, Hovagim claims that “without a doubt” most political violence in the United States is “perpetrated by far-right extremists.” A few minutes earlier, he had referred to the September 10 assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk as “a certain event.”

“But America ended up here because of our culture focused on economic development,” he continued, appearing to refer to American free-market capitalism. “The way we have structured our economy favors short-term individual gains over long-term collective progress. The United States, as a project, has no long-term vision. There is no unity among Americans because the very core of the nation is rotten.”

One-way ticket to Zulag https://t.co/beezSSnEq1 pic.twitter.com/NF6hWLSVtk

– Éric Hovagim (@EricHovagim) November 2, 2025

Hovagim has just under 35,000 subscribers on YouTube, almost 30,000 X subscribers and 15,500 subscribers on Instagram. He currently works as both a full-time YouTube creator and a full-time freelance web developer, according to his LinkedIn profile, which displays his pronouns as “he/him.” He graduated from UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering in 2019, according to his LinkedIn.

Hovagim’s LinkedIn page does not appear to mention his involvement in Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

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