Via Jerry Dunleavy, here’s the transcript of what she says in the clip below, which makes the rhetorical sleight of hand clearer. I can’t tell if she’s deliberately deflecting on behalf of the Farrakhan apologists at the top of the Women’s March or if she’s having some sort of leftist Pavlovian response in which someone mentions bigotry to her and she immediately begins salivating about Trump.
A key part of what makes AOC such a sensation on the left, I think, is that there’s no lip service paid in her daily shtick to canards like “this country needs two vibrant well-functioning parties.” She might concede that the new Trumpy Republicanism is worse than Reagan Republicanism but ultimately Ocasio-Cortez seems to believe that the right is deplorable, root and branch. When that’s your worldview, of course a question about left-wing anti-semitism will be redirected into an answer about right-wing anti-semitism. It’s almost beside the point to her, I assume, whether the leaders of the Women’s March are anti-semitic. The Women’s March is leftist in orientation; leftism is the solution to America’s problems; by advancing leftism the March is thus working towards a future in which literally everything will be better. So, in a way, Tamika Mallory is kinda sorta working to end anti-semitism even as she’s muttering on Twitter about how her leader has “the same enemies as Jesus.”
If you’re wondering, “So at what point would AOC begin to suspect that a woke cause maybe isn’t as woke as it seems given some of the beliefs of its founders?”, good question. We’ll see over time. The short answer for now is “A point pretty far beyond where the DNC is willing to draw the line.”
Elsewhere, reporter Noga Tarnopolsky noticed that another co-founder of the March, Linda Sarsour, decided to address the controversy yesterday on Facebook — by highlighting a piece accusing Jews of “race and class bias” for being critical of Farrakhan sympathizers, of course:
Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t taken any “bold stances” yet on Israel and the Palestinians (I think?) but it’s unimaginable that someone so orthodox in all of her other left-wing opinions would break from progressives on an issue that highly charged. When she does, Pelosi’s going to have a major headache trying to solve the problem that bedeviled establishment Republicans during the tea-party era with populist heroes like Sarah Palin, namely, how to broadcast the party’s message nationally when the rival broadcast from populists seems to resonate much more with your own base. Dems in Congress have done an amazing job for many years ignoring their base’s hostility to Israel. That era is coming to an end.
WATCH: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addresses question about those with concerns about anti-Semitism within the Women's March groups. https://t.co/qxhHH5CLXR pic.twitter.com/0B90LAZ186
— The Hill (@thehill) January 19, 2019
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