Rep. Ocasio-Cortez appeared on Pod Save America and was asked if she believes Trump supporters are racists. AOC gave a lengthy answer which started with her claim that asking if someone is racist is a trap. Eventually, she settled on the idea that many Trump supporters don’t believe they are racist, but that’s only because they aren’t sufficiently woke.

“I don’t necessarily want to vilify people who vote for Trump but at the same time you also need to you also need to call racism out,” host Jon Favreau said.

“The biggest mistake that we have, and it’s a trap that’s set by the right whether intentionally or unintentionally, is just the frame of asking ‘Is blank racist?'” Ocasio-Cortez replied. She continued, “It’s not about asking whether Trump voters are racist. We need to talk about racism, not racists.”

“Trump relied on a coalition and a core part of that coalition were racists building a coalition with all sorts of other people that could be susceptible to racist views if they were blanketed and layered and made people feel good about it not being a racist thing,” AOC said. She added, “And so there are a lot of people support Trump that genuinely don’t believe that they are racist because we do not talk about or educate people on recognizing racism.

“And because we do not do that it just allows itself to just—we get caught in this debate of is something racist, and then a person uses their defensiveness and they say ‘Well, it’s not racist because I’m not racist and I believe this thing because it’s economic in nature.'”

She starts by saying not all of Trump’s supporters are racist but she ends saying if Trump’s supporters were sufficiently educated (by the woke left) they wouldn’t deny that they are racist by pointing to things like economic factors.

As AOC sees it, anyone who denies being a racist is simply taking a convenient out, i.e. making an excuse. Because the only correct answer is that racism is responsible for everything Trump supporters believe.

The comparison here isn’t to other political views but to religious ones. Racism is the intersectional equivalent of original sin. Everyone is guilty and if they deny it that just proves they are far from salvation. The solution is the Great Awokening, i.e. people are spontaneously overcome with the conviction of their own sin and make a confession.

In fact, earlier in this clip, AOC specifically says that white people are the demographic who need to get woke: “It’s going to take a lot of white people. We need white people right now to do the work…It’s white people talking to other white people about race. And that I think is a lot of what we’re going to need.”

I don’t think accusations of racism leveled at millions of people this casually really deserve much of a response. And, let’s face it, the whole game AOC is playing renders any response pointless. As she’s already said, anyone who denies it simply hasn’t been educated enough. And therein lies what I believe is the real reason AOC and others who adopt this viewpoint have done so: They see themselves as the teachers, which necessarily puts them in charge. If you follow AOC on Twitter you may have noticed that she only has two modes: Accusing and teaching. In fact, her social media motto seems to always be teaching. She is never the learner and that’s true even when she clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

You see the same dynamic with the students at Evergreen State College where a bunch of woke 19 and 20-year-olds were confident they should be educating the entire faculty. It’s a viewpoint that appeals to a lot of people who want to be in charge of what everyone does (see the Green New Deal) without having to do much or know much about anything in particular.