Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:33 pm

I want to scream

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Wait until you see the dance video....
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 23, 2019 1:33 pm

THE BRANDING OF ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ – BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY [ADDENDUM]
Wrong Kind of Green Feb 15, 2019 Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Social Engineering
February 15, 2019

By Cory Morningstar

[ADDENDUM to ACT V: The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The New Green Deal is the Trojan Horse for the Financialization of Nature]

[An investigative series in six acts: The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI]

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Marketing to a key “femographic”, the Green New Deal is both literally and figuratively in Vogue.

The following Teen Vogue makeup tutorial slash Ocasio-Cortez promotional video can only be understood through the lens of today’s incredible infatuation with superficial self-improvement. The makeup tutorial, now a new industry in itself, has been made popular (bordering on obsessive) with teenagers/youth by mainstream pop idols and celebrities, such as Western culture icons Kylie Jenner and music artist Rihanna.

The tutorials further enrich the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry. [Fortune, July 11, 2018: “How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built A $900 Million Fortune In Less Than 3 Years”] Rihanna’s net worth in 2018 was a reported 210 million USD having launched her cosmetic line Fenty Beauty with Kendo in 2017. Kendo is a subsidiary of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury group. The unprecedented covetousness for cosmetics lauded by celebrity, is also a reflection of unobtainable beauty expectations being marketed to young women.

“According to the report, global cosmetic products market was valued at around USD 532 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach approximately USD 863 billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 7% between 2018 and 2024… In the U.S, growing Hispanic population is propelling demand for luxurious personal care brands and will escalate during the forecast years.” — Zion Market Research, June 22, 2018

The following statistic taken from the Ocasio-Cortez campaign team (written by Data for Progress, author of “The Future of the Party” policy report commissioned by the Justice Democrats) reveals how segments of the Ocasio-Cortez Latinx volunteer base could be effectively exploited to further her popularity with the aforementioned constituency:

“In particular, Latinx voters are especially concerned about global warming compared to non-Latinx voters—78 percent to 56 percent—and think it should be a priority of Congress–70 percent compared to 52 percent. 45 Across the board, Latinx voters appear to take the issue and the response to global warming more seriously.” — Data for Progress, A Green New Deal policy report, September, 2018 [p. 24]

Although media is quick to hype Rihanna’s vast combined fortune, few references are made to the fact she is a minority shareholder in her company. Hence, the astronomical profits (the brand grossed $72 million USD in its first month) go to those who own the majority of her company. By marketing black power and feminism, those that garner the vast amount of wealth garnered by Rihanna are Anglo billionaire men at the top of the pyramid.

Further, although Ocasio-Cortez is presented as the celebrity Latina superstar in the political domain, she too, is placed there, only to serve capital belonging to the power elite. With a documentary film that recounts Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise to stardom having just been purchased by Netflix for a cool ten million, we can expect cosmetic endorsements and cosmetic lines in the not-so-distant future. [February 7, 2019: ” Netflix just bought a film about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It might be the most ever paid for a Sundance documentary.”] In this day and age becoming a brand for corporate merchandise is no longer the death of cool – rather, it is the epitome of cool. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that in the near future one’s bid for presidency may have more to do with who has the best makeover tutorials on social media than anything to do with housing, healthcare, education or the environment.

+++

MSN, February 7, 2019: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared her skincare routine on social media. Sit with four young Latinx campaign volunteers from her congressional district in the Bronx and Queens as they try her detailed instructions and talk about AOC’s impact in their lives.” [Teen Vogue]

Video: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Campaign Volunteers Try Her Skincare and Beauty Routine | Teen Vogue [5m:48s]:



[Further reading: Barclays: Gen Z: Step aside Millennials, November 8, 2018]

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02 ... -addendum/

And wtf is this crap about Teen Vogue being some kinda 'leftist' outlet?
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:36 pm

Criticizing the Democratic Party is not “Privileged”, It is the Duty of a Revolutionary
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 07 Apr 2021

Neither AOC nor the rest of the Squad has mounted any significant challenge to the party’s corporate leadership, despite being elected for this exact purpose.

‘Black Americans are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s legitimacy, thereby making it necessary for the DNC to drape its loyalty to corporate power in the language of anti-racism.”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, popularly known as AOC, was interviewed by the Democratic Socialists of America for their online journal Democratic Left this past January. The interview was published two months later and went viral on social media after observers pointed out AOC’s direct attacks on left critics of the Democratic Party. AOC’s disdain for the left was made clear in her answer to the question of whether Biden’s political history and current antipathy to the Bernie Sanders-aligned section of the party ensures that no “progress” will come under his administration. Her response is published in full:
“Well, I think it’s a really privileged critique. We’re gonna have to focus on solidarity with one another, developing our senses for good faith critique and bad faith critique. Because bad faith critique can destroy everything that we have built so swiftly. And we know this because it has in the past, and it’s taken us so many decades to get to this point. We do not have the time or the luxury to entertain bad faith actors in our movement. But also we have to value our solidarity with one another. For anyone who brings that up, we really have to ask ourselves, what is the message that you are sending to your Black and brown and undocumented members of your community, to your friends, when you say nothing has changed? Perhaps not enough has changed. And this is not a semantic argument. Just the other night, we in collective struggle were able to stop the deportations of critical members of our community. And that would not have happened in a Trump administration.”
AOC and the left-leaning Democratic Party members of Congress otherwise known as “the Squad” have come under scrutiny of late for their unwillingness to force a Congressional vote on Medicare for All or a $15 minimum wage. Over this period, the Democratic Party has won slight majorities in both chambers of Congress and succeeded in pushing Joe Biden over the presidential hump presented by Donald Trump last November.

“AOC’s disdain for the left was made clear.”

These conditions would suggest that there is no better time than now for the Democratic Party to push through a left-wing political agenda. Yet the exact opposite is happening. The latest COVID-19 stimulus package did not include a $15 minimum wage clause in large part because Democrats such as Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin voted against it . More troubling is that neither AOC nor the rest of the Squad has mounted any significant challenge to the party’s corporate leadership during a violent global pandemic and economic depression, despite being elected for this exact purpose.

While AOC decries “privileged” critiques of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party has been busy waging class war on all fronts. Contrary to AOC’s argument that undocumented immigrants suffer less under Democrats, the Biden administration has deported more than 100,000 people in his first few months in office . Biden and the Democrats have also bombed Syria , refused to engage in good faith negotiations with Iran , and propped up a brutal neocolonial regime in Haiti while deporting more Haitian immigrants in a matter of weeks than Donald Trump in his full four years in office. The Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network is organizing a Day of Action on April 8th to demand that Joe Biden withdraw fully from the U.S.’s murderous forever war in Afghanistan before the deadline of the U.S.-Taliban agreement passes on May Day.

“Contrary to AOC’s argument that undocumented immigrants suffer less under Democrats, the Biden administration has deported more than 100,000 people in his first few months in office.”

Furthermore, Biden has maintained his opposition to Medicare for All and given health insurance companies a boost by subsidizing COBRA and ACA marketplace plans . Temporary unemployment and one-time stimulus checks have done little to soften the blow for workers navigating a low-wage capitalist economy in a yearlong state of contraction. Worse yet, the Democratic Party has paid lip service to racism in the United States yet has ignored their systemic roots entirely. Mass incarceration, the decimation of Black wealth, and racist police violence are far from priorities under the current administration. One must ask AOC: what message does this sends to Black and brown members of our communities?

AOC’s comments promote the tired trope that the Democratic Party’s mere presence in the White House represents “progress” for the people. This is not a “left” or a “progressive” argument; it is Democratic Party elite propaganda. AOC hints subtly that the victory of “diversity” over the Trump-led GOP this past election cycle has already led to concrete material change for the people. Harm has been reduced. Black and brown communities have tasted victory and anyone who claims otherwise must be “privileged” and operating in “bad faith.”

“Mass incarceration, the decimation of Black wealth, and racist police violence are far from priorities under the current administration.”

Of course, words such as “privilege” and “bad faith” are never defined and thus easily weaponized to legitimize the dominant system of U.S. imperialism. We’ve seen this before. During the Obama administration’s two terms, the U.S.’s corporate machinery invested heavily in the concepts of “diversity” and “inclusion.” Black and brown faces in high places were celebrated non-stop at the expense of pesky topics such as policy and power. Left critics of Obama were “haters” or “racist” and deemed no better than the GOP.

Now, as then, it is critical to highlight just who is and isn’t included in the “solidarity” that AOC speaks of or the “diversity” achieved during the Obama period. Not included are the millions of Syrians, Libyans, and people across the Middle East and North Africa who have been killed or displaced by U.S. wars . Also not included are the 1.4 billion Chinese who are currently surrounded by hundreds of U.S. military installations and hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel. The tens of thousands of mostly Black people languishing in solitary confinement or the dozens of political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal being tortured behind prison walls also don’t make the cut. If they did, AOC and the Democrats would be having an entirely different conversation.

“During the Obama administration Black and brown faces in high places were celebrated non-stop at the expense of pesky topics such as policy and power.”

The duty of a revolutionary is to take any action, including criticism, that advances the cause of transforming U.S. imperialism into its opposite—a socialist system capable of truly meeting the needs of the oppressed and exploited classes. AOC makes clear that the duty of Democratic Party politicians is to preserve the system of imperialism by framing their substance-free crusade against the GOP as genuine “resistance” or “solidarity.” Unlike the GOP, the DNC is not bound to the ideological limitations imposed upon corporate rule by overt white supremacy. Democratic Party politicians must respond to an increasingly youthful base that finds itself living in worse economic conditions than prior generations. Black Americans are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s legitimacy, thereby making it necessary for the DNC to drape its loyalty to corporate power in the language of anti-racism.

Less than two weeks after her Democratic Left interview went viral, AOC took to social media and explained in more detail her thoughts on immigration policy. According to AOC, the “border crisis” is really an “imperialism crisis,” a “climate crisis,” and a “carceral crisis.” She goes on to directly name the U.S.’s “interventionist history” as a source of destabilization and laments having raised these points “in this term” and during “this president.”

‘AOC makes clear that the duty of Democratic Party politicians is to preserve the system of imperialism by framing their substance-free crusade against the GOP as genuine “resistance” or “solidarity.”

The “woke” politics of the Democratic Party render words meaningless since they are never tied to concrete action which places the interests of workers and oppressed people at the forefront of politics. Imperialism can be named for likes and views on social media but criticism of Biden’s direct role in placing starvation sanctions on Venezuela and Syria or leading disastrous interventions in Honduras (2009) or Libya (2011) is akin to operating in “bad faith.” We are told to express solidarity with undocumented immigrants by praising Biden’s leadership as progressive while ignoring the fact that thousands are currently incarcerated in deplorable conditions in just one “detention center” in Texas.

AOC and the “Squad” offer an important lesson to aspiring revolutionaries, socialists, and militants on the left. It is a lesson that was never fully learned during Obama’s immensely destructive tenure as president. That is, the Democratic Party exists not to nurture and develop social movements but rather to send them to their early grave. In this period of intense crisis, a potentially more formidable foe is emerging onto the political scene—one that openly espouses “socialism” yet remains fully committed to a thoroughly capitalist and imperialist Democratic Party anyway. If you criticize this foe, then you may end up being labeled “privileged” or a “bad faith actor” in the movement.

Still, the criticism must go on. Criticism of the Democratic Party is the bare minimum duty of a revolutionary. Anything less is a betrayal of the people, intentional or not.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/criti ... olutionary
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:46 pm

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AOC Panders to Israel Lobby
April 13, 2021
By Ali Abunimah – Apr 9, 2021

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset primary victory in June 2018, it came as a breath of fresh air for supporters of Palestinian rights.

The month before she unseated a senior member of the Democratic Party, she had expressed her solidarity with unarmed Palestinians being gunned down by Israeli snipers as they protested in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“This is a massacre,” she tweeted on the day Israeli soldiers killed some 60 Palestinians. “I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such.”

“No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification,” she asserted. “Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”

What a difference three years and two elections to Congress make.On 1 April, Ocasio-Cortez did an online event with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, her first meeting with the Israel lobby group.

The event might have gone unnoticed, but for a tweet on Wednesday from left-wing activist and journalist Ryan Wentz, gently criticizing her “incredibly underwhelming” response to a question about “peace both between Israelis and Palestinians.”

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1379879392642408448[/youtube]

Ocasio-Cortez’s vacuous word salad of an answer – which completely failed to address Israel’s violence against Palestinians or call for accountability – went viral, with thousands of responses and retweets mocking it.



In a deeply disturbing development, Wentz was tracked down at his Los Angeles home on Thursday by California state police after he posted the video. They were acting at the behest of the US Capitol Police.

Wentz told the publication The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s office has denied reporting Wentz’s tweet to the Capitol Police, though the episode is raising alarms about increasing police-state style censorship of US online discourse. Ocasio-Cortez has been in the forefront of calls for online speech-policing and censorship.

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AOC praises Israel

While the segment of Ocasio-Cortez’s comments shared by Wentz attracted widespread derision, there are other troubling parts of her discussion with JCRC-NY that have escaped attention.

JCRC-NY CEO Michael S. Miller used the interview with Ocasio-Cortez to advance the claim that “Israel is a leader in environmental sustainability, especially in water conservation, reforesting and solar power.”

Miller spoke about seeing an Israeli aid project in Ocasio-Cortez’s ancestral homeland Puerto Rico, a country she calls “colonized” by the United States and whose self-determination she champions.

“Might there be components of the Green New Deal in New York or around the world where Israeli ecological expertise could be employed to upscale real solutions and address the climate crisis?” Miller asked the Congress member.


Ocasio-Cortez, the author of the Green New Deal, ought to have seized this opportunity to point out the striking parallelsbetween Puerto Rico’s colonization by the United States and Palestine’s US-backed colonization by Israel.

She could also have denounced Israel’s greenwashing propaganda, which aims to falsely paint it as an exemplary environmental steward, often as a cover for ethnic cleansing and theft of even more Palestinian land.

Instead, she answered, “Absolutely,” before going on to praise “Israel’s technology around wastewater circulation.”

Those technological marvels will come as news to two million Palestinians caged by Israel in Gaza, where due to Israel’s wars and blockade, 97 percent of water is undrinkable and conditions are like living in a septic tank.

While Ocasio-Cortez’s dismal performance during the JCRC-NY event sparked widespread ridicule, a basic question is why a self-proclaimed champion of human rights and racial justice agreed to participate at all.


Justifying Gaza massacre
JCRC-NY is an Israel lobby group whose activities include organizing junkets to Israel for politicians and community leaders.

It uses these junkets to build support and influence to advance its agenda, which includes justifying Israel’s brutal violence against Palestinians.

It disseminates propaganda attacking the Palestine solidarity movement, including recommendations from Israel’s Reut Institute think tank on how to smear and sabotage the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

In Ocasio-Cortez’s defense, she appears never actually to have endorsed the BDS movement, unlike her fellow Squad members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

JCRC-NY promotes a host of far-right anti-Palestinian organizations, including CAMERA, HonestReporting, Palestinian Media Watch and Our Soldiers Speak, a propaganda organization for the Israeli military.

It also promotes the Israel on Campus Coalition, a group shown to collude secretly with the Israeli government to surveil and smear American college students and educators who organize in support of Palestinian rights.

The CEO of JCRC-NY – the same Michael S. Miller who interviewed Ocasio-Cortez – has attacked the New York chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a “superstar” member.

According to Miller, the group was anti-Semitic because it asked candidates seeking its endorsement to pledge not to go on the kind of propaganda junkets to Israel that lobby groups like JCRC-NY organize.

(Notably, even NYC-DSA had to distance itself from Ocasio-Cortez following her 2018 endorsement of now fullydiscredited New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.)

The depravity of JCRC-NY’s anti-Palestinian racism can be gauged by an action alert it issued in support of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza.

During 51 days of merciless bombardment, Israel killed more than 2,200 Palestinians including 550 children – an average of 11 children per day.

Entire families were obliterated in their homes.

The lobby group’s efforts to justify the massacre in real-time included hosting briefings with senior Israeli military officers and officials.

“Not the expert”

Ocasio-Cortez’s path into the arms of the JCRC-NY – and who knows which Israel lobby group might be next – has been discernible from the start, even if it has had a few detours on the way.

Within weeks of her stunning June 2018 primary win, she already showed signs of buckling under pro-Israel pressure.

When challenged on PBS about her description of Israel’s mass killings of unarmed Palestinians as a “massacre,” she replied defensively: “Well, I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist. I am a proponent of the two-state solution.”

That represented a quick reversion to accepted Democratic Party orthodoxy. She also said apologetically that she was “not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.”

She was given the chance to address the stumble less than two weeks later in an interview with outlet Mic, but Ocasio-Cortez dodged the question and did not mention Palestine at all.

Ocasio-Cortez appears to have taken the lesson to heart: Since her May 2018 “massacre” tweet, she has rarely tweeted to her 12 million followers about Palestinians or about Israel’s abuses at all.

She never again tweeted about Gaza.

Last year, Ocasio-Cortez delivered another shock to supporters of Palestinian rights, when she agreed to participate in an Israel lobby event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister responsible for decades of expulsions and war crimes against Palestinians.

Amid strong criticism from Palestinians and supporters, Ocasio-Cortez backed out of the Rabin event.

But in hindsight, given her recent embrace of JCRC-NY, it appears her initial acceptance of the Rabin event was not a hapless mistake, but a calculated effort to curry favor with the Israel lobby.

True, Ocasio-Cortez has still occasionally taken positions that go beyond those of mainstream Democrats.

Last summer, she angered the lobby group AIPAC by spearheading a congressional letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that called for putting conditions on US funding for Israel if it proceeded with formal annexation of land in the occupied West Bank.

This letter appears to be the only item on her official website that refers to Palestinians.

And while she has not endorsed BDS, Ocasio-Cortez did co-sponsor a 2019 resolution introduced by Ilhan Omar supporting the right to engage in boycotts as a matter of principle – though that resolution did not explicitly mention Israel.

Path to the center

Ocasio-Cortez’s embrace of an Israel lobby group like JCRC-NY is of a piece with her widely noted shift towards the center of the Democratic Party.

The backlash over her response to the question on Palestinians recalls the outpouring of disgust earlier this month when she deflected criticism from the Biden administration’s continuation of cruel Trump-era policies of detaining migrant and refugee children at the US-Mexico border.

Under Trump, she had called the detention practices “concentration camps” – language that has now disappeared from her vocabulary.


It also follows the backlash in December over the refusal by Ocasio-Cortez and every other member of her allegedly progressive Squad to withhold their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to force a vote on Medicare for All.

At the time, Ocasio-Cortez justified falling into line behind Pelosi on the basis that it would preserve progressives’ “leverage” to win a $15 minimum wage.

But then when Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad had the opportunity to hold up the Biden administration’s must-pass COVID-19 relief package unless it included the overwhelmingly popular minimum wage hike, they refused to do that too.

During an interview with DSA last month, Ocasio-Cortez slammed leftists skeptical that progressive policy could come out of the Biden administration as espousing “a really privileged critique” and suggested they were “bad-faith actors.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s shift to the right, including her embrace of the Israel lobby and echoing of its propaganda, could be linkedto reports that she may mount a primary challenge against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Or it may be motivated by the mundane and routine personal interests of almost every politician who seeks to stay in office and advance through the ranks of their party.

None of that would make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarkable, but no one should mistake her for a courageous champion of human rights, especially those of Palestinians.

Featured image: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a rally for Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, in Venice Beach, California, December 2019. (NSPA & ACP)

(The Electronic Intifada)

https://orinocotribune.com/aoc-panders-to-israel-lobby/

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:39 pm

Misleadership in the Bronx: AOC, the Fraud Squad, Military Recruiters and U.S. Imperialism
Richie Merino, Danny Shaw 12 Apr 2023

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Bronx residents protest military recruitment event sponsored by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Photo: Twitter @brx_greens)

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the best known of the so-called progressives. Her leftist image is a pose which intentionally creates political confusion.

On Monday March 20th 2023, U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Adriano Espaillat co-hosted a “Student Services Fair” at Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and the Arts in the Bronx. As the official flier indicates, there was a large military presence . Alarmed that the two U.S. politicians, especially one who is a self-described “democratic socialist” and affiliate of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), were hosting this career fair, the Bronx Anti-War Coalition organized a counter-recruitment protest.

‘The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today’

The official flier for the event listed seven representatives that would headline the fair. Six of them represented branches of the military. Protestors observed dozens of uniformed military personnel walk into the fair through the main entrance, while AOC snuck in and out through back doors. She refused to address her constituents’ questions and instead sent a U.S. Marine colonel outside to address us. The military officer bragged about his time training Saudi troops and the countries he and his government have invaded.

The “duck test” is a form of abductive reasoning, usually expressed as "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck." The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be. This same reasoning can be applied here to deduce that this “student services fair” was in fact a military recruitment fair. Yet somehow, AOC continues to deny that the military played a major role at this event.

Dr. Martin Luther King was crystal clear on this question in 1967 , exactly a year before the U.S government assassinated him: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” AOC herself has been on record speaking out against predatory military recruitment tactics targeting our youth. Why then did she decide to host a fair giving these predators access to disenfranchised high school students? The Bronx Anti-War Coalition understands that anytime and anywhere we see military enlistment officers or representatives of the U.S. service academies near our youth, we must confront them and chase them out of our communities.

After her security detail briskly whisked her through a backdoor clear of our protest, she decided to respond to us via instagram . Like other U.S. politicians who practice duplicity, she has a true gift for evasion. She smeared and lied about us in a nine minutes and thirty second video while doubling down on why she has a “responsibility” to inform Bronx youth about U.S. military enlistment “opportunities.” Did it not occur to AOC and her inner-circle to denounce the genocidaires in her monologue? Too busy victimizing herself, at no point did the Congresswoman address the reasons we were outside protesting: 1) to defend the multinational, working-class youth being used as cannon fodder to fight imperialist wars, 2) to stand for the Black, Indigenous and Latinx soldiers murdered on U.S. military bases, such as Abdul Latifu, Vanessa Guillén, Elder Fernandes, and Ana Fernanda Basaldua Ruiz, among hundreds of others, and 3) to give voice to the millions of victims in the Global South targeted and murdered by U.S. sanctions, drone attacks and unprovoked invasions.

This article explores why the anti-war movement has a responsibility to continue to confront AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Bernie Sanders and any faux leftist professional politician and sheepdog who go along with the bipartisan pro-imperialist and pro-war status quo.

Military Recruiters not Welcome at Renaissance High School[1]

A central part of AOC’s attack on our rally was that we were “outside agitators” who traveled from far away because we heard false rumors about her.

The reality is that the Bronx Antiwar Coalition is comprised of parents, teachers, students, activists, and community organizers from the Bronx and many are AOC’s constituents. Richie is a Special Education teacher at a public high school in the Bronx. Danny knows Renaissance High School well because it is part of the Lehman campus where he coached basketball for 3 years. Danny’s son Ernesto teaches fashion and modeling there for an afterschool program. We are not outsiders nor a threat to our children, as Ocasio-Cortez alleged ; the politicians rubbing elbows with the NYPD and U.S. military recruiters are the true predators.

Hearing her gaslight us like a typical U.S. politician, we felt it was more important to expose this clever politician who provides a “leftist” façade for the Democratic Party. She is this generation’s Obama , another example of POC misleadership promoted by corporate media and treated like celebrities, used to give the same white supremacist, capitalist system a more diverse and modern look. While this comparison is not perfect, both politicians are very popular figures who have invited millions of the most dispossessed and disenfranchised to reinvest their hopes into an undemocratic and broken system.

It is important to move beyond liberal identity politics (i.e. one based on “representation” and “being seen” promoted by corporate “DEI” initiatives) and judge AOC and other so-called “progressives” on their actual voting record on vital issues for principled anti-imperialists. The “democratic socialists” in Congress and their affiliate association, the DSA,[2] play a specific role in muddying the waters on what socialism is and what it means to be a socialist. They portray themselves as “socialists” but lack theoretical grounding in Marxism-Leninism, serving the establishment by smearing anti-war demands, like “abolish NATO” and “lift the sanctions,” as “pro-Putin. ” We must study how truly transformative, socialist revolutions were successfully organized and led by the most oppressed in society. Study shows us that we cannot wait for a U.S. politician to serve the interests of the people, because the people’s interests are diametrically opposed to the careerist aspirations of politicians like AOC. Dr. Ernesto Che Guevara taught us that only an independent, mass movement of poor and working class people can take down the class enemy when he said, “I am not a liberator. The people liberate themselves.” Anti-colonial and revolutionary movements succeeded in 1917, 1949, 1979 and beyond. What other alternative to capitalism and white supremacy can boast of such a historical record?

AOC’s Record on U.S. Foreign Policy: The Truth is Always Concrete

True socialists are asking themselves: Why would the “progressive” Congresswoman from the Bronx vote for a $40 billion-dollar military aid package , among dozens of others, for a murderous proxy war against Russia with Ukrainian workers trapped in the middle? At this juncture of the internationalized proxy war, the U.S. government and NATO have undemocratically pumped over $150 billion of our money into this war. When was the last time she advocated for the nearly $1 Trillion Pentagon budget to be invested in our communities? Alongside her Republican colleagues in Congress, AOC proudly adorned the Ukrainian flag during Biden’s State of the Union Address. This was a symbolic moment because Republicans and Democrats claim to be at each other's throats but in actuality subscribe to the same unwavering american-dreaming and express the same loyalty to American Exceptionalism. Why hasn’t AOC ever mentioned the 2014 U.S.-backed fascist coup that installed a U.S. imperialist puppet in Kiev? What is Russia supposed to do as NATO – the U.S. and Europe’s attack dog – encircles them and attempts to revert them to the humiliating Yeltsin-years as a neocolon y of the West? The U.S. and NATO sabotaged the Minsk I and II Accords which laid out a path towards peace in the region. AOC voted “Yes ” in favor of the highly propagandistic April 2022 “Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa.” Is Russia to blame for political instability and underdevelopment in Africa? How many African nations are colonies and vassal states of Russia? Mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism constantly warn of the Chinese and Russian threat as they continue to be the number one labor exploiter, natural resource thief, military occupier and murderer in the world.

After the 2019 coup in Bolivia, the Congresswoman tweeted : “What’s happening right now in Bolivia isn’t democracy, it’s a coup. The people of Bolivia deserve free, fair and peaceful elections – not violent seizures of power.” That was correct, but then she backtracked, expressing, “The people of Bolivia deserve free, fair, and peaceful elections,” after Evo Morales had just won a democratic election. She then met with coup supporters.

AOC has never raised her voice against the CIA-orchestrated hybrid dirty war against Syria. Syria and Libya, similar to El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980’s, have been subjected to the most far-reaching U.S., Saudi and Gulf Kingdom intelligence efforts to overthrow regimes with interests opposed to the Pentagon. She and the rest of the Fraud Squad just voted to maintain imperial sanctions on Syria, even after well over 50,000 people died in the 7.8 magnitude, February 6th earthquake.

AOC has failed to speak out in defense of Venezuela’s world-inspiring Bolivarian Revolution? Why hasn’t she vocally opposed the deadly sanctions on the 30 million people of this nation? When asked who was the true leader of Venezuela, AOC said she "deferred to party leadership" in order to avoid taking a stance . This was a de facto endorsement of U.S. puppet Juan Guaido. She even participated in a standing ovation for the U.S.’ poster boy for regime change during Trump’s 2020 State of the Union.

How could a “socialist'' promote further U.S. aggression against China and support CIA-backed “independence movements'' in Hong Kong , Taiwan and Tibet ? Ted Cruz authored yet another declaration of war against China and guess who signed it ? AOC stood shoulder to shoulder with every imperialist U.S. congress member when she voted in favor of the anti-China and anti-development bill, “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act."

Has she stood up for Palestine? No. Did she defend Ilhan Omar during the AIPAC-Israeli lobby debate when Omar was under the gun by Zionist propagandists? No . Did she cave before “If Not Now,” a well-funded J-Street lobby? Yes. She “welcomed [Omar’s] apology” when Zionism owes millions of Palestinians much more than apologies, they owe them reparations and their land back. Where were the demands for an end to the Zionist’s apartheid state? AOC largely deferred to Pelosi, who she called “Mama Bear ”, on important international issues .

The Knife that has yet to Be Removed: AOC within U.S. Politics

Malcolm X succinctly explained the role of liberals in the U.S.: “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”

“The Squad” plays a necessary role in this era of woke capitalism and intersectional imperialism . They work to co-opt left movement language and shore up support for the establishment from the most oppressed layers of society, Black, Latino, Indigenous and poor white youth. The misdirection, illusions and confusion they cause are harmful to the anti-imperialist movement. The dictatorship of capital attempts to hide behind the youthfulness, perceived dynamism and non-traditional outsider aesthetics of “the squad.” The corporate media paints them as the ultimate “rags to riches” examples of the "American Dream" and represent the utopian notion that any Black, Arab or Latin@ child can become president of this country. No socialist would want to join much less rule over the sickest system the world has ever known. Puerto Rican political prisoner and mentor Rafael Cancel Miranda wrote: “Not even the devil himself could dream of an empire as diabolical as this yankee one.”

The Republicans, no strangers to performance politics themselves, characterize AOC and her ilk as the “far left,” focusing on her supposed socialist bonafides. When the cameras are rolling, AOC pretends to stand up to the white supremacists and misogynists but only when they disrespect her and her colleagues and only if they are Republican. But why won’t she stand up for the masses of oppressed nationalities and against U.S. imperialism and sanctions? Does her theatrical advocacy for crumbs truly represent a threat to the U.S. ruling class? Overall, Marx’s words from 1859, when he was engaged in similar debates with the liberals of his time continue to ring true, “The liberal outcry that follows an age of reaction is all the louder the greater the cowardice displayed by liberals in putting up with the reaction for years on end without protest.” While it's easy and fashionable to critique right-wing Republicans, AOC has been virtually silent on the role of Biden and the Democrats. Lacking a class-conscious program to improve the lives of workers in the U.S, the Democrats laid the foundation for a fascist Trump victory in 2016. Having learned nothing from being humiliatingly defeated by Trump once, are they going to make the same mistakes again, opening the road to another Trump victory in 2024?

AOC’s stance on the NYPD has been soft. She did “community outreach ” with the NYPD who thanked her for “bringing community and police together.” Following the example of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the original Rainbow Coalition, we need to mobilize our own people, alongside social workers and educators, to do this important community work. The NYPD is the domestic arm of the U.S. military in NYC, harassing, humiliating, brutalizing and murdering oppressed communities on a daily basis. The 1033 program gifts military grade weapons to local police departments, while military veterans have preferential hiring. Violence committed by the U.S. military against oppressed nationalities abroad is replicated domestically through local police departments.

Consistent with AOC’s histrionics, liberal apologists for AOC’s record have accused leftist critics of carrying out a “Cointelpro 2.0” against her. But doing ads for vogue , posing for the cover of Rolling Stone and Time magazine, and wearing a multi-thousand dollar evening gown with a tepid message to “Tax the Rich,” is performative. AOC is not a revolutionary. There is speculation she has presidential ambitions . What concrete demands and movements has she truly fought for and defended?

Sheepdogging Yet Again: No Liberal Illusions

Many of AOC’s cheerleaders celebrate that she has inspired a generation . Inspired them to do what exactly? To rise up against an oppressive capitalist system and fight imperialism? No. She’s inspired youth to engage in a certain type of celebrity-worship which gives the same exploitative system a polished facelift.

Intersectional imperialism is still imperialism. Women, the LGBTQ+ community and people of color rising up in the ranks of the U.S. government, the NYPD, the military and the CIA is not progress; it only further buttresses a system deadset against combating revolutionary organization. Largely ignoring meetings with working-class organizers in the Bronx, AOC prioritizes meetings with celebrities and now military recruiters.

As socialists and anti-imperialists, our orientation is rooted not in what bigots say in the beltway or gusanos in Miami. Our struggle goes way beyond exposing AOC and the Fraud Squad. Dead Prez’s song “Politricks ” remains instructive: “Even if Obama wins, Uncle Sam ain’t my friend.”

Can anyone sincerely argue that AOC is our comrade? Her track record shows she is not an ally of the billions of workers and fighters around the world struggling against the antiquated U.S. unipolar model of hegemonic world domination, and fighting against the billionaires and fascists at home. She has proven herself to be just another bourgeois politician: a top sheepdog, high-level Democratic Party operative, careerist, and sell-out of this generation. Despite what she proclaims, actions speak louder than tweets.

[1] Renaissance High School for Musical Theater, Lehman High School, Pelham Lab High School, Schuylerville Prep, Bronx River High School, and Westchester Square Academy are the 6 schools that make up Lehman High School Campus.

[2] Some leadership within the DSA’s International Committee has done solid work the past few years to undo the horrible pro-imperialist record of this organization.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/misle ... mperialism

Damn straight: Know them by their acts.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 11, 2023 5:58 pm


Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald
AOC -- who ran her 2018 primary campaign based on a vow to wage war against the Democratic Party DC establishment -- announces her support for Joe Biden's re-election in the Democratic Party primary, on the day he announced cluster bombs for Ukraine✊:
Image
thehill.com
Ocasio-Cortez backs Biden for reelection
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of the most vocal progressives on Capitol Hill, has backed President Biden’s reelection bid. Ocasio-Cortez told the “Pod Save America” podcas…
It's like we always knew, AOC is garbage.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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