• Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            To be nuanced on the question of AOC in Niger, while I suppose it’s not impossible that a 19(?) year old AOC was a CIA agent that helped carry out a coup, I think it’s much more likely that she played a peripheral role, simply working for neoliberal NGOs. She seemed to be part of some kind of Gates-Foundation style project to lower the birth rate and encourage contraceptive use. Not to suggest that NGOs aren’t often CIA fronts with a decidedly reactionary role in geopolitics, just that her imperialist role in Niger was more passive than active.

            • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I think these types of program (e.g. USAID) are a means to select for idealistic youths who are amenable to toeing the State Department lines and cooperate with intelligence agencies, and to induct them into a broader political-intelligence network.

              In other words, a grooming process for future ghouls.

            • while I suppose it’s not impossible that a 19(?) year old AOC was a CIA agent

              I think this is a really salient point, not just in reference to the NGO work but in terms of her being a turncoat in general. I think there’s a natural tendency to reframe how we look at someone’s past when we grow disillusioned with someone because of their actions, but I don’t think AOC set out to get elected with the express goal of misdirecting revolutionary sentiment into support for the future Biden Administration.

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      hyper individualist liberal ideology in a nutshell. It’s like Jack Nicholson’s character says at the beginning of The Departed “I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.”

      Nobody gets to choose that! It’s wishful thinking.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      This is why a lot of communists are very clear that the point of getting elected isn’t to succeed in reforms (thought that is nice) it’s to get inside the glass house so you can commence rock throwing.

    • sicklemode [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Literally all you are doing by getting into “the system” is switching classes. It’s no big mystery why these so-called “progressives” that hold seats in the halls of bourgeois power become more revisionist and reactionary over time.

      Good luck finding a politician that has resisted this trend. There aren’t many, if any at all. I would love to retract this statement by being proven wrong, though.

    • smiley [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I just posted a song in c/music where the hook is “you can’t change the system from within, the system changes you” lol

      Weird coincidence coming here and reading this

    • I’ve seen it brought up before that in the past when the US had a stronger socialist movement, it had people who ran and were elected to US Congress but then used their position subversively, and their terms were generally short-lived in the process. How I wish this was AOC – she seemed to abandon that once Trump was out of office.

  • cynesthesia [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Even the most independent members of the American government still regularly support imperialism in their votes. Bernard as well

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Not even apologist; straight up capitalist. People forget, in addition to her USAID adventures in Niger, she had a book publishing startup funded by two Israeli venture capitalists, while also working as a strategist at GAGEis Inc. Just bartender stuff. think-about-it

      • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I remember reading that she only worked for 6 months as a bartender and was actually a co-founder of a startup incubator, but leaned heavily into the bartender image to sell her electoral platform as working class-centric. Her entire career and image are one that is very well manufactured, it seems.

    • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Under Biden, more asylum seekers are being held in private detention centers than under Trump.

      and her response might as well have been written by Nancy Pelosi. god she fucking sucks

      the full question and answer

      Speaking of our closest neighbors, I want to talk about immigration. Under Biden, more asylum seekers are being held in private detention centers than under Trump. Families are still being separated. The Biden administration kept Trump-era policies that sped up deportations and made it harder for legitimate claimants to come to the U.S. So, what grade do you give the administration on immigration?

      Immigration is arguably this administration’s weakest issue. This is one area where our policy is dictated by politics, arguably more so than almost any other. There are very clear recommendations and suggestions that we have made to the administration to provide relief on this issue, and it’s my belief that some of the hesitation around this has to do with a fear around just being seen as approving or providing permission structures, or really just the Republican narratives that have surrounded immigration.

      We also need to examine the root causes of this migration and address that this problem doesn’t start at our border, but it starts with our foreign policy.

  • UltraGreen [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    In my younger days, I thought she was this beacon of hope. I hadn’t yet realized how fucking right wing, always dancing with fascism, and imperialist the US was.

    If only she was as cool at 16 year me thought she was at the time :(

  • NewAcctWhoDis [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    She said left-wing criticisms are “because we haven’t really had a political presence like this in the United States before” and her critics are “bewildered” by the prospect of being in power.

    I hate her so much.

  • ChapoKrautHaus [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    While Faust, who through a lifetime of study had mastered vast fields of knowledge, bargained his soul in exchange for unlimited worldly pleasure, Ocasio-Cortez was content with a minor promotion. The story of Faust is the stuff of the greatest human tragedy; that of AOC is one of the lowest farce.

    Some good dunking going on in that article, I like

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    #FrauDSquAd #AOCIA

    DSA needs to dump the Dems post hate with non of this LIB maybe-later-honey maybe-later-kiddo flattened-bernie most important election in our lifetime half measures crap. It inly serves to channel legit grivances back into DNC loyalists.

    The DNC Does Not Care. people need to start demanding a 3rd party. Be it the Greens or Socialist Alternative or whatnot. It doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. It just needs to be ennough demand the sysstem can no longer manipulate it out of main stream’s attention.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    To be charitable the only defensible point to be made for AOC with that interview is that it was with the New York Times. It’s not exactly an audience that wants to hear outside the party line to begin with.