How AOC and DSA Should Talk About Defunding the Police
And the never-ending AOC Derangement Syndrome Pandemic
CONTENT WARNING ‼️ Much of this article is about Tweets. It’s about the media’s obsession with DSA members’ old Tweets, DSA members’ attempts to move past old Tweets, and the many Tweets that were Tweeted when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned a Tweet that discussed moving past old Tweets. If you don’t care about Tweets, or the AOC Derangement Syndrome that spreads from Twitter, or you just don’t want to read another Substacker’s takes about Tweets, you can skip to the part outlining a practical path to prison and police abolitionism by clicking here. I wouldn’t blame you.
Last Sunday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC’s This Week. As tends to happen whenever the New York congresswoman appears on a screen, everyone lost their goddamn minds. Something about this woman makes people from across the political spectrum throw context, rationality, listening skills, and the most fundamental skills of human interaction out the window. You either must believe she’s the next Martin Luther King Jr., or the next Nancy Pelosi who is secretly trying to trick you into sending weapons to Israel. And if you try to hold a position inbetween those, people get furious.
Insanity spiked when AOC was asked about Francesca Hong’s past tweets about “canceling Thanksgiving” and “abolishing prisons and police.” AOC responded by quoting New York councilman Chi Ossé, who laughed off his own absurd tweets by saying “Woke 1 was crazyyy.”
Jonathan Karl: What do you make of those controversial statements? I’m sure you’ve seen the Thanksgiving dust-up. She says she doesn’t still believe that, but the “abolish prisons, abolish police” positions, which have also been taken by a lot of the progressive candidates who’ve won, how do you get around that?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Those are not positions that are supported by... I think a lot of these races, even right now, have a tendency to be nationalized, but these races are ultimately local — all politics are local. My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances for her election.
Jonathan Karl: Yeah, she’s moved away from a lot of it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Right, she’s moved away from it. I have a local city councilman who has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’
Jonathan Karl: ‘Woke one was crazy.’ Okay, that’s interesting. But did the movement go too far with some of those positions? You briefly supported the idea of defunding the police.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Well, I think during that time, especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. We saw some of the highest unemployment rates because of those shutdowns. I think the doors were really open to entertaining any and every policy that might get us to a better place. And I actually think the discussions we had in that time were quite fruitful. I think when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way we talked about bringing crime down back then. I think we all share the goal of having as low a crime rate as possible. During lockdown, of course, the rhetoric of that time isn’t rhetoric we’d use today. And I’m grateful these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to their electorate and what they’re campaigning on in this moment.
Because “Woke 1” is a nonsensical term born from too-online Twitter culture, everyone got very mad at AOC based on their specific definition of “Woke 1,” which was not AOC’s definition of “Woke 1,” because she was quoting this stupid meme born from this stupid reference about Chi Ossé's stupid tweets.
The more reactionary elements of independent media accused AOC of making light of the 2020-era, which they consider “a deeply authoritarian, mob-driven, sinister, coercive, and bloodthirsty" movement that “sought to destroy anyone and everyone who did not immediately submit to and recite all of its new jargon and dictates.” Another conservative podcast host (you’ll notice a trend that the people most mad at AOC speak into microphones for a living) demanded that AOC apologize for her role in driving wokeness, which he called “the worst movement in modern American history,” marked by “mass-looting and rioting” and the “chemical castration of little kids.” In my opinion, the resurgence of fascism and the Republican Party’s attempt to resegregate the country were worse than “Woke 1.” (Which again, isn’t a real thing.) But that’s just me.
AOC was also criticized from the left, but for different reasons. Some commenters accused AOC of making light of the horrendous police murder of Black Americans such as George Floyd, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor. This critique didn’t come close to the absurdity of the reactionary freakout. (By nature, it never will.) But what these critics missed was that AOC wasn’t laughing off the righteous outrage against police brutality, or any of the protestors. I sound like a broken record here, but when Ocasio-Cortez mentioned “Woke 1,” she was referring to a stupid Twitter term that brushed off stupid things leftists said on Twitter, during a conversation about stupid things leftists said on Twitter, when asked about the stupid things Francesca Hong said on Twitter. She was talking about Tweets, because she was asked about Tweets. Then, when the interviewer asked her about policy, she called many of the 2020-era discussions around policing “fruitful” and admitted the rhetoric of the late Trump-1/early Biden years is different from the message socialist candidates are running on.
This was obvious if you watched the interview. But, as is common with sufferers of AOC Derangement Syndrome, many leftists simply imagined AOC laughing at Black Lives Matter protestors, drove themselves into a rage, and raced to the nearest keyboard to make very serious allegations against the congresswoman for things they imagined she said, but never actually said.
