Being a communist is bad, and so is being a moron. But not all communists are morons—Leon Trotsky was very bookish. And not all morons are communists. When the two converge, you get the representative from New York.
Last week, our great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, gave an excellent speech at the Munich Security Conference. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–Oberlin College) was also there, making her debut on the world stage. Now, Rubio would have sounded smart in a vacuum, but when you compare him with AOC’s speech later that day, all you want is to get them on a debate stage together with some popcorn.
She criticized the “rules-based order”:
It was a rules-based order, sometimes. The issue that lies before us is that, in a so-called rules-based order, the rules for whom? Because for all too long, the rules only applied to the United States, Europe, its allies, and we carved out exceptions for the global south.
Her criticism was that America did not uphold human rights and democracy for the “global south.” (I will come to this term later.) She claims that despite the United States pushing the Brits to grant India independence, worked to end colonialism in Africa (the last country to decolonize was Namibia, which Ronald Reagan negotiated, thus ending colonialism in Africa); saved millions of lives in Africa through PEPFAR, and democratized Latin America, from Chile to El Salvador. But I do not expect AOC to know these things. Her political knowledge comes from TikTok.
I also do not expect her to know the rules of the international order: that countries do not get to invade each other and forcibly annex territory (which we have upheld throughout the world), do not get to disrupt maritime trade, do not get to develop weapons of mass destruction, and must adhere to the trade agreements they make. And we have upheld these rules everywhere. Human rights and democracy are great, but they are not a part of the rules-based order.
Newsflash: AOC speaks of what she doesn’t know.
Taiwan is the most imminent potential flashpoint with China, America’s most important adversary. You would think that she had spent time considering this. Asked if the United States should commit troops to defend Taiwan, she responded:
You know, I think that, eh, this is, such a, eh, I—I think that, this is a, this is of course a very long-standing policy of the United States, and what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and global positions to avoid any such confrontations and for that question to even arise.
Aside from the torturous immediate reaction of “eh, I have not thought about this one,” she was asked if the United States would commit troops to defend Taiwan, and she responded that “this is, of course, a long-standing policy of the United States.” Which is not true! The policy of the United States is “strategic ambiguity,” which means that America will not reveal its policy toward Taiwan’s defense. But the Taiwan Relations Act of 1980 requires the United States to at least supply Taiwan with arms to defend itself.
Which is all she needed to say—and something anyone else would have said. Also on the panel was U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Withaker, who said exactly that: “That would be the president’s prerogative, how to deploy our military.”
But AOC was not done humiliating herself, so she went on to give a second talk at the Technical University of Berlin. She still said stupid things, but she also reminded everyone that she is a communist. There, she said:
Replace fascism with class-based solidarity. This is both ignorant and Marxist. It is Marxist because, when someone wants to say they are a Marxist without using the word nowadays, they talk about class-based solidarity. And for good reason. Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world, unite!”
It is also ignorant. During the talk, AOC warned that the economic elite is taking the lion’s share of economic growth for themselves and “leaving crumbs for the working class.” The right-wing populists, who are fascists, focus on culture. To fend off fascism, AOC advised for social welfare programs, higher wages, and going after the economic elite.
AOC has read the Communist Manifesto. Next, she should get a copy of the Fascist Manifesto, written by Benito Mussolini, who endorsed all of these before AOC was born. Et tu, AOC?
She was just beginning. She also said that it is not a coincidence that European countries established their universal healthcare systems “in the wake after World War II,” so they could prevent the rise of fascism. First, no, they did not create those systems as anti-fascistic—again, the fascists liked welfare. Second, most European countries started having universal healthcare in the 1970s, not immediately after World War II. But what are two decades among friends? Math is not her strong suit.
AOC does not know this, but the difference between a fascist and a communist is that fascists want this stuff in their own country, while commies want it in all countries. AOC is definitely a communist.
Every statement she made began by first endorsing class-based conflict. This included her foreign policy view: “We talk about … a class-based internationalist perspective.” What is a class-based internationalist perspective, you ask? It means that an American worker and a Chinese worker share an interest together against the American and Chinese businessmen who hire them. It means that countries are meaningless, and only class is real. I am not saying this is communism; communists say this is communism.
It gets better. She condemned the arrest of Nicolas Maduro. Just because “he was an anti-democratic leader doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.” So, fun fact: Venezuela is in the Northern Hemisphere.
She also made fun of Rubio for saying that Europeans brought the cowboy culture to America. Au contraire, argued AOC, it was Mexicans and African slaves. Don’t tell her, but Mexicans have Spanish ancestry, and the Spanish brought horses to the Americas.
It was so bad that even her fans at the New York Times criticized her. What did she do? Like a true Karen asking to talk to the manager, she called the New York Times to yell at them!
Mind you, AOC studied international relations and economics in college, and she failed both subjects in Germany. You can graduate from college without studying nowadays, but you cannot survive a panel discussion without doing your homework. Her problem is that she didn’t know this.
But I don’t blame her. I blame the American university system that takes in stupid people and returns them to society, still stupid, but also communist.