Sunday on Twitter, proud socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) declared that Republicans have been criticizing “wokeness” to distract Democrats from pursuing racial justice.
“One dangerous aspect of thinking there’s a ‘woke problem’ is that Dem chances for re-election or majorities in House, Senate, & WH rely on the racial justice issue of voting rights,” AOC wrote in a series of tweets. “Dems distancing from racial justice makes protection of voting rights less likely, ensuring losses.”
“‘Woke’ is a term pundits are now using as a derogatory euphemism for civil rights & justice. Making up a ‘woke’ problem results in putting civil & voting rights on the backburner,” she added. “In a year state legislatures are planning out GOP majorities & voter suppression, that’s dangerous.”
“People think Fox News is just about indoctrinating right-wingers, but it’s also about conditioning Dems on what to run away from,” she continued to rant. “Framing racial justice as ‘controversial’ is key to delaying the protection of voting rights (& others) until it’s too late. We shouldn’t indulge it.”
In fact, neither Republicans nor the “woke” themselves use “woke” as a euphemism for civil rights or voting rights. Being “woke” — a term popularized by the left, not the right — means being “enlightened” about social justice issues. It means seeing the world through the neo-Marxist lens that divides the world into the white, hetero-capitalist “oppressor” on the one hand and the intersection of various “oppressed” racial and gender groups on the other.
This is how AOC and the Democrat Party as a whole see the world, and it drives their radical politics, which is why Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t want Fox News to disparage it or shine a spotlight on it.