US "The Squad" Megathread - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib Derangement Syndrome

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I honestly only know about American politics from what I read on the Internet but since we all love shitting on leftists I figured we'd get a kick out of this. Also it's trending on Twitter so you know it's important.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...irect=on&noredirect=on&utm_term=.960552c9ba53

NEW YORK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political novice running on a low budget and an unabashedly liberal platform, upset longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley on Tuesday in the Democratic congressional primary in New York.

The surprise victory by the community organizer in a district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens came after an energetic, grassroots campaign that mustered more than enough support in a low-turnout race that many had expected to be an easy win for Crowley, a member of the Democratic House leadership.

“The community is ready for a movement of economic and social justice. That is what we tried to deliver,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who has never held elected office and whose candidacy attracted only modest media attention.

She told The Associated Press after her victory that she didn’t have enough money to do polling in the race, but felt in her gut that her message had a chance to connect.

“I live in this community. I organized in this community. I felt the absence of the incumbent. I knew he didn’t have a strong presence,” she said.

Crowley has been in Congress since 1999 and hadn’t faced an opponent in a primary election since 2004, when Ocasio-Cortez was just a teenager. He was considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

“It’s not about me,” Crowley, 56, told his supporters at a campaign party following his loss. “It’s about America. I want nothing but the best for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I want her to be victorious.”

He later played guitar with a band at the election night gathering, and dedicated the first song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” to Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, where he is also the leader of the Queens Democratic party.

Ocasio-Cortez was outspent by an 18-1 margin during her race but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s far left, including MoveOn, as well as the actress Cynthia Nixon, who is running for governor. She defeated Crowley by 15 percentage points.

Born in the Bronx to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father who died in 2008, Ocasio-Cortez said she decided to challenge Crowley to push a more progressive stance on economic and other issues.

She attended Boston University, where she earned degrees in economics and international relations, and also spent time working in the office of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

After graduating, she returned to the Bronx where she became a community organizer. In the 2016 presidential campaign she worked for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Among her issues is expanding the Medicare program to people of all ages and abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. She recently went to Tornillo, Texas, to protest against policies that have separated parents from their children at the southern U.S. border.

Ocasio-Cortez gained some internet attention for a campaign video called “The Courage to Change,” a two-minute spot for which she wrote the script and featured footage from her own home.

Crowley is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest ranking position in Democratic leadership in that chamber of Congress.

His loss drew the attention of President Donald Trump.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” he tweeted.

The Republican candidate for the office, Anthony Pappas, is running unopposed and had no primary. Pappas teaches economics at St. John’s University.
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She was a Bernie campaigner, is supported by BLM, and wants to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Also this was in a solid-blue Congressional District so you know she's a shoo-in for next Congress.

But hey, we did get to see Trump laugh at Crowley on Twitter.
 
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Has Ilhan Omar proposed anything that could be debated? I know she likes to say stupid shit, but I can't recall her opining on policy matters.

AOC has proposed a lot of really stupid shit, on the other hand.
 
Isn't Omar the one that was shagging her brother?

I'm gonna give the source the benefit of the doubt and say it's because AOC would just be more fun to debate whereas with Omar it would just be mussie this and palestine that. As to who you could bait into better soundbites, I'd say that's a tie.
 
RoofGook said:
Cuz aoc got a bangin rack what the fuck else would it be? Its that simple.
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If you think those tits are something special, ... you got low standards.

Half the debate Ilhan would be beeped out screaming about the kikes. AOC brings the lulz with Dunning Kruger effect, Ilhan is just a flat gross boring racist.

The debate would go something like this
Ilhan : we need to stop the Jew
Sane person : uhh.. well could maybe reducing funds to Israel
Ilhan: nope kill em all.

Picture that for 45 mins.

It wouldn't make good tv, no quips, nothing silly like ocean trains or cow farts, just a seriously insane bigot spewing unfounded unamusing genocide fetish.

As well is she's ugly for a niggo.
 
It's not that she doesn't want to debate. But her husband needs to give permission first. The worst part is she's a combination of the worst that society has to offer. A nigger and muslim. Absolutely double disgusting
 
Academics rally behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over concentration camp comments: 'She is completely historically accurate'


Freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continued to spar with Republicans over her claim that U.S. migrant detention centers are "concentration camps" over the weekend.

Ocasio-Cortez blasted Iowa representative Steve King Sunday after he asked her to visit the site of Nazi death camp Auschwitz with a Holocaust memorial group. Declining his invite, she pointed out King had met with a far-right Austrian group during his own trip to the camp, as The Washington Post noted last October.

Ocasio-Cortez described migrant detention facilities at the southern U.S. border as "concentration camps" during an Instagram live stream June 17. Following up on Twitter, she said the centers "brutalized" migrants with "dehumanizing conditions."

Ocasio-Cortez quickly came under fire from critics, including Republicans like Liz Cheney, for employing a term most commonly used to refer to the Nazi camps where millions of Jews lost their lives.

But Ocasio-Cortez continued to defend her use of the term, writing Wednesday: "These camps...fit squarely in an academic consensus and definition." Noting the fact that several migrant children have died in U.S. custody in recent months, she added: "Kids are dying and I'm not here to make people feel comfortable about that."

The term "concentration camp" predates World War II by decades, and has been used to describe numerous detainment facilities. It was first used to describe "reconcentration camps" set up by Spanish general Valeriano Weyler in Cuba in 1897.

It is often used to describe the internment of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent—many of whom were U.S. citizens— on American soil during World War II.

The term is also used, for example, to describe camps set up by the British in South Africa during the Boer Wars.

But it's most commonly used to refer to camps operated by the Nazi party, who held vast numbers of Jews and others in concentration, labor and death camps during World War II. The regime systematically killed some six million Jews between 1941 and 1945.

Rachel Ida Buff, a professor of American studies who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Newsweek Ocasio-Cortez was "absolutely" correct to describe U.S. migrant detention centers as concentration camps.

Sociology professor Richard Lachmann at the University at Albany, SUNY, agreed, telling Newsweek: "Concentration camps are any place where large numbers of people are held in poor conditions because of their nationality, ethnicity, religion or other characteristics rather than as individuals convicted of crimes."

Noting the experiences of migrant children in U.S. detention centers—some of whom are set to be housed at Fort Sill, a site that held Japanese Americans and Native Americans before them, back in the 20th century—Buff said: "The trauma these children are suffering threatens to disable a generation."

"All asylum seekers crossing into the United States are placed in 'hileras,' cells chilled to 50-55 degrees. They are stripped of warm clothing. Many get sick; several have died. This is torture and life endangerment," she added.

Anika Walke, an associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis told Newsweek she understood the sensitivity surrounding the term "concentration camp."

"An initial reaction could easily be to say, 'no, the detention centers at the U.S. border are not the same as the Nazi camps,'" she said. But to say the term applies only to camps set up by the Nazi regime is incorrect and only signals "an ahistorical understanding of the Holocaust," she added.

The Nazis "radicalized" internment technologies developed decades before. As well as concentration camps, the Nazis created death camps and forced labor camps, Walke added.

Auschwitz, for example, is more correctly described as a "death camp" than a concentration camp, Lachmann said—a distinction Ocasio-Cortez made on social media. Death camps, Walke said, "were expressly designed to commit mass murder."

ay Geller, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, said Ocasio-Cortez was deliberately using the term "concentration camp" because of its "powerful association" with the Nazis. "In the popular imagination, the expression... evokes images of Dachau and Buchenwald [concentration camps], if not Auschwitz," he told Newsweek.

"She and others want to invoke our moral indignation through reference to the Holocaust, not the Boer War," he said, adding he would personally use terms such as "internment camps" or "detention camps" instead.

The camps "can be an affront to our sensibilities without being just like something during the Holocaust." Geller added his suggested terms don't "make the camps any better or diminish their horribleness."

Amy Simon, Michigan State University's William and Audrey Farber family endowed chair in Holocaust studies and European Jewish history, told Newsweek Ocasio-Cortez was 'completely historically accurate' in her use of the phrase "concentration camp."

But she also argued the representative used the "loaded" term "purposefully to call up those particular images of inhumanity."

Although some may see this as "unnecessarily inflammatory," others may see it as a "necessary" way to show the "severity" of the situation at the southern border, Simon added.

While there were "important differences" between Nazi concentration camps and migrant detention centers—such as the historical context, the motivations and the sheer level of horror—"there are also important historical similarities that should give us pause," she said.

Images of concentration camps, however the term is defined, will "necessarily" be invoked "any time a government uses blanket categorizations to hold indefinitely, without trial, people who have not committed any crimes in some kind of enclosed area," Simon continued.

Lachmann accused politicians criticizing Ocasio-Cortez's use of the term of deploying "the memory of the six million" killed in the Holocaust "to score political points."

As well as "undermining" left-wing voices, they are reserving the Holocaust as "a bludgeon to attack those who disagree with their views on Israel, Iran, or other political issues," he said. "They are not trying to educate the public about the Holocaust."

Buff said such criticisms of Ocasio-Cortez are "part of a long-term, right wing campaign against the overwhelming success and popularity of progressive politicians like her, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib."

But Geller argued that the debate that has emerged since Ocasio-Cortez used the term has become a distraction from "the real issue" which is "not what these camps are called, but that they exist."

Simon added: "It's not the term that matters as much as the fact that tens of thousands of innocent people are being held in terrible conditions with little to no recourse."

"This is not the Holocaust, but it is a serious issue which will not improve without radical changes to the detention policies and treatment of those detained," she said. "It threatens not only those in captivity, but also the democratic ideals of this nation."
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Now technically no one specifically called them death camps, but it's not exactly subtle when congressman Ocasio-Cortez ends her statement with "never forget"

This image keeps being relevant two years later

813720
 
"Oh no! People have called me out on comparing the detention facilities to places like Auschwitz! Better move those goal posts!"
For fucks sake AOC called them concentration camps in the holocaust sense and this shit is as pedantic as it is exceptional.
 
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