Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: What Silence Means on Venezuela

UPDATE 2/25/2019: AOC did a live stream on February 24th, 2019 and characterized the issue in Venezuela as follows, “it is about democracy vs authoritarianism” not, as she puts it, socialism vs. capitalism. Omitted completely: politicized (and broadly condemned) aid, murderous sanctions targeting many Venezuelan’s, or Elliot Abram’s sordid history in Central America.

DURING LAST YEARS MIDTERM ELECTION then-congressional candidate Ocasio-Cortez ran what was assuredly one of the most progressive campaigns in modern United States history. Progressives were excited about a host of issues from green energy, lobbyist reform, and the decommodification of human health to military bloat, interventionism, and regime-change blowback — all issues she spoke out on frequently and with consistency during her campaign.

Weeks have passed since Donald Trump’s coup to install Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s President became official, and weeks since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has yet to say a single word about it. In the halls of Congress, Max Blumenthal asked her about Venezuela on February 1st, 2019, to which she replied, “we are working on a statement.” But this isn’t the first time that Progressive supporters have been surprised by her post-election behaviour:

Ocasio-Cortez even had the honour of engaging with Jeremy Corbyn, current head of UK Labour and the one to beat in the next UK election, saying she shares a great hope with him on “peace, prosperity and justice when we uplift people across class, race and identity at home and abroad.” What ensues is a very interesting exchange:

The accusations against Jeremy Corbyn are quite something else. We will not investigate them here with any detail, except it suffices to say, if you spend barely 60 minutes using Google searches you can find a long history of journalistically dubious attempts to smear and slander him. Jewish-American Noam Chomsky himself characterizes them as follows:

”The charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are without merit, an underhanded contribution to the disgraceful efforts to fend off the threat that a political party might emerge that is led by an admirable and decent human being, a party that is actually committed to the interests and just demands of its popular constituency and the great majority of the population generally, while also authentically concerned with the rights of suffering and oppressed people throughout the world. Plainly an intolerable threat to order.’”

Seeing as how Cortez met with the anti-Semitic Corbyn, surely she would be curious as to how his “well-documented anti-semitism” came to be. If it is so well documented, why meet with him at all? Surely she doesn’t believe that. Instead of asking for documentation to learn about his so-called anti-semitism, instead of defending him, we are served with an enabling trope, who’s selfish purpose is nothing more than to placate, not progress the conversation.

On Venezuela, it is fortunate that Cortez has strongly denounced regime-change there...in 2017:

Not speaking up, when the Nazi Citizenship Law was passed taking away the rights of Jewish citizens means you granted them immunity to progress their agenda. Not speaking up, when the Knesset in Israel passed a law diminishing the rights of Israeli-Arabs means you support human rights only for some. Not speaking up, when everyday Palestinian’s live in apartheid Gaza means you support the aggressors. Not speaking up, when apartheid South Africa passed education laws to segregate black students from white means you supported apartheid. Not speaking up, when 20 million Congolese children will be born into abject slavery over the next decade, living to barely 58 years old, working in the very mines Google, Apple and Huawei use to defraud it’s people of their natural resources to yield massive profits from their fleet of smart phones means you support a system that enslaves children of the future. Not speaking up, when every human being’s privacy on the planet has been commoditized and digitized, sold to marketers and advertisers, sold to political campaigns, used to manipulate elections and more, means you support a system of subjugation and control.

What Cortez claimed to be against is happening right now. As we know, almost every underhanded intervention ends in more blood. It is never about freedom for the people. Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya now. Instead of speaking up with principled, consistent, loud condemnation, her silence tells us a great deal. The sleeping masses cannot be asked to speak about that which they do not care to understand. But as an orator in public service, the possession of knowledge carries with it the burden of inherent ethical responsibility to act.

Her silence is shameful, the authenticity of her past statements of anti-interventionism have become dubious, the worst kind of political pandering and she should be taken to task for it, not paraded around as the progressive darling “of the left”.