AOC Disowns “Woke” BLM Demands

Socialists are proving competitive in a number of Democratic primaries ahead of the US midterms. However, um some are taking heat because of their past lives, namely what they tweeted between the years 2020 and 2021. And Francesca Hong is the prime example here. She's currently running to be the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. Um, and networks like Fox News have been highlighting tweets of hers um, from 2020 and 2021 calling for the defunding of the police, the abolition of the police. And there's also one from 2026, so very recent, calling for the abolition of ICE. I think that policy she does still stand by. Um, Hong has also been criticized for calling for Thanksgiving to be cancelled because she had quite good reasons for doing it. You know, she saying it's celebrating the colonization of this continent, but not necessarily a populist position. Um, we'll look at how Hong herself has responded to these past tweets in this current campaign. However, first, um, it's another socialist politician whose response to this line of questioning has gone viral this weekend. >> What do you make of those controversial statements? I'm sure you've seen. I mean, she's, >> uh, you know, the the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that, but uh, you know, uh, the abolish prisons, abolish police, which is also positions that have been taken by a lot of the progressive candidates who have won. >> Mhm. >> How do you how do you get around that? Those are not positions that are supported by, >> right? I mean, I think that a lot of these races, even right now, they'll have a tendency to be nationalized, >> but these races ultimately are local and all politics are local. My understanding is that um is is that Franchesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her election. >> Yeah, she's moved away from a lot, >> right? She's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this uh >> uh saying woke one was crazy. [laughter] >> Uh [snorts] so Ash, that clip has absolutely divided the internet. So there's sort of one group of people saying great, you know, this is showing that AOC has, you know, become, you know, she's grown up. Um she's abandoning some of the unpopular or, you know, not persuasive positions she once held. other people saying this is AOC selling out the BLM movement or people who you know believed in defunding the police. other people saying which to be honest actually is the most common I think saying oh well it's easy enough to say this now um in the years 2020 to 2023 there were people losing their jobs for this and if you said what AOC is saying now 3 years ago then >> AOC might say that you're not someone who should be associated with so I mean is it how what's your interpretation of this new position from AOC >> well look I I think that there is truth in the point that well it's easy enough to say it now but I don't think that that's a reason to necessarily dismiss someone. I think that tells you something about how a particular set of politics operated at that time. Now I think it's something that you said which is that when you look at positions like defund the police and I'm sure that lots of people watching will agree with the sort of slogan and and proposition to defund the police. But even if you look at African-American voters at the height of BLM, it was a minority, a real minority of Africanameans who supported defund the police. And because of the way in which movements work, I don't think that um social movements do necessarily have to be super representative of the electorate. That's never been how they've worked. They're often sort of vanguardist in the in the fight for social change throughout history. Um, but there was often this sense of invoking the broader interests and beliefs of black people in the US in the slogan defund the police. But actually, there was always this remove. And what's most interesting about that isn't that um it was a minority of people saying something that was unrepresentative of the wider electorate. Again, that's movements. Is that there was never much interest in building any support for the proposition. there was as you've said before a sort of mechanism of raising the social costs of disagreement. So what you're talking about in terms of well you'd have you know some people lost their jobs or you know found themselves very intensely criticized in a way which um went beyond I really disagree with this or I think it's problematic and here's why and was sort of you're racist for for disagreeing with the premise is that that was the mechanism of trying to get people on board. And so I I think that it's a little bit it's you're not actually escaping from the Twitter mind vortex when you say I'm leaving woke 1.0 behind, right? Because that is an extremely online thing to say and to think about. Um like it's you're just you've got brain rot in a in a new uh flavor. Um, but I I do think that there is something important for movements to recognize which is the way in which things were done a few years ago. And I think that's because of that sort of like I don't know that like uh hotboxed sort of you know cauldron you know really intense crucible of politics where you had movements and then because of the sort of poorestness of the you know the Democrats and the primary system is that there were expectations to see that being reflected in um you know national political campaigning is that maybe there is a step in between which is if you say okay we're a street movement, right? We're a street movement that that are making demands. Maybe before you go and we want that those slogans, we want those demands to be represented by electoral officials. The thing in between is to go maybe we should start persuading people of it. But there was a jump without any of that persuasion happening. There was a jump in saying we want to see our elected representatives um you know out there fighting for this, which I think was was a tactical error. I'm I've got a lot to say about this, but let's actually first go to AOC expanding um on how she looks back at the demands made at the height of the BLM movement. >> Did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean, you you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police. >> Well, um >> you know, I think I think that during this time and during especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the overtone window. We were shut down. there was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that had that were had in that time were quite fruitful. I think that when we talk about crime today, it's fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today. And I'm grateful that these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to their electorate and what they're campaigning on in this moment. I suppose from what AOC says there and I don't you know I'm not going to make this about me [laughter] that would be ridiculous. >> Enough about you AOC. >> Uh but I I remember saying at the time like on Twitter, you know, like defund kind of makes sense if you're just saying there are other ways to deal with crime and that America should maybe be a bit more like a social democracy, a bit more European in sort of like how it deals with crime and punishment. Um, and it's good that people have moved away from abolish and they're going to defund because it seems a bit more reasonable. And the amount of people online that would be like, "What the hell are you talking about? You're speaking over activists. Um, it's defund as a route to abolish, yada yada yada." And obviously, you know, I didn't lose my job. My life is fine. I'm not really >> I tried to get rid of you, but I was overruled. >> Well, some people did. No, not not anyone in the organization, but there were lots of people who were sort of like the number of quote tweets and da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d and um and the main consequence for me which wasn't a consequence was was people sort of saying you know why why do you why do you need your voice to be heard on this issue D and so I just stopped tweeting about it which is fine for me but I feel like both on that debate and um I mean even more controversial one sort of some of the trans debates The main consequence for I think lots of people was to just back out of all the discussion. And what that means is that the discussion is only ever dominated by people with quite specific views because everyone else thinks this is not worth it. Oh my god. >> Should I risk getting in trouble? >> Go on. >> All right. So, >> better than me risking it. Something which I've I've changed my mind on is that you know I I would talk about abolition and abolition of prisons and abolition of the police because like a lot of people I was coming from that position of having seen the impacts of racist policing um like fairly close up having also seen the way in which prisons contribute to the social wheels that they purport to be solving because when you take someone out of their you know family unit out of their community, you put them in prison, you're sort of creating a tear, right? A tear in the social fabric which has all of these these different consequences. And something which changed my mind about it was actually an experience of incarceration within my own family where I actually thought this person needs to be in prison, right? There isn't an alternative to this person being in prison. And in a moral society, in in a just society, that's where they should be. And whenever I tried to bring this up with friends of mine who were still abolitionists, they just couldn't wrap their head around that part. And when I would say, "But hang on, like, aren't we proposing a society where prisons are eliminated?" Then it would get into these very semantic arguments of well no because whatever force we have to deprive people of their liberty or separate them off from society be so different from the police it would no longer be called police which I just think is a an argument about language it's not an argument about content obviously I want how policing operates and prisons work to be really different or it would be a setting of homework like well if you go and read Ruth Wilson Gilmore and so I would then started going, "Okay, but abolition had a really specific meaning. The abolition of slavery meant one day you didn't have slavery anymore, right? It wasn't, well, we're going towards a horizon where there is no more slavery." It's like, "No, there will be no more slavery." Um, and so I I have since come to the conclusion that abolition is often invoked, and I'm not saying this about, you know, Ruth Wilson Gilmore or Angela Davis, who I'm sure thought a lot about this, but it's often used by people in the movement to make reform sound spicier than it actually is. >> And I think that has got something to do with subculture. I think it's got something to do with the way people turn to politics when what they actually want is either subculture like you're not a real punk, I'm a real punk or religion which is a certain form of certainty if this is right and this is wrong. Whereas politics is actually about negotiation and prioritization, persuasion, coalition building, these things which have various forms of compromise kind of built into it because that's what it means to to negotiate something politically. Um, and and again, I just don't think that people, and there are good reasons for this. I think that when you watch the video of Eric Garner being choked to death or George Floyd being suffocated or you hear the 911 call, Trayvon Martin being killed by George Zimmerman, all of these things have very visceral effect, right? You don't really want to think politically and tactically. You do feel, you know, so morally outraged and offended. It is very right and it's very wrong. But if you're making political demands actually right or wrong is just one component of it. >> Well, I suppose I'd push back because I I never thought the problem with like defund or abolish was that they were politically unstrategic. I thought they were bad ideas. >> But it's both both, right? It's like you have to be open to having a discussion. >> Yeah. Yeah. You have to be open to having that discussion. Then you can hash it out in openminded. >> You can't you can't just sort of be like um manayan about it. There is good and there is evil and this idea is on the side of the good. But I can understand how you feel that way and how you feel that there is a very clear sense of good and evil when you watch a video where quite frankly evil is being done. M um let's look at how Franchesca Hong is responding to the questions about her old tweets. >> That's not going to be an easy race. It's going to be very easy for people to put up on the board and say, "You said abolish the Senate, defund the police, abolish the police." And why should they not believe that you would want to do that, that you would try to do that if you became governor? >> I believe that people can evolve. We meet Trump voters from previous elections who now would like to vote for me who have a sign in their yard. >> So, who needs to involve the voters? >> The governor cannot defund the police and I won't defund the police. But in the things we know prevent crime, like getting guns off of our street, making sure there is victims for justice, that there are, you know, places where our kids can go after school and thrive. You know, we can't be tough on causes. We have to be tough on causes if we would like to be tough on crime. And as governor, I cannot defund the police. And I've reminded folks that I won't defund the police. >> So her argument is basically it's unclear if I believe in it or not, but I don't have the power to do it anyway, so don't worry. >> I I mean this um you know, in a derogatory way. She sounds like a politician both in terms of her delivery and the sense that she's trying to make you feel much better about some bad news that she's telling you. Um, and also what feels like a lack of authenticity. I think it's perfectly legitimate to be like my views have changed and they've evolved. I've become older. I've spoken to more people. I understand that there are different solutions to social problems and that's what I'm committed to. But the slogans didn't didn't really tell us anything about them. So, I'm interested in these solutions. That's what I'm clear about. It's would also be fine or, you know, honest to be like, I still believe in this man. >> Like, disco never died. I still believe that both of those things pull from a real human place. Whereas, I just don't think she was getting there. I I I I don't really mind in a way. Um, and I think lots of people feel this way is that I've got more time for someone who holds a belief that I don't hold, but they're sincere in their holding of it than someone who is constantly triangulating. >> All right. Uh, that uh primary is tomorrow. >> Um, >> may I set something right though because I saw something in the comments which is someone asked, >> "Am I that girl who said that air conditioning was racist?" No, that was a different South Asian woman who I constantly get mixed up for. And I would actually say maybe not having air conditioning is racist because I look shinier than you, right? Shine shows up more on dark skin. So that's woke 2.0. Fit AC in the office. >> To be fair, I still look pretty shiny. Maybe the contrast is lower. I don't know. >> I think the contrast is lower. >> I was just some comments. I've been really liking some comments today. So, so Michael went to Oxford and can't add 30 to 2012, which is fair enough. It did take me a few seconds. Um, there was also a debate about why I'm not a vegan, and someone kindly pointed out that I had IBS, so [laughter] I struggle with with pulses. So, I love I love that you [laughter] I love that our viewers know about my dietary requirements. Makes me feel very careful. >> That you had IBS. Well, I've got I've got terri I'm actually going to I'm trying to get referred to an allergist because um pulses give like make me incredibly bloated. Now, I know they make everyone a bit bloated, but me really bloated and I have a kind of nut allergy. >> Oh, >> so I'm really struggling with the whole vegan proteins, but I am going to try and cut out well not try that's weak. I'm going to stop eating beef and lamb for a start because they are the ones that are really bad for the climate. Maybe cut down on cheese, chicken, fish, tofu. any advice you've got, uh, let them know in the comments. If you know a good allergist in the London area, uh, feel free to let me know. Or if you are an allergist, definitely >> if you want to join Michael's support group, Hot Boys with IBS, >> link in the description. >> Exactly. [snorts]