During a recent incident, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retaliated against a group of protestors who confronted her at a Brooklyn movie theater with her fiance Riley Roberts. Footage of the encounter shows a masked individual recording the liberal representative while demanding that she label Israel’s military activity in Gaza a “genocide.”
The protestors continued pressing Ocasio-Cortez, complaining that she wouldn’t publicly condemn Israel’s military advances as “genocide.” AOC told one of the men confronting her, “I need you to understand that this is not OK,” as he held an iPhone in front of the Congresswoman’s face to record her. “It’s not OK that there’s a genocide happening and you’re not actively against it,” the protester further argued.
“You’re lying,” the New York lawmaker said as she fled from the protestors down an escalator. However, the group of antagonizers proceeded to follow after AOC and Roberts, who appeared to become increasingly aggravated. At one point, Roberts turned to face the individuals, commanding them to “stop.”
“You’re gonna cut it and you’re cut this and you’re gonna clip this so that it’s completely out of context,” Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at one of the protestors who inquired if she was concerned about their recorded footage going viral. “I already said that it was and you’re y’all gonna pretend that it wasn’t over and over again. It’s f–ked up, man. And you’re not helping these people, and you’re not helping them,” she said, dropping an expletive.
Since the incident went viral, social media users took the opportunity to criticize her relentlessly. X user PhotographicFloridian posted a screenshot of a 2020 tweet from AOC related to protesting, painting her as a hypocrite. “The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable. Activists take that discomfort w/ the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes. Popular support often starts small & grows. To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable… that’s the point,” the representative tweeted.
Since the violent attack against Israel in October of last year, AOC has maintained a relatively neutral stance toward the Jewish nation relative to some of her other leftist colleagues in the Democratic Party. “Some of your colleagues have accused the president of supporting genocide, including Rashida Tlaib. Do you agree with that word, genocide, that the president’s been supporting a genocide, or does that go too far?” host Kristen Welker asked her during an interview on “Meet the Press” earlier this year.
“I think what we are seeing right now throughout the country is that young people are appalled at the violence and the indiscriminate loss of life,” Ocasio-Cortez said, deflecting the question. “They are still determining whether it’s a genocide. Do you think that term is responsible given it’s still under investigation?” Welker further questioned her.
AOC responded, “I believe that they are. They’re still determining it. But in the interim ruling, the fact that they said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think, demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing.”
See footage below of the confrontation involving AOC and the protestors.
