It’s one of those days where you wake up, pull up Twitter, see “EatTheBabies” is trending, and know you’re going to spend the rest of the day wondering if it’s too early to start drinking/crying in public. You know, typical Friday stuff.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in her home district of Queens, New York for a town hall Thursday, when a woman claiming to be a supporter and constituent expressed her extreme concerns about climate change.
“I’m so happy that you are really supporting a Green New Deal, but it’s not enough,” she told the congresswoman. “Even if we were to bomb Russia, we still have too many people, too much pollution. So we have to get rid of the babies. That’s a big problem. Just stopping having babies is not enough. We need to eat the babies.”
She removed her jacket to reveal a t-shirt echoing this plan: “Save the Planet, Eat the Children,” it read.
The woman, as it turned out, was not a climate activist, nor did she (likely) believe in eating babies. She was a plant from the extreme, cult-like political movement based around the ideology of the late Lyndon LaRouche.
I remember seeing LaRouchies outside of my own college campus. They would hound students waiting for buses or at crosswalk stoplights. I never really understood what they stood for, which makes sense, because while they ostensibly started as a far-left group aiming for economic overhaul, over the years, they’ve morphed to the point where they’re now staunchly pro-Trump, pro-Putin, and pro-conspiracy theory.
The LaRouchies are pretty exotic. They believe that the Queen controls the drugs trade. They think Prince Philip wants to start WW3. They think Bertrand Russell used the Beatles as part of a secret British psy war against the USA. They are, to use a technical term, nuts. pic.twitter.com/HaeOQC0WMe
— Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet) October 4, 2019
It’s not clear what exactly the group’s goal was with this staged scene, but they got the rightwing headlines they probably wanted. Ocasio-Cortez listened calmly to the woman, presumably because the person appeared to have serious mental health issues. After the woman had been calmed down, AOC expertly redirected her comment to talk about the core issue, saying, “We need to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it does present.”
But according to the far-rightwing news, AOC’s refusal to denounce this obviously ridiculous idea means she’s open to the Swiftian concept of consuming children.
Even Donald Trump felt the need to chime in.
AOC is a Wack Job! https://t.co/LU3hIeek0c
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2019
She fired back at that one, by the way.
Better than being a criminal who betrays our country. https://t.co/UnShA6gcQQ
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 4, 2019
Because AOC put out a statement asking people not to “mock or make a spectacle,” those same outlets are spinning it as her trying to hide something.
AOC does not want people talking about this incident: pic.twitter.com/Zatzd3U1CL
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 4, 2019
How hard is it see AOC’s response for what it was: an empathetic reaction to someone who appeared to be extremely troubled?
having the grace to deal with all sorts of people who show up at public events and confront you is a gift not a sign of weakness
— darth™ (@darth) October 4, 2019
Maybe, just maybe and this is a crazy idea but go with me on this…that the reason @AOC didn’t denounce the #EatTheBabies woman is because she realized this woman was having a mental break and knew that denouncing her might exacerbate the mental break so she listened instead. 🤷🏼♀️
— Meredith (@meralee727) October 4, 2019
(image: screencap)
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