AOC Laughs Off the ‘Woke 1’ Era. The Damage Was No Joke.

Peak woke revealed a totalitarian mindset in America that raged out of control for a few years, until unpopularity, a little courage from the minority who stood against it, and the election of President Donald Trump in 2024 turned the tide against it.

But leftists—especially ones running for office—are determined to rewrite history (they’re used to doing that) to gaslight the American people into believing that its excesses were merely rhetoric and that they are totally more reasonable now.

A prime example of that is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who appeared on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday to talk about, among other things, the rise of socialists in American politics.

If it wasn’t clear already, Ocasio-Cortez seems to be setting the table for a presidential run in 2028 or beyond. On that White House question, she chose to remain predictably noncommittal, saying, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility.”

So, unfortunately, we are likely to hear a lot more from her in the coming years, especially considering the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Ocasio-Cortez was asked about socialist politicians, like Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who’ve endorsed things like defunding the police, among other crackpot ideas that were widely popular among Democrats just a few years ago.

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The New York congresswoman tried to wave away what happened during the Great Awokening as no big deal, just lefties getting a little frisky and excited, that’s all.

“I have a local city councilman that has this saying: Woke 1 was crazy,” she said to host Jon Karl as she wore a big smile and laughed. “ … I think that during, especially during COVID, I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Ocasio-Cortez appears to be angling to fill the lane of the nationally electable socialist. But she remains an active member of the New York Chapter of the DSA. It’s worth noting that the DSA platform includes things like getting rid of the Senate, liquidating private property, and abolishing prisons.

Those positions that they just recently endorsed still seem unacceptably nuts to me.

The problem with peak woke, which Ocasio-Cortez eagerly took part in, wasn’t just over-the-top rhetoric.

No, their worst ideas were being forced on the country by our most elite institutions, not just a few isolated crackpots.

And they were leading us straight to perdition.

I know it gets forgotten and whitewashed now, but they were doing things like rationing medicine based on race.

The “better place” we got to with the “defund the police” movement was a historic, national crime wave.

And in places where they felt most powerful, they tried to ruin the lives of anyone who stood in their way. That included people who were generally on the left but didn’t buy all the conclusions of the most fervent wokesters.

For just one small example in a sea of examples, data scientist David Shor was fired from the left-leaning consulting firm Civis Analytics merely for saying that violent protests could be counterproductive and encourage political backlash.

Wildly popular and quite liberal “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling has been canceled for refusing to say that a man can become a woman. She has the great advantage of wealth, but many others weren’t so fortunate.

Some people with a lot less power than Rowling were fired for refusing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns.

Countless academics were hounded, threatened, and occasionally fired for merely saying that DEI policies were bad or excessive.

Woke 1, as Ocasio-Cortez called it, wasn’t just ideological excess or people getting a little “crazy,” it was an existential threat to free societies, a moment that got cut just short of the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France.

It was stopped because Democrats lost power and the incoming Trump administration has worked hard to undo it.

Given those woke excesses, it’s a little rich for Ocasio-Cortez—or any left-wing politician pretending to suddenly be a sensible moderate—to wave away the comments they made during that era as no big deal.

It’s on them to explain what drove them to embrace cuckoo policies like defunding the police.

Have they abandoned the idea that biological sex can be changed? If so, I see little evidence of that other than occasional “reasonable” sounding statements that don’t actually repudiate the notion.

The truth is they haven’t changed at all.

Sure, they focus more on economic leveling these days, but the Democrat activist class remains as culturally woke as ever, and they will never accept what they see as a reversal of the progressive wheel turning of history that they feel was being accomplished in recent years.

That’s something that even CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria recently recognized.

“When Democrats come under pressure, they find it much easier to move left on economics than toward the center on culture,” he said. “If they speak plainly and say that the border must be controlled, repeat offenders punished, and standards of merit defended, or that biological sex matters, they risk revolts from activists, advocacy groups and highly educated staffers. So instead, Democrats offer a larger subsidy, a new benefit or a fiercer attack on billionaires while leaving untouched the cultural attitudes that alienate many voters.”

That’s right.

And the moment they get power as they had under President Joe Biden, what do you think their priority will be?

We will go right back to where we were before, except this time the Left might be even more paranoid about the possibility of losing power. It’s a chilling thought. Ocasio-Cortez’s giggles and smiles may fool some, but it’s likely woke 2 will be just like woke 1. This time with more ruthless communism.