Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is apparently unable to recognize anti-Semitic dog whistles, an unexpected development that comes just three days after she claims to have heard anti-Jewish bigotry in an address delivered by President Trump.
The New York lawmaker voiced support Thursday for Britain’s Labour Party, sharing a video on social media that explicitly urges voters to back the left-wing party group headed by Jeremy Corbyn.
“This video is about the UK,” the congresswoman said in a tweet, “but it might as well have been produced about the United States. The hoarding of wealth by the few is coming at the cost of peoples’ lives. The only way we change is with a massive surge of new voters at the polls. UK, Vote!”
The video included in her message ends with an exhortation to viewers: “Vote Labour 12 December.”
This video is about the UK, but it might as well have been produced about the United States.
The hoarding of wealth by the few is coming at the cost of peoples’ lives.
The only way we change is with a massive surge of *new* voters at the polls. UK, Vote!pic.twitter.com/N5JYaVGCBs
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 12, 2019
The congresswoman’s pro-Labour tweet this week comes on top of her steadfast defenses of the anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Labour members, however, are far less subtle than Omar with their anti-Semitism, going so far as to promote Holocaust denial, caricatures of Jews as “bent nose manipulative liars,” and even the occasional call for the “extermination of every Jew on the planet.”
“Britain’s Labour Party is riven by anti-Semitism,” writes my Washington Examiner colleague Tom Rogan. “So riven that it views complaints of anti-Semitism as conspiracies against the leader, as fables made up by troublemaking Jews.”
Moreover, Rogan notes, citing a recent BBC report, “far from working to root out the rot, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle are obsessed about covering up anti-Semitism.”
Labour’s anti-Jewish elements have been a top campaign issue this entire election year. Britain’s chief rabbi even took the rare step of intervening directly in national politics to urge U.K. voters not to support Corbyn and his cohort.
“A new poison — sanctioned from the top — has taken root in the Labour Party,” Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said in an opinion article published by the Times of London. “The very soul of our nation is at stake. … The way in which the leadership has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud — of dignity and respect for all people.”
Corbyn, Ephraim’s op-ed flatly states, is “unfit for office.”
Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez was being facetious when she denounced Trump Monday for “atrocious antisemitism” for a (quite funny, actually) joke that he told to a crowd of Jewish Americans this weekend at the Israeli American Council National Summit. But she is quite serious about urging U.K. voters to get behind a party with a deadly serious anti-Semitism problem.
