Several PJ Media writers have commented on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to put a new suit of clothes on “woke” in order to hide the stench of hate, intolerance, hysteria, and lunacy associated with it.
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,'” said Ocasio-Cortez with a laugh during an interview with ABC News host Jonathan Karl recently.
All the lives ruined by idiotic and even false charges of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other avenues used by the left to attack people they disagreed with can never be forgotten. People lost their jobs, their families, and their future employment prospects for being a little too familiar with a female co-worker. (I’m not dismissing rape, assault, or sexual harassment in any way, shape, or form, so don’t even go there.)
The fact that almost all of these “targets” were on the right only proves this was a politically motivated movement meant to shut people up and close off debate on critical national issues.
David Harsanyi remembers.
“The revolution will be sanitized,” he writes in an op-ed published in the New York Sun. “Yet as I remember it, ‘Woke One’ was a high-tech progressive jihad that relied on intimidation, public shaming, and economic ruin to dictate what words and ideas were permissible in the public square.”
Harsanyi recognizes that most thinking adults change “their views as they learn and grow.” I am a different person at age 72 than I was at 25 in 1979. What has changed in me is my storehouse of knowledge, which has expanded exponentially. I am far more informed and cognizant of the issues today than I was back then.
Some of my positions have been altered; most have not. Harsanyi believes that if a politician changes their mind about an issue, we are owed an explanation.
Only days after Democrats took a beating in the 2024 election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez removed “she/her” pronouns from her social media accounts, which doesn’t exactly scream of authenticity. So, is using your “preferred pronouns” crazy? Is adopting pronouns that don’t match your “gender assigned at birth” crazy? Is using nonbinary pronouns crazy? Is performing “gender-affirming care,” needless life-altering surgery on confused children that destroys their development, crazy? Is it crazy to let biological males play in girls’ sports? What part was crazy?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was a gung-ho supporter of virtually every ideological element of the past 10 years. “Woke,” she once argued, was nothing more than a term pundits used as a “derogatory euphemism” for “civil rights” and progressive notions of “justice.”Does Ms. Ocasio-Cortez now oppose DEI initiatives and racial quotas? Does she support Black Lives Matter, a movement that sparked the most expensive and prolonged domestic destruction in American history, including looting, rioting, arson, and homicide? BLM is an objectively racist movement that judges people on color rather than achievement. Is that crazy?
They’re really gonna just shrug, giggle, and say, “Gosh, wasn’t ruining your life quirky of us? Teehee!” https://t.co/Mnf0SihdPQ
— Sour Patch Mom ن (@sourpatchlyds) August 10, 2026
So many questions, so few answers forthcoming. I feel fairly confident that major media won’t be asking any of those questions, accepting her “woke was crazy” explanation and taking it at face value, and will do everything in their power to elect this radical nitwit the next president of the United States.
Does she denounce the “Green New Deal” that she toured the country trying to sell? Following the introduction of the Green New Deal resolution in February 2019, AOC headlined and participated in multi-city tours to build public and political support for the proposal.
Organized by the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, this nationwide campaign featured over 250 town halls and events across the country. AOC served as one of the primary headline speakers at major stops alongside allies like Sen. Ed Markey and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In the years following, she continued to headline national tours, town halls, and advocacy pushes organized by progressive and environmental networks (such as the Green New Deal Network) to promote federal climate investment, job creation, and environmental justice policies.
What was the “Green New Deal?”
Let’s not forget, Ocasio-Cortez hatched a “social justice” environmental policy that not only called for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production by 2029 but also for replacing every “combustion-engine vehicle” — trucks, airplanes, boats and 99 percent of cars — in America. Her Green New Deal would have compelled us to “retrofit every building in America” and build “high-speed rail at a scale” that would eliminate all air travel. The plan offered government-guaranteed “family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and a pension,” “safe, affordable, adequate housing,” and “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work.
I’m not sure if that’s Woke One — but it’s definitely crazy.
If Ms. Ocasio-Cortez abandons the ideas she championed to deal with an alleged crisis that could destroy the Earth in 10 years, now three years and counting, what does that say about her ability to evaluate crises and offer practical solutions moving forward?
That was like, far-out hippie crazy, amiright?
For me, the bat-guano crazy policy ideas are just noise. It’s the ruined lives, the people whom woke broke and discarded for the most minor of indiscretions or transgressions, that stand out. In retrospect, it was eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union show trials of dissidents, where the unlucky soul had to stand in the dock and endure wildly exaggerated lies, insults, and “testimony” that had little to do with the truth. If they were lucky, they were sent to the gulags in Siberia for 10 years. If not, they ended up an uncounted statistic of Communism’s inhumanity in the name of “social justice.”
Recommended: Mamdani Burns Through New Yorkers’ Goodwill as the Grim Realities of Governance Hit
As most commenters have suggested, “Woke 2.0” won’t be much different from “Woke 1.0,” except that, given where the Democratic Party is today compared to a decade ago, Woke 2.0 will be far more radical.
Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider believes that Woke 2.0 will be far more openly antisemitic.
“By focusing on a foreign policy issue that is less impactful to many Americans than the economy or crime, they’re hoping they won’t suffer as much backlash as they did when they alienated a broad swath of the electorate with outside-the-mainstream proposals that affected people’s day-to-day lives,” he writes.
“When AOC is talking about the latest iteration of woke, this is what she’s referring to,” Kraushaar adds. “Bashing Israel and a tolerance for antisemitism wasn’t really part of the woke equation in the first iteration of the left’s social justice activism. It’s now a litmus test in this new era, with major implications for American Jews.”
And major implications for the rest of us.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and bold policies, America’s economy is back on track.
Help us continue to report on the president’s economic successes and combat the lies of the Democrats. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
