Bad Faith Commentary on Ocasio-Cortez

I generally avoid reading the comments on widely-distributed public posts. The viciousness and stupidity that pop up so quickly are discouraging to me.

Some of it, though, is intentional trolling.

This week Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez correctly named the concentration camps in which our government keeps asylum seekers. Suddenly actual antisemites were pretending deep concern that she was diminishing the horror of the Nazi holocaust. People who would rather see me dead wanted me to denounce AO-C because she said “concentration camp” without CBP gassing people to death en masse.

Now I see this same type of trolling in the comments on an Ocasio-Cortez fundraising post. She notes - accurately - that most Representatives have to spent the majority of their working hours phoning deep-pocket donors, begging for campaign contributions, instead of doing the people’s business, ie actually going to Congressional meetings. She explains that her ability to work on legislation and to skip the phone solicitations in her party’s call center is dependent on small-dollar online donations. She asks that the reader click a link to make one of those donations.

Most of the comments on this post were positive. It’s still Facebook so I have to wonder how many of these people think they are contributing when they reply with some equivalent of “You go, girl” instead of clicking the link and sending $5, but, oh well. It was the trolls that caught my eye.
The clever ones didn’t go directly for her and identify themselves as enemies. One angrily demanded to know why we shou politicians who spend all their time fundraising. When people pointed out that this was EXACTLY THE POINT of AO-C’s post, the troll just kept doubling down. I sincerely hope that nobody is that obtuse. She was intentionally creating a false equivalence between AO-C and establishment politicians at the same time as discouraging participation in the process.

Then there are the people complaining that she is fighting against Joe Biden instead of against Donald Trump. That is transparently false. So I ask, “Who is served by that lie?” The answer is: So many people. Establishment Democrats who don’t want to be accountable for their complicity with monopoly capitalism. Republicans who like seeing their adversaries fighting one another. Foreign adversaries (Russia) who work to disrupt out electoral process. Foreign allies (Israel) who work to obscure their reliance on US military support. The truth is that Representative Ocasio-Cortez has worked hard to support Speaker Pelosi despite her waffling on important issues like immigration, the climate crisis, and the lawless Trump Administration. So have Representatives Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley.

But the aim of trolls is not to challenge our biases. It’s not even to spread lies. The aim of trolls is to make us suspicious and cynical. The aim of trolls is to get us bickering with each other. The aim of trolls is to discourage us.

Don’t give in to trolls.