copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2019-01-07): In response, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—representative-elect for New York's 14th Congressional District—tweeted a clip of the interview and used it to highlight the lack of young voices in the U.S House of Representatives. "The age difference between myself + oldest House members is ~60yrs," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the tweet. "For better or worse, young people will live in the world Congress leaves behind. That's why I focus on our future: addressing climate change & runaway income inequality, ending school-to-prison pipelines, etc." [...] Ocasio-Cortez responded to the comment by saying that age is "absolutely" not a disqualifier for thoughtful contributions, saying: "I have spoken in the past about how youth is not an embodiment of age, but of attitude—a willingness to risk for what is right, among others. We also shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge the dearth of young elected officials + those implications."
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2019-02-27): Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says it is 'legitimate' for people to not want children because of climate change [...] Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argues that it is a "legitimate question" to ask whether it’s moral for people to have children with the looming threat of climate change continues to exacerbate global conflicts. [...] "There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult," Ms Ocasio-Cortez said during an Instagram livestream. "And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?"
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2020-10-28): The 2020 horse race may be between two white, male septuagenarians, but it is a millennial Puerto Rican Democratic Socialist who produced a seminal political moment. Her Yoho rebuke inspired a fresh wave of awe for the youngest U.S. congresswoman in history and cemented her status as neopolitical icon—not just good on Twitter (where she schooled her congressional colleagues in a tutorial) and Instagram Live (where she gave an impromptu address on the dark night of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death), but a skilled orator with the power to move even her most cynical congressional colleagues. "They were like, ‘I didn’t know you’re that eloquent,’ " Ocasio-Cortez says with a wry smile. " ‘I’m so pleased and surprised by your restraint.’ " [...] Most of Ocasio-Cortez’s family and close friends call her Sandy. A few, like Representative Ayanna Pressley, go with "Alex." But becoming AOC—and @AOC—has simultaneously vaulted her into a pantheon of triple-initialed legends and, alternately, given a handy tagline to the right’s worst nightmare. Her beatific face is commodified on twee Etsy greeting cards ("I AOC It’s Your Birthday") and stamped alongside those of RBG and Frida Kahlo on "feminist prayer candles" and "Latina icon stickers." Conservative attack ads depict her as socialist villainess. One especially disturbing spot shows a photo of her face on fire before cutting to a pile of skulls.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2024-06-09): Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989) is an American politician and educator. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district, elected on November 6, 2018. She is the youngest woman to serve in Congress in the history of the United States. Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ equality. [...] - Trump’s dig on socialism means he’s scared, Ocasio-Cortez said after his speech. What really scares the pro-plutocrats on both sides of the political aisle about her, Sanders and other democratic socialists is that they have become messengers for a compelling message with an actual vision — the simple idea that it’s up to government to intervene and equalize the playing field between the capital that owns the politicians, the system and the rewards, and the general public toiling to provide those rewards. Everybody deserves to live a life of dignity, with their bare-minimum needs met in... "the richest society in history of the world." It’s an idea whose time has come...
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2019-03-04): - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has described herself as a democratic socialist. [...] In an exclusive interview with Business Insider in late December, Ocasio-Cortez broke down why the idea of democratic socialism isn’t so scary for her generation. [...] Ocasio-Cortez has likened her view of democratic socialism to Scandinavian social democracy. The congresswoman's progressive platform consists of a single-payer health care system that covers all forms of health care.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2024-08-20): When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) stepped onto the Democratic National Convention stage in Chicago on Monday night, the crowd erupted in chants of "A-O-C." The 34-year-old’s speech electrified the room of Democrats, representing a dramatic shift from when the congresswoman from Queens first entered the scene in 2018 as an outsider and challenger to the party establishment—a democratic socialist who unseated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, protested Democratic leadership in the House, and quickly became the poster child for the Democratic Party’s outlier left wing. [...] For her part, Ocasio-Cortez has maintained that she doesn’t have her sights set on higher office than the House. In her DNC speech, she instead doubled down on her commitment to bringing a working-class perspective to politics, recalling her past experience as a waitress without health insurance, struggling to pay bills after her father died from cancer. She reiterated how more people who have experienced similar struggles—such as Harris, she said—need to be in government and in the White House.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2023-07-17): I’m not sure that AOC was ever strongly attached to the label or identity of "socialist" to begin with. According to Take Up Space, AOC only joined the Democratic Socialists of America in early 2018, "around the same time she was seeking its endorsement." The book also notes that AOC said: [...] Young people today tend to reject capitalism in favor of socialism. But socialism can’t just be a negative rejection of capitalism in rhetoric and a synonym for a kind of generic "progressivism" as limited by the Democratic Party. As AOC said in a 2020 interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, "We don’t have a left party in the U.S. The Democratic Party is not a left party." Just as the Democratic Party is not a left party, the DSA is not a political party. We have to build an independent working-class party. The work of building this working-class movement includes supporting a third-party leftist candidate for president, such as Jill Stein, Claudia De la Cruz, Cornel West, or Joseph Kishore.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2023-11-08): Amid deep divisions among Democrats over the US response to the Israel-Hamas war, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that the White House’s position on Israel could impact President Joe Biden’s standing among young voters – a key bloc that helped propel him to the presidency in 2020. "I think it’s significant," the New York Democrat told CNN. "Young people have been paying attention to this issue. And before people say, you know, that this is due to social media platforms, this is an issue that I’ve been warning the party about for a long time – that young people have been increasingly concerned about the status of human rights of Palestinians for years now, and it has been growing and growing." She continued, "And I think what young people really want to see is an assertive stance from this administration and from our government about what we ourselves are willing to do to uphold US law."
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2022-09-12): In one of the few interviews she’s ever done about her daughter, Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail about how her daughter got her name. It had been her husband’s suggestion they call her Alexandria. "I thought about it for a while and I said, ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,’ " she recalled. " ‘That sounds very powerful. That’ll be her name.’ " [...] None of that is to say that the political establishment has become any more fair or her existence in Washington any more fun. In July 2020, Republican Representative Ted Yoho passed the congresswoman on the Capitol steps and reportedly told her she was "disgusting" while later referring to her as a "fucking bitch." (Yoho apologised but denied that he ever said the "offensive name-calling words.") In May 2021, Ocasio-Cortez was confronted outside of the House Chamber by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right member of the Republican caucus, who ran up to her and demanded she explain why she supports "terrorist groups" like Black Lives Matter and insisted Ocasio-Cortez debate her "radical socialist beliefs" with her, according to two Washington Post reporters who were present. Last November, Arizona Republican Paul Gosar posted an online anime video that depicted him using swords to kill Ocasio-Cortez.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2024-01-11): By any measure, Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez ran a remarkable 2018 race that was tailored to her district and benefited from shrewd organizing and even technological innovation. Running as a Democratic Socialist, she drew a large, multiracial progressive coalition that overwhelmed an incumbent, in Joseph Crowley, who personified the Wall-Street-friendly Democrat uninterested in local concerns but assumed to be too powerful to be held to account. [...] Embracing the Democratic Socialist label (after some early trepidation), Ocasio‑Cortez countered Crowley’s cautious centrism by pushing a platform that included a federal jobs guarantee, Medicare for All, tuition‑free public colleges, a $15 minimum wage, ending for‑profit prisons, and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She also leaned into her deep district ties, criticizing Crowley for pulling his kids out of the local schools and moving his family to Northern Virginia to better accommodate his busy life in Washington. Most of all, Ocasio‑Cortez stressed her working‑class background. With less than a month to go, she poured her remaining money into a campaign video she wrote herself that was shot by a pair of socialist filmmakers from Detroit. The ad shows Ocasio‑Cortez getting ready for work in an unglamorous apartment, climbing out of the subway, swapping comfortable shoes for nicer ones on the platform, greeting people in the neighborhood not in the stagy way a big‑time politician does it but like a normal person who lives there.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2021-03-20): TALKING SOCIALISM | Catching up with AOC Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, best known as AOC, is DSA’s foremost socialist superstar. Her June 2018 primary win—a 29-year-old taqueria bartender defeating the third most powerful Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives—inspired up to 10,000 people to join DSA. [...] Today—with over 12 million Twitter followers, her picture on the December cover of Vanity Fair, and mass cultural appeal to teens and the not-yet-political—she continues to use her unasked-for celebrity to build support for a democratic socialist agenda. On Jan. 28, more than a quarter of a million people streamed her impromptu teach-in on the gamer platform Twitch.tv. The topic was the GameStop stock market rebellion, but the discussion encompassed a critique of Wall Street and a plug for a wealth tax.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2022-01-04): No evidence that AOC said all young people want to be socialists [...] Our searches of Google, Bing and Nexis found no instance in which she said that all young people want to be socialists, as Baxter’s ad says. We also searched for any mention of young people and socialists on her personal and official Twitter accounts. Had Ocasio-Cortez flatly stated that all young people want to be socialists, it’s likely news coverage would have quickly followed.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2020-04-03): It’s unclear if the people in the United States who say they are democratic socialists want to reform or abolish capitalism. If I had a chance to speak to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez without the political fanfare, the first question I’d ask her is, what do you think about capitalism? The big dilemma for people on the left since 1989 [generally regarded as the year communism collapsed] is whether you think capitalism can be reformed or if markets by their nature always harm people without power. The big dividing line on the left is between those who say, "Look, the market is a good thing, trade generally benefits everyone," and those who say, "Trade is a zero-sum game, someone always wins and someone always loses." If Ocasio-Cortez thinks capitalism always hurts the poor, then she probably opposes capitalism. If so, then she only has a few options. She’s not a communist, so she’s not going to go the dictatorial route like the Soviets. But no one knows what democratic socialism would really look like.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2018-11-09): I am writing to congratulate you, and other newly elected socialists, on your elections and to outline the lessons of our experience in Seattle since my first election to the city council in 2013. To those who campaigned for you I also offer my congratulations, including to members of Democratic Socialists of America, who along with my own organization, Socialist Alternative, helped bring your fight to hundreds of thousands of working people. [...] Yet while the election of self-declared socialist candidates in the belly of the capitalist beast is a victory in itself, it is also just the beginning. We face a decisive struggle to defeat the sexist, racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker agenda of the right and the deeply reactionary Trump regime. Trump is licking his wounds from the midterms but he is far from vanquished. His campaign was a relentless torrent of hate against immigrants and the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party is increasingly taking on aspects of a far right movement. This is a major threat to working people as a whole and to the most oppressed sections especially. [...] I also want to share a few things with the emerging socialist movement behind your electoral successes: We should always remember that most gains are won by the mass struggle of working people, not elected office, and that is where we must root our power. Our struggle cannot base itself on a few elected representatives, and our own responsibility must be to the working class, not to any individual politicians, even those we judge well meaning.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2018-08-15): "I Have No Problem Saying I’m a Democratic Socialist" [...] I was excited to learn about DSA and what they’re doing. I saw the value of the work they were doing and sought DSA’s endorsement before the awesome win of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [...] Yes. I have no problem saying I’m a democratic socialist and believe in democratic socialism, when asked. Being a democratic socialist shouldn’t be this crazy thing. The tenets of it are what most people want. It’s just that the people who make big money out of the current system, while other people are suffering, want us to believe that the terminology is anti-American.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2022-04-20): Ocasio-Cortez agrees. As the unofficial head of the House’s Progressive Caucus, explains: "My policies most closely resemble what we see . . . in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden." Sanders, AOC, and their socialist cohorts laud the Nordic model (comprising Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland) for its supposed management of the market, draconian taxes on the rich, and cradle-to-grave welfare system. Polls show that a large number of Americans, especially those under 30, would welcome the Nordic way. [...] Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad, and the Democratic Socialists of America want to turn America into a giant Denmark or Sweden. To do that they would have to build a gigantic welfare state and a bureaucracy to run it; triple income taxes on everyone, including the middle class, to pay for the welfare; initiate a value-added tax of 25 percent on coffee, beer, chocolate and other goods; convert our $141 trillion net worth into government bonds; eliminate all right-to-work laws and unionize the 90 percent of workers who do not belong to unions; and open our borders to all.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2019-03-21): Ocasio-Cortez represents one vision of the Democratic Party’s future. She’s a young Hispanic woman, three cornerstones of the party’s electoral coalition. She’s a democratic socialist at a time when confidence in capitalism is declining, especially among progressive millennials. The issues she ran on—a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, abolishing ICE—are animating a new generation of Democrats. She’s a political phenomenon: part activist, part legislator, arguably the best storyteller in the party since Barack Obama and perhaps the only Democrat right now with the star power to challenge President Donald Trump’s. [...] That’s why young Americans have become increasingly attracted to democratic socialism, which aims to build a stronger social safety net through democratic elections. After Sanders’ rise in the 2016 Democratic primaries, membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) soared from fewer than 10,000 members in early 2016 to more than 55,000 by 2019. A 2018 Harvard poll found that 39% of young Americans favor democratic socialism, and even young Americans who don’t identify with the movement overwhelmingly support ideas like Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and a Green New Deal. "Every year, young people are ticking a couple points more left," says John Della Volpe of the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who has been tracking youth political attitudes since 2000. "On literally every single question they’re moving left."
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2018-06-29): Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old self-styled champion of the working class who, as the ad shows, can effortlessly change from flats to high heels on an elevated subway train platform, scored a stunning upset victory that not only shocked America but also might signal a new direction for the Democratic Party. It is clear that the movement started by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 had found new life in very un-bro-like fashion. "I think so many young people are completely disillusioned with mainstream politics and the two-party system, and democratic socialism is something that seems to speak to their concerns and interests," said Marisol LeBrón, a Latino studies scholar who grew up in Parkchester — the same Bronx area Ocasio-Cortez is from — and identifies as queer and Nuyorican. "The fact that she is a young woman of color helped her connect with young people around the country who identify as progressive or left and are trying to think through party politics in this increasingly repressive moment." [...] To this potent stew, Ocasio-Cortez added a Sanders-like appraisal of what ails the American Dream, offering solutions that hew to the "s"-word strategies of a group with which she openly identifies, the Democratic Socialists of America. That same "socialism" that the center and right often identify with pretentious European thinkers and student-debt-saddled millennials turns out to be a viable approach to the problems of people of color who are segregated out of opportunity for high-quality education, affordable housing and the accumulation of generational wealth.
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2019-07-11): Socialists, says National Review correspondent Kevin Williamson, are guilty of a fatal conceit: They think they can develop a system so powerful that it can consider every variable in society and propose scientific answers "about how many acres of potatoes to plant, and when and where to plant them." [...] The subtitle of Hayek’s last work "The Fatal Conceit" is "The Errors of Socialism." Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have failed to learn from those errors, says Williamson, asserting that "you cannot call yourself the party of science and the party of socialism too. You have to choose one or the other." Socialists flaunt their compassion, argues former National Review Editor-in-Chief John O’Sullivan, because it gives them an excuse to impose their will on others "unlawfully and even murderously."
Claim: Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.” (Tim Baxter, 2022-01-04)
Evidence (2024-10-06): Democratic socialism has had a global resurgence. As many as 70% of millennials say they are "likely" to vote for a socialist candidate. The problem is that the youth of today – and for that matter Bernie Sanders – do not know what democratic socialism looks like. [...] When politicians such as Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say that they want socialism, they always point to Sweden. If you want higher taxes, then perhaps Sweden is the country to emulate. However, Sanders and company need to know that Sweden and its Scandinavian neighbours are not socialist countries – at least, not today. A democratic socialist country does the kind of things that the UK did before Thatcher (and which Sanders, et. al., advocate today): The state controlled markets to the point of emasculation. Sweden, by contrast, has almost total free trade, lower corporate tax rates than the U.S., no wealth tax, and no minimum wage. Yes, the Swedes have high marginal tax rates, but their tax and welfare systems do not redistribute much more than the UK’s present welfare state. A number of economic freedom indices suggest that, on several dimensions, Scandinavian countries are less socialist than the U.S. And it cannot be considered progressive that Sweden’s high Value Added Tax ensures that the less-well-off shoulder a large share of the nation’s tax burden.