After casting President Trump and his supporters as “white supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists” for the past four years, the most prominent member of the far-left “squad” in the U.S. House thinks it’s time to pour more money into efforts to “deradicalize” and “deprogram” that population.
At a virtual town hall meeting Friday night in the wake of the the violent protest at the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said it’s “a problem that doesn’t go away on Jan. 20,” when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th president.
“There are people who are radicalized right now. It’s going to take a very long time to deradicalize these people and a lot of effort,” she said.
In November, a member of the Democratic National Committee, David Atkins, said on Twitter that “deprogramming” is needed for every one of the Americans who voted for Trump on Nov. 3.
“No seriously … how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?” he wrote on Twitter.
“We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.”
Ocasio-Cortez noted the House subcommittee on civil rights on which she serves has held hearings over the past two years on the issue, but the Trump administration hasn’t made funding “de-radicalization” programs a priority, the New York Post reported.
No seriously…how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?
We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) November 18, 2020
One year ago, a campaign organizer for then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said the country would need to “spend billions” on “reeducation” of Trump supporters who have become “Nazified.”
Ocasio-Cortez said Friday that the deprogramming of people who live in a “misinformation bubble” requires more than just a conversation, likening it to therapy, the Post noted.
But rest assured, she said, research has shown “healing is possible.”
“We need to double, triple or quadruple the funding for these programs,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She described a spectrum of radicalization that ranges from sympathizers to conspiracy theorists, to Neo-Nazis.
One example of a dangerous conspiracy theory is Trump’s insistence that vote fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 election.
On his show Monday, Rush Limbaugh said Ocasio-Cortez “believes that you can reprogram conservatism, that you can psychologically remove it from people who believe it.”
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