Originally posted August 14th, 2026:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), NY’s Democratic Socialist rep., according to Kimberley Strassel in the WSJ, just exposed an entire movement’s disingenuousness with a laugh. AOC trivialized an entire perilous moment in American politics and culture: “Woke 1 was crazy!” she told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, in reference to calls to eliminate the police. And then she laughed.

Kimberley Strassel emphasizes that Woke 1 was never funny.

Talk with Americans who lost jobs or friends, or who were otherwise canceled for refusing to fall in line with Covid orthodoxy, for landing on the wrong side of the #MeToo rush, or for failing to renounce their “whiteness” abjectly enough.

Is this the part, asks KS, “where we laugh with AOC?” Ha, ha. “Woke 1.”

Ms. Strassel discusses how “inappropriate” it is to even label it “woke”. Too lighthearted or dismissive or perhaps “crazy,” which suggests brief unreason, or a moment that just “happened,” she continues.

AOC dished up those excuses—complete with a dash of poli-sci jargon—to close the book, explaining that during “this time,” especially “during Covid, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” a moment to “entertain any and every policy.” Such wild times!

AOC mistakes the timeline by selling short the dedicated intent of purveyors of Woke 1:

Well before Covid, AOC had introduced her “Green New Deal,” a Trojan horse for a government economic takeover. Nancy Pelosi had introduced a bill to federalize elections. Dishonest scholars and journalists were rewriting history to justify radical policies. The nation was handed a new, enforced lexicon—“equity,” “the unhoused,” “cisgender,” “birthing persons,” “Latinx.”

Mobs were mobilized, donors tapped, costly campaigns waged to pressure corporations, organize universities, rewrite policy platforms, elect radicals, and silence dissenters. The Biden administration adopted much of this as official policy and tasked the federal apparatus with strictly enforcing DEI, redefining Title IX at women’s expense, creating the Disinformation Governance Board, and imposing “environmental justice.”

Ha, ha. “Woke 1.”

AOC’s Non-Political Conversion

AOC not only didn’t offer any apology for past “crazy,” but she also didn’t offer any account of how she so quickly evolved from wanting to end all policing to wanting “as low a crime rate as possible.”

With this cosmic shift, AOC calls into question her movement’s entire worldview, Ms. Strassel writes.

• Does she no longer believe“mass incarceration” is a function of “White supremacy,” as she said in 2019?
• Does she still think “police brutality” is a “public-health crisis”?
• Would she still end qualified immunity? Why, or why not? We’re not told.

“Woke 1.” Ha ha.

What did AOC learn? That some policies are so toxic politically as to deny them office—and so must be massaged or disappeared, at least for now?

Look to failed Wisconsin gubernatorial hopeful Francesca Hong, who tried so hard to walk back her calls to abolish Thanksgiving. Then there is Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, “who has deleted from public view a big stash of YouTube files, including ones in which he calls to defund the police, says that Fourth of July “fireworks suck” and suggests replacing the Second Amendment with a constitutional right to healthcare.” Responding to CNN queries about the deletions, El-Sayed’s campaign complained that “cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don’t reflect his beliefs today.” Mr. El-Sayed, 41,” made his fireworks comments not in the “crazy” old days of 2020, but in July 2024.”

Can Americans blink away Woke 1 when they are now faced with Woke 2, or whatever version we are now on is just as “noxious?” Look closely, advises Ms. Strassel, at the latest Democratic Socialists of America platform, which calls to abolish entire segments of the Constitution and for a world “without capitalism.”

Among questions every voter should ask:  In the absence of an explanation for the radical left’s scurry from its past, should anyone trust that once in power, with passions running high, we wouldn’t be right back to Woke 1?

Maybe, writes KS, “we should give AOC credit for knowing exactly what she’s doing.”