AOC ridiculed for celebrating Carlson's ousting and saying 'deplatforming works'

"Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News," the democratic socialist said gleefully in the video. "Couldn't have happened to a better guy."

Ocasio-Cortez indicated she was "very glad" that Fox News gave Carlson the boot, repeating the claim that he was "arguably responsible" for "driving some of the most, uh, amounts of death threats and violent threats, not just to my office but to plenty of people across the country."

While delighted by this turn of events, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that Carlson's days of calling her out are likely far from over.

"Um, I also kind of feel like I'm like waiting for the cut scene at the end of a Marvel movie, after all the credits have rolled, and then you see like the villain's like hand re-emerge out to grip over like the end of a building or something," she said.

The democratic socialist held off on her more controversial statement until the end of the video, where she stated, "Deplatforming works and it is important and um, there you go. Good things can happen."

Independent journalist Kyle Becker responded to the video, tweeting, "This is the only way the radical left can defeat its political opposition. Terrorism, censorship, guerilla warfare, purging its ideological opposition."

Alex Lorusso, an executive producer at Newsmax, wrote, "The Democratic Party is the Party of Censorship."

One Twitter user branded Ocasio-Cortez "The Bronx Bolshevik."

Another argued, "Deplatforming does work in most cases (it won't in Carlson's case) but it is also the tool of people whose ideas either can't stand scrutiny or debate and/or those with totalitarian impulses."

Whereas Ocasio-Cortez had been more suggestive, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was explicit last week when he called on Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch to deplatform Carlson:

Like Schumer, this was not the first time Ocasio-Cortez took aim at independent-minded journalists.

The New York Post reported that in 2021, Ocasio-Cortez had mulled over ways to help "rein in" the free press and combat undesirable information.

"It’s one thing to have differentiating opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false," she said. "So that’s something that we’re looking into."

Whereas Ocasio-Cortez is "very glad" to see her critics deplatformed, she has spoken out in the past when those who share her views have lost their jobs at corporate news outlets.

In 2018, Temple Hill professor Marc Lamont Hill got fired from CNN, where he was a contributor, for making statements widely interpreted to be a call for the ruination of Israel.

The National Council of Young Israel said, "With his racist views and unabashed denigration of Israel, Dr. Hill does not deserve to be given any sort of platform that facilitates the dissemination of his bigotry, whether it be on Cable TV or in a classroom," reported The Hill.

In an interview with the New Yorker, Ocasio-Cortez bemoaned Hill's termination by CNN, saying, "There was no discussion about it, no engagement, no thoughtful discourse over it, just pure accusation."

Ocasio-Cortez later attempted to define cancel culture in 2020, noting that "the term 'cancel culture' comes from entitlement - as though the person complaining has the right to a large, captive audience,& one is a victim if people choose to tune them out. Odds are you're not actually cancelled, you're just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked."

According to the Democratic lawmaker, the people who are actually canceled include Palestinian human rights advocates, abolitionists, anti-capitalists, and anti-imperialists, "not spicy 'contrarians' who want to play devils advocate w/ your basic rights."

The Twitter CEO was responding to a video wherein South African venture capitalist David Sacks discussed an "illiberal agenda" that "involves censorship, and de-platforming, including economic de-platforming, and this collusion between state power and the security state and these tech monopolies and the media. This idea that we have all the right answers. This is fundamentally an illiberal agenda."

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