Just A Congressman Tweeting Cartoon Video Of Himself Murdering Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

It's NOT GREAT!

 Rep. Paul Gosar from Arizona shared a video on Twitter Sunday that depicted him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden. It's sick and twisted, and while it violates Twitter's rules against hateful conduct, the site believes it's somehow "in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible." Here's the link, if you feel compelled to watch.

Gosar tweeted “Any anime fans out there?" so he didn't share the video blind. The 90-second hate crime is apparently an altered version of the opening credits to the Japanese animated series "Attack on Titan." The show's hero predictably sets out to attack Titans, which are these monsters that have destroyed most of human civilization ... just like Democrats, we guess.

 The Washington Post reports:  

In the video Gosar posted, the congressman is depicted fighting the Titans alongside Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.). In one scene, Ocasio-Cortez's face is edited over one of the Titans' faces. Gosar flies into the air and slashes the Titan in the back of the neck, killing it.

I suspect this is similar to some intense dreams Gosar's had. This is presumably the type of video content that so distresses Josh Hawley. 

After sensible people expressed their shock and horror, Gosar's digital director, Jessica Lycos, released this statement: "Everyone needs to relax." She's not a mattress salesman. She works for a congressman who threatened a colleague and the president of the United States. I can't believe I have to say this, but it's not wise to promote violence against politicians you don't like when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January. Ocasio-Cortez was traumatized by the experience because she thought she might die, and if you're an asshole who thinks she's overreacting, just remember that the unhinged mob almost lynched Officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges. Th 1/6 thugs were normally all Blue Lives Matter, while they'd always despised AOC, so it's obvious that if they'd found her, they would've killed her.

And I get that Ocasio-Cortez isn't conservatives' or centrists' favorite person, but she doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve the death threats or just casual contempt from colleagues who call her a fucking bitch. 

Twitter is considering suspending Gosar's account — the Deluxe Trump treatment for sociopaths — to which I say, "Oh, no, not his Twitter account! How will he go on?" In the normal world, someone would lose their job if they shared content like this on social media. At the very least, he should have an uncomfortable conversation with Secret Service.

So while I was en route to Glasgow, a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me And he’ll face no consequences bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses. Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions don’t protect wochttps: //twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1457865685464276997 …

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) 1636422132 

Of course, there's zero chance of Gosar facing any consequences for his repulsive behavior. Most Republican voters hate Ocasio-Cortez more than they like pretending to care about human life. While traveling to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP26 climate summit, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that “... a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me." This a true sentence, and that's so damn depressing.

Ocasio-Cortez also pointed out that GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, potentially the next House speaker unless it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, only enables this violent rhetoric. McCarthy personally joked about punching Nancy Pelosi, who's 81 and would kick his ass in a fight, so we shouldn't expect him to take the high road.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday that Gosar's tweet was "unbelievably dangerous and irresponsible." He argued that the House should consider expelling Gosar.

HONIG: The other thing to keep in mind, the US Constitution, Article One, gives the House of Representatives and the Senate the power to expel, kick out its own members by a two-thirds vote. Now that is very, very rarely done, but you have to ask, if not now, when? I mean, what person at what company in the United States, public or private, would not get fired for doing something like that?

So Congress has that constitutional power. We'll see whether there's any will to exercise it.

I wish the media would eventually accept that the GOP is a bunch of thuggish assholes without a single scruple among them. No one in the media ever suggested that bin Laden would just turn himself in as if that was a serious option. Republicans aren't going to expel Gosar. They'll likely fundraise off the incident and accuse “Big Tech" of censoring conservatives on social media.

Rep. Cori Bush is correct when she observes:  "Every day these white supremacists push the limits further and further to see how far they can go without consequences."

Don't content yourself with thinking that AOC and other inconvenient Democrats are the sole targets. It'll soon be everyone unless Democrats collectively get pissed off and fight back.

[ Washington Post ]

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