Those weren't the exact words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) last week when she “apologized” for her failure to vote against more funding for a major element of Israel’s massive weapons system, the “Iron Dome”—but they may as well have been. This supposedly “defensive”¹ weapons system was given to a country notorious for unprovoked wars, for outrageously disproportionate slaughter against any force that opposes them, for arming itself with between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, for a decades-long grinding genocide against Palestine and Palestinians in particular, for assassination and sabotage and torture and... well, you get the picture. And if you don't, and even if you think you do, go here, here, and here.

The House of Representatives passed this funding overwhelmingly, by 420 to 9. Ocasio-Cortez sat “firmly” on the fence by voting “present.” “Present” means that she was too cowardly to take a stand one way or the other on whether the U.S. government should even more thoroughly lavish arms on its Middle East attack dog. She then wrote a letter saying that she had to vote this way because she wasn’t given time to explain this to her constituents in such a way as to prevent it from tearing her community apart by creating a “real sense of panic and horror.” (Go here to read her statement.)

She moves on to say that “I wept.... Yes I wept.” Perhaps she includes this so everyone can understand how “deeply conflicted” she felt about letting this new round of financing Israeli terror and oppression in the Middle East go unopposed, how much her unprincipled capitulation troubles her. And then she apologizes to those who feel disappointed. Yada yada yada.

For those of you who feel “betrayed” or “sold out” by AOC, the point here is most definitely NOT AOC’s individual act of political cowardice. Nor is the lesson you must solemnly draw is to “never trust AOC.” If that’s all you do, then you’ll again let yourself be played by the next opportunist who comes along.²

The lesson to learn from this disgusting display of crybaby capitulationism is where it flows from: the political line of "democratic socialism." This “democratic socialism” in fact boils down to a more equitable division of the spoils and plunder carried out by imperialism.³ In fact, “democratic socialism” is ANTI-revolutionary.⁴ And the actual capitulation of this trend to imperialist power is nothing new either.⁵

If you actually DO care about the people of the world and what the system in this country does, and will do, to them until its instruments of force and violence and its built-in institutional structures of worldwide exploitation and oppression are forcibly dismantled through a real revolution… then you actually need to engage with the revolutionary-internationalist work and line of Bob Avakian, and get with the Revcoms who follow him.

AOC may strike a pose and—sometimes—sound real “radical.” But when push comes to shove she, and the trend she represents, will cave in to the interests of the capitalist-imperialists. As Lenin said over 100 years ago, “People always were and always will be the foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. The supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling classes.”