Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has warned that the United States is “facing an environment of fascism” less than two weeks ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
The New York congresswoman made the statement during an interview on Friday, when she compared voter suppression in U.S. history to recent alleged voter suppression. The specific instance she was discussing was when men in tactical gear were photographed close to a drop box in a suburb of Phoenix last week, according to MSNBC.
“This type of intimidation at the polls brings us to Jim Crow. It brings us back and hearkens back to a very unique form of American apartheid that is not that long passed ago,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And we have never fully healed from it, and those wounds threaten to rip right back open if we do not strongly defend democracy in the United States of America.”
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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who was also with Ocasio-Cortez in the interview, discussed “replacement theory,” which he described as the fear of Caucasian people not being the majority in the U.S. in the near future, and accused Republicans of “playing on that fear.” The representative stated that the way to address this fear is to recognize that a majority of U.S. residents recognize the country as the biggest “multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious constitutional democracy.”
The Democrats have an uphill battle to face in the midterm elections between low approval ratings for Democratic President Joe Biden and rising inflation across the U.S., which Republicans have focused on leading up to the election. However, Raskin was confident in victory for the Democrats, saying that “we’re going to win, by the way.”
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In order for the GOP to gain control of Congress, the party must gain five seats in the House of Representatives and gain one seat in the Senate. As of Friday, the Republican Party is expected to win control of the House, while the Senate is in a dead heat, according to FiveThirtyEight.