Fans of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein are lashing out at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) after the 34-year-old progressive rebuked Stein’s campaign as “predatory.”
The in-fighting in the progressive wing began after Ocasio-Cortez came for Stein during an Instagram story responding to a question from someone asking how to tell their Stein-supporting friends “they are wasting their time and effort.”
Ocasio-Cortez began by stating she’s “not coming for people who are thinking” about voting for Stein and has been vocal about criticizing the two-party system.
“But you are the leader of your party. And if you run for years and years and years and years and years in a row, and your party has not grown and you don’t add City Council seats and you don’t add down-ballot candidates and you don’t add state electeds, that’s bad leadership,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“And that to me, is what’s upsetting,” she continued. “Because if you have been your party’s nominee for twelve years in a row … and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can’t pursue any successful strategy and all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.”
Stein quickly hit back, swiping at Ocasio-Cortez that “what’s seriously predatory is pretending your candidate is ‘working tirelessly for a ceasefire’ when in reality they’re actively arming and funding genocide,” highlighting Ocasio-Cortez’s comments at the DNC about Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a separate post, she added: “Democrats sue to kick us off ballots, hire operatives to infiltrate and sabotage us, lock us out of debates, fight ranked-choice voting, then act concerned that Greens have only won 1,400 elections. So which party is authentic, and which is predatory?”
The spat between Ocasio-Cortez and Stein drew a vocal outcry from Green Party supporters, many of whom were quick to echo Stein’s criticisms of Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Party.
“AOC trying her best to drag Jill Stein for ‘showing up every four years and doing nothing,’ after sitting idle in office for the past 11 months, watching a genocide unfold, is next-level scumbaggery,” blasted one X user.
“Kamala Harris honeymoon is over, so now Democrats are panicking. So they ordered AOC and a bunch of liberals to mass smear Dr. Jill Stein out of desperation,” theorized someone else.
Another user likewise quipped that Ocasio-Cortez had “gotten her marching orders.”
“Dems are clearly terrified of Jill Stein and the Green Party,” the user continued. “The number of hit piece videos from supposed progressives has spiked in the past week. And how can you take AOC seriously when she completely lies and says Jill Stein ran 4 years ago. Jill Stein did not run 4 years ago, she ran 8 years ago. This is a really embarrassing thing to watch—supposed progressives being attack dogs for a party and a candidate that is literally complicit in genocide while trading the only anti-genocide candidate on enough state ballots to win the election.”
Quipped another user: “I was pretty much set on voting for Jill Stein in November but then AOC called her ‘not authentic’ and ‘predatory’ and now I will crawl through miles of broken glass to vote for Stein.”
Butch Ware, Stein’s running mate, posted a reaction video in which he dubbed Ocasio-Cortez “the land speed record for quickest betrayal of the people.
“See, we don’t take no PAC money. We are not knee deep in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and y’all’s blood money,” Ware said. “So we can’t come out every day. We come out every four years when it’s time to give the American people a choice.”
“Predatory is murdering 200,000 people (the Gaza Ministry of Health’s death toll is approaching 41,000) in 11 months and then when they try to speak up, muzzling them when they come up on the stage. You slaughter Palestinians like animals and then you muzzle them like animals,” he added
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