AOC Gives GOP Leader's Demand for an Apology the Response It Deserves

This week in bad discourse, politicians and the media have been obsessing over the semantics of concentration camps.

To be more precise, whether the forced internment of legal asylum seekers in despicable conditions on the Southern border constitute a “concentration camp,” and whether or not that definition is offensive to survivors of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

The face of this controversy, once again, was freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who correctly identified the border holding facilities as concentration camps. Republicans and other bad faith actors immediately swarmed. The latest installation was House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who said that she should apologize for her comments.

Ocasio-Cortez, unsurprisingly, did not think very much of that.

Who committed the greater transgression: AOC for using a word in a factual but possibly controversial way, or the politicians—like McCarthy—who support and enforce policies that result in immigrants being torn from their families and thrown into the churn of a racist system designed to erode their humanity and make them easy fodder for a nationwide campaign of xenophobia?

You must decide for yourself over the weekend, and every day following it while these policies remain in place.