New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14) has never been very good at public speaking, especially without a teleprompter. Like many Democrats, she tries to utilize buzzwords and phrases to create a point where there isn't one.
You saw this a lot from Kamala Harris whenever she was on camera, especially during the election, and I've come to the conclusion that you only really get this way whenever you know what you're saying is absolute garbage, but you've been coached repeatedly to phrase and frame things a certain way, with little wiggle room in how you can improv your responses.
For a leftist, you can never be too careful in how you phrase things, because any opening can be exploited and your narrative destroyed in the space of a quote response on X. It doesn't help that your own side is ready to take offense at nearly anything said in a way they don't like, so you have to watch out for that pothole too.
In AOC's recent CNN town hall, AOC began talking about masculinity and how an entire generation of boys (Gen Z) has been "brainwashed" into a sort of extreme masculinity that "requires the domination of" minorities and other genders. Not women, mind you. Other genders.
The way I just put that is far more coherent than what she actually says. Here's the video in question.
Good luck.
AOC claims that Republicans are “radicalizing young men by pushing them towards masculinity..”
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) February 19, 2026
Thoughts..?? pic.twitter.com/Dlmv7feFep
My favorite thing about this clip is that it cuts to a young woman in the crowd nodding along, as if AOC is really cooking with this point.
But let me break down what AOC is really saying here.
Are Republicans pushing men toward "masculinity"?
No. Men were masculine to begin with. It's our default setting. Republicans didn't have to say a thing to get Gen Z men over to their side, because AOC and the Democrat Party had been pushing them there with constant attacks on men's honest nature. They called everything "toxic" at every turn, blamed men for the world's ills, supported women supplanting men in every regard, and called anyone who disagreed with any of it "sexist." They allowed women to play by different rules than men, have an easier time getting jobs, better chances of getting accepted to college, and sometimes even punished men based on mere accusations of assault or rape, whether there was proof or not.
The constant lessening of men in the culture is what drove Gen Z men to the right.
What AOC is doing here is refusing to take accountability for her side's part in their loss of the male vote, which is what this is ultimately about. There's a dearth of men among the Democrat voting pool, and all attempts to win them back have failed. This is mainly because, as AOC highlights, men have refused to accept the reinterpretation of "masculinity" as something that looks more akin to anti-masculinity.
They want men to effectively sit down, shut up, accept whatever they're told to accept, stop trying to lead, stop inserting their own thoughts and opinions, and just pull the lever when they're told.
Oh, and accept the beatings with a smile while you're at it. Continue being the scapegoat. Lay down on the altar and wait patiently for the dagger.
That, according to Democrats, is the right way to be masculine.
Read: The Democrats Clearly Don't Get Men
Men Thrive on Respect and the Democrat Party Is Incapable of Providing That
The issue is that this goes against the very nature of masculinity. Asking men to do all of that is like asking a fish to climb a tree or a pig to fly. Men don't operate through permission structures or shared experience, so trying to pressure us all to accept the same narrative and treatment while behaving the same way and saying the same things is something that will ultimately fail because we literally cannot do it.
To be clear, men will unite under a single banner and fight for it to their dying breath, but if we don't believe in it, or it threatens our family, tribe, or property, then it'll get dropped quickly, and we won't wait for our friends to agree.
So, AOC's only recourse is to try to label natural masculinity as "extreme," and present it as something that's racist, classist, sexist, and transphobic.
Keep in mind, she's not saying all this to make us men feel bad. It'd be a nice byproduct, but that's not the point. The point is to keep the nodding girl nodding. So long as she can convince useful idiots that this is all true, and they can get mad enough to continue following the Democrats blindly, then it's not a total loss.
So, repainting standard, run-of-the-mill masculinity as what is effectively a "white patriarchy" — never mind that Republican men come in all ethnicities — is the real goal here, because that's the narrative that keeps the real radicalism going. It keeps leftists hating and feeling spite for white men, keeping the boogieman of our society alive and "dangerous."
So, to translate AOC:
"We can't get men to join the Democrat Party because we've consistently abused them in name, so since we've made them our enemy and we can't just stop doing that lest we anger our base, I'm going to evoke the image of the "white patriarchy" and talk as if young generations are being seduced by it when really it's just a bunch of regular guys not buying our Democrat strategist bulls**t. Everyone who isn't white and male is a victim and should hate them, regardless of facts or nuance."
