AOC Has An Excuse For The Left’s Most Radical ‘Woke 1’ Era

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joked that her and other socialist politicians’ calls to ‘defund the police’ were just a “crazy, Woke 1” era.

“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,'” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with ABC. “What’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”

ABC News host Jon Karl had asked the congresswoman about the latest socialist backtrack, involving Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and her comments that called for prisons to be abolished and for Thanksgiving to be canceled.

The radical statements from the Left’s self-proclaimed “Woke 1” era ranged from calls to “defund the police” to declarations like “no one is illegal on stolen land,” “homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy,” and “all deportations are wrong.”

Ocasio-Cortez explained that those statements led to “fruitful” conversations. “I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful,” she said.

She tried to put some distance on that line of thinking, however, claiming that rhetoric is not the rhetoric used today. “I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”

So far, past radical comments have not stopped self-described democratic socialists — many of whom do still embrace the rhetoric Ocasio-Cortez appears ready to abandon — from winning primaries and advancing to the general election. In New York City, democratic socialists Darializa Chevalier and Claire Valdez swept their primaries and defeated incumbent establishment Democrats, Melat Kiros won in Colorado, and Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan.

Their success may not stop at the primaries. Prediction market Kalshi currently forecasts a Chevalier win in the general election at 98%, a Valdez victory at 76%, a Kiros win at 97%, and an El-Sayed win at 55%. Increasingly, more and more Americans hold a positive view of socialism — with nearly 40% reporting they have a positive view of socialism.

Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proved in his 2025 election that radical statements can be successfully walked back before a general election. Mamdani had previously advocated for seizing the means of production, refused to condemn globalizing the intifada, and had described the New York City Police Department as a “racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety.”

The thirty-four-year-old mayor chalked up his comments to his own emotional reaction to “the year George Floyd was killed,” saying that at the time “it felt like safety and justice had never been further apart.”

Mamdani’s win proved socialism could win a major election in the United States. And while socialism’s popularity is on the rise, capitalism’s popularity has declined, dropping 6% since 2021 to just over half — 54% — of Americans viewing capitalism in a favorable light.