‘Woke 1 Was Crazy’: AOC & Mamdani Betray the Movement That Made Them

2020 wasn’t a joke — but is “Woke 1.0” proof of a calculated pivot to the right? Both AOC and Zohran Mamdani dismissed the George Floyd uprising against police violence as “crazy,” but as Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra argue this isn’t just careless language: it’s a warning sign of how the Democratic Party disciplines “progressives” to protect the ruling class from socialism’s growing popularity.

Rania and Zoe break down Mamdani’s shift — from explicitly linking NYPD militarization to Israel in 2023, to stating that “defund the police” was a mistake last Wednesday — and argue this isn’t an organic evolution, it’s a bet that toeing the party line is the only way to survive in a corporate, genocide-funding party built to crush movements, not represent them.

It’s a growing pattern of capitulation: Mamdani, AOC, and Brad Lander all backing Hakeem Jeffries for House Speaker despite his defense of Israeli apartheid and genocide; Michigan’s William Lawrence disavowing DSA membership within a month of winning his primary on DSA organizing; and Abdul El-Sayed enthusiastically embracing Kamala Harris’s endorsement despite her role enabling the annihilation of Gaza.

“2020 wasn’t some mass psychotic break. It was the largest uprising in modern American history, because tens of millions of people watched a police officer kneel on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes until he died — suffocated to death, on camera, in broad daylight”

If the movement lets these betrayals go unanswered, what stops Abolish ICE, Medicare for All, and Free Palestine from being next on the chopping block?

“2020 wasn’t some mass psychotic break. It was the largest uprising in modern American history.”

@RaniaKhalek & @ZoeAlexandra_ok on why “Woke 1.0” isn’t a joke — it’s a warning.