A Woman? Dancing? The Insolence!

04/01/2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sworn in as the youngest US Congresswoman today (3^rd January in the US), and in a rather bizarre tweet, a scandalous video of her, God forbid, dancing was posted on Twitter. The caption called her out as a “know-it-all commie” who was now being outed as the “clueless nitwit she is”. Unsurprisingly, the tweets have in fact gone viral for the opposite reason, with the media reporting widespread support and adoration for the video, which commenters said was a take on the Breakfast Club, that she was a part of at university. How controversial.

What seems bizarre about it isn’t so much the fact that people are trying to attack her reputation as a result of the video, but who posted and shared the tweet in the first place. Dan Jordan, who honestly I’ve never heard of, appears to be quite the well-known conservative conspiracy theorist, and he was the initial poster. His Twitter feed is full of what he himself called ‘memes’ (that didn’t make a lot of sense) and a bunch of stuff about fake news, MAGA, and trying to blame the “left” and Democrats for the current government shutdown in America over the wall. And I only scrolled down about fifteen posts.

The shorter clip I first saw, linked in a Guardian article, was shared by an account named AnonymousQ1776, which I assume (trailing on the conspiracy theorist connection) is so called for the mysterious figure known as Q. With a following of vehement Trump supporters, the most prolific theory from this person (who is apparently deeply embedded in the “Deep State” who happens to have access to all this information, but seems to be a 4Chan offshoot gone too far) is that of the Clinton-led global paedophile ring. Their followers treat everything they say as gospel, including a more recent accusation that WikiLeaks has now been infiltrated by the Deep State and can no longer be trusted. For conspiracy theorist buffs, it’s quite the intriguing rabbit hole to go down if you want to learn more.

But, I digress – the reason I mention Q and Jordan is because the video seemingly has no relation whatsoever to anything they talk about. Sure, the term socialist probably makes them and their followers scream at night, but a clip of a woman dancing has no relation whatsoever to political or ideological matters. I’m certain there would be videos of Trump dancing somewhere on the internet, but it wouldn’t make much sense to share them with the caption “Look at America’s favourite capitalist hero acting like the buffoon he really is”. From what I can tell, at this moment the AnonymousQ1776 account (which I do not think belongs to this Q character) has been taken down from Twitter; search results and links yield nothing but an error.

If the worst thing the youngest Congresswoman in US history can do is dance on a roof during her time at university, I look forward to seeing the best of her as she takes on this role.

Liked this? Read Don’t Think Sexism Still Exists? Just Look at Our Government

Previous piece: What Is History?: A Reflection Pt.1