Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez heckled for ‘voting to start nuclear war’

Protesters have interrupted a town hall event being addressed by Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, accusing her of pushing the US into a nuclear war with Russia and China by supporting military aid to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia.

Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) was heckled during a Q&A, held to engage with voters in the New York City borough of the Bronx on Wednesday.

A man in the audience interrupted the far-left congresswoman from New York, shouting that none of the things she was speaking about would matter if there’s a nuclear war.

“You’re voting to start a nuclear war with Russia and China. Why are you playing with the lives of the American citizens? Why are you playing with our lives?” he shouted.

The protester also wondered how could Ocasio-Cortez claim to be a “progressive socialist” yet consistently vote in favor of lethal US aid packages for Ukraine, which only escalated the fighting. “You’re a coward!” he proclaimed.

He was backed by another man, who described himself to be a left-winger and former fan of AOC, who’d become disillusioned with her over her actions in Congress. “I believed in you and you became the very thing you sought to fight against. That’s what you’ve become. You are the establishment,” the second man claimed.

He urged Ocasio-Cortez to follow the footsteps of another prominent female politician Tulsi Gabbard, who quit the Democratic Party earlier this week, saying that it fell “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers.”

“You have done nothing! Tulsi Gabbard has shown guts where you’ve shown cowardice,” the man told AOC.

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“You’re the reason why everybody will end up in a nuclear war, unless you choose to stand up right now and denounce the Democratic Party. Will you do that? Yes or no?” he shouted.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to the question, but her words weren’t clear in the footage from the town hall that had been uploaded on social.

The possibility of the conflict in Ukraine turning into a nuclear war has been making headlines in the US and elsewhere in the West in recent weeks. It became a hot topic after Russia’s President Putin vowed that Moscow would use “all the means” at its disposal if Russia’s territorial integrity was threatened.

However, his words were interpreted by the US and its allies as a “veiled threat” to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine. Washington has warned that such a move would result in “catastrophic consequences” for Moscow.

Numerous Russian officials have since insisted that the country wasn’t threatening anybody with nukes. They pointed to Russia’s military doctrine, which clearly states that nuclear weapons may only be used if such arms or other weapons of mass destruction are being deployed against the country, or if it is faced with an existential threat from conventional arms.