Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew yet another round of mockery this week after comparing the border wall President Trump wants to build with another infamous wall from the annals of European history. In a livestream for her supporters on Friday, the often-idiotic congresswoman said that she was offended by the idea that we might actually want to protect our borders.
“No matter how you feel about the wall, I think it’s a moral abomination,” she said. “I think it’s like the Berlin Wall. I think it’s like any other wall designed to separate human beings and block out people who are running away from the humanitarian disasters. I just think it’s wrong.”
Having exposed the fact that she knows literally nothing about the Berlin Wall other than that it was a thing that existed, Ocasio-Cortez was once again criticized by social media users who have grown bored with her incessant ignorance.
“Dear @AOC: Let me serve as your private professor here,” tweeted scientist Gad Saad. “The Berlin Wall was meant to keep people inside the socialist/communist utopia and stop them from fleeing to the decadent capitalist west. So as the New Millennial Lenin, you might want to refrain from using this example.”
Saad is correct, of course – the Berlin Wall was a Soviet construction designed to place borders around the so-called Iron Curtain of the Cold War. Germans at the time were desperate to flee communism and enjoy the freedom and democracy of West Germany; the wall was the only way the U.S.S.R. could keep their subjects from defecting en masse at a time when communism’s flaws were plainly evident in day-to-day life.
Thus, while Ocasio-Cortez was perhaps not wrong to indicate that the wall was meant to stop people from fleeing “humanitarian disasters,” it is strange that she would use one of communism’s greatest symbols of failure to make her point. After all, she is intent on bringing that very ideology home to the United States.
Beyond that, the comparison is absurd for many other reasons, not the least of which is our country’s right to police immigration. The Berlin Wall was not meant to keep people out; it was built to keep people in. Trump’s wall would not prevent U.S. travelers from getting to Mexico – nor would it have any bearing on Mexican travelers who would like to vacation in the United States, of course. Further, it would not prevent Mexicans or Central Americans from properly applying for legal immigration statuses or even asylum. It is meant solely as a deterrent to illegal immigration, and that makes it a just, legal, and moral project.
If greedy, white stockbrokers were flooding in through the southern border, perhaps Ocasio-Cortez would see things differently.
