AOC Accuses Christian Group of Promoting Fascism Over Uplifting Super Bowl Ads
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused a Christian group that aired two ads during the Super Bowl of spending “millions of dollars… to make fascism look benign” on Sunday night in a bizarre social media post.
He Gets Us is a non-profit organization with the stated goal of helping people “understand the authentic Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible — the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.”
“We are also about sharing Jesus’ openness to people that others might have excluded,” reads the About Us section on its website. “You may see religious people as often hypocritical or judgmental, know that Jesus saw that too — and didn’t like it either. Instead, Jesus taught and offered radical compassion and stood up for the marginalized.”
The two commercials produced by the group for its Super Bowl spots seemed to support this inclusive and nonpartisan message. In one, a narrator tells the story of a young family driven from their home while images of the hardships endured by refugees flash onscreen. Eventually, the plight of today’s migrants are compared to the persecution of Jesus Christ and his family.
So thankful we have thoughtful, brave, and well-adjusted leaders like @AOC who are willing to call this out for what it is: fascism.
pic.twitter.com/w15l2HYQzs— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) February 13, 2023
In the other, various protests, shouting matches, and physical altercations, especially over political issues, are depicted before the text “Jesus loved the people we hate” is displayed at its end.
Despite their uplifting arguments for compassion and civility, Ocasio-Cortez discerned a subliminally authoritarian message behind the ads.
Jesus loved the people we hate. #HeGetsUs https://t.co/NcJdEoyCaJ pic.twitter.com/TFlxxCLBM7
— HeGetsUs (@HeGetsUs) February 13, 2023
“Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” she tweeted without any further explanation. Ocasio-Cortez was joined by other progressives, who accused He Gets Us of being a “hate group,” that hails from the “Christian Nationalist movement.”
The accusations stem from He Gets Us’s status as a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation, which also spends money on other Christian causes, including the promotion of pro-life and pro-religious liberty organizations and campaigns. Fascism, as defined by Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow belly-achers, constitutes mere connection with those who hold traditional Christian values on social issues — some of which were professed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during and even beyond their 2008 presidential campaigns.
An instinctive aversion to all things Christian, which Ocasio-Cortez associates with her political opponents, has led her to not only denounce a group promoting many of the same values — if not policy prescriptions — that she professes to hold, but to do so by way of an eminently bizarre smear.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
