A fringe group claimed responsibility for a woman who suggested “eating babies” during Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s town hall on climate change Thursday.
An audience member stood up to ask the congresswoman a question during the New York town hall. The woman went into a rant about “eating babies,” adding that the world only has a few months left and this is what needs to be done.
LaRouche PAC, a fringe political action committee, took credit for the stunt Thursday evening on Twitter and noted the congresswoman didn’t “rule out eating babies.”
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The group responded to multiple tweets on the incident, writing “it was us” repeatedly, The Washington Post reported. The group’s stunt is “a fairly well-established tactic” for it, Matthew Sweet, a historian who has documented the group, said according to WaPo.
“They’ve been doing this since the ’70s,” Sweet told WaPo. “The tactic is you go to a political meeting and you create a disturbance that disrupts the meeting, and more importantly, that creates a kind of chaos.”
The group’s tweet hinted at Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” a 1729 satire essay where he suggested that the Irish should eat their own babies to combat a famine.
Conspiracy theorist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. founded the LaRouche PAC. He ran for president eight times between 1976 and 2004, WaPo reported. LaRouche Jr. built up his following, which reaches across the world, “based on conspiracy theories, economic doom, anti-Semitism, homophobia and racism,” WaPo wrote in an obituary on LaRouche Jr., who died in 2019.
The Thursday incident sparked a Twitter feud between Ocasio-Cortez and President Donald Trump. The president tweeted called Ocasio-Cortez “a Wack Job.” The congresswoman hit back and said that it’s “better than being a criminal who betrays our country.”
The president’s tweet included his son Donald Trump Jr.’s comment that the person “seems like a normal [Ocasio-Cortez] supporter to me.”
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday morning about the stunt after writing Thursday that people shouldn’t make fun of the woman because she likely had “a mental condition.”
“Turns out the woman yelling was a Trump supporter,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday. “Doesn’t rule out potential mental issue (Drs do that) but good to know they were not in crisis. Earlier this year I was stalked & very nearly hurt by a disturbed person. I don’t take chances & immediately try to de-escalate.”
