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Progressive Politics

Cori Bush Scares the Fascists?’: Progressive Congressional Nominee Targeted in RNC Fearmongering

“You can’t stop the Revolution! I said what I said,” Bush responded.

2 min readAug 25, 2020

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Progressive congressional Democratic nominee Cori Bush found herself in the spotlight at the Republican National Convention on Monday night, as a right-wing Missouri couple made infamous for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protestors outside their mansion earlier this year characterized the Ferguson organizer as a “Marxist revolutionary” ready to overthrow the nation’s power structure.

In their virtual remarks during the RNC’s opening night, Mark and Patricia McCloskey appeared to be speaking from their home, and, according to Bush, “tried to villainize” the St. Louis Democrat.

In a tweeted response to their comments, Bush appeared to take issue with the characterization while also treating the claim as laughable:

“The radicals are not content just marching in the streets. They want to walk the halls of Congress. They want power,” Mark McCloskey said. “This is Joe Biden’s party. These are the people who will be in charge of your future and the future of your children,” he said, after mentioning Bush, a nurse and Black Lives Matter activist who became a leader in the movement after the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.

Bush, who ran on a platform of progressive policies including Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and compassionate criminal justice reform, upset entrenched incumbent Lacy Clay in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District earlier this month.

“The Marxist, liberal activist leading the mob to our neighborhood stood outside our home with a bullhorn screaming, ‘You can’t stop the revolution.’ Just weeks later, that same Marxist activist won the Democrat nomination to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Mark McCloskey. “That Marxist revolutionary is now going to be the congresswoman from the first district of Missouri.”

Bush agreed, tweeting, “YOU can’t stop the Revolution! I said what I said.”

While much of the RNC convention was wrought with racist undertones, progressives took the McCloskey’s focus on Bush as a win.

“Cori Bush scares the fascists?” Justice Democrats, who backed her bid for office, tweeted.

Other observers weighed in on the McCloskeys’ comments about Bush, welcoming the remarks as inadvertent praise for the Democrat.

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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