With no clear winner emerging from the third Democrat primary debate, the party has found something to unify around: calling Republicans racist over a provocative ad that linked socialism to Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide.

“This is the face of socialism. And ignorance,” says the thirty-second clip, opening on the smiling image of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), a self-described democratic socialist. The face then begins to burn away, revealing the grisly photos of the 1970s genocide in Cambodia.

“Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know the horror of socialism? My father was minutes from death in Cambodia, before a forced marriage saved his life,” says the narrator, revealed to be Republican activist Elizabeth Heng. “That’s socialism. Forced obedience, starvation. Mine is a face of freedom. My skin is not white, I’m not outrageous, racist, nor socialist. I’m a Republican.”

The controversial ad reportedly cost $96,000 to air Thursday evening in New York, Washington, DC and Houston, Texas, where the DNC presidential debate took place.

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“Republicans are running TV ads setting pictures of me on fire to convince people they aren’t racist,” Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, tweeted in response. “Life is weird!”

Just minutes later, she followed up, explaining what the Heng really meant: “Know that this wasn’t an ad for young conservatives of color – that was the pretense. What you just watched was a love letter to the GOP’s white supremacist case.”

“Are you really calling me racist, AOC?” Heng shot back. “I’m calling all Democrats out for supporting an evil ideology.”

Not Republicans. Me. Are you really calling me a racist @aoc? I’m calling all Democrats out for supporting an evil ideology. Or are you just in Congress to hang out with celebrities and tweet out ridiculous ideas like the green new deal? https://t.co/w985LYjIZd — Elizabeth Heng (@ElizabethHeng) September 13, 2019

Fellow Democrats quickly rallied around AOC, denouncing the ad as “ridiculous and evil” and “absolutely despicable.” The hashtag #BoycottABC quickly began trending on Twitter. Even the former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul chimed in, with a take that Pol Pot’s regime wasn’t real socialism.

Really disappointed in ABC for running this ad. And as someone who has been teaching comparative politics for 30 years, Pol Pot's tyrannical regime had nothing to do with "socialism." https://t.co/PWEyTHmAnj — Michael McFaul (@McFaul) September 13, 2019

Heng pointed to the furor on Friday morning as proof what the Democrats were all about.

“They are more offended by truthful words than the acts of their political ideology that has killed millions of innocent victims,” she tweeted. “I don't care about [AOC’s] feelings – I care about stopping her lies about the lies of socialism.”

Heng was a staffer for Republican Congressman Ed Royce, and ran for Congress herself last year, losing to a Democrat in California’s 16th district. She recently set up New Faces GOP, a political action committee aiming to “help diversify the Republican Party.”

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