Color me shocked, shocked that a self-professed socialist would think that the East Germans built the Berlin Wall to keep the capitalists out. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) mused on the “moral abomination” of Donald Trump’s planned wall on the southern border, saying in a self-produced video that “it’s like the Berlin Wall.” Ryan Saavedra takes historical exception to the comment (via Twitchy):

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) says the wall is “a moral abomination. I think it’s like the Berlin wall” The Berlin wall was built to stop East Germans from escaping into West Germany The goal of the border wall is to stop illegal immigration and trafficking pic.twitter.com/MbFWitkFBi — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 18, 2019

Er … suuuuure it is. The only way anyone could assert this with a straight face, let alone with the smug dismissal Ocasio-Cortez displays here, is to be entirely ignorant of the post-war history of Berlin, Germany, and the deep desire to flee the communist system in both. A quick search on “Berlin Wall history” for the woefully uneducated would land on this entry in Encylopaedia Britannica:

In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West Germany, including steadily rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals. Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off East Germans’ access to West Berlin and hence West Germany. That barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of August 12–13, 1961, as the result of a decree passed on August 12 by the East German Volkskammer (“Peoples’ Chamber”).

The Berlin Wall’s “moral abomination” came from its intent to trap people inside a communist system when they wanted to flee — at which it largely succeeded for its 28-year lifespan. East Germany arrested more than 5,000 people attempting to cross over it into West Berlin and freedom, and they shot and killed at least 191 people in the attempt. Only 5,000 crossed over into freedom during its three-decade abomination. They didn’t care a whit if anyone wanted to enter East Berlin.

If nothing else, you’d think that a cheerleader for socialism would know to avoid references like this. Nothing proved economist F.A. Hayek more correct in his seminal work The Road to Serfdom than the Berlin Wall’s erection. Hayek wrote that socialism’s inherent economic contradictions made failure inevitable, and socialist systems would produce leaders of greater brutality in attempts to impose success, leading inevitably to totalitarianism. The Berlin Wall proved the point by turning East Berlin and East Germany into a prison camp that none could easily escape. Venezuela’s busy proving Hayek correct again, a point that Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist supporters are busily ignoring.

There may be good arguments against building a border wall, although I’ve yet to hear a coherent argument about an equally effective alternative. This ain’t one of those good arguments.

There’s a bit of good news for Ocasio-Cortez on this, though — at least one Republican presidential contender has made this same argument before. The bad news is that it was, er …

At least Ron Paul had enough sense not to expressly cite the Berlin Wall as the equivalent to a comprehensive border wall in the US. He just hinted at it, which was silly enough.

As a Presidents Day bonus, here’s another capture from Saavedra from AOC’s latest rant. Apparently she finds the celebrity of Washington DC life rather taxing … and the basis for some mild paranoia. “Here in DC, it’s like so weird,” Ocasio-Cortez says. “It’s like everybody is like a spy.” It’s like what happens when you like Instagram your like every like thought and like tweet them like all out, too. Like.