It's hyperbolic but there is some truth in what she is saying. The DSA wants to abolish capitalism. This entire article is nothing but praising Marx and his writings. It ends with basically saying that socialism is a dirty word because it's never been done right. AOC is a registered DSA member and the whole BLM line about being "Trained Marxists" comes from this line of thinking:
https://www.dsausa.org/strategy/toward_freedom/
A lot of people on the left see capitalism as the ultimate evil and want to replace it with socialism. I certainly have my problems with capitalism and I think what we have now is not exactly capitalism but crony capitalism. I still think as a concept, it makes sense but just needs to be highly regulated. I'm actually open minded about it. But to pretend that these people aren't Marxists and interested in socialism and communism is being foolish. It was like we heard for years that "Defund the police doesn't mean abolish the police..." and now you have articles and groups saying "Yes...we mean abolish the police".
It's better to listen, debate and understand than pretend like this stuff isn't happening.
The problem with having these kinds of conversations is that people keep making extremely broad generalizations about what they think other people mean, cherry pick statements, and interpret every sentence in the worst way possible.
They are also either not using the same definitions, or one party simply does not know the definition of words.
Do you think that what AOC's definition of socialism is, and MTG's definition of socialism is are the same?
These people are talking past each other.
We keep talking about these words like socialism, capitalism, abolish, and Marx as if they are mystical, taboo or spiritual words. People are weaponizing these words to make very simple ideas sound scarier than they actually are.
"there is no reason to think that there is one exact “right” answer as to how socialism should be constructed, or that there is no politics apart from economic issues.
There is not one agreed upon definition of this word. There isn't one goal, or one voice or leader.
We already have "socialism" in aspects of our government. The immediate goal of the DSA is to give everyone a fair chance at success, and you can't do that in a system that is ruled by cash. People like MTG keep making these comparisons of the USSR when people have clearly and repeatedly brought up countries in Europe, and even Canada. No one is talking about "getting rid of capitalism" in the way that its being made out to be. These labels do more harm than good to the conversation, when the focus should be on policy.
Being influenced by some of the ideas of Marx doesn't make you some kind of crazy cultist. There's plenty of things that he was correct on.