A group of staunchly anti-socialist freshmen Republican representatives calling themselves the ‘Freedom Force,’ has billed itself as the antithesis of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad.
The 2020 Congressional election saw the Republican Party make significant gains in the House of Representatives, whilst also paving the way for a flurry of new female and minority house members.
The group of Republican freshmen all have first or second-hand lived experience in communist or socialist regimes, and have vowed to fight against rising socialism in the US.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis is the daughter of Greek and Cuban migrants and has already hit out at fellow New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s growing influence in US and New York politics.
“Millions of immigrants fled countries to escape some of the very policies that Democrats are pushing here,” Ms Malliotakis said.
Her fellow freshman representatives include Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar from Florida, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana who is the first US representative from the former Soviet Union.
The group join an unprecedented amount of minority and female Republicans heading to Washington to counteract the growing influence of Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad.
The Squad emerged from the 2018 mid-term elections in which four minority females all under the age of 40 were elected to the US House of Representatives.
Ocasio-Cortez joined Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan.
The group – which has since expanded – has been critical in pushing a more progressive socialist agenda.
Representative Malliotakis has vowed to take her anti-socialist message to college campuses to ensure America’s youth “understand that socialism is not something grand”.
Similarly, Victoria Spartz – who grew up under socialism before leaving The Ukraine in her 20s – said it’s sad and “strange” how socialism is finding a foothold in America’s younger generation.
“Of all of the countries in the world, our country fought so much against this utopic socialistic idea that it’s crazy for me to see how quickly we made the turn to the left,” Represenative Spartz told Fox News.
“Every socialistic system, it’s about suppression, and we have to value our freedoms because we’re the greatest republic that ever existed,” she continued.
The new group has taken after The Squad and used Twitter to re-brand the GOP and brand themselves as freedom fighters against socialism.
Whilst the Republicans now have a new and young force of anti-socialist fighters, the Democrats have also bolstered their progressive ranks by adding Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush and New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman.
The new force within the GOP aims to counter The Squad and the growing progressive caucus in the Democratic Party, but still in the minority, the Republicans will have to take the fight to Twitter and wait it out until the 2022 mid-term elections.
