Republican Paul Gosar takes down AOC anime after massive backlash

Paul Gosar defends video, calls it a ‘symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy’

The video showed anime versions of Paul Gosar and two others killing a giant monster caricature of Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Twitter: Paul Gosar)

Republican Congressman Paul Gosar has deleted from his Twitter account a bizarre video depicting him as an anime character battling a monster with the face of representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The congressman from Arizona had shared the 92-second clip on Sunday, both on his personal as well as his official congressional accounts, triggering severe anger and outrage on social media. It was viewed tens of thousands of time before it was deleted.

The edited clip of Netflix anime Attack on Titan showed Mr Gosar as well as fellow right-wing lawmakers Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert battling a towering, naked “Titan”.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez is seen for a few seconds in the video, with her face superimposed over the monster’s. The three anime versions of Mr Gosar, Ms Greene and Ms Boebert are then seeing delivering a fatal strike to the back of the monster’s head as blood gushes out.

The video also shows the three congressmen fighting with president Joe Biden for a few seconds.

The video was flagged by Twitter for violating the platform’s rules about hateful conduct.

The tweet was captioned: ‘Any anime fans out there?’ The Twitter URL for the anime video now reads: “Hmm...this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.”

It was taken down on Tuesday, two days after it was shared. Though Mr Gosar did not mention why and when he took the tweet down, he put out a statement defending the video on Tuesday night, calling it a “symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy”. It “depicts the fight taking place next week” inside the House of Representatives over the “soul of America”, Mr Gosar added.

“I do not espouse violence or harm towards any member of Congress or Mr Biden,” the representative wrote, adding that the video was “not meant to depict any harm or violence against anyone portrayed in the anime”.

The Arizona congressman’s sister said that her brother needs to face consequences from congressional leadership. Several other leaders and Democrats also sought action against representative Gosar in the House for the video.

“He should be removed from committee assignments just as Marjorie Taylor Greene was,” tweeted Kaivan Shroff, a former digital staffer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. “Absolutely disgraceful.”

Ms Greene was removed from her House committee assignments earlier this year after a series of videos were uncovered of her espousing wild conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, harassing survivors of a school shooting on the street, and crucially, expressing support for violence against Democrats in Congress including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She has since apologised for some of her comments.

Responding to the video, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said on Monday: “This dude is a just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway. White supremacy is for extremely fragile people and sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”