Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Christian organization behind two ads made for Sunday night’s Super Bowl game, claiming they spread fascism.
“Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” the lawmaker wrote on Twitter.
Christian group “He Gets Us,” a campaign to promote Jesus, ran two ads during the game for $20 million. They were funded in part by the conservative billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby, which has been at the center of several controversies, including the support of anti-LGBT legislation and a years-long fight that eventually resulted in the Supreme Court allowing companies to deny medical coverage for contraception due to religious beliefs.
The first ad that aired Sunday night—which stood out amid Rihanna’s show-stopping halftime performance, star-studded commercials, and football—showed migrants fleeing their homes. It was implied they were heading for the U.S. The commercial portrayed Jesus as a champion for immigrants and the poor, but above all, someone who’s exhausted by our current political divisions. The second showed images of violent confrontations before displaying text saying, “Jesus loved the people we hate.”
“He gets us. All of us,” the campaign claims, directing people to a website to learn more about Jesus’ teachings of “unconditional love.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene responded to Ocasio-Cortez Monday morning, writing, “Jesus died a horrific death on a Roman cross so that our sins can be forgiven and whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.”
“There’s proof there’s nothing Jesus wouldn’t do to show us His love,” she continued. “AOC needs to know Jesus.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s criticisms of Super Bowl Sunday didn’t stop there. The lawmaker also posted an image on Twitter of the company’s billionaire owner Elon Musk sitting next to fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox Corp, at the big game.
Ocasio-Cortez wrote, “Birds of a feather flock together.”
He Gets Us does not list donors on their website.
“Funding for He Gets Us comes from a diverse group of individuals and entities with a common goal of sharing Jesus’ story authentically,” the site’s funding information page reads. “Most of the people driving He Gets Us, including our donors, choose to remain anonymous because the story isn’t about them, and they don’t want the credit.”
However, though it touts itself as a diverse, modern organization built upon compassion and love, He Gets Us has ties to anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws as well as evangelical churches, per CNN. For example, the campaign is a subsidiary of The Servant Foundation, or the Signatry. According to research compiled by Jacobin, The Servant Foundation has donated tens of millions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. It has also pushed for several anti-LGBT legislations and seeks to end non-discrimination legislation in the Supreme Court.
