Her rise to "fame" is more or less well-documented, but I find it fascinating that, if the story is true, she won a "popularity contest" of young people to be selected to run for office. If memory serves, she ran unopposed in a small district in NYC.
What is crucial to look at, to understand, is where her ideas come from. She apparently has an economics degree from Boston University, which must be a haven for Marxism. Well, nearly every American university is such a haven, so no real news there.
The power behind the throne, or, the Think Tank where she gets her ideas, is called, New Consensus. Here is their home page, along with the opening paragraph of their purpose.
New Consensus
A truly beautiful world is possible—one without poverty or pollution, and with prosperity and dignity for everyone. Humanity has everything it needs to build that world in a single generation: billions of creative, hard working people, technology that already can allow us to make a comfortable living safely and sustainably, and unlimited energy from the sun that we can now harness to power that technology.
Even more intriguing, they publish a Reading List of authors whom they favor and recommend. Let's just say it's a list of alternative views on economics and policy, as well as America itself, and other topics.
New Consensus Reading List
Now I do find some of these books of interest, but I don't have time to go through all of them, or even some of them, at this time. The gist of one of the books however: The Public Bank Solution, by Ellen Brown, seems to say their grandiose plan, The Green New Deal, can be paid for by 'just printing as much money as we need.' [!] (Note: To my knowledge, the book mentions nothing of the Green Deal itself, just that we can print whatever money we need! Out of thin air! For whatever we want!)
I could be wrong about that, but I've only given all this a cursory glance. I'll leave it to others, who are seriously interested, to dig deeper.
Good Luck!
Here are two other links related to the above. I apologize for the large type...
AOC understands Politics Better Than Her Critics
