Asked if the US would still be a democracy in a decade she said: “I think there’s a very real risk that we will not. What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t. I think we will return to Jim Crow. I think that’s what we risk.”

She added: “You have white nationalist, reactionary politics starting to grow into a critical mass.”

The congresswoman compared proposed voting laws in Texas to “the rise of fascism in post-World War I Germany.”

She said: “Was the last 50 to 60 years after the Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had with a multiracial democracy, that we will then decide was inconvenient for those in power?”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez also linked rises in crime to the end of pandemic child tax credits.

She said: “We don’t want to say some of the things that are obvious. Like, Gee, the child-tax credit just ran out on December 31, and now people are stealing baby formula.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who has been in Congress for three years, expressed disillusionment with the legislative body.

She said: “I ate s— when I was a waitress and bartender, and I eat s–- as a member of Congress. It’s called a job, you know.

“Honestly, it is a s— show. It’s scandalising, every single day.”

Congress’s current Gallup approval rating is 18 per cent.