Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing Republican and pro-Israel candidate, may well be the next representative from Georgia’s conservative 14th district. Greene won a first round of voting in June by close to 20 percentage points, but failed to clear the 50 percent threshold and consequently faces John Cowan in an 11 August runoff.

The winner is widely expected to be the next representative for a district that voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016.

Greene is among a number of candidates who support the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Travis View, who has written about QAnon for The Washington Post, has described it as being “based upon the idea that there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything.”

Greene goes beyond conspiracy into outright bigotry. In June, Politico released video evidence of Greene voicing her racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views.

In one Facebook video she verbally attacked Muslims. “If you want Islam and Sharia law, you stay over there in the Middle East,” she inveighed. “You stay there, and you go to Mecca and do all your thing. And, you know what, you can have a whole bunch of wives, or goats, or sheep, or whatever you want.”

Greene decried what she termed “an Islamic invasion into our government offices” following the 2018 elections. She also accused Muslim men of pedophilia.

In another video, she suggested Black people are held down by gangs and lack of education rather than by white people.

Greene contended that if she were Black she would feel “proud” to see Confederate monuments because they would show how far she had come.

She repeated a common right-wing anti-Semitic attack against George Soros, a Democratic contributor and founder of the Open Society Institute, when she stated, “George Soros is the piece of crap that turned in – he’s a Jew – he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” This is a repugnant misrepresentation of reality.

Soros was a child at the time of the Second World War and was in profound danger of death from the Nazis.

Days before the runoff, she labeled Soros an “enemy of the people” on her campaign’s Facebook page.

In another recent post, she referred to Black Lives Matter and anti-fascists, saying that “Soros funds the destruction of America by supporting BLM /Antifa /Fake News Media, the true enemy of the American people.”

She added, “He’s bank-rolling left-wing movements worldwide who want to destroy Israel, one of the few friends the American people have.”

Greene posted a nearly 30-minute video following Trump’s election putting forward the theories of the internet commenter – or three commenters – known as Q.

She noted the theories could also be found at hate site 4Chan.

In the video, Greene speculates about the Washington elite’s involvement in pedophilia and Democratic Satanic worship. She cites Q as discussing a triangle involving Saudi Arabia, the Rothschilds and Soros.

These are supposedly “the puppet masters that fund this global evil.”

Greene adds, “I definitely would believe that.” She then says the triangle recently lost “one of its sides” – Saudi Arabia – around the time Trump visited the country to be honored there in 2017.

This is a clear mishmash of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab sentiment.

Anti-Semitic, but pro-Israel

Nonetheless, Greene trumpets her pro-Israel credentials in the apparent expectation that it will wipe away her anti-Jewish views.

In November 2018 she spoke up for George Papadopoulos, an adviser to Trump during the 2016 election campaign, and Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser, regarding their “stance on Israel.”

Flynn is a QAnon supporter who tweeted himself taking the group’s oath on 4 July this year.

He has more than 855,000 followers on Twitter. Presumably, he anticipates that many will be taken in by this Satanist pedophilia conspiracy theory in the midst of a deadly pandemic that some believe is fake news.

Papadopoulos, for his part, announced at the time of Trump’s inauguration: “We are looking forward to ushering in a new relationship with all of Israel, including the historic Judea and Samaria” – calling the West Bank by the name Israel uses. He later served 12 days in federal prison for lying to the FBI.

Nearly four years later the Trump administration has signaled it might recognize Israel’s possible annexation of some of that West Bank territory in violation of international law.

Greene also supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of Israel. She has not displayed any understanding of the dispossession and occupation of the Palestinian people by Israeli forces.

Racist gun proponent

The aspiring House representative has made clear her disdain for Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, claiming that they and other members of Congress have “destroyed” the National Football League and are “destroying” the stock-car racing firm NASCAR – apparently for getting rid of the Confederate flag which for many Americans represents treason, the enslavement of Black people and Jim Crow racial discrimination.

She has gone so far as to make a claim of dual loyalty against Omar.

Greene is a staunch proponent of the second amendment which has made the US one of the most dangerous countries in the world, particularly for school children.

One of her campaign advertisements has her drive up in a Humvee before firing an AR-15 at signs saying “gun control,” “open borders,” the “Green New Deal” and “socialism.” The “open borders” shot is a clear threat to undocumented migrant workers crossing the southern US border and fits with the racism she has expressed elsewhere.

In another ad, she touts Trump as declaring antifa to be a “domestic terrorist organization.” Holding her AR-15, Greene hints at her capacity for violence when she warns “antifa terrorists” to “stay the hell out of northwest Georgia.”

The anti-science Greene is certain to promote conspiracy theories, a more gun-stuffed US and belligerent support for Israeli colonial expansion if she wins her August runoff and again in November. At the moment, there’s a strong possibility she will be in Washington in January as the next representative of Georgia’s 14th congressional district.

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• Marjorie Taylor Greene
• QAnon
• Travis View
• Islamophobia
• anti-semitism
• anti-black racism
• George Soros
• Open Society Institute
• Donald Trump
• George Papadopoulos
• Michael Flynn
• Sergey Kislyak
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Ilhan Omar
• George Floyd

• Michael F. Brown's blog

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Comments

QAnon

Permalink Frank Dallas replied on Wed, 08/12/2020 - 10:52

This s what happens when people have an emotional position to defend and absorb a ready-made doctrinal view which ignores evidence and reason. There is all the evidence you need that people are capable of believing anything. What militated against beliefs that fly free of reality is the requirement to provide evidence. The use of rational thought too, of course. But empirical evidence is the essence. Politics isn't evidenced based and never will be while the world is divided between rich and poor, powerful and powerless. Greene may well win because people need to believe this tosh in order not to see the truth. American bigotry is the result of the American money-fetish. A wad of dollars in one hand and a gun in the other, peoplem like Greene represent the worst of the US: touch our money and we'll kill you. Of course, that tilts into racism because colonialism always was racist. And the celebration of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is the ultimate assertion of racial doctrine.