January 31, 2021

Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene & What Do We Need to Know about Her?

You might have heard about the Congress freshman from Georgia.

Democrats want to remove her from Congress, big parts of the Republican Party are still defending her, and the media has found another controversy with the potential to make us fight each other in social media comments.

But what is this outrage all about? Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene, and what makes her so controversial?

First of all, she is one of the GOP lawmakers who voted against the impeachment, but that is not enough these days to qualify for the outrage she is facing.

Greene is representing the 14th congressional district of Georgia. According to the “Cook Partisan Voting Index,” it is the 10th most Republican district in the country. Donald Trump got more than 70 percent of the votes in this area in 2016 and 2020.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Republicans would probably win this district with any candidate—no matter how controversial that person might be.

Greene was probably banking on that when she decided to run a campaign as one of the loudest Trump supporters running for Congress in 2020.

She calls Black Lives Matter a radical Marxist organization, thinks that facemasks are oppressive, and strongly supports the 2nd Amendment—but that is not much different from other GOP members these days, so what makes her so controversial?

Maybe it’s because she posed with an assault rifle and called herself the “Squad’s worst nightmare”—referring to lawmakers like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who she sees as the part of a socialist invasion that is up to destroy the United States.

Maybe it’s because she publicly supported the theory that school shootings are just false-flag attacks orchestrated by liberals with the ultimate goal to abolish the 2nd amendment.

Maybe it’s because she supported the QAnon conspiracy theory and fantasized that a bullet into Nancy Pelosi’s head would be a good thing.

Maybe it’s because she harrassed David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting and continues to defend these actions.

Each of us can pick a statement from Greene and decide which one is the least acceptable rhetoric for an elected official, but for some reason, many conservatives still support her.

They see her as a proud conservative woman who is holding up their values against the liberal mob. She calls herself a patriot who is fighting for the American people. And, of course, she still buys into the narrative that Trump actually won the elections.

She shared QAnon content on social media and asked Mitt Romney to man up after he criticized her outrageous behavior—and that’s where things get really interesting.

The Republican party is literally doing nothing to stop Greene and her inflammatory rhetorics. Instead, they keep bashing Liz Cheney for voting in favor of the impeachment against Trump. It seems as if Republican lawmakers are more worried about folks turning their backs on Trump than a freshman asking for the execution of Democrats.

That is the real scandal here—it is not that there is a former owner of a Crossfit studio running for Congress in one of the most conservative districts of the country—the problem is that she gets away with it.

The problem is that conservative folks see her as a hero who is representing ludicrous conspiracy theories. It was already hard to accept that people like Alex Jones distribute their hate via sketchy videos on the internet, but electing these folks into Congress is more than troubling.

It is even more troubling that the GOP seems to be cool with having someone like her on the team.

I don’t have anything against folks supporting conservative values, I have no problem with folks loving their country, and I have to accept that some people are in favor of the 2nd amendment, but I do not have to accept that someone runs on supporting baseless conspiracy theories that call for violence in the streets.

Conservatives should really ask themselves if this is maybe going a tiny bit too far. We can agree to disagree, we can discuss different ideas on how to battle the pandemic—but we cannot deny reality.

Greene represents the biggest accident in the political history of the United States. It is one thing to be upset about Candace Owens or Kayleigh Mc Enany for using their intelligence to support Donald Trump, but it is another thing to support a woman who is buying into the narrative that citizens have to defend freedom with the “price of blood.”

The next weeks will show how the GOP is dealing with this issue. There needs to be a two-thirds majority to remove Greene from Congress. It looks like, once again, we will get to see where Republican lawmakers stand when it comes to defending democracy as we know it.

I still can’t believe that this is something we even need to talk about in 2021, but as the former President said, “It is what it is.”

~

 

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