This article has been updated to reflect a response from Greene’s office. A statement from her communications director, Nick Dyer, is included below.
In recent days, Democrats have launched a full-court press against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the Republican who filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on his second day in office. At least 50 House Democrats have called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress. As legacy media outlets highlight Greene’s previous statements on social media, Republicans have hesitated to condemn her, even as some conservative groups have broken their silence.
Conservatives and Republicans need to condemn Greene’s previous statements on social media and demand an explanation for them. While Greene has dismissed the scandal as a biased attack from the left-leaning legacy media, she has yet to explain her previous statements or denounce them. Until Greene unequivocally rejects the insane and dangerous things she has written and promoted on Facebook, she will give conservatives and Republicans a bad name.
While “canceling” people for old social media posts is distasteful, it seems Greene consciously built a following of crazies and worse in order to further her political career. In office, she has released a number of statements unequivocally condemning political violence and denouncing anti-Semitism, but this does not erase or explain her previous activity. As legacy media outlets have noted, she supported the QAnon conspiracy theory, but she went further than that, as well.
In 2018, Greene crafted a conspiracy theory about Jewish space lasers. As PJ Media’s Stephen Green noted on Friday, she never actually wrote the phrase “Jewish space lasers,” but what she did write was “so paranoid and convoluted that ‘Jewish space lasers’ actually sounds slightly less crazy.”
Hold on to your hats — your tinfoil hats, that is. Greene claimed that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), working with the Rothschilds, used a space laser to clear room for a high-speed rail project, and that that space laser caused the 2018 Camp Fire, which burned more than 150,000 fires and killed 85 people. Over in reality, the fire actually traced back to electrical wiring belonging to PG&E.
Yes, she spread that conspiracy theory. Here’s her Facebook post from November 2018:
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Greene also shared a video warning about “Zionist supremacists” attempting to flood Europe with migrants in order to replace white populations.
Many conservative groups loudly denounced Greene’s Jewish space laser comments.
“As we have seen, in recent years there are individuals who subscribe to absurd, dangerous, antisemitic lies and react with violence. Leaders of both parties must unequivocally repudiate those who enable these lies to persist,” the Christians United for Israel Action Fund said in a statement. “In light of recent reports that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene advanced wild, antisemitic conspiracy theories, we call upon Republican leaders in Congress to immediately remove Greene from her committee assignments pending a full review of her past statements.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition called Greene’s conspiracy theory “indefensible and unacceptable” while the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – which includes groups like AIPAC and American Friends of Likud – called for a “swift and commensurate response” from congressional leaders. “It is unconscionable for Members of Congress to spread baseless hate against the Jewish people.”
Yet in addition to anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, Greene supported calls for violence against Democratic leaders, some of them now her colleagues in Congress. In a January 2019 post, Greene “liked” a comment that said, “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) In other posts, she “liked” comments about executing FBI agents.
In April 2018, after Greene had condemned the Iran Deal, one commenter asked, “Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O???” referring to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Stage is being set,” Greene replied. “Players are being put into place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”
When CNN reached out to Greene for comment on the posts, she responded by tweeting a long statement, beginning with “Fake News CNN is writing yet another hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office.”
Greene started to distance herself from her social media statements but did not condemn them.
“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. Especially the ones that CNN is about to spread across the internet,” she claimed.
Greene’s slight suggestion that she did not agree with these statements did not even come close to a satisfying explanation. At the very least, Greene had to clarify that she does not support violence against her colleagues, whatever side of the aisle they may be on. If these threats “did not represent” her views, then why did her account positively engage with them?
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Greene brushed off all criticism of her past horrific statements on social media as politically-motivated attacks against conservatism.
“They are coming after me because I’m a threat to their goal of Socialism,” she argued.
Fake News CNN is writing yet another hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office.
I will never back down to the enemy of the American people and neither should you. pic.twitter.com/K3JuvqrDGS
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 26, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene must not get away with this ridiculous dodge. A spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told CNN on Friday that McCarthy plans to question Greene about these comments in a meeting next week. McCarthy should not just question her — he should grill her. He should demand a clear, public statement from Greene, along with a convincing retraction of her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and her support for violence against her colleagues.
Republicans and conservatives cannot stand idly by while Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a mockery of our political movement. I agree with Greene on all sorts of issues, such as the evils of abortion, the dangers of transgenderism, and the seriousness of the Hunter Biden-Burisma scandal. Her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and her support for political violence undermine those important causes.
Especially after the Capitol riot, when Democrats seem to be preparing a domestic “War on Terror” to silence conservatives, conservatives must vocally condemn political violence and make it clear that facetious attempts to link Trump supporters to terrorists are false and despicable. Greene rightly condemned the violence of the Capitol riot, but she must also disavow her Facebook support for violence against Democrats.
Until Greene disavows QAnon, anti-Semitism, and her Facebook support for political violence, Republicans and conservatives should condemn her and distance themselves from her. Our movement is too important for her to derail it.
Update February 1, 2021, 12:45 p.m. Eastern:
PJ Media reached out to Greene’s office and received a lengthy response. Greene’s communications director, Nick Dyer, claimed to present evidence that “refuted” the legacy media’s stories about Greene’s previous comments. Unfortunately, the evidence does not actually put serious concerns to rest.
Here is Dyer’s statement in full:
Don’t fall for the radical Democrat’s left wing cancel campaign.
These assertions are absolutely ridiculous and don’t represent the Congresswoman. You are doing what the Democrat mob and their spokesman in the Fake News Media wants you to do by using their talking points against her. Don’t buy into it and she’s certainly not jumping through any hoops people on the left want to put her through. Don’t act like them. They aren’t who she represents, that’s the people of NW Georgia.
Take a look at her Congressional page and the town halls she did last week, the people LOVE her.
She is not anti-Semitic. She is not a bigot. She doesn’t believe in Q Anon. She has repeatedly condemned political violence. You would know that if you weren’t just listening to what CNN is publishing about her.
I did some research on her statements in the last few weeks and from years past for you.
Here’s some of her statements:
On Parkland: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1351636182086639619?s=20
On CNN: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1354136407128813571?s=20
On Democrat violence and condemning any political violence by either side: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1350563512565837826?s=20
Her condemning political violence while the attack was happening: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1346907955623567363?s=20
On Israel: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/996006412575805441?s=20https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/994558239177084928?s=20 https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1335618411599159297?s=20https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1331644453006798849?s=20https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1068950089647968256?s=20
Denouncing anti-Semitism: https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1294012673366130695?s=20https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1280563933175328768?s=20
https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1293924642093228032?s=20
Again, Greene’s scandal is not the idea that she is a bigot or that she herself is necessarily anti-Semitic. The problem is, she expressed support for dangerous conspiracy theories, breathing life into them and tying them to the conservative movement. She needs to reverse this damage, not deny that it happened.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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