(C) Common Dreams
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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Controversies Are Piling Up. Republicans Are Quiet. [1]
['Catie Edmondson']
Date: 2021-01-29
After avoiding the issue for months in the hope that it would resolve itself, Republicans are now facing calls from Democrats to expel Ms. Greene from Congress, pressure from a prominent group of Jewish Republicans to discipline her, and private consternation from within their own ranks.
Their reticence to take action is yet another example of how Republican leaders have allowed those forces to fester and strengthen. Some leaders have privately said they are eager to move past the fringe movements and the charged messaging used by President Donald J. Trump that fueled the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, has yet to say anything personally about Ms. Greene’s comments or conduct, even after a week in which a slew of problematic social media posts and videos have surfaced from the years before she was elected. In them, Ms. Greene circulated and endorsed a seemingly endless array of hate speech and conspiracy theories explicitly rooted in Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and the belief that government actors were secretly behind a sweeping range of violence.
The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America reported last summer on the video in which Ms. Greene questioned a basic fact about the deadliest terrorist attack in history, falsely called Mr. Obama, who is Christian, a Muslim, and hinted that the Clinton family had Mr. Kennedy killed. Since then, much more has emerged about her conspiracy claims.
Ms. Greene suggested in a 2018 Facebook post, unearthed this week by Media Matters, that a devastating wildfire that ravaged California was started by “a laser” beamed from space and controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family with connections to powerful Democrats. She endorsed executing Democratic lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She served as a prolific writer for a now-defunct conspiracy blog called “American Truth Seekers,” writing posts with headlines including “MUST READ — Democratic Party Involved With Child Sex, Satanism, and The Occult.” And she argued that the 2018 midterm elections — in which the first two Muslim women were elected to the House — were part of “an Islamic invasion of our government.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-republicans.html
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