This story was originally published by Georgia Recorder):

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Report says hundreds of state legislators have joined far-right Facebook groups

['Kira Lerner', 'More From Author', '- May']

Date: 2022-05

More than 1 in 5 Republican state lawmakers across the country have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, according to a new report.

Together the lawmakers sponsored 963 bills during the most recent legislative sessions, said the group that wrote the report, which describes the far-right efforts as anti-human rights.

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a think tank that defends democracy and human rights, identified 875 lawmakers who have joined at least one of 789 Facebook groups, including white nationalist groups, groups tied to QAnon, groups that spout conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and others that promote former president Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.

The institute’s report, titled Breaching the Mainstream, lists all of the legislators identified as being part of far-right Facebook groups and detailed their legislative impact.

“We knew we had a problem on our hands, but we hadn’t been able to quantify the depths of it,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the institute. “This was a first attempt on our part to wrap our heads around it, and it was pretty striking in terms of the various pipelines that have opened up to pump disinformation and far-right ideas into legislatures.”

Dozens of Georgia Republican state lawmakers belong to Facebook groups pushing messages on the fringe of the conservative mainstream. The most common themes of the far-right Facebook pages joined by Georgia GOP lawmakers are Tea Party membership, opposition to COVID-19 safety restrictions, opposition to Common Core in education and opposition to Critical Race Theory in public schools.

Some of the Georgia legislators listed in the report hold top leadership positions. Here’s a sampling of Republican state lawmakers from Georgia and their Facebook affinities (some interact with more than one):

Local Tea Party groups

Rep. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas, Rep. Charlice Byrd of Woodstock, Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan of Carrollton, Sen. Steve Gooch of Dahlonega, Rep. Matt Hatchett of Dublin, Sen. Chuck Payne of Dalton, Sen. Brian Strickland of McDonough and Rep. Steve Tarvin of Chickamauga.

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