Meet Mrs ‘Jewish Space Laser’
FOR THE US media, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s past social media posts are the gift that keeps on giving.
Last week, the latest batch of the newly elected hard-right US congresswoman’s online musings revealed a 2018 suggestion on Facebook that the Rothschilds might have been involved in starting deadly California wildfires using lasers from space. As well as a round of new headlines, the story set the hashtag “Jewish space lasers” trending on Twitter.
But Ms Greene’s views are no laughing matter.
A high-profile enthusiast for Q-Anon — the baseless far-right conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitism which the FBI has labelled a potential domestic terrorist threat — she has risen in a little over six months from obscurity to become one of the most talked about, and controversial, politicians in America.
That rise underlines the lasting impact that, even out of office, Donald Trump is set to have on both the Republican party and US politics more widely.
The latest revelations came hard on the heels of reports that, prior to her election to Congress last November, Ms Greene had appeared, through likes, shares and comments, to express support for social media calls to execute senior Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Ms Greene denounced the CNN report as a “hit piece”, saying “teams of people manage my [social media] pages” and that some of the posts which had been “liked” did not represent her views.
Ms Greene hasn’t confined her conspiracy theorising to the Rothschilds. She’s also previously turned on billionaire philanthropist and Democratsupporter George Soros. In one video. she said: “George Soros is the piece of crap that turned in — he’s a Jew — he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” Soros, a Holocaust survivor, she claimed, is
“a Nazi himself trying to continue what was not finished”.
Predictably, Ms Greene has, in the past, also reportedly dipped her toe into the world of 9/11 conspiracy theories; claimed that various mass shootings, including in Las Vegas in 2017 and at Parkland, Florida, in 2018 were “false flag” operations designed to strip Americans of their right to carry guns; and “liked” a social media post suggesting that Mossad may have had a hand in the Kennedy assassination.
Such talk isn’t simply distasteful or kooky. It’s also dangerous, as recent research by Paul Djupe and Jacob Dennen of Ohio’s Denison University has shown. In combination, support for Q-Anon — described by Ms Greene last summer as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out” — and “Christian nationalism” (a belief that the federal government should declare the US a Christian nation) appeared to significantly drive up antisemitism.
As a Washington Post investigation last weekend demonstrated, Ms Greene’s path to Washington was fuelled by a toxic combination of backing from hardline gun groups and massive spending on far-right social media sites. But a key factor was the backing she received from prominent supporters of Mr Trump in Washington, including the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and a political action committee run by the wife of the then-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. “Her ascent demonstrates the extent to which key party leaders embraced her and propelled her to victory despite her well-documented history of spreading false claims and violent rhetoric,” the Post suggested.
Her opponent in the primary for the party nomination, John Cowan, warned leading Republican figures, including members of Mr Trump’s Cabinet, about her views. Some of the party’s leadership on Capitol Hill, including House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, endorsed Mr Cowan, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said some of her past comments were “appalling” and he had “no tolerance” for them.
But the former president gave her his seal of approval, gushing that she was “a future Republican star”.
Ms Greene repaid the compliment by echoing Mr Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election and his inflammatory language in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol early last month; a day which, in advance of the protests and in a reference to the American revolution, the congresswoman billed as the Republicans’ “1776 moment”.
Even before he took office, Ms Greene called for Joe Biden’s impeachment.
With her victory in the primary and November’s general election, reticence about Ms Greene among the Republican leadership appears to have melted away. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, may, without naming her directly, have denounced her as a “cancer for the party”, but his colleagues in the House of Representatives have already awarded Ms Greene a plum seat on the Education and Labour Committee.
Ms Greene’s rise — like that of Mr Trump himself — demonstrates the Republican party’s periodic flirtation with, and failure to distance itself from, what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously labelled the “paranoid style in American politics”.
“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” he wrote over half a century ago.
“I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”
The former president gushed that she was a future Republican star’