#2944: Bruce Greyson

Charles Bruce Greyson is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Perceptual studies at the University of Virginia, as well as a semi-legendary parapsychologist and pseudoscience promoter. He is also affiliated with the Esalen Institute and with the International Association of Near-Death Studies, a group of very silly people who try to continue to promote the work and ideas of Raymond Moody, who is most famous for thinking that near-death experiences are a evidence for an afterlife. They are not. Greyson himself is co-editor of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences (2009) (as well as author of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021)), and has, in fact, himself been called ‘the father of research in near-death experiences` – he has even developed a scale to ‘measure aspects of near-death experiences’ that has apparently become very popular among like-minded researchers (or whatever you call them) and various media of the kind you’d expect would be interested in such stuff. He has also devised a truly pseudoscientific 19-item scale to assess experience of kundalini, the “Physio-Kundalini Scale”. Greyson doesn’t really like science but he enjoys the trappings of science and the sheen of respectability that comes with dressing nonsense up as science.

 

Greyson is a Cartesian dualist of the old-fashioned kind, and like most defenders of Cartesian dualism seems to operate largely in blissful unawareness of the devastating problems with and 350-year history of refutations of that idea. Cartesian dualism is e.g. the point of departure for his book Irreducible Mind (2007), which he co-edited with Alan Gauld and a gaggle of other parapsychologists. Although Irreducible Mind purports to be a kind of psychology book, it is in fact a ridiculous pseudoscience tome filled with anecdotes that are supposed to promote paranormal claims. Serious psychologists were largely unimpressed and/or embarrassed by the book and its attempt to promote substantial (and silly) claims without empirical evidence.

 

Diagnosis: You’d perhaps be excused for thinking that this is hardly among the most serious challenges humanity is facing at present. However, this kind of pseudoscience is, in fact, rather insidious: It is carried out by people with genuine credentials and presented with a sheen of scientific respectability – to very many people, the work of Greyson and his ilk might unfortunately be rather difficult to distinguish from real science. As such, it will certainly be ammunition for those who seek to discredit real science (‘look how silly those scientists are’), and there are quite a lot of those these days.

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

#2943: Tanveer Grewal

The yogi jacket – which we have encountered before – is probably among the silliest things ever to be (attempted) marketed, regardless of category (‘attempted’ because at the time it was brought to our attention, in 2018, it was still the subject of a Kickstarter campaign to get it started). According to its promotional materials, the jacket will “[n]aturally relieve pain and reduce stress” – they obviously don’t define ‘natural’ – since its “7,000+ acupressure spikes support you in reaching a deep state of relaxation to elevate your overall well-being”. Yes, apparently “over 7,000 strategically placed nontoxic plastic spikes” line the interior of the jacket to “stimulate” acupuncture points and “energy centers” in the body to provide a sense of happiness and comfort. Of course, since the plastic spikes are all over the place, they wouldn’t primarily hit what quacks identify as “acupuncture points”, but that observation is, honestly, probably of rather limited significance at this point.

 

The jacket was developed by one Tanveer Grewal, who according to himself used to feel uncomfortable and low on energy spending 10–12 hours a day in front of a computer until he designed the jacket, which he currently (ostensibly) wears around everywhere, and feels much better, something he credits the jacket rather than spending time away from the computer. Otherwise, the marketing is unsurprisingly rather vague about the jacket’s indicated health and wellness outcomes and even briefer on the evidence behind the vague gestures toward “reliev[ing] back pain” and “promot[ing] relaxation of tense muscles”. We don’t rule out that it would be a hit if it ever hit the market. We definitely rule out that it would ever do anything but ruin your clothes and potentially cause infections, however.

 

Diagnosis: A strong application for an advisory position on public health in the current HHS. Or influencer status in downtown LA. There might be a worrisome horseshoe situation here. 

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2942: Michael Greger

Michael Greger is a vegan activist, author, MD, and general purveyor of medical misinformation. As laid out in various videos and in his bestselling book How Not to Die, Greger basically claims that eating animal-based foods is the cause of all disease and that, conversely, a vegan diet is the cure for everything. This is, needless to say, incorrect.

 

Greger rose to (some) fame in the early 2000s for his wild alarmism about mad cow disease, which he claimed was “much more serious than AIDS”; according to Greger, “thousands of Americans may already be dying because of Mad Cow disease every year”; that last claim was, in fairness, posed as a question and should be treated accordingly.

 

His current advocacy for a vegan, whole-foods diet is fairly typical for activist perusal of science: Although many of Greger’s statements constitute good and sound advice, and some of it is based on genuinely scientific findings, his claims are also characterized by judicious cherry-picking, omissions (e.g. this), misrepresenting real research (a plethora of examples are mentioned here) and overstating the benefits of his recommendations (and the dangers of animal-based foods). His book How Not to Diet, for instance, is reviewed here: as his other stuff, it mixes good and sound advice with omissions and unsupported speculation, and no: it has not been shown in a randomized controlled trial that a whole food plant-based diet can reverse heart disease. His video on how Death in America is largely a foodborne illness, which purports to offer “practical advice on how best to feed ourselves and our families to prevent, treat, and even reverse many of the top 15 killers in the United States”, is discussed here: In the video, it is for instance claimed that “a plant-based diet of primarily whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes can completely prevent heart attacks” based on some small-scale and flawed research by Caldwell Esselstyn that only purported to show that patients (merely a few) who had already had a heart attack did not have a second one while on cholesterol-lowering medications and a largely plant-based diet that also included animal-based foods; that “those who eat meat are 2-3 times as likely to become demented as vegetarians”, which is demonstrably false; and that diabetes can be cured by a plant-based diet, which is insane nonsense. His best-seller How Not to Die provided data for this study.

 

Greger is a co-founder and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and founder of the website NutritionFacts.org. His list of books is long but his stylistic characteristics seem to found in most of them, for instance in Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, which, as public health expert David Sencer tactfully put it, “a professional audience would quickly put aside for more factually correct sources of information”.

 

Diagnosis: No, he is not always wrong. But he is always untrustworthy, and you have no good reason to listen to anything he has to say (if it is correct, you’ll find it in better sources; if you can’t find it in better sources …). His popularity is depressing.

#2941: Patty Greer

Crop circles are geometric designs of flattened or knocked-over crops resulting from simple pranks or the work of slam artists in line with a tradition started by David Chorley and Doug Bower in the 1970s. Crop circles were very popular themes in media in the 1980s and 1990s when it was still possible to convince teenagers and loons that they were caused by alien visitations, i.e. before the internet made it obvious to everyone that they were not (and no, it’s not like there is any remaining mystery: we know that they are man-made – except perhaps these – and how). Well, almost everyone: There are still some dingbat loons out there trying to argue that at least some of the crop circles are alien-made. These people, called cereologists, adher to the classical and time-honored pseudoscientific method of studying all bullshit that purportedly supports what they want to believe and carefully ignoring tiresome facts and reality. Perhaps the unofficial leader of this colorful group of conspiracy theorists is filmmaker Patty Greer, known for ‘documentaries’ like The Wake Up Call: Is Anybody Listening?; 2012: We’re Already In It; The UFO Conclusion; Crop Circle Diaries, and Orbs and Light Beings.

 

Greer apparently travels around to crop circles. When she arrives, she always make a bow at the entrance, heads to the center of some main circle and lays down in order to experience an intuitive connection with the “circlemakers” (not the people who actually made the circle, of course). Indeed, what spurred her “documentary” film making career was what she describes as a “life changing out-of-body-experience in the center of a UK Crop Circle in 2007”, in which “her perception of reality was forever changed” (we admit harboring some suspicion that she was plenty kooky prior to that experience, too – why else would she find herself at the center of a crop circle to begin with?). To Greer, the circlemakers are some “illuminated light beings” that a “stunned witness” saw “come out of orange balls of light” at a crop circle in 2010 because stunned witnesses talking about light beings trump the facts every time.

 

Her documentaries seem to touch on anything suitably flashy from the demented lifeworlds of whale.to contributors; much of it is, obviously, concerned with UFOs, and the documentaries cover every piece of nonsense ever covered on any History Channel Ancient Aliens show, including things like the Abydos helicopter. Her 2012: We’re Already In It documentary focuses on the projected 2012 apocalypse and offers “a rich medley of interpretations of the Mayan Prophecies blended with ancient wisdom and scientific probabilities, well known experts and druids share their predictions and perceptions about 2012”. For the record, ‘scientific’ in that passage does not mean scientific, and her ‘experts’ seem to be limited to C-list New Age novelists like Patricia Cori, Geoff Stray and Simon Peter Fuller, as well as Barbara Lamb, an instructor at the International Metaphysical University whose specialty appears to be “human–alien hybrids”.

 

In addition to being a mainstay at outlets like Coast to Coast AM, Greer also appeared as a feature at the 2015 Conspira-sea Cruise (one has to give the organizers some credit for its wonderfully Bob’s Burger-esque name) together with classic conspiracy mavens like Leonard Horowitz and Andrew Wakefield. Then there is this, which is entirely predictable and which we just leave here without comment.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, at level of caring for facts and reason, Greer is comparable to Wakefield, trapped as she is in an incoherent and flaky fantasy world of her own making. But as opposed to Wakefield, she is presumably entirely harmless.

#2940: Heather Greenlee

We’ve had ample opportunity (e.g. here) to talk about the intrusion of quackery into academic medicine under the brand name ‘integrative medicine’ – the idea that mixing nonsense with real medicine somehow makes medicine better – and some of the reasons for why it happens and some of the rhetorical techniques used for marketing it. Some common reasons include:

 

-       there is often significant amounts of money, through gifts and donations, attached to such projects, and the administrators who make the decisions are not necessarily deeply motivated by mere medical concerns

-       it’s glitzy, faddish and easily marketable (integrative medicine is all about marketing, of course).

 

Some common marketing tricks include:

 

-       Appealing to real problems inpatient care, such as the opioid crisis and the desire for non-pharmacological ways of addressing the conditions and the suffering that opioids are used to alleviate – while being notoriously vague about whether the alternatives actually work to treat the relevant conditions because they don’t.

-       The Trojan horse strategy of rebranding elements from conventional medicine (like diet and exercise) as somehow ‘alternative’ to argue that there is nothing scary about alternative medicine and that its critics are hysterical, and then use the rebranding to introduce bullshit like reiki, homeopathy or acupuncture as if such quackery is merely an extension of the obvious, non-alternative measures. (And once integrated into institutions doing real medicine, proponents of quackery can then use the institutional credentials to claim that their pseudoscience is science-based without actually doing any science)

 

One of the major movers in the attempts to whitewash quackery and providing such nonsense with a sheen of legitimacy through equipping pseudoscience with academic affiliations, is Heather Greenle. Greenlee has an MPH in addition to an ND degree from Bastyr University, and she is a board-certified naturopath (“naturopathic physician”), medical director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Integrative Medicine, and associate professor with the Division of Medical Oncology at the UW School of Medicine. Greenlee is an advocate of “integrative therapies” in cancer treatments to “ease side effects and bolster overall physical and emotional health”. Officially, her “goal is to help patients with cancer make sound decisions about using integrative medicine”. That is, of course, not her actual goal. Here is a discussion of a purportedly rigorous study on acupuncture she was part of. And here is a discussion of a press release from her center that perfectly illustrates the distortions and tricks people like Greenlee employ to market integrative practices.

 

Greenlee was also president of the Society for Integrative Oncology from 2013 to 2015. The Society for Integrative Oncology is an organization that purports to be “dedicated to studying how to apply evidence-based integrative medicine to the treatment of cancer”, and which has its own journal, the Journal of the Society for Integrative Oncology. The level and type of dedication they’re talking about is discussed here. You may also wonder what, exactly, integrative oncology actually is, but if so, you should probably not ask them. The group (nevertheless) publishes guidelines for what they deem to be “evidence-based” supportive care for cancer patients, including a 2015 set of guidelines concerning breast cancer patients, which, with its addendum ‘Clinical practice guidelines on the evidence-based use of integrative therapies during and after breast cancer treatment’ written by Greenlee et al. in 2017, is discussed here, and yes, it is mostly convential suggestions mixed with fluff and acupuncture – the ‘evidence-based’ claim is, as you’d expect, based on appealing to real studies (for the conventional therapies) and appeals to ancient traditions and vitalism for the rest.

 

As part of her organized and concentrated efforts to whitewash quackery, Greenlee has also for instance been involved with a University of Michigan course to miseducate healthcare professionals with infomercials about “integrative oncology”. The course would offer modules on a range of quackery, in particular various “mind-body” interventions and “natural” products, but also energy medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, supplements (no, seriously), Ayurvedic medicine, naturopathy, and high-dose Vitamin C, and it would of course do so with the help of the strategy mentioned above: coopt conventional science-based diet and lifestyle modalities (though their dietary recommendations of course themselves mixes the sound with the pseudoscientific), and use these recommendations as a Trojan horse for insane quackery like homeopathy.

 

Diagnosis: No, she is not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. But that makes her just more dangerous, insofar as the target for her disinformation and propaganda on behalf of woo and pseudoscience is academic institutions. And she seems to be rather successful.

#2939: Ben Greenfield

Ben Greenfield is a deranged promoter of quackery, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and – apparently – a hugely successful one, having amassed a significant number of followers in various “health” and fitness communities – so much so that even serious media has sometimes mistaken him for an “expert”. He is not, but he has products to sell, and is pretty good at selling them. Greenfield is the author of more than a dozen books and numerous articles, and he hosts a popular website, podcast and coaching business, which he uses to sell a wide range of unfounded and silly – but expensive – supplements and his own “Kion” products. Among the many things Greenfield promotes is extreme biohacking, which really is nothing but “a rebranding of the usual self-help pseudoscience”.

 

Though much of his advice and recommendations fall into the categories common sense or useless, much of it is also potentially dangerous. The latter category encompasses his “at home” stem cell injections (Greenfield is really into stem cell injection quackery), which even received credulous coverage as a Science of Sport Ad by Sportsnet, to the consternation of anyone who actually knows anything and has a modicum of integrity. Other dangerous advice from Greenfield is the nonsense collected under his “Cancer Resources”, which includes discussions of topics like “Why You’ve Been Lied to About Cancer [yes, there is conspiracy] and What You Can Do About It” and which supplies information from famous quack David Minkoff, a promoter of bogus cancer treatments like metal detoxification and chelation. (Remember that cancer patients who seek out alternative and complementary cancer treatments are more likely to refuse conventional cancer treatment, and have a twofold greater risk of death compared to patients with no complementary medicine use.)

 

The useless category encompasses his magic “power bracelet”, which is ostensibly superior to all the other ridiculous power bracelets out there because it uses piezoelectricity: it contains “a piezoelectric ceramic disc [that] is pre-programmed with about 100 different sound frequencies” that “are amplified by the wave signals that emanate from motion” in order to bring your body into a “state of cohesion”. Some might wonder how ‘state of cohesion’ is operationalized for scientific testing. We don’t. Even Greenfield admits that “I know that this stuff can get a bit tricky to understand” (well … sure) but he helpfully offers some youtube videos about piezoelectricity that has nothing to do with his wristband and directs readers to a podcast with one Jeffrey Thompson called “How You Can Use Sound And Music To Change Your Brain Waves With Laser Accuracy And Achieve Huge Focus And Performance Gains”.

 

His podcast is otherwise a cesspool of nonsense, pseudoscience and conspiracy mongering (“Deer Placenta Smoothies, Smearing Colostrum On Your Face, How To Use A Clay Mask & Much More”) and hosts guests who are often even less concerned with reality than Greenfield himself, including anti-vaccine activists and breatharians (“Biohacking The Body With Breatharianism By Pranic Breatharian Ray Maor”), as well as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

 

Indeed, Greenfield is anti-vaccine himself, claiming, contrary to all evidence and reality, that “vaccines do indeed cause autism” and telling his readers preemptively not to trust the fact-checking organization Snopes. For his podcast “The Shocking Truth About Vaccinations: Everything You Need To Know About Vaccines And Your Health”, he hosted Stephanie Seneff, no less, and directed fans to her “resources” concerning the VAERs database and glyphosate delusions, as well as Suzanne Humphries’s antivaccine classic Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History.

 

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific moron. And you should be really sick and tired of the large group of fools on Reddit and elsewhere who claims that “Ok, some of his stuff is dubious/crazy/nonsense but he’s got lots of good stuff as well.” No, he really doesn’t: Misinformation works best if seamlessly mixed with stuff that is close to being correct, and Greenfield is a successful purveyor at misinformation. Don’t listen to him about anything; if there is anything correct in anything he says, you’ll find it better expressed from more trustworthy sources.

 

Hat-tip: Sheila Kealey

#2938: Marjorie Taylor Greene

And then we’re here. Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) is, together with Lauren Boebert, the first generation of QAnon conspiracy theorists in Congress, with MTG representing Georgia’s 14^th district since 2021. Since she’ll be familiar to most readers, we’ll restrict ourselves to a few characteristic highlights (or whatever you call them). It is worth noting that, apart from a few attempts to impeach Joe Biden based on debunked conspiracy theories, MTG’s stint in Congress has been utterly unproductive in terms of writing bills or debating legislation in committees and suchlike; instead, MTG spends her days engaging in Twitter wars with members of both parties, posting incoherent rants and memes, and literally chasing fellow members of Congress around the hallways yelling conspiracy theories at them (remember that when she talks about who deserves their paycheck) – several of her targets have had to request additional security to deal with MTG trying to physically run them down at work. We have no doubts that the good people of Georgia’s 14^th district or her many other supporters fail to recognize the difference between actual work and MTG’s antics. Also her fellow GOP members more or less invariably view her as a “batshit crazy” “idiot”.

 

Sample dumbassery: Qanon

As MTG sees things, the American government is, when it isn’t Trump, a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. In 2017, for instance, while writing for the conspiracy site AmericanTruthSeekers, she chronicled in some detail what she claimed to be “disturbing behavior that seems to keep raring it’s ugly heads. Child Sex, Satanism, and the Occult all associated with the Democratic Party”, and she endorsed the authority of the character known as Q: “There has been an anonymous voice, with obvious intelligence beyond the normal person telling of things to come. They call themselves Q. Make no mistake, Q is a patriot”. After she won her primary election (the only one that matters in her district), she admittedly distanced herself a bit from QAnon on the grounds that even she had to admit that Q was lying the whole time, but she continued to believe most of the conspiracy theories associated with the Qanon movement anyways, including believing that there was a secret plot to undermine Trump during his first term – which is a bit confusing given that the investigations and impeachments were hardly secret. In fact, it is worth noting that her 2017 post ”Democratic Party Involved With Child Sex, Satanism, and The Occult” actually predates the first appearance of Q.

 

Elsewhere, MTG has for instance supported the conspiracy theory that the Clintons had JFK jr. killed. The Clintons are, as MTG views it, probably behind a number of assassinations (“What is the quickest way to wind up dead when you aren’t suicidal and don’t have any health problems? Investigate Hillary Clinton of course”), partially to hide their involvement in a Satanic pedophilic cult of blood-drinkers working out of a pizza restaurant in Virginia – why yes, MTG has promoted pizzagate conspiracy theories because of course she has: In particular, MTG endorsed the claim “[t]hat John Podesta had [Seth Rich] murdered. That John Podesta is a pedophile and pizza gate [sic] is real” based on having found some “website [that] tells about information that was only whispered about and called conspiracy theories by all main stream [sic] news media”. Back in the days, MTG even endorsed the infamous Frazzledrip conspiracy theory, according to which there exists a video (to be made public ‘imminently’) showing Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin murdering a child in a satanic ritual and Clinton ordering a hit on a police officer to cover it up. MTG dismissed the discovery of her support for the conspiracy theory as the work of “Communists [sic] bloggers”, which is not quite the same as dismissing it as incorrect (“guess what? Nobody cares”, said MTG).

 

And of course, Obama is secretly a Muslim (which is, according to MTG, basically the same as a Satanic pedophile) who is using Latino gangs as his personal death squads to take out people he doesn’t like. That said, MTG is also on record criticizing Obama of identifying as Black merely to appeal to Black voters, even though he is, in fact, “American” [dramatic pause warranted here], so at least she rejects birtherism: we do not expect her to have a consistent approach to the issues, however.

 

Assuming that MTG genuinely believes what she claims to believe, it is perhaps no surprise that she also believes that violence is an acceptable means to achieve her ends. Her facebook feed has presented numerous endorsements of violence against political opponents (like Nancy Pelosi). She is also on record liking comments suggesting that FBI agents whom conspiracy theorists suspect are part of the “deep state” should be executed along with Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi (the latter should “suffer death or she’ll be in prison” for her “treason” – note that MTG never mentions trials). On February 4, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove Greene from all committee roles in response to her endorsements of political violence – she claimed, in line with her general level of commitment to her position, to be happy for the extra free time – but she was soon given new ones.

 

Sample dumbassery: Anti-semitism & Nazi accusations

Like wingnut conspiracy theories often do, MTG’s conspiracy theories frequently devolve into anti-semitism. She rather famously believes that wildfires are caused by “Jewish Space Lasers” (and accuses people who confront her on her beliefs of being conspiracy theorists), and has, in fact, suggested that the US government should utilize similar technological solutions at the Mexican border to stop immigrants … though that particular suggestion was possibly mostly intended to show her voters and other groypers that she emphatically doesn’t take her job seriously.

 

That said, she is not shy about accusing other people of being Nazis – not uncommon among people whose views tend toward MTG’s views – including Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros; according to MTG, Soros has complete dominion over the Democratic Party, which “the Nazi himself” is exploiting to try “to continue what was not finished”. Black Lives Matter are Nazis, too, as are, of course, the Democrats – MTG has complained about both “the DC gulag” (for January 6 insurrectionists) and “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police” [another dramatic pause for effect warranted here]. And of course, having binged on Russian propaganda and fake news, she thinks that the current government of Ukraine is a Nazi government (and why wouldn’t she, given her understanding of and ability to actually identify Nazism?), and has argued, in relation to US foreign policy, that it is “anti-semitic to make Israeli aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis”. More on her views on Russia below.

 

Perhaps even more than Jewish people, MTG is wary of Muslims, and she has asserted that Muslim people should be barred from holding public office; when Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were elected to Congress in 2018, MTG complained that “there is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now […] You saw after midterm elections what we saw so many Muslims elected. I don’t know the exact number but there were quite a few,” and that is a problem because Muslims do not want equality but “special treatment. You want to rise above us, and that’s what we’re against”, which is why Muslims must be barred from holding public office. Her views on Muslim and Jewish people are nicely unified in a video she promoted blaming Jewish people for Muslim immigration to Europe. Yes, she is a promoter of The Great Replacement conspiracy theory, “an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands”, which, according to MTG, “is what the UN wants all over the world”.

 

MTG has done more than almost anyone to mainstream white nationalism on the right and bridge the gap between white nationalist groups and the GOP. In February 2022, she spoke at a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, who, at the conference, called the January 6 attack “awesome” and praised Putin and Hitler. When criticized for her attendance – it’s not the only QAnon and neo-nazi conference she has attended – Greene attacked her critics of engaging in “identity politics” and attempting to “cancel” her, labeling them, for somewhat unclear reasons, “Pharisees” (an obvious possible reason for the choice of that term could be that even MTG recognized that it would be strategically unwise use a more general population category).

 

Sample dumbassery: Covid and vaccines

During Covid, MTG spread misinformation and compared wearing face masks in order to protect others from Covid to Jews having to wear a star of David on their clothing in Nazi Germany. She obviously had to apologize for that one, but more or less immediately followed up by comparing offering voluntary Covid vaccinations to Nazi brownshirts. (MTG, a congresswoman, claimed to have understood the policy as involving Joe Biden and Democrats “coming to your front door to force you to take the vax”, which was … not the policy.) On social media, MTG suggested that the vaccination program might be “Biden’s mark of the beast”, and if it isn’t, “it’s still fascism, or communism, whatever you want to call it, but it’s coming from private companies. So, I have a term for that. I call it ‘corporate communism.’ ” Yes, that`s the MTG we all know!

 

At the same time, MTG argued against the Covid vaccine by citing the blatantly false idea that the virus was “not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65” but that there had been (by July 2021) “6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported”, a claim she had picked up from delusional antivaxx rantings about the VAERS database from her usual sources and which is, of course, nonsense.

 

Her mention of obesity is telling. Indeed, MTG spent much of Covid obsessing about obesity: She would falsely blame obesity rather than Covid for Covid-related deaths, and on multiple occasions suggest that “... our response to #COVID19 should be working towards ending obesity ...” or ask, rhetorically, “Obesity. When do we help people overcome the highest risk factor for being hospitalized & dying from covid?” (‘rhetorically’ since she wouldn’t actually be willing to help). The suggestion is, in fact, indicative of her character (as it is indicative of the character of numerous other nitwits making similar suggestions): combating obesity is of course at best a long-term strategy, and raising the issue during the pandemic is exactly like uselessly telling someone hanging from a cliff that they should lose some weight so they can get up instead of actually helping them up – and the thing is: MTG, like everyone else focusing on obesity during Covid, is aware of that: the point of the suggestion is not to help anyone but to tell obese people that they got what was coming for them. And if nothing else has done so thus far, that suggestion should put MTG’s desperate attempts to accuse others of being Nazis in a proper light.

 

Then again, MTG does seem to struggle with some of the basics here: In December 2021, she famously criticized the government of hypocrisy(?) over schools being closed due to Covid-19 when “not a single school has been closed” because of cancer, even though “[e]very single year more than 600,000 people in the US dies from cancer”.

 

In July 2021, Greene dismissed the COVID-19 variants, including the Delta variant, saying, “no one cares”. When she finally had to admit, grudgingly, that COVID-19 was still spreading, she added, falsely, that hospitals were not overwhelmed with afflicted patients, and – just like an MD would – that “we’re human, we can’t live forever, we’re going to catch all kinds of diseases and illnesses and other viruses”. She also pushed the anti-vaccine film Died Suddenly which promotes fractally insane misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines as well as the Great Reset conspiracy theory – a theory MTG has helped promote on other occasions, too. She is also on record referring to unvaccinated people as “purebloods”.

 

Sample dumbassery: MTG on science

MTG is not well-versed in matters concerning science and, more importantly, she really doesn’t care. Indeed, Greene has suggested that there is no need for scientific research and development at all, because God exists. Some examples of her particular views on matters scientific include:

 

–      On a Steve Bannon podcast MTG explicitly rejected the theory of evolution on the grounds that she doesn’t “believe in that type of so-called science”.

–      With regard to the origins of Covid, MTG has on the one hand adopted the view that Covid is a deliberately designed bioweapon, apparently partially on the grounds that she rejects even the possibility of evolution – though on the other hand she appears to deny that scientists are even able to engineer viruses or organisms at all.

–      In 2022, she claimed that monkeypox is only transmittable through gay sex on the grounds that it gels with what she finds convenient.

–      MTG rejects the scientific consensus that climate change is largely caused by human activity, instead suggesting that “maybe our climate just changes”. So there; betcha those librul scientists never thought of that hypothesis. Also, “carbon is actually healthy for us” – scientists mistakenly believe that “carbon is bad” because they fail to realize that plants need carbon to survive. In April, 2023, MTG claimed that climate change was a “scam”, that “fossil fuels are natural and amazing”, and that “there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy”, as opposed to carbon fuels, which no one could possibly have a vested interest in defending.

–      In May 2022, MTG promoted a conspiracy theory that the US government is planning to force Americans to eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish” by Bill Gates.

–      A staunch opponent of abortion, MTG claims, falsely, that the Plan B contraceptive “kills a baby in the womb”. In 2021, she also voted against a bill that reauthorizes the National Marrow Donor Program, a database that helps match donors and patients with serious blood diseases, possibly because she didn’t have the faintest clue what the database actually does – indeed, she usually doesn`t have the faintest clue what she votes on.

 

In that light, it should be rather curious (but isn’t) that she has a poster on her door that reads “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. Trust the science!”. (As for the scientific-enough answer to “what is a woman?”, MTG’s response is “We came from Adam’s rib. God created us with his hands. We may be the weaker sex, we are the weaker sex, but we are our partner’s, our husband’s wife”.)

 

Sample dumbassery: Mass shootings

MTG, like her voters, fancy guns, and are apparently aware that the huge death toll due to gun violence in the US could encourage some to wonder whether restricting people’s access to guns could help reduce the number of deaths. The solution, to someone like Greene, is to deny that access to guns could be a factor affecting rates of gun deaths and rather try to argue that attempts to restrict access is to blame. So, according to MTG, school shootings are usually false flags operations carried out by Democrats to introduce gun legislation – as she points out, Q frequently warned about false flag school shootings – and she claims that “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control,” neglecting to mention that her informant in this case is herself.

 

Accordingly, MTG has claimed that the Parkland mass shooting was a false flag operation (she was subsequently banned from Twitter for twelve hours, but that ban was apparently caused by her false claim that the Georgia Senate elections were rigged). In that connection, MTG also acquired a history of harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg and even referred to him as “Little Hitler”, based on the popular petulant child principle of political discourse that anyone who is more reasonable than herself and promotes ideas she doesn’t fancy is Hitler, as well as pushed conspiracy theories that he was a “bought and paid little pawn” and a crisis actor. (In response to the 2023 Nashville shootings, MTG called for more guns among children, which was precisely one of the ideas toward which Hogg expressed some skepticism).

 

Moreover, the Las Vegas shooting massacre was a false flag plot to abolish the Second Amendment, and the Highland Park shooting in 2022 was apparently orchestrated by Democrats for the same purpose. And yes: MTG has also endorsed SandyHook trutherism, liking and commenting “[t]hat’s all true” on a comment claiming the massacre was a “STAGGED [sic] SHOOTING.”

 

Regarding a shooting at Kennesaw State University that killed one person, MTG asked whether it was a “failed op? What about hearing voices? Mental illness? Demon possession? Or military grade intelligence developed weapons like Voice of God technology”, and concluded that “We don’t know, but I do believe all three of those exist”. In May 2022, MTG claimed that the Uvalde, Texas school shooter was transgender, justifying the assertion with pictures of random trans women who don’t live in Texas (the source of her information was apparently a 4chan prank that simply flew too high for her). The same month, she claimed that gender-conforming people would go extinct within the next 150 years due to LGBT-inclusive educators (“trans terrorists”), and in June 2022 she blamed tampon shortages on trans people.

 

Sample dumbassery: More conspiracy theories

Once you’ve endorsed the kinds of conspiracy theories MTG endorses, including QAnon, there is little reason to limit yourself. Some other conspiracy theories endorsed or promoted by MTG – spouting them is apparently just a reflex – include:

 

–      9/11 trutherism: “it’s odd there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon”, said MTG, despite an abundance of evidence.

–      That the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that led to one counter-protester’s death was also an “inside job” “to further the agenda of the elites” (MTG cited YourNewsWire, which doesn’t even claim to be anything but a fake news site, for support).

–      In 2019, MTG suggested that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced by a body double.

–      She has expressed deep concerns about the Georgia Guidestones, claiming that ecumenical texts inscribed on them represented a nefarious future of “population control” as envisioned by the “hard left”, adding, for some reason, that “there is a war of good and evil going on, and people are done with globalism.”

–      In 2023, she raised concerns (on Twitter) that her TV was spying on her. She hastened to add that she couldn’t be crazy since “I don’t take any medications. I am not vaccinated.”

–      When some people tried to use legal means to remove her from the ballot due to her death threats toward other legislators and blatant calls for political violence, MTG interpreted the efforts as a gloablist “ploy” for a “one world government” (and, for good measure, that the effort “is totally funded by George Soros dark-money groups”).

–      In October 2024, Greene faced widespread ridicule after posting weather-related conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene and the leadup to Hurricane Milton. According to MTG, “[y]es they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done,” though this time around, she avoided trying to provide any details on who “they” might be since she obviously dislikes having to apologize outside Holocaust Memorial centers. Instead of backtracking, she doubled down a few days later, posting a 2013 news clip about experimental efforts to induce rain and lightning using lasers.

–      She of course published similar weather-related conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the July 2025 Texas floods.

 

According to MTG, “the definition of a right-wing conspiracy theory” is “just the news a month early.” Needless to say, none of her conspiracy theories have ever turned out to be remotely correct.

 

Sample dumbassery: MTG and Russia

MTG is an unapologetic fan of Vladimir Putin. When Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, MTG promptly blamed Ukraine, praised the invasion, gave vocal support for Putin and repeated a rather staggering array of misinformation, conspiracy theories and baldfaced Russian propaganda to support her views. She has consumed an impressive amount of Russian propaganda since then, and has argued for instance that the war is “a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They’re not attacking Christianity. They seem to be protecting it, so that’s something else that’s clear and obvious to many people that are looking closely to what’s going on.” She also threatened to oust Mike Johnson from the speakership after he expressed support for Ukraine aid. On numerous occasions, MTG has falsely warned her audiences that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that “he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine,” which is, of course, the exact opposite of what Zelenskyy actually said.

 

Sample dumbassery: Some political positions

One of MTG’s few efforts to do anything as a politician was her plan to launch the America First Caucus with Rep. Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz to champion “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure projects to “(befit) the progeny of European architecture”. The founding documents lamented the supposedly decreased “capital-to-labor ratio” of “post-1965 immigrants” and also, as expected, contained its share of 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories. MTG self-identifies as a Christian nationalist, and has said that Christian nationalism is the only thing that can stop school shootings, crime, and sexual immorality, declaring that anyone who opposes it is a “domestic terrorist”.

 

Indeed, MTG was herself an early champion not only of election-fraud-related conspiracy theories but of genuine violent overthrow of the government. With regard to the January 6 2021 insurrection, MTG claimed, in 2022, that “if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.” Yes, it’s an embarrassing type of claim to make about anything, and it is of course laughably false (MTG hasn’t managed to organize shit), but still! Already while the event itself was unfolding, she suggested that the insurrectionists were Antifa members dressed as Trump supporters (despite the fact that Anthony Aguero, a close associate of hers, was one of the Capitol stormers), a conspiracy that later turned into a widely used technique to self-identify as a paranoid moron among wingnuts that MTG herself would frequently employ.

 

A vocal fan of Trump, Greene of course consistently supported Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and championed Trump’s nonsense claims that the election was stolen (having her endorsement can’t exactly have helped the credibility of those claims), e.g. calling for the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia to be decertified on the grounds that she didn’t like them. She was also part of the sedition caucus, a group of wingnut legislators who unsuccessfully challenged votes for Joe Biden during the 2021 US Electoral College vote count, even though federal agencies and courts overseeing the election found no evidence for or indication of electoral fraud.

 

MTG is also one of few congresspeople to explicitly suggest secessionism, in particular calling for a “national divorce” separating “blue states” and “red states” as a response to what she perceives as “the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies”. Of course, no one took her shitposting to be anything but an example of her familiar troll behavior to get attention (partly because her own state, Georgia, at that point was technically a ‘blue state’). She also suggested that Democrats who move to “red states” shouldn’t be able to “get to vote for five years” because democracy is only worth having if her side is guaranteed to win (which is important to remember whenever you hear her talk about election integrity).

 

Given the level of paranoia and crazy that characterizes the QAnon crowd, it is hardly surprising that MTG has often found herself in feuds with other insane wingnuts. Here, for instance, is an attempt to make sense (at some level) of her fight with Laura Loomer. And here is a report from her spat with mindrot avatar Lin Wood over who is the bigger supporter of Kyle Rittenhouse. Whether it’s funny or just sad is up to you. Millions of Americans are fans of these two.

 

As for social issues, MTG belongs to a long line of people who think that unemployment is simply the product of “bad choices” and being “lazy”, though the reason minorities are particularly affected is partially due to Planned Parenthood and abortions (she didn’t detail potential mechanisms) and emphatically “not white people.” And in line with the attitudes of her supporters, MTG has lamented that we have “a generation of children that are just being attacked by Satan” because we’ve become a “soulless” nation “ever since God and prayer was taken out of public school.” Well, there is certainly something seriously twisted and wrong with Marjorie Taylor Greene (and her followers), but we doubt that a lack of prayers in public schools is the reason.

 

Diagnosis: The current star of and lightning rod for the MAGA cult in Congress (the Trump accurately identified her as such), as well as the person primarily responsible for mainstreaming QAnon and similar conspiracy theories, as well as white nationalism, on the right, MTG is ultimately probably a boogaloo post-truth bullshitter – “does she believe her own nonsense” is a misguided question, insofar as MTG seems to have no beliefs grounded in anything but what gets her social media pages clicks and donations. And it’s not a strategy – there just isn’t anything there but a bit of paranoia and narcissism. And she is ruining everything.

 

Hat-tip: rationalwiki.