#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.