Republican party leaders will meet Georgia’s extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene next week as an ongoing crisis over her bizarre and racist political views continues to cloud American politics.
Greene, who has in the past expressed support for the racist conspiracy movement QAnon, has been the subject of a series of media reports revealing his previous posts on social media that support or promote a range of marginal, violent and prejudiced ideas.
Some major outside groups have demanded that the Republican Party condemn her and the Democrats are pushing for Greene to be removed from Congress or, at least, for her to be removed from the major committees on which she has received positions.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, will now sit down for a conversation with Greene next week, his office said. But Republican leaders have so far offered no significant condemnation of Greene or an indication that they will take action against her.
Greene herself remained furious and defiant in the face of criticism, although her Facebook profile has had many posts removed. “I will never back down. I will never give up, ”she said in a statement on Friday.
Since coming to Congress, Greene has become a symbol of how far to the right much of the Republican Party has moved under Donald Trump and the continued influence of extremists in its ranks, especially after the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a crowd pro-Trump.
Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush said on Friday that she is moving her office from Greene due to security concerns after Greene and her team scolded her and refused to wear masks. Bush told MSNBC that he is relocating, “not because I’m afraid” of Greene, “because I’m here to do a job for the people of St. Louis.”
“What I can’t do is keep looking over my shoulder and wondering if a white supremacy in Congress, called Marjorie Taylor Greene … is conspiring against us,” she said.
Calls for action against Greene grew louder as more and more reports emerged from his extreme views. In previous social media posts discovered by CNN, Greene indicated support for the execution of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In a 2018 Facebook post reported by MediaMatters, she echoed conspiracy theories that the forest fires that hit California that year were caused by a space laser fired by a group of Democratic politicians and companies to make financial gains.
In a 2019 confrontation with survivors of the mass shootings in Parkland documented on tape, she appeared to approach students and later echoed conspiracy claims that survivors of mass shootings and victims’ families are “actors of the crisis” and attacks who killed loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.
Some of her views embrace anti-Semitic tropes and this has led some Republican Jewish groups to speak out against her.
The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Friday that it is working with some leaders on “next steps” and noted that it opposes Greene’s election in 2020 because “she has repeatedly used offensive language in long online diatribes” and “has promoted bizarre theories. of political conspiracy ”.
Meanwhile, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – which includes conservative Jewish groups like AIPAC and American Friends of Likud among the 53 Jewish groups it represents – issued a strong word of condemnation and a call to action.
The group said Greene was spreading “unfounded hatred against the Jewish people” and called for a “swift and proportionate” response from political leaders.
Elsewhere, the Human Rights Campaign asked McCarthy to remove Greene from his committee assignments.
“There must be consequences for your actions. The Human Rights Campaign calls for minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, to hold it accountable and remove MP Marjorie Taylor Greene from all of her designated parliamentary committees at the very least, ”said HRC President Alphonso David.