Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican QAnon Supporter, Wins House Seat in Georgia
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who has voiced support for a range of conspiracy theories including the bizarre pro-Trump QAnon movement, won the race for Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
Greene, who previously ran a CrossFit gym and co-owned a construction business started by her father before deciding to run for Congress, once called QAnon “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out,” per the New York Times.
Greene’s victory over Democratic candidate Kevin Van Ausdal was projected by the AP. On Sept. 11, Van Ausdal announced that he was bowing out of the race for unspecified “family and personal reasons” and that “the next steps in my life are taking me away from Georgia”; by that point, under state law, it was too late for Democrats to field a replacement candidate.
QAnon, which first emerged in 2017, is supposedly based on postings from “Q,” whom followers believe is an anonymous U.S. government insider helping to expose a secret child sex-trafficking cabal run by satanic pedophiles/cannibals who oppose President Trump.
Greene more recently has tried to distance herself from QAnon, which the FBI has called a domestic terror group. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have cracked down on QAnon-related content and groups on their platforms, citing the potential for real-world violence.
In August, Greene said in a Fox News Channel interview that QAnon “wasn’t part of my campaign.”
“I was just one of those people, just like millions of other Americans, that just started looking at other information,” Greene said in the Fox News interview. “And so, yeah, there was a time there for a while that I had read about Q, posted about it, talked about it, which is some of these videos you’ve seen come out. But once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”
On Tuesday, after she was declared the winner on the Georgia House race, Greene tweeted, “So honored to serve! THANK YOU to the people of NW Georgia for choosing me to fight for them in Washington, DC!”
Besides QAnon, Greene has also publicly spread other conspiracy theories, including alleging that Holocaust survivor George Soros collaborated with Nazis and saying that the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites,” per CNN.
In September, Greene posted a picture of herself on Facebook holding a rifle next to images of three Democratic representatives of color — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — with a caption reading, “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.” Facebook removed Greene’s post a day later, citing its policy banning incitement to violence.
More from Variety
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.