Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., keeps peddling pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine talking points. Unfortunately for the far-right conspiracy theorist, she has zero credibility on the matter.
During an interview with a conservative podcast on Tuesday, Greene, who once blamed California wildfires on space lasers controlled by Jews, suggested Ukraine is overrun by Nazis. The Kremlin has made similar allegations to justify its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, claiming it must “denazify” the country.
“It’s shocking to me that Congress is so willing to funnel $14 billion in military equipment over and over again into Ukraine,” Greene said. “And you have to ask, is this money and is this United States military equipment falling into the hands of Nazis in Ukraine?”
She made a similar remark Sunday on Twitter, underscoring her apparent desire to inject the Kremlin’s talking points into U.S. dialogue.
But Greene’s credibility problem on the anti-Nazi front is abundantly clear: She’s publicly aligned herself with neo-Nazis and white nationalists in America. Just last month, she spoke at a white nationalist conference in Orlando, Florida.
At the conference, Greene told attendees they were wrongly “canceled Americans.”
“You’ve been handed the responsibility to fight for our Constitution and stand for our freedoms and stop the Democrats, who are the communist party of the United States of America,” she told them.
Yet, we’re to believe she’s suddenly developed an interest in rooting out neo-Nazism? It’s an inexplicable contradiction that blows a hole in the “supporting Ukraine means supporting Nazis” propaganda that Kremlin sympathizers have been pushing.
And Greene isn’t the only right-winger to carry the Kremlin’s water in furthering this conspiracy theory. As The New York Times reported Wednesday, ultraconservative commentators, including former Fox Nation host Lara Logan and podcaster Joe Oltmann, have helped push Russia’s “denazification” propaganda as well.
In supporting Ukraine, they claim, the U.S. is supporting Nazis and thereby provoking Russia to continue its invasion. I’ll be the first to acknowledge there are strains of Nazism and white nationalism in Ukraine — just as there are strains of Nazis in Russia.
But saying Russia’s invasion is justified because there are some Nazis in Ukraine, a country of millions, is like saying Russia would be justified in attacking the U.S. because some neo-Nazis live here.
The more far-right lawmakers like Greene push Russia’s denazification claim, the more it’s exposed for being the propaganda it so obviously is.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.