Sometimes it’s tempting to believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene is just a poorly-designed chatbot, programmed to absorb information from the shadiest corners of the far-right internet and spit it all out in the most ridiculous way. Every unhinged tweet she posts pretty much follows the same format, complete with a slowly evolving lexicon of pointless buzzwords that usually make very little sense. And, thanks to the fact that Twitter Blue subscribers can now post up to 4,000 characters per tweet, the level of hateful slurry pouring from her account has increased massively. Another terrible thing to thank Elon Musk for, it seems.
Her latest rant about trans people pulls from many of her greatest hits, including a shoutout for the dubiously-named “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which Greene introduced to Congress despite many of her fellow Republicans being happy to aid, abet and even marry people who have committed sex crimes against minors. But then again, she’s never been the sharpest, so this oversight isn’t a surprise.
While it’s easy to dismiss Greene as a misguided hatemonger simply repeating things she reads from dubious sources, or a tool used by wealthy interests (often Republican donors) to divert the very real and justified anger many Americans feel at the state of their country towards struggling minorities, tweets like these need to be tackled head on. The litany of mistruths and distortions in her post can spread like wildfire, and it’s up to those who have done their research to combat them. So, prepare yourself for a rollercoaster of anger as we delve into everything wrong with her recent Twitter screed.
The first proof that Greene is a joke (albeit a dangerous one) is the odd portmanteau she’s used in the tweet: “Transtifa.” The term is a combination of “trans” and “antifascist,” although the way she’s written, it makes no sense even in that context, as it would read “Trans-tifascist” if extended. As a serious pun lover it’s obvious she should have gone with “Trantifa,” but Greene having done that would mean she’d spent longer than half a second thinking about what she tweeted before typing it. You’d also think likening her enemies to the brave Americans who lost their lives fighting the Fascists in WW2 is a mistake, but conservative America has apparently deciced that fascism isn’t a bad thing, really, so here we are. Although, with that said, the American right has always had an admiration for Fascists, so it’s not the biggest shock she sees being antifascist as a slur.
Her next line is genuinely dangerous, implying that it’s a bad thing that taxpayers should have to pay for the rights of certain American citizens to be protected. By attempting to portray trans people as not worthy of the same rights as their fellow Americans, she’s opening the door for the discrimination of a group who are already at a higher risk of violence than the average American, as well as suffering from a whole range of other issues that affect their quality of life, from worse access to education, employment issues, and a deadly lack of healthcare.
She then moves on to a favored creed of the gender critical community: that trans rights will erode the rights of women. This assertion is usually based on outlandish what-if scenarios or by focusing heavily on niche topics like trans people competing in the highest echelons of sports, or the weird obsession Republicans seem to have with toilets. The fact is, the idea that strengthening trans rights will damage women’s rights has been rubbished by numerous organizations with long and proud histories of standing up for gender equality. Also, it’s highly telling that the vast majority of anti-trans movements are funded by far right groups who also give plenty of cash to organizations who are anti-abortion and anti-women’s rights. It seems simple enough, but we’ll still spell it out: if your movement is supposedly for gender equality but is being funded by people who want to ban abortion and send women from the workplace back into the home, it probably isn’t as pro-women as you think.
On that note, Greene also mentions another conservative wedge issue that she likens to trans people having rights: The banning of abortion. We’re not quite sure how these two are related, other than both are thought-terminating cliches that her base can latch on to. She also champions conversion therapy, claiming that it’s helped “many former gays, trans, and detransitioners…to successfully change their life.” Like most things Greene says, this is categorically untrue. Conversion therapy has been proven over and over again to damage those who go through it. Moreover, the majority of those who detransition do so not because they feel they made a mistake, but because of social pressures.
It wouldn’t be a Greene tweet without the claim that religion (which in her world means extreme Christian nationalism, something many experts argue has very little to do with Christianity) is under attack, so of course that gets a mention. However, she always seems to forget that Jesus was all about peaceful solutions and treating those around you with respect. Funny, that.
Like all Republican propaganda, children, and the threat of them being hurt in some way, is also brought into her tweet. She likens books that deal with the reality of U.S history — that it involves horrible people exploiting minorities in the most barbaric ways — to “grooming” and “brainwashing.” A whitewashed history of the United States that ignores the millions of brutalized enslaved Africans who built the country, the genocide committed against Indigenous people by colonizing European and U.S. military forces, and the country’s long history of persecuting LGBTQ folks, might make her feel better about her positions, but denying history is never a good look.
She ends the first of her five (yes five)- tweet rant with another classic of the far right: That gender-affirming healthcare is inherently evil. This is again patently untrue, with countless studies proving it is hugely beneficial to countless trans children and adults.
Tweet two is effectively a longwinded assertion that trans people already have all the rights they need, another idea that’s been endlessly debunked. Tweet three harps on about children being kept safe again, but, as mentioned, Greene doesn’t seem to actually care about minors being raped as long as it’s by someone she likes politically. Add in the fact that she’s advocating for policies that we know hurt trans kids, it’s fair to say she’s the one who is pro-child abuse. And that’s not even mentioning her unbridled support of the gun lobby, despite the endless trail of blood left by school shootings in the U.S.
Her last two tweets in the thread consist of a usual call to arms, filled with the war-like rhetoric that made Greene one of the main driving forces behind the Jan 6 insurrection. The dangerous congresswoman paints a wild picture of the U.S, stating that folks “on puberty blockers and raging hormone therapies will be marching the streets.” The mention of hormones is obviously a dog whistle implying that trans people lack mental stability, which is a bit rich coming from someone who consistently throws tantrums like a child. It’s also ironic that she’s worried those who disagree with her would try to start a violent revolution, considering the most recent groups who attempted that are very much fans of her work.
Greene’s grand finale in this carnival of dangerous idiocy is comparing the prospect of trans people having the same rights as their fellow Americans to an apocalypse. Like many cults, the fanatical Christian nationalist caucus that she’s a leading light of love comparing everything to the end of days, so this rhetoric is no surprise, nor his her final line, underlining the importance of the 2024 election. This might be the one thing she’s tweeted that’s entirely true: the next election is of vital importance, because if people like Greene get in, things are set to get a whole lot worse for a large swath of Americans who are already struggling on the edge of survival.
