QAnon’s favorite Congresswoman just gave a little insight into how she came to believe far right conspiracy theories.
"I started looking up things on caligula.com sex videosthe internet, asking questions like most people do every day, use Google,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in a speech on the House floor on Thursday. "And I stumbled across something, and this is something at the end of 2017, called QAnon."
"If it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong," she continued.
Facebook has played a major role in the spread of online conspiracy theories and misinformation. QAnon, a right-wing conspiracy theory that claims former President Trump was waging a secret battle with a global Satanic baby-eating child-trafficking ring made up of members of the Democratic Party and Hollywood elites, once a large presence on Facebook.
In October, Facebook bannedQAnon content from its website. The thousands of QAnon Groups and Pages on the platform totalledhundreds of thousands of members at its peak.
However, Greene did not mention her previous comments attributing her discovery of QAnon to Liz Crokin, a prominent influencer in the conspiracy community. Crokin appeared in a viral QAnon video last year, Out of The Shadows, and was a major promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy.
Congresswoman Greene spoke for ten minutes on the House floor before a voteto boot her from two House committees on Thursday. In the speech, Rep. Greene sought to distance herself from at least a few of the conspiracy theories she previously espoused in online video and social media posts.
The House voted in favor of removing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Thursday evening from both the Education and Budget Committees, according to the New York Times.
While it’s important to note Facebook’s role in the spread of the conspiracy theory, Greene — now a sitting-member of Congress — is also responsible for her own actions.
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Greene largely did not take responsibility in her speech. Instead, the Congresswoman spent the bulk of her time equating the outlandish conspiracies that she spread with her disagreements with the “mainstream media.” She declared that the consequences of her actions were examples of unfair "cancel culture."
The Congresswoman also did not apologize for espousing conspiracy theories nor did she even correct the record on her falsehoods.
For example, Greene did mention in her speech that "school shootings are absolutely real" and also "9/11 absolutely happened." However, she did not walk back her false comments on the 2018 Parkland school shooting being staged or her belief that a plane did not strike the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
In fact, Greene only attempted to distance herself from QAnon. There was no denunciation of the conspiracies.
"I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true," explained Greene, deflecting from taking responsibility for what she said.
Her "regret" as she categorized it was merely "asking questions about them and talking about them."
UPDATE: Feb. 4, 2021, 7:06 p.m. EST This post has been updated with additional details and to note that the House voted to remove Rep. Greene from her committees.
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