Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has abandoned plans to launch a group called the America First Caucus after she faced wide-ranging public condemnation over racism in the group’s prospective tenets. Among other vitriol, a planning document associated with the group expressed support for what it called a “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” and the same material also included an ignorant claim that “mass immigration” threatens “the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity.”
Greene claimed on Twitter after the planning material leaked that the document was “a staff level draft proposal from an outside group that I hadn’t read.” It’s unclear what exactly she meant by “an outside group,” because on Friday, her spokesperson Nick Dyer confirmed that the Congresswoman planned to launch the America First Caucus. On Friday, Dyer told CNN to “[be] on the look out for the release of the America First Caucus platform when it’s announced to the public very soon.” The next day, Dyer said that Greene “wants to make clear that she is not launching anything.” Talk about a quick reversal.
On a note similar to Greene’s initial defense, Dyer called the controversial planning document “an early planning proposal,” adding that “nothing was agreed to or approved.” More specifically, Dyer added that Greene herself “didn’t approve that language” in the highly scrutinized document.
Notably, in her rambling attempt to characterize herself as definitely not racist in the wake of the release of the America First Caucus planning document, Greene employed rhetoric mirroring racist conspiracy theories. As she put it, “liars & psychotic left wing communists in the media who only care about self-awarded Pulitzers, clicks for cash, and pushing weak politicians around” are the ones who “really [run] this country,” and this idea seems like an outgrowth of the racist conspiracy theory that financially well off Jews in the media and other sectors of society are secretly pulling social strings.
Greene already once suggested that imaginary space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish family, could’ve been responsible for wildfires in California. Once, she also shared a video on Facebook containing the loony racist conspiracy theory that “an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists, and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.”
