When you politicize literally everything, you can insist that any criticism of your views is a political attack. The Right adopted this policy years ago, politicizing the coronavirus, climate change, homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and every other issue that would lose rich, white people money. For Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), it meant getting her personal Twitter account removed for violating terms and conditions she claims are unfair. And her witless friends have come to support that crusade.
Twitter suspended the Twitter account of the twice-impeached ex-president who lost the popular vote twice when he used their platform to incite an attack against the U.S. government. Greene’s personal Twitter account was permanently suspended (her government account is still up) for spreading dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 virus and the vaccines that are saving lives around the world. Neither violence nor viruses should be politically divisive issues.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is well-known for creating controversy, arming her small children with semi-automatic weapons for photos while families grieve the loss of their children to school shootings, dredging up the worst social media rumors about her political opponents to spout them on camera as fact, spouting racial and xenophobic stand-up acts to give her most horrid followers a good chuckle, and telling the world through social media the location of Speaker Nancy Pelosi while Congress was under attack. She’s insisted that being criticized for those moves is purely political and she says now that the consequences faced by Rep. Greene are political, too.
The truth is that they’re both bullies creating controversy for political gain and social media clicks. The consequences of their actions for other people – Muslims, people who are targeted with death threats and bullying online after losing a family member to gun violence, and families who lose loved ones to COVID-19, among others – are all too real. They should become even more so for elected leaders who cause such dangerous and deadly harm.
Twitter wasn’t buying the rhetoric, either. Read some of their comments below:
