Marjorie Taylor Greene banned from Twitter – but not for her rampant transphobia
Marjorie Taylor Greene has attacked stepmums and adoptive parents, saying they’re not real mothers. (CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty/ Tom Williams)
Twitter has temporarily banned Republican congresswoman and noted bigot Marjorie Taylor Greene – but not for her relentless transphobia.
Greene, of Georgia, was suspended from the service for 12 hours on Monday (19 July) for tweets that went against Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy.
One of the inflammatory tweets, which is still displayed on the lawmaker’s account but now with a “misleading” tag, saw Greene rail against mandatory inoculations in the military. The post cannot be liked or retweeted.
Greene, who has previously tweeted QAnon conspiracy theories, also claimed that the virus is not dangerous for people unless they are over 65 or obese and that vaccines should not be mandatory.
“We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a Twitter spokesperson told PinkNews.
In response, Greene said in a statement that Silicon Valley companies are “doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isn’t state-approved”.
The highly contagious Delta variant has ripped through Greene’s home state of Georgia, with the Georgia Department of Health reporting a 193 per cent surge in new cases in the past two weeks.
America has been hit hard by the pandemic, with its death toll recently topping 600,000. Despite this, Greene, in May, compared the mask mandate on the House floor to the Holocaust, drawing heated criticism from Democratic lawmakers.
As the coronavirus seizes Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene spreads misinformation
Twitter has taken a hardline on COVID-19 misinformation, explaining in March its view that such lies, if left untouched, could blunt the vaccine rollout and put the vulnerable at risk.
“We’ve observed the emergence of persistent conspiracy theories, alarmist rhetoric unfounded in research or credible reporting, and a wide range of unsubstantiated rumours, which left uncontextualized can prevent the public from making informed decisions regarding their health and puts individuals, families and communities at risk,” the company said.
US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. (AFP via Getty/ SAUL LOEB)
According to the policy, Twitter users who post lies about the virus or the vaccine are given a strike. Those with two or three strikes are suspended for 12 hours, like Greene.
If a fourth strike is dealt, the user is banned for seven days. On the fifth, the user is banned completely.
While Greene fell foul of this, she has faced little penalty from Twitter for her anti-LGBT+ tweets, routinely launching attacks against the Equality Act.
Only two weeks ago, Greene egged on her 425,000 followers to take aim at trans women for “invading” girl’s sports while calling on queer Americans to keep “what you do in the bedroom” private in an unhinged rant.
She has criticised the “LGBT+ (trans) agenda” while comparing puberty blockers to “child abuse” – the treatment has been consistently found to be “life-saving” by researchers with actual qualifications and medical expertise.
Her track record of provocative social media activity does not end there, however. Earlier this year, it was found she endorsed a raft of Facebook posts calling for fatal violence against Democrats in the wake of the Capitol riots and liked the anti-LGBT+ hate group MassResistance.
She has also casually said that 9/11 was a hoax, that former president Barack Obama and that the Clinton family were guilty of murder – all in a single, 40-minute-long YouTube video.
PinkNews contacted Twitter for comment.
