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Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not allowed to obtain a pass from the GOP or the media
The newly elected GOP House representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was suspended from Twitter on Sunday night for promoting the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Twitter temporarily suspends Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for election fraud claims https://t.co/dq9UuvkZnv
– CBS News (@CBSNews) January 18, 2021
Greene had posted tweets including a video claiming the election was stolen from Donald Trump, there had been massive election fraud, Dominion machines were breached, and almost every other lie put forward by Trump and conspiracy theorists.
Twitter suspended her for 12 hours and requested that she remove the tweets, which she did. But when she got back on Twitter, she started attacking the social media company in an attempt to silence conservatives, claiming this was a free speech issue, just as Trump and many other supporters claimed as he and thousands of others did Qanon-spreading and white supremacist accounts were banned a week and a half ago.
The argument is ridiculous, given that Twitter is a private company that can decide what rules apply to its free service. Nobody has a “right” to use Twitter – or Facebook, or any other social media company – and your speech won’t be hindered in any way if you’re banned for breaking rules: you can send a press release or go shouting on a street corner if you want.
And when it comes to Green, Twitter should go further and ban them, just as Trump and thousands of other accounts banned it. She is, like newly elected GOP representative from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, an advocate of the Qanon conspiracy, which claims a cabal in government made up mostly of Democrats and others in the “deep state” are Satanists and pedophiles, and this one Trump is on a secret crusade to stop them. This insane conspiracy fluctuates with the electoral fraud conspiracy and well, it’s complicated – but actually not because it’s all nonsense and dangerous.
Both Greene and Boebert built their following and support in their deep red Trumpist districts and promoted conspiracy theories. Boebert has slandered immigrants, promoted open-carry laws – she and her husband own a restaurant called Shooters Grill, where the servers are armed – and, like Greene, defiantly violated coronavirus restrictions and mask mandates. Greene has promoted racist, Islamaphobic and anti-Semitic lies and, like Boebert, demonized the Democrats as the baby-killing socialist party.
While they were both promoting Qanon and “Q”, the unknown person behind the Message Board account that caused the conspiracy, they have tried – bleakly failing – to break away from the cult now:
While Greene has withdrawn her support, saying that the QAnon candidate label “does not represent me,” she has touted “Q” as a patriot and spread baseless conspiracy theories associated with the movement. And while Boebert claimed she was not a believer and worked to distance herself from the conspiracy theorists, she said of QAnon, “I hope this is real.”
There is no question that both members of the House of Representatives who voted to reverse the election results when the electoral college was certified sparked the Capitol terror mob, which included prominent Qanon figures and many supporters.
Boebert, who ran an ad swearing she would carry a Glock pistol during Congress, was in some sort of “stalemate” with House Sargent-at-Arms last week and refused to have her bag searched, after she set out for newly installed metal detectors at the entrance to the house chamber – although carrying a gun on the house floor is prohibited. She stormed through the metal detectors and called the security measures an “atrocity”. It was unclear whether her bag was searched.
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