'Bald-faced lies': Columnist calls Marjorie Taylor Greene's complaint against Jamaal Bowman 'white supremacist violence'
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), after a heated argument with a congressional colleague, said during a press conference Thursday she took offense to being called a “white supremacist,” a term she compared to calling a Black person the N-word.
Greene told reporters that “Jamaal Bowman [was] shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing, calling me a horrible … calling me a white supremacist which I take great offense to that.
“It’s like calling a person of color the N-word which should never happen. Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that. That is wrong.”
But a columnist argued Monday that description fits the far-right congresswoman from Georgia perfectly.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is a very dangerous person, a leading member of the Republican Party and larger neofascist movement,” Chauncey DeVega wrote in a column for Salon.
“Proving that to be true once again, last week Marjorie Taylor Greene summoned up the country's unique history of white on Black spectacular lynchings and other white supremacist violence in an attempt to gain political leverage, attention and more power.”
Greene, during Thursday’s press conference, claimed that Bowman had demonstrated a “history of aggression” toward her, among other members of Congress. She also claimed that Bowman encouraged a “mob” that accosted her when she visited New York City to protest former President Donald Trump’s indictment.
"He has aggressive — his physical mannerisms are aggressive," Greene said of Bowman.
"I think there's a lot of concern about Jamaal Bowman, and I am concerned about it. I feel threatened by him."
DeVega called Greene’s characterization of Bowman’s behavior “bald-faced lies.”
“If Greene felt ‘threatened’ by Bowman that is a manifestation of her own white racist paranoiac thinking for which she should seek counseling or other mental health assistance,” DeVega writes.
“Bowman was not physically aggressive towards Greene on Wednesday or on other occasions. Bowman has not been the subject of any reasonably reported concerns or complaints by other members of Congress about his ‘history of aggression.’”