Far-right conspiracy theorists Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) are not outliers in the Republican Party, but are just the latest examples of the “white lady agitators” who have always propped up white supremacy.
“Powerful white racist politicians like George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Ronald Reagan could not have ensured the durability of institutionalized white power without the countless white women who eagerly and continuously helped perpetuate racial discrimination and oppression through whatever grassroots means were available to them,” wrote Daily Beast columnist Kali Holloway.
“As a rule, Black women with arrest records and rap sheets, GEDs earned just months before their first election campaigns, who walk around open-carrying and bragging about the Glocks they own, as Boebert has done, are not elected to Congress,” Holloway added. “Were a Muslim Black woman to start a campaign of harassment against her colleagues, like the one Marjorie Taylor Greene has waged from the moment she got into office, she would have been ejected from Congress long ago.”
Throughout history, white women have “performed myriad of duties to uphold white over black; “censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials,” historian Elizabeth McRae explained.
“But Boebert and Greene can stand on the frontlines of the GOP’s fight for white supremacy, lob all the vitriol they please and become stars in the process, and then blame the folks they harm for sport and political profit for any fallout,” Holloway wrote. “It’s basically guaranteed that, seeing how the formula is working for them, Boebert and Greene will only continue to wreak more racist havoc. Even if it means that violence will almost assuredly result.”
“Now that holding political office is an option for women, it’s an optimal choice for women like Boebert and Greene,” she added. “White women racist agitators walked so Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene could run.”