White privilege is Marjorie Taylor Greene calling to end the USA and then getting invited on Fox News to sell her idea to the public

Imagine if AOC or Rep Omar said the same thing

Imagine if either Rep. Ilhan Omar or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that they wanted to end the United States of America, calling on blue states to secede from the Union to form their own countries. Add to that, the reason given was because they wanted to avoid having to share the same nation with the “sick,” “disgusting” and “traitorous” Republicans.

The reaction would’ve been swift. The media—and not just the right wing—would’ve demonized these women of color. Democratic leaders would have been called to denounce them in every TV appearance. Fox News would’ve broken into their previously scheduled coverage demonizing Reps. Omar and AOC to demonize them more.  

From there, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would’ve called a vote to strip them of their House committee assignments—especially if they were on the Homeland Security committee. And both Reps. would’ve been subject to a tsunami of death threats from the terrorist wing of the MAGA movement. (Just this week, a Trump supporting terrorist was sentenced to 38 months in prison for threatening to kill AOC.) Indeed, Omar or AOC may have been required to stay out of the public for a while for their own safety.

But when white supremacist/GOP leader Marjorie Taylor Greene says that same thing-- calling for “national divorce”--she is invited by Sean Hannity to appear on his highly rated Fox News show to sell her treasonous idea to the Fox News audience.   And jaw droppingly, Hannity even agreed to appear with Greene that we need to end the United States saying, “I don’t see the middle ground on many of these issues,” adding, “So what is the other answer if it’s not a divorce?”

Here is what Greene tweeted earlier this week:

Apart from her call to end the USA as we know it, Greene is dangerously dehumanizing Democrats by calling our ideology “sick, “disgusting” and even “traitorous.”  Given that nearly 60% of the GOP base—per a June 2022 CBS poll--views the Jan 6 terrorist attack as an act “defending freedom,” that means a majority of the GOP base is open to using violence to achieve their political goals. This is the very essence of FASCISM. As the late Madeline Albright explained in her book, Fascism: A Warning, “fascism involves the endorsement and use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in power.”

There was a time we could dismiss Greene as just a run of the mill GOP bigot. But she is now the second most visible Republican in the House caucus after Speaker McCarthy--and she sits on the House Homeland Security committee.  

Beyond that she represents where the energy of the GOP base is. Big swaths of the GOP rank and file love her. For proof of this look at how much money she raised in campaign donations in the past two years: over $12.5 million dollars. That makes her the 4^th highest fundraiser in the current GOP House caucus of over 220 members.  In fact, of the 435 members of the House, she raised the 8^th most amount of money.

That’s bone-chilling. It tells us that the GOP base loves her defense of the Jan 6 attack stating, “if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.” They cheer her continual defense of the Jan 6 attackers as “political prisoners” and love that just last month she called for an investigation into “civil rights abuses” committed against Trump supporters arrested in the Jan 6 terrorist attack.

The GOP base also must approve of her speaking last February at a white supremacist convention organized by Holocaust denying, Nick Fuentes. And then there is her declaration  that the GOP needs to be the party of “Christian nationalists.” And of course, we know the GOP loves her bigotry targeting Muslims and Jews given that Trump did the same and they flocked to him.

Greene’s grievances are not much different in tone than what her ancestors in Georgia cited as the reason to leave the Union in January 1861. The declaration approved by the Georgia legislature at the time explaining why the state was seceding from the Union to create the “Republic of Georgia” tell us that.  Georgia’s elected officials began by noting, “The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation.”

They then explained why they needed a “national divorce” as Greene has called for: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”  

They bluntly spoke of preserving white supremacy—just as Greene believes in—writing, “While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen.”

And they slammed the “woke” people of their day, which were those trying to end slavery: “For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us.”

The final lines of the Georgia declaration explaining why they were seceding also conures up Greene’s own views of the other side as evil: “To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.”

As a reminder, Greene as a member of Congress visited monuments to honor the traitors of the Confederacy who took up arms against the United States, posting on social media: “Tonight, I stopped at the Wilder monument in Chickamauga, GA, which honors the Confederate soldiers of the Wilder Brigade.”

We are not on the verge of a new Civil War. But the slave owning mentality that led to that bloody conflict is still alive and well in Greene and a swath of the GOP base. That is more than white privilege, that is white supremacy. And history tell us that when white supremacy is challenged it will employ violence to remain in power—just as they tried on Jan 6.

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