Marjorie Taylor Greene shared an anti-Muslim video that portrays Jewish people as trying to destroy Europe through immigration

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published

Marjorie Taylor Greene on Capitol Hill

From Marjorie Taylor Greene's Facebook page. 

Less than two years ago, right-wing commentator and Republican House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene shared an anti-refugee video and claimed that “this is what the UN wants all over the world.” The Greene-promoted video features anti-Muslim propaganda, quotes an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier saying that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” and, as one reporter wrote, “implies that Jews are at the heart of a project to destroy Europe as we know it.” 

The video, which originated on the far-right message board 8chan in 2015, has been celebrated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. 

Greene is heavily favored to win her race in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. She has expressed support for the violence-linked QAnon conspiracy theory, which the FBI has labeled a potential domestic terror threat. Conspiracy theories researcher Mike Rothschild has written that "anti-Semitism has been part of the fabric of QAnon since the conspiracy theory first launched” in October 2017. 

Greene has also pushed conspiracy theories about 9/11, the killing of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, the mail bombs sent around the time of the 2018 midterm elections, and Pizzagate. 

Politico reported in June that Greene posted Facebook videos in which she expressed “racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views,” including stating that “there is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now” and that “you saw after midterm elections what we saw so many Muslims elected.”  

Greene has the support of leading Republicans and has been “invited to attend President Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday evening at the White House."

Media Matters found that before running for Congress, Greene promoted a video that attacked Muslims and refugees and pushed anti-Semitic messages.

On December 9, 2018, Greene shared a link to a video along with the comment: “This is what the UN wants all over the world with the UN Global Migration Compact to be signed Dec 10-11 in Morocco. But I’m still banned on my fb pages from going live, for using the term ‘illegal invaders’, apparently that’s hate speech!” (Update (1/5/21): Following the publication of this article, Greene’s Facebook post was removed; a screenshot of the original post can be found here.)

Her link was to a 19:32 minute video called With Open Gates: The Forced Collective Suicide of European Nations. As reporter Philip Kleinfeld wrote in Vice when it began circulating in 2015, the video “is designed to scare people about the supposed menace of refugees” by using “a mishmash of comically fake and out-of-context footage, bad subtitling and Islamophobic propaganda.” He wrote of the racist start of the video: 

The video begins with the narrator claiming the other side of the refugee crisis is "how it will change Europe". What follows is a montage of selectively chosen footage designed to present refugees and migrants as violent and dangerous. Some of it is genuine footage from the past 12 months, but a lot of it has absolutely nothing to do with the current crisis. It's just a collection of random footage of people that aren't white in circumstances that aren't stated.

Kleinfeld also noted that the video relies on anti-Semitism to make its points, including using a video clip that was “taken out of its original context and spliced into an anti-refugee film” to imply “that Jews are at the heart of a project to destroy Europe as we know it.” He wrote: 

AN ANTI-SEMITIC MESSAGE

The message of the video ratchets up the anti-refugee rhetoric to a whole new ideological level, making Britain First look comparatively PC. About nine minutes in, it quotes former BNP leader Nick Griffin saying that an "unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation".

It ends with a quote from Barbara Lerner Spectre, the founding director of the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, who says, "Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the centre of that." She's talking about Jews playing a role in making Europe a more tolerant and diverse place. But taken out of its original context and spliced into an anti-refugee film, it implies that Jews are at the heart of a project to destroy Europe as we know it. This is an anti-Semitic trope claiming that immigration is part of a Zionist/Jewish plot to destroy the white race – something the far-right likes to call "white genocide".

Griffin, a racist and Holocaust denier, also states in that clip that the supposed alliance of “leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists” has a “deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” 

The Anti-Defamation League also criticized the video, writing in 2015 that it “uses selective footage of African and Muslim refugees and immigrants to depict them as creating mayhem and destruction throughout Europe.” It added that With Open Gates also attempts to give “fuel to anti-Semites who blame Jews for non-white immigration to Europe”:

“With Open Gates: The Forced Collective Suicide of European Nations,” a virulently anti-refugee propaganda video widely circulated on the Internet has received over four million views on YouTube over the last two weeks. The video uses selective footage of African and Muslim refugees and immigrants to depict them as creating mayhem and destruction throughout Europe.

The video ends with a clip of the founder of a Jewish cultural institute in Sweden, who claims that Jews support efforts to promote multiculturalism in Europe. This segment of the video gives fuel to anti-Semites who blame Jews for non-white immigration to Europe. The statement that accompanied the posting of the video on YouTube blames “Zionist interest” for destroying Europe “from the inside.”

The ADL also wrote that “the racist video originated on 8chan, a controversial Internet discussion forum whose ‘Politically Incorrect’ subforum is notorious for racist and anti-Semitic language,” and that it was also extolled by the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer and the white supremacist websites Vanguard News Network and Stormfront. BuzzFeed News’ Joseph Bernstein wrote in February 2017 that the video “received some 4 million views in late 2015 before being taken down by YouTube over a copyright claim.” He added that it was “first circulated by white supremacist blogs and chans” and “gained social steam until it was picked up by Breitbart, at which point it exploded.” And The New York Times wrote in November 2018 that With Open Gates “drew praise from prominent neo-Nazis and white nationalists, and was broadly condemned by anti-hate groups.”