QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene wins House seat

CBS projects Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who drew national scrutiny for promoting QAnon conspiracy theories, has won the U.S. House seat for Georgia’s 14th congressional district. Green was running unopposed after her Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, dropped out of the race in September due to “personal and family reasons.”

Greene has posted racist and Islamophobic messages and voiced support for QAnon, a tangle of baseless claims about a supposed cabal of pedophiles and Satan-worshippers who will be vanquished by President Trump. The FBI has warned that fringe conspiracy theories like QAnon pose a growing domestic terrorism threat.

Greene will be replacing Republican Tom Graves, who resigned on October 4.

President Trump refused to condemn QAnon when asked about it during the final presidential debate last month.

The group first surfaced on the internet message board 4chan in 2017 and has grown a wider following on mainstream social media. In a YouTube video, Greene said QAnon is “something I think it’s worth listening to and paying attention to” and that Q, the anonymous figure who posts clues for followers to decipher, is a “patriot.”

Greene, a business owner in a district northwest of Atlanta, defeated John Cowan in the primary runoff in August. After she won the primary, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois posted a video saying that “denouncing conspiracies shouldn’t be the exception. They really should be the rule.”

Greene is not the only member of the Republican Party to voice support for QAnon. At least 19 House Republican candidates who supported or elevated QAnon content were set to appear on the ballot this election cycle, according to tracking by Media Matters, though several later distanced themselves from it.