(WGHP) — Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia home was apparently “swatted” Wednesday morning, and now she’s calling for a controversial site to be taken offline.
“Last night, I was swatted just after 1 am,”the Congresswoman tweeted. “I can’t express enough gratitude to my local law enforcement here in Rome, Floyd County. More details to come.”
The Hill reports that authorities are investigating the incident, in which someone called 911 and reported that a person had been shot at Greene’s home.
Officials said they received a second call from the suspect, using a computer-generated voice, saying they were upset about Greene’s view on transgender youth rights. However, during aNewsMax interview, Marjorie Taylor Greene says officials told her that the caller said they were a member of the forum KiwiFarms,Newsweek reports.
What is swatting?
Swatting is the practice of making fake calls to 911 or other emergency services to send a large police presence to a particular location, often for the purposes of terrorizing the people inside.
In May,a Winston-Salem family was swatted after the son spoke with a stranger on Discord while playing Fortnite. In July, one Guilford County home was thesubject of multiple swatting calls over just a day.
Swatting is strongly associated with online gaming communities, but as in the case with Greene, can be used as what she believes was a “political attack.”
Kandiss Taylor, a Georgia Republican who received 3.4 percent of the vote in the state’s May gubernatorial primary, alsosaid she was swatted last month.
An email sent from Greene’s campaign, entitled “They tried to kill me,” says that a “radical leftist called the police, reported a murder — and gave them my home address as the location in hopes they’d raid my house and end my life.”
Then on Thursday she tweeted that she had been “swatted again last night.”CNBC reporting that the police “say the caller ‘came out as trans-gender and claimed they shot the family’ at Greene’s address, the report said.”
As Greene’s campaign decries a ‘radical transgender rights activist’ for the swatting, the identification of the site KiwiFarms muddies the waters a little.
What is KiwiFarms?
“Isn’t it concerning that such a website exists?” Greene asked in her interview. “That website needs to be taken down. There should be no business or any kind of service where you can target your enemy. That’s absolutely absurd and this is the type of lawlessness that Democrats want all over the country.”
KiwiFarms is a site described as an “alt-right forum of doxing and unmitigated hate.” In the past, it has been connected to right wing violence, such as theChristchurch mass shooting.
It describes itself as a “community dedicated to discussing eccentric people who voluntarily make fools of themselves. Explore abnormal psychology and the minds of Internet crazies.”
Currently, controversy is swirling around the KiwiFarms userbase’s tendency to dox, swat and harass minorities or people they deem “lolcows” (people they can ‘milk’ for entertainment via bullying and harassment.) Their current efforts allegedly drove a Canadian Twitch streamer, who is trans, from her Ontario home.
KiwiFarms’ users often target minorities, particularly transgender and non-binary people, on the internet with a torrent of bullying and abuse.
At least three people have committed suicide as a result.
Since 2017, a transgender game designer namedChloe Sagal,a non-binary web developer known online as Near, and ateenage girl named Julie Terryberry have committed suicide, with friends, family or social media posts blaming KiwiFarms campaign of bullying for their deaths.
KiwiFarmsusers fantasized about going to the victims’ funerals and making a scene.
MTG vs. KiwiFarms?
While the caller allegedly told the police that their swatting was a result of Greene’s anti-transgender beliefs and policies, they also allegedly told police they were a KiwiFarms user, two things that seem in conflict with one another.
Whatever the caller wanted to do, whether to bring national attention to KiwiFarms or to paint trans activists in a negative light, remains to be seen. Greene has strong words for the site’s continued existence regardless.
“All of these types of groups need to be completely eradicated,” Greene said to NewsMax. “They should not be able to abuse police resources like that.”
