Raskin: Greene ‘recycling direct Russian propaganda’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Wednesday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is “recycling” Russian propaganda in falsely saying Ukraine is a Nazi state.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out,” Raskin noted concerns — even from high-ranking GOP lawmakers like House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) — about the influence of Russian propaganda in the Republican Party.

“Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, has been recycling direct Russian propaganda. She says that our tax dollars are going to support Ukrainian Nazis, and that is a Putin line, that he’s de-Nazifying Ukraine and that it’s a Nazi state,” Raskin said. “Of course, it is a liberal democracy committed to equal rights for everybody and human rights, and it has the only Jewish president in the world outside of Israel.”

“So, calling it a Nazi state is such an affront and an insult to the Ukrainian people, and it’s just a lie,” Raskin continued. “And yet we’re hearing a lot of that coming from various Republican members and different sources, to the point where you’re getting now Republican chairmen, finally, of committees like the Foreign Affairs Committee saying that Russian propaganda has invaded the ranks of the Republican Party.”

Greene, in a Wednesday hearing held by the House Oversight Committee, dedicated her questioning to making false claims that Nazism was rampant in Ukraine — an argument frequently touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Rep, Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) rebuked Greene for her remarks, invoking his own family’s experience in the Holocaust.

“Stop bringing up Nazis and Hitler. The only people who know about Nazis and Hitler are the 10 million people and their families who lost their loved ones — generations of people who were wiped out,” Moskowitz said. “It is enough of this disgusting behavior, using Nazis as propaganda. You want to talk about Nazis? Get yourself over to the Holocaust Museum. You go see what Nazis did.”

Greene’s line of questioning was directed at the Democrats’ witness, historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on the Holocaust, fascism, the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

Snyder also subsequently addressed Greene’s false claims.

“If the chamber is interested in the degree of far-right participation in Ukrainian politics, you can be assured that no far-right party has ever crossed 3 percent … in a Ukrainian election,” he said. “So, of course, there are bad people in every country, but by any comparative standard, it is a very small phenomenon.”

“In Russia, on the other hand, the army includes openly Nazi formations … the government itself is fascist in character, and it is carrying out a war, which includes deportation of children by the tens of thousands, the open intention of destroying a state, as well as mass torture,” Snyder said. “So if we’re looking for fascism, and if there is anyone who is sincerely concerned about halting fascism or racism, you would wish to halt Russia.”