MTG Duped by Fake Anti-LGBTQ Demonstration
Marjorie Taylor Greene has a notorious reputation for a lot of things, but not her ability to sus out clearly bogus internet hoaxes. The Georgia congresswoman on Monday shared a video purporting to show a mother walking into her son’s classroom, tearing down a Pride flag, and arguing with the teacher. Greene was apparently unaware that the video was staged.
“GOD BLESS THIS MAMA!!!!!” Greene wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “I stand with her!!! 💪Teachers are paid by taxpayers – the PARENTS!!! Get the LGBTQ propaganda out of the schools!”
The video Greene shared depicted a woman walking into a classroom of students and tearing a Pride flag off the wall before throwing it in the trash. The woman, who is presented as the mother of one of the students in the room, then berates the teacher for wasting her tax dollars on LGBTQ representation and teaching her son things she’s trying to “keep them away from.”
None of this actually happened, though. The clip was a small part of a six-minute “comedy” sketch posted Saturday on Facebook by a content creator known as “Jibrizy.” In the last 20 seconds of the full video, Jibrizy and the cast of the sketch appear in front of the camera and disclose that the video is fake. “Hey guys, this was all a skit,” Jibrizy says, asking the audience for their opinion on the situation. “Comment down below, we can’t wait to read your comments.”
Staged rage-bait videos are a staple of Jibrizy’s content. The classroom depicted in the Pride-flag video is a staple set for many of his posts. In another recent video, captioned “Karen tries to give a man a flyer and gets rejected,” Jibrizy spars with a young woman offering him an otherwise blank piece of paper with the “Black Lives Matter” logo printed on it. Other sketches on his TikTok implement a “fake podcast” format, with Jibrizy and fellow content creators rambling off hot takes as women clad in barely-there lingerie mill around in the background. Jibrizy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
The edited version of Jibrizy’s Pride flag video has been widely shared by a slew of prominent conservative commentators. “Parents have HAD it with the work agenda-pushing in class,” tweeted commentator Megyn Kelly, who after realizing the incident was staged added that her “family dealt with this kind of nonsense for YEARS in NYC. Worse, actually. It was all too real.” Other right wing influencers, including Oli London, the Hodge Twins, and Covid truther Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis, also shared the edited video and praised the “mother” for her actions
Greene took a similar approach to Kelly after realizing she’d fallen for a hoax. “If this is a fake or a skit, it’s a very good representation of exactly how people feel,” she wrote.