US elections: Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene, America’s gun-toting conspiracy theory candidate?

The QAnon supporter has espoused spurious claims that the FBI describes as dangerous

Marjorie Taylor Greene appears in a campaign video in which she warns the anti-fascist Antifa to ‘stay the hell out of Georgia’. Taylor Greene campaign

A businesswoman who brandished an AR-15 assault rifle and peddled unfounded conspiracy theories about Muslims and Jews in campaign videos was elected to Congress on Tuesday.

Marjorie Taylor Greene won a vacant seat for the Republicans in a conservative-supporting district in Georgia in an unsurprising result.

Ms Taylor Greene, 46, who President Donald Trump called a future Republican star, was described as the only supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory to be elected to the House of Representatives.

The QAnon movement espouses claims that paedophiles and child traffickers in government, business and the media are plotting to overthrow the Trump administration.

Despite its baffling nature, the central premise, along with hundreds of other disparate theories, is propagated by hundreds of thousands of social media users.

Ms Taylor Greene herself has alleged an “Islamic invasion” of government offices and claimed the billionaire American-Hungarian financier George Soros, a Jew and Holocaust survivor, is a Nazi.

She has reiterated the central QAnon theory that a “global cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophiles” threatens America’s current government and society.

In June, in a campaign video, she locked and loaded an assault rifle and warned members of the anti-fascist Antifa movement, who were protesting against the police shootings of black suspects, to “stay the hell out of north-west Georgia”.

In September, she again shared an image on Facebook of herself holding a rifle alongside a collage of pictures of Democrat congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

The stunt was denounced by Democrat House speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “dangerous threat of violence”.

Ms Taylor Greene has recently backtracked from her embrace of QAnon but remains a highly divisive figure.

Her campaign was given support by groups related to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a number of major Republican donors.

US election night – in pictures