A protest against the fascist group Moms for Liberty in Pennridge, PA. Image: Joe Piette, Openverse
A protest against the fascist group Moms for Liberty in Pennridge, PA. Image: Joe Piette, Openverse
Candidates aligned with “Moms for Liberty,” a group very much opposed to liberty in our schools, were run out of school boards across the country.
Republished with permission from OtherWords, by Jim Hightower
In one of their satirical songs, the Austin Lounge Lizards lampooned the ridiculous bigotry of some Christian fundamentalists. “Jesus loves me,” they sang, “but he can’t stand you.”
That could be the bellicose anthem of a quasi-religious far-right front group with a very sweet-sounding name: “Moms for Liberty.” Far from sweet, however, these moms are funded by rich donors to be ground troops in the culture wars—essentially an anti-liberty campaign against people, books, teachers, and ideas they don’t like.
In the last few years, squads of these moms have turned into political hate groups, persecuting small town school board members by baselessly accusing them of conspiring to indoctrinate children with pornography, hatred of white people, and “liberal” thinking.
Having stirred up dust devils of division and fear, the “momsters” ran candidates in local board elections this fall, hoping to take over public schools. But they miscalculated on an essential political reality: Most Americans are not right-wingers, bigots, or Christian Nationalists.
The group had counted on surprising voters in what are usually low visibility and low-turnout races, but the extremists were the ones surprised by an aggressive voter pushback against their scheme. Indeed, various surveys show that the far-right moms group lost about 80 percent of its races across the country, including in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
In the very conservative school district of Pennridge, Pennsylvania, where a far-right majority of the board was attempting to impose a national model of a politically driven educational system, all five far-right incumbents running for re-election were swept out.
To help push back against politicizers of your school district, check out the Campaign for Our Shared Future: CampaignSharedFuture.org.
OtherWords is a free editorial service published by the Institute for Policy Studies. Each week, we publish a package of op-eds and columns, plus an original cartoon, and distribute them to readers, editors, and publishers through our website and newsletter. Each year, hundreds of newspapers and websites reaching millions of readers use this work.
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