You don’t need a vast rightwing conspiracy… all it takes is a few billionaires.
That conservative push to control… the government — the courts — the cops — and of course the schools.
This is not grassroots concerns from parents… this is part of a deliberately orchestrated and long term effort to restructure society in their own image. Project RedMap for redistricting, The Federalist Society for judges, and of course multiple conservative “family” organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council) for school boards.
- “The Heritage Foundation... They're encouraging people to report examples of critical race theory. And they and other organizations put out information, like if you see these words, that's critical race theory sneaking into school. And they're words like diversity, and equity and inclusion.” — Peter Montgomery, Right Wing Watch.
The scariest thing is that words like: diversity, equity and inclusion… really DO stoke the emotional anger of conservatives. When elected these “parents” will be deciding what your kids will be taught.
It’s not about education, it’s about exerting authority.
Why school boards are a nexus of America's culture wars (WBUR-On Point Oct14)
“Right-wing groups have often returned to public schools as a culture war battleground," says Peter Montgomery senior fellow at Right Wing Watch. "But it is also clearly an attempt to rile up and mobilize."
“From people like Heritage Foundation, and the Leadership Institute to newer organizations like Turning Point USA, which is a right-wing youth organizing group. Part of the Koch Brothers network like FreedomWorks, religious-right groups like the Family Research Council.”
“They have all jumped on the bandwagon because they see it as an issue that they can exploit to try to make political gains this year, and in 2022 and 2024.”
The Family Research Council is raising money to, for what it says, is to train candidates to take over school boards. And they say that in June, they had a boot camp that trained 1,200 parents to do that.
About 20 minutes in they’re discussing Heritage “Action” (the social media arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation) — and they have a Heritage spokesperson Noah Weinrich explaining (without irony) how they had
- “over 10,000 ‘grassroots organizers’ across the country with training programs for people to win seats on school boards.”
He also proudly asserted that their goal was to prevent Critical Race Theory from being taught because “it promotes racism… it’s racist” and that “parents were fighting against it and teachers were fighting against it.” Apparently the only people who want it are “unions” [gasp]
- “the ‘Teachers Union’ — really, the National Teachers Union, the National Education Association are advocating for CRT by name… they actually want to teach their teachers!”
Seriously, he spat it out as though “Teachers Union” were the mafia or a drug cartel and CRT was crack cocaine (although Heritage would probably be okay with those as “enterprising”) — it was surreal. (apparently corporations are people… but unions are not?)
Peter Montgomery from Right Wing Watch noted:
"What we're seeing is really harmful to communities.
When I heard you playing that tape of some of the anger coming out at meetings, I thought about some of the Tea Party meetings that we heard where people were fueled to anger with lies about what the Affordable Care Act would do, and how it was going to destroy Medicare. And so all this anger was created really around lies. But it worked for the right, if your only value is winning the next election.
Meghna Chakrabarti (the host) pointed out how successful the right-wing has been at taking over school boards and asked the obvious question,
- “why can’t the left do the same?”
This is a critical asymmetry — other groups can’t “just do the same thing” if we actually care about truth and shared trust as values.
The conservatives on the right take pride in being “consequentialists” — any means-to-an-end (to be in control.) That narrow-mindedness (which they value as commitment to faith) does not see the possible consequences — only what they want to believe. You can see that same conservative behavior repeated over and over. (Mainly because they won’t see the problem in their own mis-judgement — it’s someone else’s fault it did not work)
This is a serious disconnect between “the left” that want a cohesive society… and the right that want a coercive society.
"It helped people turn out to the vote and win. And I think some of that is what we're seeing here. You can often mobilize people if you make them fearful and angry. And you say that their children are being threatened by teachers in public schools who have evil intent. Some of the groups that are involved in this anti-CRT campaign have long records of trying to sow distrust in public education, and that plays into this as well."
The people at the top simply see it as a means to power and the people in the base want emotional vindication (if not vindictive) for all the problems that are someone else’s fault — and they will trust someone who tells them who to blame. Factual does not matter, belief matters.
Sadly, while I was walking through the neighborhood, I saw too many yards with multiple signs for candidates… “school board” “borough council” and... “stop the steal.” You can guess what they support.
This is not isolated, Texas has already passed a law to assert control over the schools. Note that the “parental complaints” are coming right out of the Heritage Action playbook discussed above.
Why not teach bothsides of the Holocaust?
Southlake school leader tells teachers to balance Holocaust books with 'opposing' views (NBCnews Oct14)
Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom.
“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
That Texas Law HB 3979 was just passed as the “anti Critical Race Theory Bill” (Texas Tribune Jun16 2021)
The On Point story has a good discussion of how this whole school board insurrection had been planned by conservative groups and is now unfolding across the country.
The right is exceptionally narrow-minded, but that also makes them very good at grinding away toward a goal…. by whatever means, day after day, judge by judge, school by school and regardless of the collateral damage (“that’s their fault for not doing what we told them to”)
Don’t ignore your local elections, those are the springboards to control.
(Hat tip to DK Charles Jay for edit suggestions)