Intelligence Dispatch: Anti-CRT & Anti-LGBTQ School Board Boot Camp
Intelligence Dispatch: Anti-CRT & Anti-LGBTQ School Board Boot Camp
The Family Research Council sponsored a boot camp for conservative Christian school board candidates that opposed racial diversity and LGBTQ inclusion: “I guarantee it’s in your school.”
This week on Radical Reports: The Family Research Council’s campaign arm, FRCAction, sponsored a boot camp for conservative Christian school board candidates opposed to racial diversity efforts and LGBTQ inclusive policies. Jonathan Butcher of the Heritage Foundation said that you can identify advocates of critical race theory by the language they use: “They’ll talk a lot about power or oppression.” Mary Hasson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said that critical race theory and LGBTQ indoctrination are everywhere: “I guarantee it’s in your school.”
What to expect from Radical Reports: Weekly Intelligence Dispatches that provide a briefing on the activities of the Radical Right, Field Notes that provide research profiles of key organizations within the Radical Right, Legislation Watch that provides a breakdown of key legislative priorities of the Radical Right, and the Research Desk that highlights research and analysis from academia of the Radical Right.
Radical Right in the Spotlight
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the lawmakers appointed to the U.S. House select committee that will investigate the January 6th insurrection: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), as chairman. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA)
Must Reads
A new report finds that “virtual assets like bitcoin have been used by extremists who have been gradually shut out of traditional payment platforms, in the same way extreme right wing (ERW) groups have been blocked from social media,” according to reporting by Ian Allison. [Coindesk]
Heath Druzin reports how a right-wing militia group has quietly sought to takeover the community of Whidbey Island, Washington, using a strategy “straight out of the modern, far-right playbook.” [Daily Beast]
Supporters of former President Donald Trump remain steadfastly loyal, and believe that the 2020 election was stolen and will eventually be overturned. As Kadia Goba reports that “just one person out of nearly two dozen people” interviewed at Trump’s rally in Wellington, Ohio, on June 26 “said they understood Biden won the election.” [BuzzFeed News]
Intelligence Dispatches
The Family Research Council’s campaign arm, FRCAction, sponsored a School Board Boot Camp to “train a new generation of school board officers to save America’s schools.” The Family Research Council (FRC), a fundamentalist Christian advocacy organization, has been among the right-wing groups promoting outrage overcritical race theory. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at FRC, spoke with Tony Perkins, president of FRC, about the book camp. The webinar featured several speakers including current and former school board members, conservative activists, and political strategists.
David Tryon, a former school board member and anti-abortion activist from Ohio, said that for anyone considering a candidacy for school board should, “when you run, at least have an agenda.” Tyron also made a book recommendation for understanding the strategies of the Left: “If you haven’t read it, read the book ‘Rules for Radicals.’”
Elizabeth Schultz, senior fellow for Parents Defending Education, claimed that she saw “highly sexualized content making its way into our children’s’ education.” Schultz also criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for “not being about diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and that school boards will use “alternative phrases to mean things that they don’t really mean.”
Mary Hasson, the Kate O’Beirne fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), told those attending the webinar that anyone who thinks that CRT or LGBTQ indoctrination is not happening at their local school is mistaken, “I guarantee it’s in your school, the spigot has been turned on.” Hasson said that transgender inclusive policies will be framed as “welcoming and affirming and providing equal access,” but claims that transgender inclusive policies actually allow for the “desire of male students who want access to female bathrooms and locker rooms.” Hasson also told those considering a campaign for school board that “language matters,” and that they should “avoid using the terms used by the activists.” Hasson: “Don’t say gender identity, say ‘gender self perception’.”
Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman fellow in education at The Heritage Foundation, told the webinar audience that you can identify advocates of CRT by the language they use: “they’ll talk a lot about power or oppression.” Butcher went on to claim that CRT was developed in the 1920s by German Marxists, and specifically cited the Frankfurt School and the “mostly Jewish academics” there as the originators of CRT. Butcher drew a direct line from the German critical philosophers of the 1920s to the critical legal theorists of the 1970s, and said that “CRT theorists say that they are suspicious of the Enlightenment, suspicious of the rule of law, and suspicious of the Constitution.” Butcher also took aim at Howard Zinn—who he criticized for being a communist who wrote “revisionists history,” and claimed the Zinn’s A People's History of the United States is “meant to be told as if America tried to crush people, and so it’s told from the people on the bottom.”
Some of the most revealing comments came from those attending the webinar:
The Delaware Family Policy Council (DFPC), a state affiliate of the fundamentalist Christian lobbying network Family Policy Alliance (FPA), is behind a campaign that seeks to prevent the opening of a Planned Parenthood in Seaford, Maryland. The DFPC is utilizing a strategic playbook — which includes targeting the property developer and the medical waste disposal contractor — that has regularly been employed by anti-abortion groups attempting to prevent the opening of reproductive healthcare clinics. The DFPC is aware that “there needs to be a miraculous legal pathway forward” in order for the campaign to successfully prevent the opening of the Planned Parenthood, and that any action take by local government can not appear to be directly targeting Planned Parenthood: “The only way the City of Seaford can stop this is through an ordinance, however if the ordinance is targeted at PP or abortion directly, it will not hold up legally.” [DFPC Prayer List Document]
Events on the Right
CPAC, the conservative political conference sponsored by the American Conservative Union, is hosting an event in Dallas, Texas on July 9-11. (Price Tag: $275 - $6,750)
Featured Speakers Include: Former President Donald Trump, former White House advisor Stephen Miller, Republican North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and 21 of the 147 Congressional Republicans that voted against the certification of the 2020 election results after the January 6th insurrection.
Wallbuilders, a Christian Nationalist media organization that promotes pseudohistory and pseudoscience in education, is hosting a Teachers Conference that is “designed to equip teachers from both public and private schools with principles and techniques that were used in early American education and thereafter for decades.” The conference will be hosted on July 5-7 and July 8-10 in Aledo, Texas.
Liberty for All: "Lin Wood, Pastor Greg Locke from Global Vision, Brad Barton from the Lil Talk Show, Pastor Shane Vaughn, AKA Professor Toto, will be motivating inspiring and educating Patriots to encourage involvement in government from the school house to the White House." The event is taking place in Spartanburg, South Carolina on July 10. (Price Tag: $155)
Live Action, an anti-abortion group known for publishing surreptitiously recorded videos of the staff and physicians at clinics that provide abortion, is hosting an Activist Training, that will provide “world-class training from leading pro-life speakers and put your new skills to practice with hands on activism opportunities,” on July 11t-14th in San Francisco, California. (Price Tag: $399)
The FAMiLY Leader, a fundamentalists Christian policy advocacy organization, is hosting The Family Leadership Summit on July 16 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Price Tag: $75)
Drew Zahn, director of communications for the FAMiLY Leader: “Attendees at The Family Leadership Summit tell us every year the thing that really makes it special to them is how inspiring it is, how encouraging it is to gather with people that have a commitment and a heart to see America transformed for the Kingdom of Christ." [Source]
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Coming Up on Radical Reports…
Field Notes: The Christian Right law firm leading the assault on LGBTQ equality.
Mapping the Radical Right: The CPAC Network (Subscribers Only)