Moms for Liberty



"He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the Future" Moms for Liberty (also affectionately known as "Klanned Karenhood") is an American far-right paleoconservative extremist group whose concept of "liberty" is doublespeak for homophobic, transphobic, and racial hatred; book-banning; and stripping any mention of racial diversity, sexual orientation, and gender identity from school libraries and curricula, under the bullshit pretense that such topics are "anti-American". They have forged ties with right-wing extremist groups including the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, sovereign citizen groups, QAnon blowhards, and Christian nationalists.

As of June 2023, the group claims 120,000 active members across 44 states, though some experts are skeptical about this claim. Their mission statement claims that they are "dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government". True to their doublespeak, the book-ban happy group claims that they are "constitutional" "patriots" who are fighting "anti-government overreach".

Astroturf origins
The groups was initially founded by Florida school board members Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler in 2021. Originally, under the guise of "parental rights", the group was focused on being against school mandates concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, such as face mask mandates. However, as the pandemic faded, the focus shifted to right-wing cancel culture, targeting school library books and curriculum that included LGBTQ rights and topics addressing race and discrimination. Favorite topics of Moms for Liberty tend to parallel the favored topics and memes seen on right-wing populist outlets such as Fox News, such as denouncing critical race theory and promoting LGBTQ conspiracy theories.

Though Moms for Liberty touts themselves as a nonpartisan grassroots effort of "passionate parents" who call themselves "joyful warriors", in reality they are heavily tied to long-running reactionary Republican political wings that have a long history of being critical of both public education and diversity, and can be seen as an astroturf organization of such. To underscore this point, their first national conference included Donald Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who during the conference flat out stated that she personally thought that the should not exist. Such has been a decades-long goal for Republican politicians. Moms for Liberty joyfully endorsed this quote on their website, and DeVos's exclamation elicited one of the loudest and longest ovations of the whole conference.

Moms for Liberty is, in particular, strongly linked with Ron DeSantis, who notably involved the group in his feud with "woke" Disney. Moms For Liberty summits are hot-spots for Republican politicians — guests at their 2023 summit included 2024 Republican primary contestants Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley. (One Democrat reactionary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was also scheduled to speak, but later backed out). Other attendees at the 2023 conference included the Dominionist Tim Barton (son of David Barton) and conservative talk show host Dennis Prager. One founding member (Ziegler), not coincidentally, happened to be married to the chairman of the Florida Republican party. Summit sponsors include long-running conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the two organizations tied to the Council for National Policy. Since at least 2022, Ziegler has also been involved in leadership roles with the Leadership Institute. While Moms for Liberty is the most notable extremist Republican astroturf organization attempting to whitewash and censor educational curriculum, there are multiple other groups, with names like "Parents Defending Education" and "Education First Alliance", that share similar goals, paradigms, and funding sources.

Contrary to their grassroots facade, in many cases when Moms for Liberty members show up at school board meetings, they aren't even parents of students in the district in question.

Book banning
The primary activity of Moms for Liberty is, with the help of friendly Republican politicians such as DeSantis, challenging books in libraries (particularly libraries in public school) that they consider "inappropriate" and "pornographic". Although Moms for Liberty insists that they are not banning books and are merely "curating" age-inappropriate material from libraries, according to the most of the book bans target material that merely is inclusive, especially if the books contain LGBTQ and/or Black themes.

The Washington Post analyzed book challenges from 2021 to 2022. While "sexual" content was the purported reason for the vast majority of the challenges, 43 percent of the challenges targeted titles with LGBTQ themes, while 36 percent targeted titles featuring characters of color or characters dealing with issues of race and racism. In 37 percent of objections against LGBTQ titles, challengers simply objected to the the fact that the book contained LGBTQ characters or stories. Most challenges resulted from "serial filers" who filed 10 or more complaints, and were linked to Moms for Liberty or similar astroturf groups. Challenges were, naturally, more frequent in states like Florida and Texas which had created laws to make it easier to "prevent the presence of pornography and other obscene content" (which of course is a dogwhistle; in practice, these laws have been about challenging books about the minority experience).

In addition to its censorship activities, Moms for Liberty has partnered with right-wing entities (such as a foundation called the American Cornerstone Institute, run by Ben Carson) to introduce conservative, Fox News-promoted propaganda into public libraries across the country.

An example of the kind of book that really irks Moms for Liberty is the gender dysphoria-exploring book It was the most frequently challenged book in 2021; of the top 10 challenged books that year, 5 dealt with LGBTQ themes (with most of the remainder having themes exploring racism and/or race). Books aside, Moms for Liberty also targets other media with LGBTQ themes as well. In May 2023, a Florida teacher was placed under investigation for showing a Disney movie, at the request of some school board members associated with Moms for Liberty, simply because the movie had a homosexual character in it.

Books dealing with racial issues fare no better. In Tennessee, two books that were simply about civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and were challenged for supposedly falling afoul of laws restricting the teaching of critical race theory. In another example, the spoken word poem  by which was famously read at Joe Biden's inauguration, was targeted by a Florida resident named Daily Salinas in March 2023 for purported critical race theory and "indirect hate messages". Salinas has ties not only to Moms for Liberty but also had attended Proud Boys events. Salinas, who had not fully read any of the material she was attempting to ban, also posted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to her Facebook page, leading to accusations of antisemitism.

Several top-tier American authors that contain mature material in their work, such as and  were also freshly challenged by Moms for Liberty members. Due to the mature themes, these novelists have been longtime targets of censorship. Morrison has also long irked the censors for her unflinching looks at some of the dark corners of American history, such as slavery and racism.

Similarly, some newer novels that explore darker subject matters with similar frankness, such as the part-graphic novel were also targeted for censorship by Moms for Liberty. Not coincidentally, very similarly to Morrison, this novel dealt with racial issues, but from a Native American perspective.

Occasionally, the book ban targets ventured into the realm of silliness. Romance novels from were targeted by Moms for Liberty for having mild and vague (but icky to fundies) sex scenes. Similarly, a graphic novel adaption of was targeted for a ban due to a parent complaining about one illustration with nude statues. The same group in Tennessee that objected to books on Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges also objected to a long, bizarre laundry list of other material that offended them. This list included teaching about Galileo Galilei (due to not having enough charitable descriptions of the Catholic Church), teaching about the Johnny Appleseed tall tale (for being too "sad and dark"), using books with Spanish language or words (for being potentially "confusing"), and showing articles concerning past crackdowns on civil rights demonstrators (for having a "negative view of firemen and police"). Most bizarrely, the Tennessee group objected to a book with a watercolor illustration of two seahorses holding tails, nonsensically claiming that this depicted "mating seahorses with pictures of (sexual) postions [sic] and discussion of the male carrying the eggs."

Ironically, by the standards of Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice ("no pornographic material, no rape, no incest, no pornography"), one book adored by Christian nationalists has such "age inappropriate" content in spades: the Bible. Opponents of Moms for Liberty and Republican book-banning laws have therefore often trolled school officials with challenges to the Bible and Bible related books in order to expose the hypocrisy. In one case in Utah, one of these troll challenges actually succeeded in temporarily removing the Bible from elementary and middle school shelves.

School board activities
One big focus for Moms for Liberty activists is running candidates that are aligned with their vision for school boards. If Moms for Liberty determines that a particular school board is not responsive to their demands, Moms for Liberty mobilizes its membership to put forth a slate of far-right activists in the next election, in the hopes of taking the board over. Once installed on a board, the activists are then in a strong position to do things like ban any book with LGBT themes and racial inclusiveness. In addition to getting candidates elected to school boards, Moms for Liberty also seeks to enact their goals in legislation and diminish the influence of teacher unions.

Far from being a grassroots operation, this effort is tightly coordinated. At the 2022 Moms for Liberty national conference in Tampa, Florida, for instance, members were trained in strategy sessions on how to get media attention, vet candidates, dissect school policies, and run for office. The 2023 conference included presentations with detailed instructions on destabilizing and bombarding school districts once in power, presented by businessmen who not coincidentally happened to run consulting firms that could implement these actions for you.

Contrary to their purported "joyful warriors" stance, Moms for Liberty is known turning school board meetings into angry shouting matches and for harassing and stalking school board members, teachers, students, and parents… to the point where some fear for their safety, or their lives. Moms for Liberty members have been arrested and convicted of harassment (to the point where restraining orders were needed in one case), and have acted so disorderly in some school board meetings, police presence was required. Moms for Liberty members have been known to engage in online harassment campaigns against those who oppose their agenda.

Occasionally, the harassment led to violent threats. In June 2022, a Moms for Liberty member in Lonoke County, Arkansas named Melissa Bosch was caught on tape musing about gunning down a librarian, resulting in a ban from all public schools in the school district. A school board member in Charleston County named Ed Kelley was censured and removed from leadership roles after a parent alleged that Kelly talked about a transgender teacher at a Moms for Liberty meeting who had discussed her identity in the classroom. During this meeting, Kelley allegedly claimed that he would have shown up to the teacher's house with a gun if the teacher "talked in front of his kid like that".

In New Hampshire, Moms for Liberty offered a $500 bounty to anyone who "catches" a public school teacher violating a recently created New Hampshire law that limited certain kinds of teachings about racism and sexism.

General bigotry
"Not every human is deserving of my child's empathy"

Moms for Liberty's bigoted activities go beyond merely banning books. For instance, unsurprisingly, they are fervently against schools promoting In September 2021, a Nashville chapter of Moms for Liberty hysterically criticized a LGBTQ float at the school's homecoming parade, transforming a small kiss between two women on the float into hyperbole where schools were now "on a slippery slope in the sexualization of children". In June 2023, an Orlando, Florida Moms for Liberty member got upset that a mere two pages in a school yearbook were devoted to a spread featuring the LGTBQ+ community, a feature that had been running in that yearbook for quite some time, in a similar manner to how the high school covered other student interests like Dungeons and Dragons and  At the 2023 Moms for Liberty conference, one workshop featured an anti-transgender activist who showed conspiracy videos that had circulated on Libs of TikTok on the  that falsely claimed that the hospital was performing gender surgery on children.

Moms for Liberty is against school frameworks like (SEL) and  In the later case, a speaker at the 2022 Moms for Liberty national conference in Tampa bizarrely blamed a mass shooting at Parkland, Florida on restorative justice practices in the school district.

For the former, founder Tiffany Justice believes that social-emotional learning promotes New Age thinking and replaces "the child's values and morals in the home with an idea of spirituality". At the same Tampa conference in 2022, James Lindsay, best known for being a key disinformation promoter in the grievance studies hoax, accused SEL of being a "thought reform program" akin to those in Mao Zedong's China during the Cultural Revolution, and linked teaching children about gender fluidity to World Economic Forum conspiracy theories. Some Moms for Liberty chapters have subsequently sued school districts that have implemented this framework, as the values of "empathy, service and connection" these programs emphasize did not, according to one parent, "reflect our values, morals and beliefs" in their religion.

Unsurprisingly, Moms for Liberty members have been known to promote outlandish conspiracy theories in a manner not unlike prior prominent umbrella conspiracy theories attractive to the reactionary right, such as QAnon and Pizzagate. One member, for instance, told CNN that she believed that teacher unions and Joe Biden were conspiring on a high-level coordinated effort to make more children trans and gay, in order to break down the family union, conservative values, and constitutional rights. At the 2023 Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia, one presenter of a breakout session believed that social-emotional learning was exploiting children for the benefit of "Marxists or globalists" who were out to "replace parents"; conspiracy theories about microchips and Bill Gates were also sprinkled within her presentation. An attendee at this same conference repeated a widely circulated conspiracy theory about furries and "litter boxes" at school to a Daily Beast reporter.

Book ban backlash
"We treat Moms for Liberty like the KKK. If you knew that a KKK meeting was happening in a church down the street from your house, everyone would be alarmed." Unsurprisingly, there has been a backlash to the censorship attempts of Moms for Liberty. Many people opposed to bans, for instance, have reacted to them by trying to invoke the Streisand effect: placing pop-up banned book libraries outside of schools, giving away banned books, stuffing with banned books, and even driving around a bookmobile dedicated to books that have been targeted by Moms for Liberty and others. Even commercial book sellers, in response to the censorship threats, have given banned books away. Many public libraries also created specific collections devoted to books that have been challenged; some even put these collections online. In addition, several counter-organizations were formed to resist both the censorship efforts of Moms for Liberty and their takeover of school boards.

As Moms for Liberty is strongly linked to Republican politics, some publishers are fighting back by suing governors and other politicians and administrators friendly to censors. In May 2023, the publisher (along with the freedom of speech advocacy group  and many others) filed a lawsuit against a Florida school board  arguing that the school district violated the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause for restricting books seemingly due to their "woke" minority content. The lawsuit singled out Moms for Liberty, along with the individual that led the charge on removing titles in this district, Vicki Baggett. Not coincidentally, Baggett is a member of the neo-Confederate group

Moms for Liberty conferences have been protested by several groups, especially LGBTQ advocacy groups. Their 2023 conference in Philadelphia, for instance, was protested by the Philadelphia chapter of ACT UP among others.

In May 2023, Illinois became the first state to ban book banning. HB 2789, passed on party lines, required libraries to adopt the American Library Association's "Bill of Rights" (or a similar alternative), which states that libraries should not exclude books "because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation" and should not remove books "because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval." Non-compliant libraries in the state could risk the loss of significant funding. The bill was inspired by a failed attempt to ban Gender Queer in an Illinois school district, where it was observed that bigoted, designated-terrorist groups like the Proud Boys were among those that attended the school board meetings where the ban was discussed. Similar state legislation was also proposed in New Jersey in May 2023. In California, governor warned school superintendents and administrators that any book ban may be unconstitutional, and thus subject to review by the California Attorney General's Office.

Historical roots
Moms for Liberty can be seen as an extension of far-right movements that date all the way back to the 1950s, such as the John Birch Society, who also advocated book bans under the guise of what they saw as "pornography" in school curricula. (Of course, the other of the Birchers, "commies", has been conveniently replaced by the all-purpose reactionary snarl word "woke".) In other words, it is not surprising that one Moms for Liberty website referenced the books of W. Cleon Skousen, and that the then-current editor of the Birch-connected periodical The New American, Alex Newman, made a presentation in a Florida Moms for Liberty meeting in 2021.

Commentators have also noted parallels between Moms for Liberty and historical groups that advocated Lost Cause of the South whitewashing, such as Daughters of the Confederacy. Some commentators, likewise, see Moms for Liberty as an explicitly white supremacist organization, as well as an entity that echoes other groups of women in the 1950s that were explicitly segregationist.