New study delves into the mating psychology of involuntarily celibate men

2023/09/1


There has been extensive media coverage on the mating psychology of incels in recent years. However, most of the commentary has been speculative given the lack of empirical research on the topic. The first formal investigation of this subject has revealed that contrary to mainstream narratives, incel-identifying men report lower minimum standards for mate preferences compared to non-incel men, among other interesting findings. This research was published in The Journal of Sex Research.

“The incel topic in general interested me because finding and retaining a mate represent persistent adaptive problems for humans. Modern humans descend from an unbroken evolutionary chain of ancestors who successfully solved these problems. Achieving mating goals is so important to humans that it impacts physical and mental health, financial success, and even functions as a social signal of status,” said William Costello (@CostelloWilliam), a PhD student of Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology in Dr. David Buss’ lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Indicative of how preoccupied humans are with attracting mates is the fact that billion-dollar industries are built around it in the form of dating apps, we write poetry and go to war over it. It seems somewhat paradoxical, therefore, that there is a growing community of men who strongly identify with their perceived inability to solve these adaptive problems – involuntary celibates (incels).”

“We have a deep evolutionary history of involuntarily celibate men. Indeed, genetic evidence reveals that in every generation, most women reproduce whereas only a subset of men reproduce (Betzig, 2012). Modern incels, however, appear unique in galvanizing a shared victimhood identity around their sexless and mateless circumstance.”

“Despite the incel community being focused almost entirely on their perceived difficulties in mating, and the significant media speculation about the potential sexual and mating psychology of incels, incel mating psychology has yet to be formally investigated in the scientific literature. In fact, there is a relative dearth of primary data collected from self-identified incels in general, likely due to incels being a hard-to-reach group who are suspicious of the motives of academic researchers.”

I asked Costello what can be learned by studying this specific population. The researcher said, “The mental health impact of feeling like you cannot access sexual or romantic relationships. We know that there is lots of research showing that relationships improve mental health.”

A total of 409 individuals were included in this research. Participants were recruited through Facebook and Twitter using social media snowball sampling. Costello also advertised the study on the “Incel” podcast. As well, the study was shared with users on the Incel.is forum.

This study focused on single, biological males. Those who identified as heterosexual, biologically female, and non-incel were kept for additional analyses. A total of 151 incel and 149 non-incel single men were included in this research.

Participants completed a “reasons for being single” checklist where they ticked off items they believed contributed to their singlehood. Of these, 9 items were external reasons (e.g., online dating), while 28 were internal reasons (e.g., fearing rejection). Participants also completed the Mate Value Scale which includes four items assessing their opinions of their own general attractiveness as a mate.

In addition, they completed a questionnaire assessing their minimum standards for mates, for which they indicated a minimum score between 1 to 10 a person would have to meet across 15 traits (e.g., humor, intelligence) to be considered as a long-term mate. Participants also responded to these items from the perspective of a woman. The researchers derived a composite score across the 15 traits. Lastly, participants indicated whether they identify as an incel and completed a demographic questionnaire (e.g., education, employment status).

Costello broke down the results of their research.

“Our findings highlight extremely poor mental health, some cognitive distortions, a victimhood mindset known, the disproportionate prevalence of autism spectrum disorder, poor mating intelligence, and dating anxiety among incels.”

“Many people are understandably worried about incel violence. However, my supervisor (Dr. David Buss) and I actually just published a theoretical overview of the scale of incel violence. The evidence suggests they are far more dangerous towards themselves than others. Given that sexless young men are typically very violent and disruptive in society, it’s actually a puzzle why there is not actually MORE incel violence.”

“Our new work also confirms and dispels some stereotypes about incels,” the researcher told PsyPost.

“Unsurprisingly, incels have a low sense of their own mate value. But interestingly, evidence shows that men are most inclined toward misogyny when they doubt their appeal to female partners and that unwanted celibacy (independent of incel identity) predicts misogyny. The misogyny pervading much of the incelosphere likely reflects a low sense of mate value. This means that helping incels improve their own mate value and mating prospects would have the added benefit of reducing harmful instances of misogyny.”

“A stereotype that our work dispels is that incels do not simply have too high standards as many commenters suggest. A common narrative is that incels simply have too high standards. Evolutionarily it would not be a good strategy for low mate value men to concentrate their finite mating effort on competing with high mate value men for high mate value females. Our data show that incels had lower minimum standards for mate preferences across every trait and overall. Incels do not appear to have overly high mate standards compared to non-incel single men.”

“However, incels make fundamental mistakes in their perception of female mate preferences. Incels UNDERESTIMATE the importance of qualities like intelligence, kindness & humor, and OVERESTIMATE physical attractiveness & financial resources. ~Global prevalence of autism spectrum disorder is .62% Yet it’s 18-30% for incels! People with autism have poorer theory of mind i.e., ability to infer the desires of others. Incels’ failures of cross sex mind reading may reflect high levels of autism.”

He noted a caveat, “There may be some social desirability regarding the reported preferences of women in our study. Specifically, around the importance of financial resources. Robust evidence shows that women do indeed place a premium on financial resources in a mate. However, kindness, intelligence, and humor are also extremely important to women.”

He added, “The vast majority of incels reasons for being single were internal (self-blame).”

What are incels’ top reasons for being single? Costello listed, 1) Not good at flirting, 2) Not good looking enough, 3) Socially awkward, and 4) Too shy.

As for questions that still need to be addressed, the researcher said, “I think the important next steps are for scholars to design and test some mental health interventions to help this at-risk group. I am also interested in working with someone to dig deeper into the high rates of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) among incels (~18-30%). We should investigate why there is such an overrepresentation of men with ASD in this community. What is it about incel identity that appeals to men with ASD?”

“It might also be interesting to investigate whether incels are accurate or inaccurate in their assessment of their own mate value. There are reports that incels are seeking invasive cosmetic surgeries to improve their physical attractiveness. It’s important to ascertain if this is based on a cognitive distortion or body dysmorphia.”

This year, Costello was selected as the American Psychological Association Division 51 Society for the Psychological Study of Men & Masculinities student of the year.

The study, “The Mating Psychology of Incels (Involuntary Celibates): Misfortunes, Misperceptions, and Misrepresentations”, was authored by William Costello, Vania Rolon, Andrew G. Thomas, and David P. Schmitt.

© PsyPost

INCEL MALE FANTASY'S ARE  GOR  S&M

Gor

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Gor

Gor is the fictional setting for a series of sword and planet novels written by philosophy professor John Lange, writing as John Norman.

Gor Series vols.1-32 by John Norman

Internet Archive

https://archive.org › 01tarnsmanofgorjohnnorman

Jan 13, 2020 — The famous fantasy/scifi series by John Norman, complete up to volume 32.

John Norman's Gor novels : Free Download, Borrow, and ...

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May 4, 2021 — Topics: Chronicles of Counter-Earth, Counter-Earth Saga, Fantasy, Gor, Gorean Chronicles, Gorean Cycle, Gorean Saga, John Norman, Planetary ...

Is the US banking crisis over?

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Image via Domenico Fornas/Shutterstock.

'Resilient' U.S. economy growth offers 'relief for the market' even though 'coast is far from clear': experts

The Conversation

September 13, 2023

The US banking crisis triggered worries about the global banking system earlier in the year. Three mid-sized US banks, Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate and Signature, fell in quick succession, driving down bank share-prices across the world.

America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, made significant amounts of cash available to the failed banks and created a lending facility for other struggling institutions. This calmed investors and prevented immediate contagion, with only one more US regional bank, First Republic, collapsing a few weeks later.

Yet it’s far from clear whether the crisis is really over. As traders return from their summer holidays to a period commonly associated with upheaval in the markets, how are things likely to play out?

Tight margins and dwindling deposits

Central banks have continued to increase interest rates to counter sustained inflation in recent months. In July, the Fed raised its key interest rate to as much as 5.5%, the highest in 20 years. The rate was near zero as recently as February 2022.

Though the increases have slowed this year, such a sudden change can be very harmful for banks – particularly as part of the sort of U-shaped movement in rates that we have seen since the global financial crisis of 2007-09.

US benchmark interest rate, 2007-23



St Louis Federal Reserve

Raising rates reduces the value of banks’ assets, increases what they have to pay to borrow, limits their profitability and generally increases their vulnerability to adverse events. Especially in the first half of 2023, banks have had to cope with low loan growth and high deposit costs, meaning the amount they have to pay out in relation to customers’ deposits.

This increased cost is partly because lots of customers have been withdrawing their money and putting it into places where they can make more interest, such as money market funds. It forced banks to borrow more from the Fed to ensure they have enough money, and at rates much higher than they used to be.


This was one of the reasons for the banking collapses in the spring, destabilising them at a time when the value of the debt on their balance sheets had also fallen sharply. This saw more customers at other banks withdrawing deposits for fear that their money wasn’t safe either. In sum, US banks saw deposits declining between June 2022 and June 2023 by almost 4%. Together with higher interest rates, this is generally bad news for the banking sector.

You can see the effect on banks’ profitability by looking at overall net interest margins (NIMs). These are a measure of what banks receive in interest income minus what they pay out to depositors and other funders.

US banks’ net interest margins (%)


Based on 641 banks.
S&P Capital IQ

Credit rating downgrades

The ratings agencies have added further pressure. In early August, Fitch downgraded its rating of US government debt to AA+ from AAA. It cited a likely deterioration in the public finances over the next three years and the endless politicking around the debt ceiling, which is the maximum level that the government can borrow.


Sovereign downgrades often reflect problems in the wider economy. This can destabilise banks by making them seem less creditworthy, leading their credit ratings to be downgraded too. That can make it harder for them to borrow money from the markets or potentially even from the Fed. This can then have knock-on effects in reducing banks’ lending capacity, capital buffers for coping with bad debts, overall profitability and share prices.

US banks’ share prices 2023



Bank of America = blue; Citigroup = orange; Goldman Sachs = pale blue; JP Morgan = yellow; Morgan Stanley = indigo; Regional banks = purple.

Trading View

Sure enough, a week after the Fitch announcement, Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of ten US mid-sized banks, citing growing financial risks and strains that could erode their profitability. It also warned that larger banks including Bank of New York Mellon and State Street were at risk of a future downgrade.

The other major ratings agency, S&P Global Ratings, has since followed suit, while Fitch is threatening to do likewise. Our research suggests bank downgrades are associated with making them riskier and more unstable, particularly when accompanied by a sovereign downgrade.

Having said all that, there are positives for US banks. Both interest rates and bank deposits are at least projected to stabilise in the coming months, which should help the sector. Despite the overall decline in banks’ profitability, bigger banks are reporting improved margins from charging higher interest on loans. Some of these banks also expect a boost from things like increased deal-making later in the year. Signs like those could help to bring more stability across the board.

In Europe, banks have seen reduced deposits and net interest margins in recent years, which helps to explain why Credit Suisse needed to be rescued by fellow Swiss bank UBS in March. Yet European deposits and profit margins have been recovering in the most recent couple of quarters. At the same time, the European Banking Authority’s recent stress tests concluded that large EU banks are robust.

UK banks appear to be in a slightly worse condition than EU banks. They remain resilient on their balance sheets, but their deposits have not recovered to quite the same extent as in Europe. They have also been adjusting down their profit forecasts in anticipation of further rate hikes by the Bank of England.

Regulatory intervention

To strengthen the US sector, the regulators are planning to further increase the minimum levels of capital that must be held by large US banks (with assets worth more than US$100 billion (£79 billion)).

These plans to increase banks’ capacity to absorb losses are encouraging, though will take more than four years to fully implement. The Basel II international banking rules were introduced to a similar end in 2004, but were not implemented in time to prevent the global financial crisis.

For the moment, the US banking system remains vulnerable both to shocks within the financial system and more general calamities. It will still be a few months before we can say with confidence that the worst is over.

George Kladakis, Lecturer in Financial Services, Edinburgh Napier University and Alexandros Skouralis, Research Assistant, Bayes Business School, City, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

INTERVIEW

"An acute threat to white privilege": Tim Wise on why MAGA is "losing their s**t right now"

The right-wing also has a backup plan

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

Senior Writer

SALON
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Thousands of Donald Trump supporters gather outside the U.S. Capitol building following a "Stop the Steal" rally on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.

 (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)


August 28 was the 60th anniversary of the1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech about the struggle to create a real multiracial democracy and humane society in the United States. On that same Saturday this year, a 21-year-old white supremacist murdered 3 black people at a Dollar General Store in Jacksonville, Florida. The killer's AR-15 rifle was marked with swastikas. He also wrote a manifesto where he detailed his desire(s) to kill black people and start a "race war." In his manifesto, the white supremacist killer reportedly praised Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, who is black, for being "The rare principled conservative, interprets laws based the Constitution instead of doing f—y activist shit like the last half-century's worth of Supreme Court justices."

That horrible coincidence of dates is a reminder of how very far America is from being a real multiracial democracy as the country continues to struggle against ascendant neofascism and the Age of Trump.

Ultimately, the Confederacy and the Southern slavocracy, and Jim and Jane Crow were never truly banished from America. Instead, they laid dormant and are now being reborn in the form of today's Republican Party and the larger white right. Public opinion polls and other research shows that tens of millions of white Americans are willing to trade democracy for authoritarianism if it means that white people like them did not have to share power with non-whites. The world they and Trump and the Republican fascists and "conservative" movement are trying to (re)create would be a new American Apartheid.

In an attempt to make better sense of these resurgent politics of white backlash and white supremacy, DeSantis's war on "Woke" and "the Critical Race Theory Mind Virus" and the real history of Black America, and how the color line intersects America's ongoing democracy crisis more broadly, I recently spoke with Tim Wise. He is one of the nation's leading anti-racism activists and the author of numerous books, including "Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority" and "Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Trumpism continues. There was a white supremacist mass murder in Jacksonville a few weeks ago – on the same day as the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. King's dream is still very much unfulfilled and extremely imperiled. How is your hope tank doing? How full or empty is it?

I am obviously horrified and concerned that we're going to see more white racist terror attacks and hate crimes. When they figure out they can't win legitimately at the ballot box, they're going to turn to the bullet.

They certainly have a lot of guns, and they have a lot of rage. I don't mean that in a prophetic way; it is pretty obvious.

There are some reasons to be hopeful, even in these dark times.

Ron DeSantis in Florida has overplayed his hand dramatically with the war on "wokeness". That's not catapulting him to the forefront of the Republican primaries.

They thought that attacking wokeness and critical race theory and LGBTQ folks was going to allow them to just, you know, just run the board. Those attacks do work, let's never underestimate the power of bigotry and hatred.

We know it works politically on the right, but it's also creating and generating a certain degree of pushback.

The "Critical Race Theory" bogeyman and "Woke" monster didn't go into that Dollar General store and murder three black people.

It never does. No one commits a mass shooting and then writes a manifesto where they footnote Derrick Bell or Kim Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audrey Lorde or other CRT scholars and thinkers and mainstream liberal antiracists more generally.

It is one thing to have a disagreement about an issue a policy issue, such as immigration or affirmative action or policing.

But if that disagreement is made into a question of existential threat, such as "you're taking our country from us!" which the likes of Tucker Carlson and other right-wing personalities do over and over again, or that "those people", black and brown people, the Other, want to hurt "people like you" then you are creating and us vs. them dichotomy. That encourages violence.

Although most people won't respond to that right-wing narrative in the same way as those racial terrorists have done, some of the public on the right will. There are real connections between hateful rhetoric and political violence.

Thankfully the white right is not as smart as they need to be to get all the things done that they want. The question is, can we stop them before they get smart and really figure out how to play the game?

"The reality is there's something horribly dysfunctional and pathological in white culture right now."

Because I think at this point, they still are just so overzealous about their reactionary beliefs that they end up alienating the large numbers of supporters they need to create a broad coalition. I don't want to keep gambling on that.

Nonetheless, I clearly recognize the threat that is represented by the right-wing and their willingness to burn it all down for the sake of getting and keeping power.

Help me work through this given your decades of experience. There are any number of things I could have written about the recent white supremacist killing of three black people in Florida. I chose not to. Ultimately, what is there left to say about white racial terrorism? How have you navigated the pressure and expectation to always have something to say about "race issues"?

I definitely don't try to say something every time there is that type of hate crime or racial terrorism. What could I say that would really be different from what we know and has already been said so many times already?

What I've learned over the years is that I don't have to always be the first voice. I most certainly don't have to be the loudest voice on these "race stories." We all need to be able to take a little breath here and here and there.

But here is something for folks like you and me to consider. What is so utterly obvious to us doesn't make it any less horrific. This is America after all. We know the history and present of this country and the color line. We are experts on it. But to other people this may be shocking and amazing somehow. Given the efforts by Republicans and Trumpists to whitewash the country's history it is important for people like us to explain those connections of the past to the present and not take it for granted that people know that history and the facts.

How do we make sense of what is obvious to you and me and others who have studied the real history (and present) of this country and translate that for others who are willing to listen and learn?

The media's problem – and this is true of the average white American – is that they don't spend much time seriously thinking about race and politics and larger issues of justice and equality like you and I and other experts do. That isn't meant as a criticism of those people, being ignorant of these things may actually be a bit healthier for them emotionally and physically. We know the cost of doing what we do has been for us.

In terms of fascism and racial authoritarianism like we are seeing with Trumpism and today's Republican Party and conservatives, many Americans really believe that "it can't happen here." That America is so exceptional and unique. They really believe it. That is true on the left and right and center, across the spectrum. Biden believes in American Exceptionalism. Obama certainly believes in it.

If you really believe that America is so exceptional and that fascism can't happen here then you look at Trump or DeSantis and then it is much easier to say, "Oh, they just don't even know what they're doing, they're just so stupid". Or "Look how ridiculous they are!"

Too many people are so desperate to find the good in people and have convinced themselves that America can't produce evil leaders – or followers of an evil movement – that they just deny what they are seeing with fascism right here at home.

Now, of course, if you're black in this country or indigenous you most certainly know about the evil things that America and Americans have done.

"The right-wing also has a backup plan, which is if we can't stop the country from becoming more diverse, then we're going to at least make sure that we control the story they learn."

Baldwin observed that black people have never had the luxury of living with the myths that white people depended upon.

White Americans really believe we could never do those evil things, in spite of the fact that white people as a group have done such evil things before in this country. Why is it so hard for white people to see the truth about America? Well, it's so hard because we want to maintain that image of a shining city on a hill. If that is not true and revealed to be a lie, then we white folks would have to rethink our entire worldview.

There's really nothing about our history that says we're inherently better than countries such as Germany or South Africa with all of the objectively evil things they did. A triumphalist and American Exceptionalism view of history blinds too many people to those uncomfortable realities.

None of what DeSantis and the other Republicans are trying to do with whitewashing American history is new. The Lost Cause ideology was a similar effort to lie about history to make white people look like they were innocent or even more absurdly victims in the civil war and the struggle to end slavery.

But the right-wing also has a backup plan, which is if we can't stop the country from becoming more diverse, then we're going to at least make sure that we control the story they learn. We're going to control the nation's narrative and literally whitewash it. Then we are going to go farther and try to indoctrinate black and brown people in these white supremacist narratives as well. We are seeing that with prominent black and brown Trump MAGA types.

To state the obvious because it needs to be stated, if black or brown folks were committing hate crimes and mass murders and other racially and politically motivated violence as seen in Jacksonville, Buffalo, El Paso, Allen, TX, etc. — and never mind the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump's followers — there would be a "national conversation" about what is "wrong" with "the black family" and in the "black community" and "black culture". There would also be demands that "Black leadership" and/or "Muslim leaders" denounce such crimes and speak out against it and otherwise be held accountable. When a white person commits such acts of terrorism and violence, no such parallel conversation takes place.

It's critical for us to ask that question in exactly the same way and spirit that the right-wing has always asked it about black folks.

It's always about what's wrong with the black family, what's wrong with the black community? What's wrong with black culture?

The reality is there's something horribly dysfunctional and pathological in white culture right now. And I don't even know what "white culture" means, necessarily. It's very hard to define.

The white family and white communities are losing their sh*t right now and have been throughout the Age of Trump and in the years before. That is tied to white privilege.

Privilege has always been a double-edged sword where even if you live in a society where people like you have always been privileged and you are on top of the hierarchy then any level of even perceived threat or challenge in your life causes a type of self-destruction reaction.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

If you're used to getting your butt kicked, and you're used to being on the bottom of the pile, and having to scrape for everything, and for any recognition, even your own humanity, then you learn how to do that as a matter of survival. Because if you don't learn how to struggle, if you don't learn how to deal with setbacks, you don't survive. But if you haven't had to do that the least little discomfort becomes amplified and multiplied to the nth degree.

It is no coincidence then that the reason that we are seeing such disproportionate rates of opioid abuse, suicide, heavy drinking and the so-called deaths of despair among "working class" and "poor whites", but especially white men, is from a perceived threat to their privilege and social status. There are other changes to American society with technology and the extreme economic precarity and insecurity caused by late-stage capitalism and globalization that are impacting Americans across the board, but white people as a group are experiencing this as an acute threat to white privilege and white entitlement.

Instead of interrogating how the expectations of whiteness and white privilege and the cultural tropes and narratives of whiteness and its lies have hurt them, many white people are lashing out at the wrong people.

We need to ask these questions in a compassionate way. What is wrong with White America? What is wrong with the white family? Why are they increasingly dysfunctional? Why are they as a group increasingly unable to deal with the world as it is?
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It's a very humanistic thing to say, how do how do we save these people from themselves so they can stop hurting other people too? If we can't figure out how to help white families, and white people and white communities, a lot of black and brown folk are going to die first.

What should "white leadership" be doing in response to Trumpism and the MAGA movement, neofascism, racial authoritarianism, and the rise in hate crimes and other antisocial behavior committed by white people against nonwhites and other targeted groups in the Age of Trump?

I think it's important for them to not only condemn white supremacy, as Biden has done, obviously.

It is also critically important to point out that if black people, Muslims, Latinos, or any other "minority group" was engaging in this behavior that there would questions asked about family, culture, leadership, etc

There is an obvious element of hypocrisy at work here: white pathology is usually not considered racialized pathology. Many people can't even conceptualize it in those terms because to be "white" is by definition to be "normal" in America.

When white folks commit violence, it's seen as an American problem.

When white folks have a disproportionate opioid crisis, it's an American problem.

When the jobs start to leave the heartland and the rust belt in these white communities, it's an American problem.

Whereas when those things happen in black and brown spaces, it's a very specific racialized problem. And we need politicians who are willing to call that out and to say, "Listen, the reality is that there are some very specific dysfunctions and pathologies that are taking place in the white middle class and above. These problems are not exclusive to Appalachia.

These are not problems and challenges that are just impacting poor white people and the "white working class" who live in trailer parks.

Also, it is not poor white people who are going out and buying assault rifles and building an arsenal who then commit mass shootings at schools or Walmart of Dollar General or wherever. We need to be asking why it is a certain cohort of white people who are engaging in these types of destructive behaviors.

Read more

about the GOP's war against multiracial democracy

Trump plans to become a dictator — denial will not save you
The PragerU goal: "Indoctrinate kids at a young age into a far-right belief system"
"You will get violence": Leading democracy expert says Donald Trump is not running to win election


By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

MORE FROM CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

PragerU's Confederate classroom propaganda: Co-opting history to prop up modern insurrectionists

Abraham Lincoln is portrayed making arguments that sound like modern Proud Boys begging a judge for forgiveness

By AMANDA MARCOTTE

Senior Writer 

 SALON
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 13, 2023 6:00AM

American Flag Hanging in Classroom (Getty Images/Glasshouse Images)


It's ironic that the team at PragerU hates communism so much since they produce dishonest agitprop that rivals anything the Soviet Union's most shameless propagandists produced. The "curriculum" — a word that really overrates what's now being used as educational materials in public schools in Florida and Oklahoma — is so overloaded with right-wing lies that debunking them all is nearly impossible. So many hats off to the team at Media Matters for combing through the extensive video library of the non-accredited right-wing disinformation mill run by Rush Limbaugh wannabe Dennis Prager. The cartoon videos aimed at children, which are also being considered for classrooms in Texas and New Hampshire, promote a wide-ranging amount of B.S. meant to poison children against reality: Videos that lie about climate change, glamorize genocide, fear-monger about urban life, and deny human rights abuses around the globe. There's even a video in which an American bigot compares being criticized online to the plight of Soviet dissidents thrown in a gulag.

It's all terrible, but I want to pull on one thread that especially illustrates why it is that conservatives are so obsessed with rewriting the past. It's not just that their snowflake-delicate egos can't stand the idea that their white ancestors may have done bad things. It's because lies about history are so useful for justifying ongoing lies about our present day. In this case, there's an important connection between the "Lost Cause" mythology embedded in PragerU videos and the attempts to whitewash Donald Trump's attempted coup that led to the insurrection of January 6.

The "Lost Cause" refers to a now multi-century effort of Confederate apologists to erase and distort the history of American slavery and the Civil War. The lies that fuel it have changed over time and place, but the basic false narratives have stayed the same: Slavery wasn't so bad. The Civil War was no big deal. And Southern racism was exaggerated.

PragerU creators are smart enough to know that they can't get away with some of the dumber lies pushed by Confederate apologists — such as claiming that the North started the war — but the basic false premise of the Lost Cause is all over their videos. They portray the Civil War, which killed 1 out of every 40 Americans, like a minor political disagreement between good buddies.

The videos also embrace the "slavery was no biggie" attitude of Confederate apologists. They even show Frederick Douglass, a famous abolitionist, making excuses for slavery by claiming it was "a compromise to achieve something great." In reality, Douglass gave a speech in 1852 in which he declared, "your shouts of liberty and equality" are a "hollow mockery" and "a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

There's a direct line, built on white supremacy, between the Confederates then and Trump's insurrectionist army now.

There are many more appalling examples. Indeed, you get the impression they would teach "Gone with the Wind" as if it were a history textbook, except PragerU isn't super keen on asking kids to read. An especially insidious video portrays President Abraham Lincoln taking a forgive-and-forget approach to the South.

Jan. 6 as white supremacy: New research on the toxic spread of "great replacement" theory

No doubt PragerU would claim it was just a coincidence, but this video came out in February 2023. Trump had announced he was running for president again, even though he really should be ineligible under post-Civil War anti-insurrection constitutional law. The Oath Keepers had been convicted and the Proud Boys were beginning trial on charges of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Capitol riot. The country's debate over how to deal with our current crop of racist insurrectionists had really started heating up. At this precise moment in time, PragerU put out a video misleadingly portraying Lincoln as an anti-accountability figure. The fake "Lincoln" in this video, frankly, sounded quite a bit like the Proud Boys begging for forgiveness at their sentencing hearings.

The favorite slogan of the Lost Cause is, unsurprisingly, a sinister one: "The South will rise again." Trump, with his usual narcissism, has remade the slogan in his own image, declaring, "I am your retribution."

Conservatives are usually the first to say that you shouldn't commit the crime if you can't do the time. But apparently, they make a big exception for efforts to topple American democracy for the cause of white supremacy. It's no coincidence that a number of insurrectionists waved Confederate flags on January 6.

As political scientist Anthony DiMaggio explained at Salon, "white supremacist politics were a significant factor in the Jan. 6 insurrection," just as preserving white supremacy was the reason for the Civil War. There's a direct line, built on white supremacy, between the Confederates then and Trump's insurrectionist army now.

Another important tie between the Confederates and the current MAGA movement is the fear and loathing of Black voters. Trump's entire Big Lie tapped into racist assumptions about who is and isn't a "legitimate" citizen. He repeatedly labeled voters in cities with large Black populations as "frauds," unsubtly tapping into white resentment over having to share power with Black people. Notably, John Wilkes Booth decided to assassinate Lincoln after hearing the wartime president give a speech affirming support for Black suffrage. PragerU put this unsubtle "let's just forget this ever happened" message into the mouth of a man literally murdered by the same forces they're making excuses for.

We're not just debating history when we talk about whether to portray the Confederates as well-meaning people who made a minor mistake versus the reality, which is that they were white supremacists who killed hundreds of thousands of people in a treacherous war to defend a violently racist institution. We're also debating our current reality and how we should understand the current movement of white nationalists who are eager to commit domestic terrorism on behalf of Trump.

The favorite slogan of the Lost Cause is, unsurprisingly, a sinister one: "The South will rise again." Trump, with his usual narcissism, has remade the slogan in his own image, declaring, "I am your retribution" at campaign rallies. t's one of the many reasons why Confederate propaganda of the sort PragerU creates is so dangerous. The argument they ascribe, unfairly, to Lincoln is that absolution will heal divisions. In reality, white supremacists are openly plotting their next assault on multi-racial democracy. They want to be forgiven, even as they vow to keep committing the same crimes. What kind of lesson is that to teach children?

Read more

about Republicans' war on history

The PragerU goal: "Indoctrinate kids at a young age into a far-right belief system"

Why Republicans are trying to rebrand white nationalism right now

Resisting fascism and winning the education wars: How we can meet the challenge

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.

Why religious believers are so desperate for the atheist seal of approval


Greta Christina

September 14, 2023

If you hang around the online atheist world long enough, you'll notice an interesting pattern. Many religious and spiritual believers who engage with atheists seem very intent on getting atheists' approval for their beliefs.

Typically, these believers acknowledge that many religions are profoundly troubling. They share atheists' revulsion against religious hatreds and sectarian wars. They share our repugnance with religious fraud, the charlatans who abuse people's trust to swindle them out of money and sex and more. They share our disgust with willful religious ignorance, the flat denials of overwhelming scientific evidence that contradicts people's beliefs. They can totally see why many atheists are so incredulous, even outraged, about the world of religion.

But they think their religion is an exception. They think their religion is harmless, a kinder, gentler faith. They think their religion is philosophically consistent, supported by reason and evidence -- or at least, not flatly contradicted by it.

And they want atheists to agree.

They really, really want atheists to agree. They want atheists to say, "No, of course, your beliefs aren't like all those others -- those other beliefs are crazy, but yours make sense." Or they want atheists to say, "Wow, I hadn't heard that one before -- how fascinating and well thought-out!" Of course they understand why atheists object to all those other bad religions. They just don't understand why we object to theirs. They get very hurt when we object to theirs. And they will spend a significant amount of time and energy trying to persuade us to stop objecting.

Why?

Why do they care what atheists think?

I've been getting into these debates with religious believers for many years now. I've seen how they start out, and where they end up. I've seen many, many theists desperately try to get the Atheist Seal of Approval for their religion. And I've reached two conclusions about why they're doing it. They think atheists have higher standards than most believers, so our approval will mean more. And they don't want to think their religion has anything in common with those other sucky religions... and getting atheists' approval would let them keep on thinking that.

The Gold Standard

Believers seeking the Atheist Seal of Approval for their beliefs seem to see atheists as the gold standard. They know that most atheists have rejected religion for a reason: they know we take religion seriously, and that we've examined it carefully and thoughtfully before rejecting it. They know that we're more familiar with the tenets and traditions of religion than most believers: that we not only know more about religion in general than most believers do, but that we know more about specific religious beliefs than the people who actually adhere to those beliefs. They see that, as Julia Sweeney so eloquently put it, we take religion too seriously to believe in it. They see how passionately we value the truth -- and they respect that.

So if they can get us to give their religion a thumbs-up... that would really mean something. They understand that religious believers -- other believers, that is, not themselves of course -- often don't have very good reasons for their beliefs. They sincerely care about the truth, I think (this is definitely not the case for all believers, but it is for these folks), and they want to test their faith against the harshest critics they can think of. They want their cognitive dissonance resolved -- the tension between the religious faith they hold to be true, and the evidence and arguments showing that the case for their faith is crap -- and they understand enough about the communal reinforcement and other cognitive errors to know that Other People Who Already Agree With Them isn't the most rigorous way to resolve that dissonance. If they could get some atheists to tell them their belief is okay, that would resolve that annoying dissonance in a heartbeat.


And they seem genuinely surprised when this approval isn't forthcoming. It seems to have genuinely never occurred to them that, since atheists have carefully and thoughtfully examined religion before rejecting it, this examination probably includes their religion as well.

The Not-So-Special Snowflake

Which brings me to my second point:

Many believers don't want to acknowledge how ordinary their religion is.

They don't want to acknowledge everything that their religion has in common with every other religion. They feel the same revulsion and bafflement that atheists do at religious hatred and fraud and willful ignorance... and they don't want to be identified with it. They think their religion is a special snowflake -- and they really, really want atheists to recognize its beautiful and unique crystalline structure.

So when atheists say, "Nope, sorry, your snowflake looks like all the other snowflakes"... these believers get very upset. They get very upset when we point out the striking similarities between their religion and the hateful, fraudulent, willfully ignorant religions they so rightly reject. They get very upset when we point out that their beliefs are just as inconsistent with evidence, their arguments just as weak, their goalposts just as slippery, their assumptions just as unfalsifiable. They get very upset when we point out that we have, in fact, heard of their version of religion before, or at least ones very much like it. They get very upset when we say, "Yes, I've heard that argument before, about 100 times, I could refute it in my sleep, here's exactly why it doesn't hold up, in fact here are links to a dozen other atheist writers who have also pointed out exactly why it doesn't hold up."

And they get very upset indeed when we point out that their version of religion is far from harmless. They get very upset when we point out that their version of religion, just like every religion, encourages people to believe things for which there is no good evidence, ideas that by their very nature can have no reality check... and that this, by itself, does harm. They get very upset when we point out that disabling reality checks leaves people vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse: that it armors beliefs against criticism, questioning, and self- correction, and thus armors them against anything that might stop them from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality... and extreme, grotesque immorality. And they get very upset when we argue that their kinder, gentler form of religion gives credibility to the harsher, uglier forms... by giving credibility to the idea that disabling our reality checks is not only acceptable, but a positive virtue, and that it's perfectly reasonable to believe things for no good reason, just because we want to.

They don't just get upset. They get hurt... and they blame atheists for their hurt feelings. They often get hostile... and lash out at atheists for the appalling intolerance of arguing that they're wrong. (In an argument that they sought out. I know. It doesn't make sense to me, either.) And they get intensely surprised. They come seeking approval for their religion from the very people who, by definition, are the least likely to give it... and they get genuinely surprised when that approval isn't forthcoming.


The Bad News

So if you're hoping for the Atheist Seal of Approval for your religious beliefs, I've got some bad news:

It isn't going to happen.

We think your religion is philosophically inconsistent. We think your religion is completely unsupported by either evidence or reason. And many of us -- probably most of us -- think your religion fucks people up.

I'll stop here for a Fairness Moment. Yes, most atheists understand that different religions are, you know, different. And I'm one of them. We get that some religions do more harm than others; that some religions are more out of touch with reality than others; that some religions are more grossly contradicted by hard evidence than others. (We understand, for instance, that theistic evolution, while having no good reason whatsoever to believe it and in fact being flatly contradicted by a mountain of evidence, isn't quite as outlandishly bonkers as young-earth creationism.)

Some of us -- and again, I'm among them -- will even say that, if the only religions in the world were the tolerant, ecumenical, moderate and progressive forms of religion, we wouldn't care all that much about it. We'd see it about the way we see urban legends about alligators in the sewers and whatnot: just another silly mistaken idea that some people are mysteriously attached to. We'd still disagree with it, we'd still argue against it if you asked our opinion... but we wouldn't be devoting time and energy to building a community of people who don't believe it, or to persuading people who do believe it out of their beliefs.

And, of course, we think you have the right to your beliefs. Absolutely, passionately, without question. We think your beliefs are full of beans... and if anyone tries to use force or violence or law to stop you from believing it, we'll sock them right in the jaw. Or at least vote to get them out of office.

But for majority of atheists, that's the most you're going to get out of us.

We don't believe in God.Any god. Not Pat Robertson's, not Osama bin Laden's -- and not yours. That's what it means to be an atheist. If we were impressed by your religion and thought it had real merit, we wouldn't be atheists anymore. Asking us which religion is the least harmful or the least out of touch with reality or the least contradicted by reason and evidence... it's like asking which of the Bee Gees is the least annoying. They're all annoying. And all religions are harmful, out of touch with reality, and contradicted by reason and evidence.

And... okay, this next bit is going to sound a bit harsh. But frankly, we don't think your religion is even all that interesting. We've seen it before. You may have an odd little twist on it that we're not familiar with, and we might be somewhat curious about it. But the apologetics and theodicies and defenses are all depressingly familiar. I've been blogging about atheism for many years now, and it's been a very long time indeed since I've seen a defense of religion that I've never seen before. (The Argument From Tigers was the last one. And it didn't exactly provoke serious searching of my non-existent soul. Mostly it provoked months of gut-blasting hilarity.)

In fact, in the years that I've been writing about atheism and debating with religious believers, I've actually become more confident in my atheism. I've become more confident because I see the same bad arguments for religion over and over and over again. And over. And over. And over yet again. Sometimes I think that if I see the argument from design one more time, or the God of the gaps, or "different ways of knowing," or "you can't disprove it with 100-percent certainty, therefore it's reasonable to believe it," or Pascal's freaking wager, I'm going to have an aneurysm. Whenever I see someone make an argument for religion, I still have moments of wondering, "Is this going to be the argument that convinces me?"... but those moments are becoming shorter and shorter every day, to the point where I'm measuring them in nanoseconds, and every day my hope that I'll see something surprising dwindles just a little bit more.

The Good News

Don't get me wrong. We can work with you as allies. We don't have to agree about everything to work together on issues we do agree on. We can work together on separation of church and state, stopping religiously inspired oppression and violence, etc. Many of us -- heck, probably most of us -- are even willing to temporarily set aside our differences while we work together on the stuff we have in common.

But if you ask us what we think of your religion... we're going to tell you. If you visit our blogs to see what we think of your religion... you're going to find out.

We think you're mistaken. And if you're honest, you need to acknowledge that you think we're mistaken. Yes, it's true, every time an atheist says, "I don't believe in God," we're implying that people who do believe in God are wrong. But every time you say that you do believe in God, you're implying that people who don't are wrong.

That's fine. You can think we're wrong, and we can think you're wrong. We can have that conversation, or we can put it on the back burner and talk about something else. We can be allies, friends, families, with people we disagree with.

But that's not going to work if that alliance or friendship depends on us giving you our seal of approval for beliefs we think are flatly mistaken.

After all -- you're not giving us yours.

Marquis de Sade - Dialog Between a Priest and a Dying Man

WordPress.com

https://eupraxsofia.files.wordpress.com › 2008/01

PRIEST: Then in the short space you have left, profit from such timely remorse to ask that you be given general absolution of your sins, believing that only ...

FBI interviewed individuals who accuse Amy Coney Barrett faith group of abuse

Revealed: individuals contacted by agency gave detailed accounts of abusive behavior they allegedly experienced or witnessed

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

THE GUARDIAN
@skirchyTue 3 Oct 2023 

The FBI has interviewed several individuals who have alleged they were abused by members of the People of Praise (PoP), a secretive Christian sect that counts conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a lifelong member, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The individuals were contacted following a years-long effort by a group called PoP Survivors, who have called for the South Bend-based sect to be investigated for leaders’ handling of sexual abuse allegations. The body, which has 54 members, has alleged that abuse claims were routinely mishandled or covered up for decades in order to protect the close-knit faith group.

It is not clear whether the FBI has launched a formal investigation into the PoP.

The Guardian has confirmed that at least five individuals were contacted by the FBI and four gave detailed accounts to agents of abusive behavior they allegedly experienced or witnessed. Individuals spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity and said they believed the FBI interviews were part of an initial inquiry.

One woman who was interviewed by agents from Minneapolis, Minnesota, said she received an update last week and was told by agents that the investigation into her own claims, which involved allegations of sexual abuse by a teacher, had been closed. The woman told the Guardian that news had left her disappointed and defeated, and full of “a lot of questions”, because the agents had seemed interested in pursuing the matter.

A spokesperson for PoP Survivors said: “We urge the FBI to use their power to unearth the long-standing pattern of child sexual abuse and coverup in the People of Praise. All perpetrators and their enablers must finally be held accountable. We must ensure that no child is victimized and silenced by a People of Praise member ever again.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the PoP did not respond to a request for comment.

The PoP was founded in the 1970s as part of a Christian charismatic movement. The group is led exclusively by men. Like other charismatic communities, it blends Catholicism and Protestant Pentecostalism – its members are mostly Catholic but include some Protestants. In meetings, members are encouraged to share prophecies and speak in tongues. One former member said adherents believe God can speak through members to deliver messages, sometimes about their future.

A PoP handbook states that members are expected to be obedient to male authorities, or group heads, and are expected to give 5% of their earnings to the group. Heads are influential decision-makers in members’ lives, weighing in on issues ranging from dating to marriage, and determining where members should live.

After a waiting period, members agree to a covenant – a lifelong vow – to support each other “financially and materially and spiritually”.

The group has been criticized for endorsing discriminatory practices. Members who engage in gay sex are expelled, and private schools closely affiliated with the group – the Trinity Schools – have admission policies that in effect ban the children of gay parents from attending.

Single members are encouraged to live with other members of the community, including families with children, a practice that former members and adults who grew up in the sect say created opportunities for sexual abuse.

Justice Barrett’s membership in PoP was first widely publicized in a 2017 New York Times report, which noted that Barrett’s membership in the “tightly knit Christian group” never came up in a Senate hearing to confirm her as an appeals court judge.

In 2020, following Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court by then president Donald Trump, the Guardian and other media outlets delved deeper into PoP, including reports about how some former members, and some children who grew up in the group, had been abused by other members of the sect.

Some but not all members who have since been critical of the PoP believe it is a cult, given the amount of control the group exerts over people’s lives.

Barrett’s membership in the group was not raised in her confirmation hearing for the high court, but media outlets reported on her role as a handmaid and that PoP had erased all mentions and photos of Barrett from its website. The Guardian also reported that Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, had lived together in the home of a key PoP founder, Kevin Ranaghan, before they were married.

It was around this time that a Facebook group of PoP survivors was established, as former members of the sect, and adults who had been raised in it, began sharing stories about their experiences of alleged abuse, and how those abuse claims were allegedly mishandled. Multiple members have said that PoP’s prominence in the news triggered their desire to share stories, but that they were not seeking to target Barrett in raising their experiences.

One member, Pete Smith, told the Guardian the survivor group first contacted the FBI in 2022 through a tip line, offering a list of witnesses to the group’s alleged “crimes”. Smith said members were confused about why the FBI had not responded to reports in the press that had begun to emerge about sexual assault and other claims that victims said were swept under the carpet.

Those media reports prompted PoP to hire lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who said they would investigate the claims. No report was ever publicly released.

The letter to the FBI, which was seen by the Guardian, alleged that PoP had engaged in a “widespread and ongoing conspiracy to cover-up the abuse of children within its families and the schools it operates”. It said members had experienced sexual abuse from non-family members of their household, from their parents, and teachers.

The letter also alleged that the PoP’s alleged culture of secrecy “in any matter that would embarrass” the group had contributed to alleged coverups, which included transferring offenders to other cities. The letter said members of the group were prepared to offer sworn testimony, documents, photographs and “our collective expertise”.

Smith said he solicited the help of his senators in Oregon, where he lives, when the FBI was not responsive. The FBI ultimately responded after Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, raised the matter on his constituent’s behalf. In a statement, a spokesperson for the senator said Wyden had contacted the FBI “not to advocate for any particular outcome, but to make sure they were aware of the claim”.

While some individuals have already come forward publicly with allegations of abuse, the Guardian interviewed one woman who grew up in a PoP household and spoke to the FBI last summer and has never shared her story publicly.

The woman, who declined to be named in order to protect her privacy, said she had been sexually and physically abused from age three to 16 by a male member of her family. When she came forward and told her mother about the abuse, the male member was forced to leave her home, but remained in the PoP community, including at one point being housed with another family that had a six-year-old child.

When her mother talked to leaders of the community, she was told it was best to not press charges.

“They were a big influence on her,” the woman said.

She later reported the abuse so that the name of her abuser was on record, though it was too late for her to press charges.

Moms for Liberty: ‘Joyful warriors’ or anti-government conspiracists?

Image via screengrab.

The Conversation

September 19, 2023

Motherhood language and symbolism have been part of every U.S. social movement, from the American Revolution to Prohibition and the fight against drunk drivers. Half of Americans are women, most become mothers, and many are conservative.

The U.S. is also a nation of organizing, so conservative moms – like all moms – often band together.

Lately, the mothers group dominating media attention is Moms for Liberty, self-described “joyful warriors … stok[ing] the fires of liberty” with the slogan “We Don’t Co-Parent with the Government.”

Others see them as well-organized, publicity-savvy anti-government conspiracists.

The rambunctious two-year-old group was founded in Brevard County, Florida, to resist COVID-19 mask mandates. It quickly expanded into the Southeast, now claiming 120,000 members in 285 chapters nationwide. Their mission is to “figh[t] for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

By “parental rights” they mean limiting certain content in schools and having local councils and boards run only by “liberty-minded individuals” – which sounds like rhetoric from the American Revolution.

There’s historical precedent in this. Change the clothes and hairdos and these ladies could look like the conservative white women who opposed busing in 1970s Boston, supported McCarty anti-communism or blocked integration in Southern schools. Those women also formed mom-based groups to protest what they saw as government overreach into their families’ way of life.

But as a scholar of American politics with a focus on gender and race, I also see differences.

21st century conservatism

Moms for Liberty skillfully leverages social media, drawing on a population activated by the 2009-2010 rise of the Tea Party followed by the Trumpian MAGA movement. Mask mandates were the trigger for the group’s formation, but opposition to gender fluidity and queerness has become its bread and butter – more 21st century than 20th.

How racial equality is talked about animates its work also, in a distinctly new way. The conservative position on race and government’s role in the past century has pivoted from enforcement of segregation and hierarchy to a kind of social “laissez-faire” – hands off – position to match the Reaganite view that government is bad.

The extreme, hyper-male form of this anti-government, pro-traditional gender-roles ideology took shape as the Proud Boys, a number of whose leaders are now under indictment and sentence for their part in the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks. Moms for Liberty, while not going this far, shares similar beliefs and apparently has ties to the Proud Boys organization and leaders. They don’t march with guns, but their actions undermine and impede local government.

‘One minute you’re making peanut butter and jelly, and the next minute the FBI is calling you,’ said Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, testifying in the U.S. House of Representatives about government investigation of her group.

New kids in town making themselves heard

The group’s roots stretch back to a heated 2020 school board election in Brevard County. Incumbent school board member Tina Descovich, a local conservative activist mom, was challenged by progressive newcomer Jenifer Jenkins. When Jenkins won, the conservative board majority ended.

Having lost electorally, Descovich – and the corps of like-minded moms she now represents – began to shift the conversation from the outside. They joined with moms in many red states angered by what seemed fast-moving changes involving race, gender and sexuality, like the increasing numbers of people identifying as trans, queer or nonbinary, even at young ages, the vast changes in marital laws and family structure, and changing ideas about whiteness, inclusion and equity.

Moms for Liberty soon found success with disruptive tactics a VICE News investigation called a “pattern of harassment” of opponents that include online and in-person targeting of school board members, parents or even students who disagree with the group.

Members in many chapters generate ill will by turning up to school board and other meetings – sometimes to the homes of public officials or teachers – yelling insults like “pedophile” and “groomer” at opponents.

For a newcomer, Moms for Liberty has had real victories. It has disrupted countless meetings, forcing local governance bodies to focus on topics important to the group such as lifting mask mandates and, more recently, removing curricular content that they deem controversial, such as texts on gender identity and racial oppression.

The group’s success in getting talked about is perhaps its greatest strength so far, moving it from outside disruptor to political player, at least locally. It has successfully supported many local candidates and book bans.

Specific examples of banned books include “Push,” which inspired the award-winning movie “Precious,” and “Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl,” also made into a movie.

Disciplining members

Despite its many chapters, Moms for Liberty is untried nationally, its total membership is still relatively small, and Federal Election Commission filings show it raising and spending little money. The group lacks control over members, who have publicly embarrassed it. In one case, the Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter quoted Hitler in a newsletter – later apologizing.

At another point, an Arkansas member avoided criminal charges for saying, in a discussion about a librarian, “I’m telling you, if I had any mental issues, they would all be plowed down by a freaking gun right now.”

These incidents mark the group not only as green, but also as part of the new right wing. Republican-leaning groups used to take a top-down approach to setting agendas and managing people, while Democratic organizations historically cited democracy and equality as both tools and goals, even if it meant disorganization and failure.

In the traditional top-down Republican party of yesteryear, Moms for Liberty would likely be marginal. In today’s disorganized, divided, hyperpolarized GOP, it may do quite well – which is not good news for democracy.
Out of step, but useful


A poster helping those who want to run for a school board position is seen in the hallway during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit on July 15, 2022, in Tampa, Fla.
Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Pro-mom language is sometimes, in the old idiom, the velvet glove hiding the iron fist.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks organized hate activity, labeled Moms for Liberty “extremist.” Its empirical evaluation concluded that the group’s chapters “reflect views and actions that are antigovernment and conspiracy propagandist.”

Moms for Liberty is ideologically out of step with the country and more anti-government than most Republicans. The majority of Americans are not in support of lifting mask mandates in the middle of a pandemic or banning books.

Among Republicans, there is disagreement over the teaching of controversial topics like racial justice, but book bans find low support. Despite the current bitter political climate, most in the U.S. appreciate government and want it to work.

Yet, some media refer to Moms for Liberty as a “power player” – and no wonder, when Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis show up to court the group. Moms for Liberty may be fringe, but its members could be of use to presidential hopefuls.

Why? The answer lies in some distinctly post-2010 electoral math. These days, only a quarter to a third of voters align with each major party, and less than a third of registered partisans turn out for primaries.

So a sixth of each party – a small fraction of the overall population – now selects the nominees. And that sixth is not representative – it is far more opinionated and angry. Moms for Liberty, having organized small, ideological voting armies in swing states, is in the envious position of representing a concentrated and potentially decisive voting bloc.

The mom rhetoric may be real, but as a political scientist, I can say confidently that the framers of the Constitution would not endorse this brand of liberty. Book bans are weapons of autocrats, and democracy ends where political figures call each other “pedophiles” in public.

Shauna Shames, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.