In this episode, Jack is honoured to be joined by special guest Teddy Wilson of the excellent substack Radical Reports. (Links below.) Teddy has been closely studying the US far-right, including the sinister political pressure group that calls itself Moms for Liberty, one of the prime movers in the current reactionary cultural counter-revolution going on in America. Teddy tells Jack all about it, going into detail about M4L's aims, methods, and connections. He also tells Jack about the interactive visualisation tool he's created at Radical Reports for tracking M4L, their activities and interactions with other people and groups on the right. Topics covered include M4L's links to the Republican Party including DeSantis in Florida, their ideological censorship movement to expunge school libraries of anything they don't like, their links to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, etc. Fascinating (if ominous) stuff. Just Jack this episode, but Daniel is on his way back. Won't be too long now. Show Notes: Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay ad-free and independent. Patrons get exclusive access to at least one full extra episode a month plus all backer-only back-episodes. Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618 IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1 Episode Notes: Teddy Wilson on X/Twitter @reportbywilson RadicalReports X/Twitter @RadicalReports Radical Reports substack Mapping Moms for Liberty - the interactive visualisation tracking tool
It's me, Jack, all by myself I'm afraid, but the good news is that Daniel and I should be able to start recording and releasing Mainline episodes again fairly soon.
As you know, we haven't been able to do that for a while.
Real life stuff, backstage nonsense, etc.
We are keen to get back to it.
We are hoping to, wanting to, expecting to get started again quite soon, so look out for that.
In the meantime, have this episode, in which I was very lucky to have a chat with Teddy Wilson of Radical Reports, at Radical Reports on, well, used to be called Twitter, now it sounds like a porn site.
Anyway, enough of that.
Yes, Teddy Wilson, who came on, very kindly, to chat to me a little bit about Moms4Liberty, a group that he has been tracking, amongst lots of other stuff, at his excellent substack Radical Reports.
I just wanted to check in with you first, say hello, let you know how things are coming along.
But now, let's get into the episode proper, me chatting with Teddy Wilson.
And hello and welcome back to I Don't Speak German, the podcast that you know.
You know what this podcast's about.
And it's just me, I'm afraid, this time you're stuck with just me, Daniel can't make it today, this episode.
But he sends his love, and he wishes he was here, and he will be back with us very soon.
I give you my word, because he's given me his.
So if he defaults on it, he's going to be in trouble.
But I am lucky, because to keep me company while Daniel's away, I do have a special guest who I'm very happy and pleased and honoured to welcome to the show.
It's Teddy Wilson of Radical Reports.
Hello there, Teddy.
Hey, howdy, Jack.
Thanks so much for having me on.
It's too bad that we'll be without Daniel, but I guess, you know, you're a decent substitute.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, hopefully we'll be able to do this again another time and Daniel will be here too, because he did wish he'd be able to make it.
The subject for this episode is going to be, well, firstly, I'm going to ask you a little bit about who you are and how you got into this work and your site and stuff like that.
Right.
So I am a journalist.
I'm a researcher.
I've been involved in journalism for about 10 or 15 years.
So I was in a previous life.
I was in the military for eight years.
I was in military intelligence.
Got out of the military.
Was going to college trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
Um, and I really began my career in journalism, uh, as a volunteer at a community radio station, uh, where I live in Texas.
Um, so it's, you know, one of these local nonprofit community radio stations where everybody volunteers.
And so I learned a lot about radio journalism and, um, how to conduct interviews and produce these different programs.
And from there I went into, um, print journalism.
I wrote for a few different websites and some online publications.
And then over the past, I don't know, three to four, five years, my focus has shifted a bit in what I cover.
So I've always, during my whole journalism career, I've spent a lot of time covering various aspects of the U.S.
Christian right, so particularly the anti-abortion movement.
Um, but within the last three to four or five years, I've really started to expand my focus to include kind of all the facets of the far right.
You know, everything, including the Christian right and religious fundamentalism to, uh, the white supremacist movement and neo-Nazis to the militia movement and some of the far right, um, violent extremist movements.
Um, and so that's been kind of my primary focus, especially Since I launched my newsletter, Radical Reports, a couple years ago.
Yeah, it's been a growing field the last few years, hasn't it, The Far Right?
It has, it has.
It's been interesting, I think, especially since the January 6th insurrection, I think, is when kind of even mainstream journalists and publications really started to take the far right seriously as a topic for investigation and reporting, I think, is really when you saw a significant increase In that focus.
Yes, indeed.
And the newsletter Radical Reports is very good.
I'm a regular reader of it.
Thank you for producing it.
In the unlikely event that anybody is listening to this who doesn't already follow you on Twitter and doesn't already read the newsletter, I would strongly recommend both.
Well, thank you very much.
I really appreciate that.
And, you know, the newsletter, it's interesting.
It's evolved a bit.
Over the past couple years and in how I produce it and kind of what I focused on and, you know, kind of the projects I've taken on as part of through kind of the newsletter, you know, and so it's it's been fascinating.
Um, over the past couple of years, uh, on how, how it's gone, but yeah, but thank you so much for the compliment.
It's deeply appreciated.
It's, um, yeah, as I say, it's, it's fantastic work and yeah, the, these projects you're in any way involved in covering this subject, you kind of just have to, uh, allow your projects to evolve.
Um, because the, uh, the scene that we're reporting on.
presumptuously say we there is it's just ever growing and ever shifting.
That's something we've certainly found on this show that we have to constantly track.
We were talking a little bit before the episode began about how new people and new organizations and new shows just use You look away for two seconds, and then you look back, and ten new things have just popped up out of nowhere, seemingly out of nowhere, while you were looking away.
And people you've never heard of before suddenly have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, and hundreds of thousands of views on their YouTube channels.
You do have to keep up.
You have to run to stand still.
Right.
And the kind of who is influential and kind of who are prominent kind of figures within the far right, that's ever evolving, right?
You see people that will gain prominence for a while and then maybe kind of fall out of favor, depending on what's happening, right?
And so it's, you can't kind of, as you look at the far right and report on it and research it, you can't really Kind of remain static and only focus on kind of certain individuals or what have you.
I mean, there are projects that I think are useful that do that, right?
The guys that, um, have spent years documenting and researching and kind of, uh, focusing on Alex Jones, for example.
Um, I think that's important work.
And I think that in itself, um, the guys that produce that podcast, like That's a whole project in itself.
It's kind of difficult to take a broad view with a subject like that.
But I think for so much of the far right, it's really a complicating, ever-evolving kind of ecosystem.
And it takes a lot to really keep track of what's going on with it.
Because I think a lot of folks that may not be kind of As well versed in in kind of the far right and kind of have a deep understanding of it as as you do and as Daniel does, I think people have a misconception of.
Well, several misconceptions of the far right, but one of them is there's a lot of infighting and bickering and competing for, you know, views and funders and everything that goes on in the far right.
Like it's like any other kind of social and political movement in that way, that there's kind of constantly evolving dynamics.
And so I think that's probably one of the more challenging things about doing this work is constantly trying to keep up with like, you know, Who is gaining influence, and who is losing influence, and who are the more important figures in the movement right now?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's very easy to get caught by surprise by things that have just been happening under your nose, so to speak.
Everybody does this.
We fall into the trap of thinking of organizations as discrete and finished things.
Oh, well, we know what that is, and we know what they do, etc., etc.
And as you say, these things are actually, they're constantly in motion, they're growing, they're changing, personnel are changing, they're coming into conflict, and they're gaining new associations and stuff like that.
So you have to constantly work not to be caught by surprise when suddenly an organization that you thought you understood takes a turn or suddenly becomes huge on the national stage, stuff like that.
One of the things you've been doing lately on Radical Reports is you've created an interactive visualization which maps Moms for Liberty, which, to spoil it, is going to be our
Our main topic, I think, for this episode is going to be Moms4Liberty, and you've created an interactive visualization of Moms4Liberty and its place in the network of far-right groups and anti-LGBT groups.
Could you tell us a little bit about that?
You know, how did you come to start that, and what are you trying to do with it?
Right, so for those that may not be really aware of Of what Moms4Liberty is.
It is this group that was started by a handful of women in Florida back in 2021.
It's a relatively new group.
And I'm trying to figure out the best way to kind of describe it.
It has a lot of similarities to the groups that formed In 2010, around the Tea Party movement, it has a lot of similarities and issues that they focus on around what is known as the, quote unquote, parents' rights movement here in the US, and that covers a number of different topics.
Over the past couple of years, this group that was originally founded in Florida has really found a lot of favor within Republican right-wing politics.
It's found a lot of favor within various parts of the far right.
It has apparently seen a significant influx in money and donations over the past couple of years, and it's really grown rapidly.
Went from just this group that started in Florida, it expanded out to include county chapters in Florida, and then now it's a national organization with nearly 300 county chapters in 45 different states.
And so it's really rapidly expanded over the past two years.
And then earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center published its annual Year in Hate report, which includes the report details all the various quote-unquote hate groups.
So this is white supremacist groups, neo-Nazi groups, anti-LGBT hate groups.
But in that report, it also included anti-government groups, a new category.
And Moms for Liberty was among the groups that it named.
And Since that time, there's been some really excellent reporting from various outlets.
I think particularly Vice News has done a lot of reporting on Moms4Liberty and their connections to various far-right groups, from the Oath Keepers to the Proud Boys.
And so really around when Moms4Liberty had their second annual summit this past June, which was in Philadelphia, and it Um, had several, um, prominent kind of organizations that were sponsors of the summit, um, groups like the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA.
Um, and there was several prominent, um, Republicans that came to speak, including presidential candidates, such as former president Donald Trump, uh, Florida governor Rhonda Santos.
And so this group has really, um.
Not just expanded rapidly as in terms of membership and how many chapters are out there in various states, but it's expanded in its influence within right-wing Republican politics to the point where it's been a destination for Republican presidential candidates to speak at their summit.
And so, considering all that, I thought that it felt like the right time to really dive into this group.
And do some significant research about, um, who they are and who they're connected with considering all the public reporting about that.
And so I started off with a, with a network analysis of, um, the kind of national level group and who all their, um, sponsors and exhibitors were at both the most recent this year's annual summit.
And then last year's annual summit, who the conference speakers were to give a kind of a, A picture, um, an overview of, of where this group fits within kind of the national kind of level of right-wing politics.
Um, but then the next, uh, part of that project was I built a similar interactive visualization where I focused on the county chapter, um, the leaders of those chapters and their associations there, uh, with whether it's far right actors or,
Prominent folks within right-wing media, or what have you, to get a sense of, on the local level, where this group affects most policy changes, and really does the most damage, is on the local level.
And so, I really wanted to understand...
If there are any patterns within kind of their strategies and who they're connected with, you know, what kind of groups they're connected with, if there's any kind of And so, over the past month and a half, I've really gathered quite a bit of research and information about all these various groups.
I've probably looked into, in detail, about 100 of the 300 or so chapters.
And so, it's been quite fascinating to kind of dig that deep into this group.
Would you say that you've started to see any particular patterns emerging?
I have.
I have.
I think, you know, one of the main kind of theses that I've developed Um, is about who are the kind of typical leaders within these county chapter?
Um, kind of, if they, um, conform to any kind of archetype.
Right.
And so I would kind of categorize these people, uh, into kind of three different categories.
Um, now to give you kind of a, kind of the audience, kind of a brief kind of overview of, of what these county chapter, uh, look like, um, There's, like I said earlier, about 300 of these county chapters.
Most county chapters have a leadership team that includes a county chair, a vice chair, and then, you know, one or two other, sometimes three other leadership positions.
Sometimes they have treasurers, a secretary, what have you.
But almost all of them have a chair and a vice chair.
Um, almost all of the leadership is white women.
Um, of the, I don't know, 500 or so individuals, um, that I've been looking into, um, and mapping out maybe a few dozen are women of color.
There's, you know, a handful of black women, handful of Hispanic women.
Um, there are about a half a dozen men that are involved in leadership in these groups.
Uh, there's actually three.
Counties that the chair of the Moms4Liberty chapter is a man, which is interesting.
But for the most part, most of these folks that are in charge and in leadership position are white women.
Now, the kind of basic three different categories that I've seen are, one, you have a large portion of these folks that are in leadership positions that appear to have been actively engaged in right-wing or Republican politics for A while.
There does appear to be quite a few people that probably got engaged in politics around the Tea Party movement.
There's a significant number of those folks that have been kind of either involved in local Tea Parties or the local Republican Party or other kinds of right-wing politics for the last decade or so.
So there's a significant number of those folks that, and some of those folks are even You know, involved in right wing, more prominent right wing organizations or have been elected to local government positions.
So there's quite a few of these folks that aren't necessarily kind of novices, right?
When it comes to right wing politics, right?
These are political actors that have been involved in this stuff for a while.
There is a significant portion of people that are in leadership also that Um, really don't appear to have any kind of publicly kind of outwardly expressions of politics don't haven't really appeared to ever really been involved in politics that
Um, might fit into kind of, um, what moms for liberty would like the perception of them to be as like, we're just concerned moms worried about the welfare or welfare of our children.
Right.
So there does seem to be a portion of these leaders that kind of might fit that archetype, that don't really seem to be really overtly political and don't seem to have any real connections to, you know, whether it's right-wing politics or the Republican Party or the far right or anything.
And so there's that group.
Then there's another group, which I think is is probably the most interesting of these three categories.
And that is people that are in leadership of these county chapters that, until about 2021, 2022, were not involved in any kind of right-wing or Republican politics, did not appear to be really overtly political in nature in any public statements or any Things that they've posted on social media or what have you.
Maybe they were outwardly religious or relatively apolitical.
Maybe they posted a few things here and there about Republican politics.
But sometime in either 2021 or 2022, there is a dramatic shift in kind of how they present themselves, particularly on social media, on Facebook or Instagram or They suddenly become ever-present within local media, constantly going to school board meetings or what have you.
There is a significant portion of this leadership that does appear to be kind of among the people that were radicalized during COVID, right?
I think that's Um, something that we've heard about, right?
Over the past couple of years, people that, um, fell down QAnon rabbit holes or kind of got radicalized in different ways online during lockdowns and everything.
And this appears to be kind of a real tangible kind of piece of evidence of how that kind of played out in kind of the real world, right?
As it, right.
And so, And these people typically seem to be radicalized kind of around a few different kind of categories of issues.
Like, so you have a lot of these people who are anti-mask suddenly became very anti-mask folks that were really against any of the stay-at-home mandates or masking of their children or what have you.
A lot of these people also became very anti-vax, and there's some overlap there between the anti-mask and anti-vax folks.
And then there is folks that really appeared to have gone down even further conspiracy theories.
There's folks that are QAnon adherents within these and adherents of other far-right conspiracy So there's a significant portion of these county leadership, the people that are involved in these groups that, you know, two or three years ago, weren't really doing anything politically, at least outwardly, right?
Didn't present themselves in any kind of political way.
And then Some time over the last two years, something clicked for them and they became very outwardly political.
Oh, and another category is folks that appear to become radicalized around the idea of gender, right?
Particularly kind of the usage of this quote-unquote gender ideology terminology.
So those are kind of When I as I've been looking into these groups, those are kind of the three categories of people that I have found that have been highly involved as as as leaders in these different county chapters.
One of the things that has struck me looking at Moms4Liberty is that it seems, and I don't know whether you'd agree with this or not, but it almost seems to be more about recruiting and training cadres of activists, so to speak, as much as it's about its stated goals.
No, I think that's a fair observation.
I think That they have really put an emphasis on not necessarily, at least not overtly, recruiting candidates for whether it's school board or kind of local city councils or other offices, but they have put a high importance on
Um, promoting the people that have gotten their endorsement for those offices.
Um, there is a lawsuit that was just filed this past week, uh, in Michigan that does accuse, um, Moms for Liberty, the national group of violating their tax status as a 5014C, um, or 501C4.
Um, and part of what that lawsuit alleges is that these groups are like actively recruiting, uh, political candidates and actively involved in, um, the campaigns of, of political candidates for various offices.
Um, and so that would kind of, I think match kind of what it seems like from the outside.
In addition to that, I think.
To your point about how this group seems to be used as a conduit to train activists, right-wing activists.
I think one really great example of that is the Williamson County chapter in Tennessee, which is one of the most active and has a lot of really publicly available information about what they're doing.
promote a lot of their events there in Tennessee.
And this group has, over the past year or two, has had really an assortment of really prominent right-wing figures come and give speeches at their events, or what looks like a lot like grassroots kind of training events.
And so their names that I think People who listen to this podcast would be familiar with people like Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire have gone and spoke.
People that are involved with the Leadership Institute, which is a right-wing group that trains right-wing activists.
They have come and given talks at this Tennessee chapter.
So yeah, I think there's plenty of evidence that it is really used as a tool for Probably promoting and recruiting political candidates, but also for providing training for grassroots right-wing activists.
So yeah, I think that's a fair statement that you made.
Another thing that strikes me about the group is how perfectly formed it seems to hoover up, maybe not loads of different types of people, but to hoover up a lot of people along several different axes at once.
It's because of the way it's framed and the way it promotes itself and the issues that it talks about.
It seems like perfectly honed to pick up people along people who are concerned about issues to do with children and teaching that of course flows directly into as you were saying there's a there's a type of person in the leadership group who have been radicalized by the
By the gender panic, and that, of course, is that flows into the the critical race theory panic again, this series of panics that have been propagated by people like Christopher Rufo and with all their connections.
And it's always along this axis of education.
It's always along the indoctrination of our children in schools axis.
So it's perfectly set up to get people along those lines.
People who are suspicious about schools, education, teaching.
People who are worried about the prevalence of liberal ideology in society.
Again, you were saying about people who have been radicalized by the pandemic, sitting at home, online, In lockdown, etc.
Getting worried about masks and getting into anti-vax stuff as well.
So there's that access as well.
And of course, there is local politics.
Because in America, there's the whole politics of the school board, the school board elections and stuff like that.
It just seems like a perfect machine for getting people recruiting people from so many different of these current panics and concerns.
I was wondering, it's often been accused of being an astroturf organization.
I am interested in its funding, but I was going to ask you first, is there an extent to which it is, or was at one point, genuinely a grassroots organization?
Does it grow from any kind of grassroots organizing?
Well, see, this is one of the examples where more than one thing can be true, right?
I think there is a significant amount of evidence that... I wouldn't use the terminology astroturf, right?
Because I think it is too simplistic, right?
And it is used dismissively, right?
As to kind of...
Not take this group seriously, which I think is a mistake.
I think this group, we do not know much about its funding.
We know that there is likely a significant amount of funding coming from somewhere.
And we know that this group is top down in how they manage and grow and expand their network of activists.
So We know that each of these groups, when they are formed at the local level, they set up a Facebook group that is automatically set to private.
You know, there's hundreds of these different county chapter Facebook groups with as few as a hundred or so members to a few thousand members.
All of those groups, the admin of those groups are The leaders of the National Moms4Liberty organization, so they have control over all these different Facebook groups.
When you look at these groups that have filed incorporation papers with their state or have filed non-profit status with the IRS, a lot of these groups, the people on the paperwork is also the national leadership.
Every one of these groups, when they form, they are given kind of a ready-made kind of box set for right-wing activism.
They get the same kind of PDFs of talking points.
They get a list of who their preferred political candidates are.
It's kind of a ready-made kind of right-wing activism.
That said, I would I think one of the things that also appears to be happening is that these groups are given somewhat kind of autonomy to kind of operate on their own within their own kind of local cultural and political dynamics, right?
So, and that means that, like, The way these groups operate, what issues they're really focused on, who they are connected with, can look very different.
The way that these groups look in Tennessee, right?
You know, connections to a lot of kind of the really well-funded, polished right-wing national group is much different than the way that these groups operate in, say, a place like Pennsylvania or Michigan, where
There's fewer connections to kind of the well-funded right-wing national groups and more connections to the kind of far-right friend within those states, even kind of far-right extremist groups.
And so I think you have kind of these two dynamics happening at once.
There's definitely a national level group that is exerting A significant amount of control over these groups and trying to grow their membership, but the way that works on the ground can look very different depending on where it is and kind of the context of that.
Kind of locales politics.
So I think both things are happening, right?
It's, it's, uh, if you want to use the term astroturf, I think there is some evidence that, um, some of this is kind of, um, similar, something similar to that is happening, but there's still a, uh, kind of, um, a kind of local grassroots, legitimate kind of grassroots, um, apart to this as well.
Right.
So it's complicated.
It doesn't look like your classic AstroTurf organisation.
It seems a lot more flexible than that.
What you were just saying was really interesting, because one of the things I wanted to ask you about was the degree of national coordination that goes on.
Is there like a central governing board of the entire thing?
And to what extent is the organisation across the country, to what extent does it report to anybody, or to what extent is it controlled by anybody?
Is that something that we know?
Really, that's something that we don't know a lot about.
We do know that, you know, in addition to having these Facebook groups that the national organization kind of manages, that each of these groups, when they're formed, they are also given a website that's hosted on the national organization's website.
There's a login for Uh, the leaders of the county chapter networks, which I mean, leads me to believe there's probably some kind of, um, communication system, you know, whether it's an, um, email network or, you know, some kind of forum or message board, or, you know, maybe even something like a discord or a Slack channel.
I'm sure there's some kind of.
National level communication for kind of where all the various county chapter, uh, leadership can discuss and, and what have you, but, uh, we really don't know kind of what kind of, um, coordination or communication they have specifically.
Like we don't know if, if there are talking points sent out by the national level, like here's our messaging on these issues.
We don't know if, if, you know, organizations are, Um, really acting completely independent of the national level if they take on something, right?
Um, but I suspect that there is probably at least some kind of coordination and, um, kind of national level messaging kind of being pushed out to these groups.
But I, I do think that there is a, a certain amount of anonymity that these groups are given to kind of Act on their own based on what's going on in their own part of the country.
I mean, and at the very least, I think if you watch how these groups interact, like, well, how these groups what they choose to focus on and their different level, you do see evidence that they are, they tend to focus all on similar thing, right at the same time.
So right now, One of their big issue focuses is on books, both in what books are allowed in the libraries and public schools, but also in public libraries.
There's been a big push around that the last few years.
And you're seeing all these different chapters kind of push those issues.
So yeah, I think there's just a lot that we don't know.
It's a pretty opaque Organization, as far as what we know about how they organize and how they communicate with various chapters.
It might be part of its strength and flexibility as an organization, that the individual cells have a certain amount of autonomy, and when they act together, it might be self-organizing.
One group does something, and it seems like a success, so other groups flow in the same sort of direction.
That's quite an effective way to organize, and it does tie in with the looser way in which these sorts of groups organize themselves, or just right-wing ideas organize themselves and propagate themselves online generally.
I am interested in the relationship between Moms for Liberty and the current absolute frenzy of removals of books from schools and libraries, or requests to do so anyway, across the country.
We know that, I believe I'm right in saying, we know that the Florida Moms for Liberty were pretty much, they were directly involved in DeSantis and the Don't Say Gay Bill and stuff like that.
Do you know how directly any groups have been with specific instances of legislation or policy to do with exactly this, removal of books from schools and libraries?
Well, we do know that Moms for Liberty, the leadership of the different county chapters, have been really highly involved in these efforts at the local level.
So the Florida example is... They show up to the school board meetings, don't they?
Right.
So the Florida example is one of the kind of more notable examples because They were involved in like state level legislation.
Yeah.
Most of what their activity looks like is, um, much more hypo localized.
So they are showing up school board meetings, um, to, um, challenge books that are, um, that are available to students at school.
Um, and what you, the kind of talking points that you'll hear from Particularly kind of the national level Moms for Liberty, but also kind of across the country is that what they're focused on is, you know, removing pornography from elementary.
Like that's kind of their main talking point.
It's the most salacious thing, right?
It's the, yeah.
When you say it and you are just somebody that's not really familiar with these groups, you know, um, having someone say like, do you think pornography should it be available to like 12 year olds in their school library?
I mean, you're obviously going to say, well, no, of course not.
But what they are challenging is not limited to what they consider sexually explicit material.
There is some of that, but some of it is any depiction of people within the LGBTQ community.
If there's mentions or discussions of people that are gay in a book or people that are bisexual or present in any way that's not heteronormative, they are challenging kind of those books.
They are challenging books that they claim are inappropriate for students to read about racism, anti-black racism.
A lot of it is these kind of books that they're challenging are the books that are written by people of color, particularly black folks, and their personal experiences of racism.
And so when a black person, there's a couple of memoirs that black folks have written about what they experienced as kids, right?
And so some of these books are very blunt about kind of What their experience was and that the fact that they were called the N-word or experienced really virulent forms of racism.
And they're challenging those books because they don't think they're appropriate for young white kids to read.
They are challenging kind of any number of different topics.
Some of it is they're claiming that it's too violent or dark for children.
I remember there was a book That was one of my favorite books growing up, called The Hatchet.
And it's just a book about a 13-year-old kid that's in a plane and flying somewhere, I think it's over Canada.
The plane crashes, the pilot dies, and this kid only has a hatchet that his dad gave him.
So he has to basically survive in the wilderness for several weeks, up in the Canadian wilderness.
And so some of these groups have challenged that book because it has the depiction of the pilot dying and there's, you know, violence and dark subject matter.
So they lead with the salacious stuff about, well, we're just trying to get porn out of the public schools, but really they're challenging books that cover a variety of topics that they claim are inappropriate.
And that's also, it's not just books that are available for Like elementary kids, like they're challenging books also in the high school libraries that they don't think should be available for teenagers, you know, kids that are from 15 to 18.
And in addition, these groups are also connected to the challenging books in public libraries that are available for everybody.
So yeah, it's, as these, These right-wing groups, I think one of the things they are best at is kind of how they message what they're doing, right?
And this leading with kind of the most salacious thing as presenting that as what they're doing.
We're just trying to get porn out of schools when really that's kind of cover for this much larger agenda of what they're attacking.
You've mentioned that they have lots of connections to the Republican Party.
Is there anything formal about that relationship?
Is there any sense in which the Republican Party and Moms for Liberty are formally connected?
Is there any evidence of influence going back and forth between them?
Or is it entirely just to do with associations?
I mean, sometimes very close associations.
Well, I think there are direct associations as there are people that are in leadership within these county chapters that are also involved in their local Republican Party.
So there's people that are in leadership that are precinct chairmen or have been heavily involved in Republican politics.
There's even an example in Michigan where the chair of a local Moms4Liberty, a Moms4Liberty county chapter, is also the chair of the county's Republican Party.
So there are some really direct connections like that.
But I think on the more national level, I think it's more of a symbiotic relationship.
Right now, I think Moms4Liberty is at this vanguard of where the right is really focused on.
The right is hyper-focused on Kind of everything within kind of this broad swath of issues that under quote-unquote gender ideology or parents' rights, which is also interesting.
I think for one of the points that I've tried to make often over the last several years about the right is that it's, you know, the far right authoritarian movement is transnational, right?
These groups in the U.S., there is some evidence that they try to affect, have an impact internationally, right?
There's groups that have been involved in Africa and South America and Europe, but it's not one way.
I think Western media often kind of mistakenly portrays kind of This idea of like the U.S.
kind of Christian right or the U.S.
right, exporting hate, right?
That's kind of a terminology I've seen.
But this is one of these prime examples, especially around the usage of gender ideology and parental rights and children's rights, where the U.S.
right really has learned and adopted strategies that have been used by the right for several years in Europe and South America.
This is something that I think, especially over the last year, a lot of people have suddenly come, like, you know, have tried to figure out, like, where is this terminology and this rhetoric around Jundia ideology coming from?
But for those that have been paying attention to what the right's been doing in Europe and South America, this has been a terminology that's been used for years and years over there.
And so this is really, I think, a really good example of how these movements learn and adapt, not just kind of From what each other are doing in their own local context, but they're watching what all these other groups are doing internationally.
So this is a prime example of that.
To the extent that they're connected with the, well, they are very connected with the Republican Party, but it's very specifically to what you could call the Trumpist or MAGA base within the Republican Party.
So I imagine that the party as a structure has a Something of a complex relationship with them at the moment, in the same way that it has a complex relationship with the base that seems intent upon nominating Trump to be the candidate again, despite the fact that that doesn't seem like a tremendously good idea electorally.
But of course, that doesn't stop the party as a hierarchical structure using these people opportunistically when it thinks it can.
Yeah, it's interesting too, because this is a group that It really has its roots and was founded in Florida, right?
And it was really grew out of that, you know, quote unquote, kind of anti woke kind of politics.
But yet, this is a group like when you look across kind of the spectrum of who's involved that Is not all in on DeSantos.
In fact, I would say it's fair to say that most of the people within this are probably more likely Trump supporters than they are supporters of DeSantos.
So that's been interesting to see that dynamic play out.
And there's probably lots of reasons for that.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's, um, I think right now the Republican Party as an institution is in this really kind of perilous place because they're not really in control of kind of, um, kind of not really in control of how they are going to operate.
Like they, um, are an institution for Most of my lifetime, the grassroots of the right-wing grassroots of the Republican Party would loudly complain about things, but then the institutional figures and the old guard of the Republican Party would do what they wanted.
They knew that the right-wing grassroots of the Republican Party was important as far as their ability to win elections, but they really never Very often catered to them.
Now the Republican Party is in a position where they just don't have the ability to do that anymore.
The Republican Party, the grassroots in the rank and file has been so radicalized and so been taken over by this MAGA right-wing movement that Yeah, they just don't have the same kind of ability to control what the party's going to do.
They're so beholden to Trump and that movement that it's been interesting to watch how that's taken place over the past five or six years.
Was there a Moms4Liberty presence at January 6th?
Well, there were a handful of Of women who were present at the Capitol on January 6th that are now involved in Moms for Liberty in leadership or some way.
There's no defendants or anybody that's been arrested that is part of Moms for Liberty.
There are a lot of people that were also present at the Capitol, a handful of members of the Proud Boys, And a few other groups that also have relationships with members of Moms4Liberty.
I mean, there's some of that element there, it's for certain, but I think for the majority of the leadership of Moms4Liberty, Kind of in January of 2020, or 2021, I think a lot of the folks that are involved in La Miserable now were just kind of at the beginning of their radicalization stages, right?
And perhaps, like, you know, January 6th might have been one of those inflection points, too.
In which ended up radicalizing folks.
I mean, that's been one of the interesting things about January 6th is that, you know, we're at a time where right now over a thousand people have been arrested and charged in connection to January 6th.
I think it's almost to 1100.
You know, the former president, Donald Trump, has been indicted for charges related to January 6th and the lead up to January 6th this past week.
Um, you know, there's been, um, a number of investigations into it, um, both in kind of January 6th, but kind of the peripheral events, including like the fake elector scheme, right.
And all these different lawsuits that happened.
Um, but at the same time, um, it's become a galvanizing issue on the right.
You still have some within kind of the Republican party, um, and kind of the, mainstream conservative movement who still have disavowed January 6th and have publicly stated it was like, you know, insurrection and that it was, you know, it was a crime essentially.
However, at the same time, there is a significant portion of not just the grassroots, right-wing grassroots, but also kind of Republican lawmakers that Maybe they did kind of originally denounce what was happening, you know, in the days, hours and days after January 6th.
But there's a big portion of them that have rewritten that history and kind of have done a lot of gaslighting about January 6th and have basically said, well, you know, the kind of, was it legitimate political discourse or whatever the terminology they've been using to describe it?
And it's been very galvanizing on the right.
I think this idea of January 6th political prisoners is something that has been that kind of rhetoric is used a lot on the right.
I think so.
It's even though we've seen kind of a lot of consequences, I think, for those involved.
Right.
There's been, you know, over the past two years, there's been some like Legitimate, tangible kind of accountability that's been happening, right?
But on the right, that hasn't kind of had the effect that I think a lot of people thought it might, right?
For example, the Proud Boys, one of the far-right groups that was highly involved January 6th.
There's more chapters of the Proud Boys and more people that are involved with the Proud Boys now than there were before January 6th.
It's been...
I think it's been an event similar to like Ruby Ridge or the Waco Sea in kind of this galvanizing singular event that has kind of motivated the right and it's and it's gotten I think there's a lot more people that buy into that vision than I think people might be aware of.
Like, it's not just kind of the fringe far right.
There's a lot of people within kind of Republican politics and kind of the conservative grassroots that have come to view it that way too, which is kind of one of the most disheartening things about January 6th and kind of the aftermath.
One of the things that immediately jumps out at anybody looking at this is the connections with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
I'm actually looking at a page of radical reports now.
I'm looking at a list of interactions between Moms for Liberty and the Proud Boys.
And I'm looking down and it just goes on and on and on.
What do you think?
Is it something that varies from place to place, locality to locality?
What is the actual relationship?
Is it just a question of people that socialize because they have similar backgrounds and similar worldviews, and that's why the organizations interact so much?
Yes and yes.
So I think there are differences based on locale, right?
As I mentioned earlier, the way these groups operate and who they associate with depends a lot on the specifics of the political and cultural dynamics in that geography.
But especially with the Proud Boys, because Monster Liberty has associations to other far-right groups, But with the Proud Boys, I think there is a very specific far-right ideological alignment, particularly around anti-LGBTQ activism and around schools.
That's where we're seeing a lot of this interaction and this overlap between Moms for Liberty and Proud Boys.
Is proud boys showing up to school board meetings, which has happened in multiple places.
It's happened in Florida.
It's happened in North Carolina.
It's happened in Tennessee and a few other places.
It's happened in California.
So there's an ideological alignment around the schools and this anti-LGBTIQ activism.
And so I think that's a big part of it.
Um, but also I think, uh, kind of the, the way it looks, um, the specifics of it depend kind of on the location.
So, um, for example, one of the primary examples of the relationship between Moms for Liberty and, and, uh, the Proud Boys, uh, is in South Florida.
Um, Vice News did some really great reporting on this a few months back.
Um, and there's, um, You know, in South Florida, the Proud Boys have actually kind of gotten involved in local Republican politics.
There was members of the Proud Boys that got involved in the local Republican county chapter that tried to become like poll watchers at election stations.
And there's some really close relationships between the leadership of Moms4Liberty chapters and these various individual Proud Boys.
So that's kind of one way it can look.
In someplace like North Carolina, you have the Proud Boys and Moms for Liberty showing up at the same protest or showing up at the same school board meetings.
The details or the extent to what kind of personal relationships there are between those two groups in those specific locations are kind of unknown as of yet, but There's a lot of interactions on that level.
So, yeah, it looks different depending on where you're looking at it.
But I think the constant thing is there is just a growing body of evidence that Moms for Liberty chapters throughout the country, there is a tendency that they have to have ties to various types of far-right extremists, whether it's kind of the Proud Boys and that kind of
Far-right violent extremists, or whether it's groups like Mass Resistance or other far-right anti-LGBTQIQ groups, or even in Michigan where there's connections now with the militia movement up there.
So it just kind of depends on Where you're looking at those relationships depend on what they look like.
But yeah, there's definitely a tendency to have those connections.
And a lot of it, I think, is just kind of around political alignment.
But we're still kind of learning about those connections and actually how far they go.
And if you look at the visualization, I think right now there is maybe nine or ten different county chapters that have connections to the Proud Boys on there.
There's a half dozen other counties that have connections to other far right groups.
There's another dozen or so groups that I know of that have connections to either the Proud Boys or other far right groups that I haven't made those connections explicit on the visualization.
I'm still doing kind of the research to confirming different details about who individuals are and how they're connected, kind of trying to identify people before and kind of get the documentation and the evidence before I make those links public.
But there's a growing number of those connections.
And every day, it feels like I get an email or a direct message from somebody with additional tips, kind of from their part of the country, about what Moms4Liberty is doing, or they have connections to some other group.
So it's been interesting.
It's the groomer panic, isn't it?
That's the glue that's holding all this together, to a huge extent anyway, and adding fuel to the fire.
That's why we get people joining up from these different groups and these different traditions to Picket and protest drag shows and things like that.
And it's escalating.
It's going back and forth in this self-reinforcing and self-exacerbating dialectic between all these people who are engaging in it.
Right.
I mean, I think that's probably the groomer panic is probably the best kind of terminology that kind of encapsulate so much of what this is going on.
And it's also kind of ironic because
Um, the group, uh, Gays for Groomers, or Gays Against Groomers, which is this, uh, a group that is really highly involved in all this, which is supposedly, um, people that are gay or lesbian or bisexual that are, uh, um, subscribed to basically, um, this, uh, kind of, they've borrowed from the, the, the TERF kind of playbook, right?
The, um, Yeah.
The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist playbook to really attack anybody else that's not gay, lesbian, or bisexual, that's part of the acronym.
And yet, there's been a split that's happened within that group recently because of the presidential ad that DeSantos published a week or two ago that was not just anti-trans, it was pretty much anti-gay anti-lgbtq iq period and so that that apparently upset some of the members of the gays against groomers group
uh because they were under the impression that uh that that these right-wing groups were not against them just against trans folks and queer folks and and so it so it's It's leopards and faces again, isn't it?
Yes!
That's one of the most amazing things about this, is the people that decide to ally with these right-wing groups, seemingly because they think it might protect their own interests.
The leopards are always going to come to your face in the end, because that's what leopards do.
That's exactly it, that's what leopards do.
Yeah, what comes out of this for me, and this has been really interesting and informative, thank you.
What comes out of this for me is the idea that this is, to a huge extent, this is a self-organizing phenomenon.
And I feel like sometimes, some people on the left, we kind of Or maybe even just people not on the left per se, but people who are researching this stuff from an oppositional point of view.
Just that.
I feel like sometimes we look at these things and we want it to be a bit more conspiratorial than it actually is.
We want these organizations to be more AstroTurf, to use that phrase again, than they actually are.
We want them to be entirely creatures of some right-wing billionaire.
And of course, there's plenty of right-wing dark money that gets funneled around the place, don't get me wrong.
But I feel like we want it to be like a plot from the Republican Party or from the Heritage Foundation or whatever.
And I think what we need to come to terms with, certainly this is what I'm getting from what you're describing.
It very much is, to an extent, a grassroots phenomenon, a self-organizing phenomenon, a phenomenon that isn't under anybody's control.
And it's a movement.
I think that's what we have to get to grips with, that this is a growing and self-powering domestic far-right movement that's filling all these different gaps in the ecosystem of society, at the moment, very effectively, just by itself, through its own growth.
No, I totally agree.
I think the way I've come to view this, I think you're right to view it as a political movement.
Well, not just a political movement, it's a social movement.
There's also a religious movement within it too.
I think I've come to call it a far-right authoritarian movement, because I think that when you frame it that way, I think that leaves room for the fact that there is kind of a genuine grassroots part of this movement.
But because it's authoritarian in nature, there is a lot of top-down direction of the movement.
That said, I think you're really right to point out that folks that do kind of Do the research and report on these movements.
I think there is a tendency to kind of look for central figures behind the movement.
And while that has some legitimacy, there's some really wealthy and powerful individuals that are part of funding this movement and have their own agendas.
But the Koch brothers are not behind every single aspect of the far right.
They have their agenda, they're influential, But they're part of some parts of this movement.
But they're not the end-all be-all.
I think when we look to kind of try to understand this movement as only kind of within that framework, whether it's, oh, it's the Heritage Foundation that must be behind all this, or it's the Federal Society that must be behind this, or the Center for National Policy, those are Influential groups on the right, but they're not the kind of, um...
The only ones behind the scenes controlling everything.
I think we run the risk of what the right does with claiming everything that the left does is directed by George Soros.
We don't want to make Leonard Leo into our version of Soros.
Right, right.
And as someone that's worked in this space for a long time, I mean, I've only gotten a few paychecks from George Soros.
Um, and that was literally when I was working for an organization called Open Democracy, which was a project of the Open Society Foundation.
So it wasn't like a secret, but I think, um, yeah, I think the, I think when you, it also, I think if you look at the movement like that, within that framing,
It really prevents you from having a clear sighted understanding of the dynamics within the far right, and how complicated it is, how there are significant divisions within the far right and right wing politics, there's disagreements, there's constantly jockeying for position to like, Capture the most amount of viewers.
There's a lot of competition for funding from these wealthy donors and foundations and everything.
And if you can't have a really clear idea and vision for understanding how this movement works and how dynamic it is, that can really Prevent you from developing the correct strategies for countering the far-right movement, right?
If you think it's just one big thing behind this movement, then you're not going to be able to develop successful strategies for pushing back against this movement.
So I think having a clear-eyed understanding of how the movement works, the dynamics of it, is really important because it is, it's a messy, complicated movement, but it is a movement.
And, you know, and you can see that dynamic play out in different aspects of the movement.
I think one of the kind of best examples of how fractured this movement can be is, is especially within kind of the far right extremist is when you look at the various parts of the white supremacist movement and how fractured that movement has been and how splintered Uh, those different organizations have been, right?
Um, you know, how, when you look at how the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally, um, how that splintered the movement in the aftermath of that and all the legal cases that came out of that.
And even, um, since then, like there's been a constant splintering of, of the white supremacist movement.
And that's why you have, um, like, I think there, The people that are part of the Groyper movement and the people that are the fanboys of Nick Fuentes are not necessarily the same people that are involved in the National Socialist Club or the Patriot Front.
There's differences within these movements that I think is important to understand, especially if you want to develop productive and useful strategies to counter these And I think your newsletter, Radical Reports, and certainly this new technique, this new tool that you've created to track Mums4Liberty and its various connections, I think that's a great resource for doing exactly that.
I'll let you go in a minute.
I just wanted to get your take on one last thing, which is the Hitler quote.
That was a flap recently.
What do you think of that?
What do you think was going on there?
Firstly, refresh our memories, in case anybody listening doesn't know what I'm talking about.
And then, what do you think was going on there?
Right, so the Hitler quote, for those that aren't aware, which I would be surprised if anybody listening to this podcast wasn't aware, Because this became kind of a national news.
Every episode is somebody's first.
That's true.
Like, so if you're just coming to this, so one of the chapters of Moms for Liberty, I think it was in Indiana.
Forget which chapter.
I think they were publishing their first newsletter and in the newsletter on the front page at the top was this Hitler quote.
And at first when I heard about this, I kind of assumed that it was probably one of those deals where somebody quotes Hitler, but they didn't know it was Hitler.
You know, that happens quite a bit.
You see people like grab quotes from wherever, right?
And then they quote, and then somebody's like, that's a Hitler quote.
But no, it was a Hitler quote.
And underneath it said Adolf Hitler.
So they knew exactly where it was.
Yes.
And so that was kind of shocking.
But it was essentially, I'm going to paraphrase the quote, it was essentially, you know, whoever controls children controls society, is what the quote was.
And the intent, or the stated intent, of this chapter was they were using it as an illustration of Of why indoctrination is bad, right?
They were trying to use it as a way to show that, you know, evil people want to target your children and indoctrinate them so they can control society.
I think that was the intent behind it.
And so, a few things.
One, do I think that they were quoting Hitler because they sympathize with Nazis?
I think that's highly unlikely.
That said, I think It is a problem that you would think to quote Hitler and then nobody within the organization that maybe read a draft of that, nobody else was like, maybe we shouldn't quote Hitler because you should never quote Hitler.
Like, and so that's a problem.
Maybe paraphrase, you know, or at least add some context.
Right.
And then, um, and I think the, the, what is probably the more, The bigger issue with this is the response from Moms4Liberty to this.
Yeah.
So there was a couple kind of things that happened in this aftermath.
Um, you know, you had the Moms4Liberty National come out and say, basically, yeah, this was a mistake.
Our chapter shouldn't have done this.
Um, but then later, um, at the summit, cause this was like a week before the summit in June.
At the summit, the Moms4Liberty speakers and stuff started kind of Panning the criticism of it and kind of using it as kind of a rallying cry, essentially.
Like one of the national leader said something to effect of, you know, that one of their chapters quoted Hitler and they were being criticized for it or something.
And some people in the crowd kind of cheered that they quoted Hitler.
And I think that was more of a, I think, a defiant kind of thing than anything else.
But then one of the last responses that they did was they were able to get a conservative rabbi who's well-known within conservative
Jewish politics to write an op-ed in this right-wing Jewish publication, Defending Moms for Liberty, with the kind of Obvious framing and implication that, of course, we can't be anti-Semitic if this Jewish rabbi is defending us, right?
Yeah.
But then, Mamsour Libri decided to promote that by pulling out this quote from the piece, written by this conservative rabbi, which begins, it's like a paragraph, but it begins with the words, Americans and Jews.
And the implication, of course, is that Jewish people aren't American.
Yeah, yeah.
And that created a separate kind of wave of criticism about that.
And they didn't really respond well to that either.
They were saying, well, This is out of context, even though it was the beginning of a whole paragraph and you are the ones that published it.
So you're saying you published something out of context?
Yeah.
And then the leader of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, later apologized to all her group's Jewish members for having to deal with all this nonsense on all these attacks.
Now, I don't know how many people are members of Moms for Liberty that are Jewish, I would imagine not.
It doesn't seem like there's that many to be.
But I think I think there's probably two dynamics going on in this kind of kerfuffle.
One is Moms for Liberty is such a new organization, right?
They have only been around for like a couple of years.
The people running it are I mean, they've been involved in some kind of Republican politics and right wing politics for a few years prior to that.
I mean, they're they're not necessarily novices, but it's a brand new organization.
Um, they aren't kind of like, I think any other kind of right-wing organization that's been around for a while.
Like if, if something happened like that, where like a group connected to like the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society, or even probably, um, uh, like Turning Point USA, I think they would probably understand how to handle that PR kind of a lot better.
Right.
There's just kind of a maturity with, with, with a young organization like this.
But also, like, the whole, like, we can't be anti-Semitic because I have a Jewish friend kind of framing of all this is, I think, it's kind of a default position for the right, usually, too.
I mean, this is pretty typical of right-wing Republican politics.
But yeah, it was just kind of a A textbook example of... I think some people on the left, a lot of people on the left, were using this as an opportunity to associate Moms for Liberty with neo-Nazi and the fascist movement.
And that's a cheap kind of of rhetorical wordplay that you can use there.
But I think it's more of an example of how so many of these right-wing groups are so insulated from everyone else and different perspectives.
I think most of the people in these groups, like running Moms for Liberty, they're all Almost like 95% are all middle-aged white women, pretty much.
I mean, there's some differences in kind of, I'm sure, in ages and economic class or what have you.
But I think it's just a lack of perspective and empathy and understanding anybody that's outside of kind of your social circle.
And that's what I think it's the biggest example of.
Um, so yeah, it was, um, and then it goes to another thing, I think, um, especially as I've been reporting on Monster Liberty and kind of outlining these different connections and kind of, um, posting about them a lot on, on, on Twitter and what have you.
Um, there, there is a lot of folks that will use terminology like, you know, clan Karen hood, I think is one or, um, uh, Taliban and minivans or something.
There's a lot of creative and admittedly sometimes funny, kind of darkest humor that people have used about this group.
And I think the problem with that is, I'm sure it feels viscerally justified, particularly kind of with how this group has targeted so many marginalized communities, right?
Particularly trans folks, right?
But that said, I think using that kind of terminology is dismissive in all the ways that we previously outlined, right?
This is a group that should be taken seriously.
And when you use that kind of terminology, I think it makes people consider them less of a threat.
And I think that's a mistake.
No, I very much agree.
I think the Hitler quote thing reminds me of when anti-vax and anti-lockdown people go around wearing yellow stars, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
compares people living today in Western democracies to Anne Frank and things like that.
The conscious intent is not to express sympathy with the Nazis by downplaying the Holocaust or anything like that.
But it comes from such a level, as you said, insularity, insulatedness, and complacency, and lack of political understanding.
And that itself is the problem, isn't it?
We don't need to reach to, well, they're Nazis.
We need to understand that that level of disconnection is the fundamental problem.
Also, from American context, I really wish that Americans would stop using the Holocaust as their historical example when it comes to any kind of ethnic violence or genocide, because there are American examples of that.
That we can use?
Like, yeah.
Um, for example, I don't know the genocide of indigenous people in America or the genocide that happened over generations to enslave black folks and Africans.
Like, so like, um, I think I, I always find it troubling when people kind of reach, automatically reach to the Holocaust as an example, particularly Americans, since there's like lots of examples of, of really awful, Genocidal actions that have happened here on our soil.
But yeah, I think also that kind of, but even that can be kind of abused and kind of misappropriated when you look at how the anti-abortion movement has done so much kind of, like, they've spent so much time comparing the abortion, legalized abortion, as comparable to slavery.
Um, to chattel slavery in America, and they've even, some of them have come to call themselves abolitionists.
Um, so yeah, I think, um, so often like when people try to use like these kind of historical analogies, it's just fraught with just, it's, it's often just not a good, good way to kind of make these historical analogies.
It's just, don't compare stuff to the Holocaust anymore.
Oh, and that was another thing.
Um, uh, I can't remember which member of it, one of the members of Moms4Liberty, she was responding to criticism of the Hitler quote.
And this was also in reference to the conservative rabbi's op-ed.
And she took a screenshot of a Hitler quote that was used in a display In the American Holocaust Museum.
And she said, well, like, if you can never quote Hitler, why can the American Holocaust Museum quote Hitler in this display in their museum?
And it was just, it defies, like, kind of, like, I can't imagine, like, how you kind of use this crumpled logic to think that that's, like, a legitimate Like, when you respond, like, okay, fine, the Holocaust Museum, they're the one place that can quote Hitler.
There's this thing we call context.
Right.
And it was like this big display on like, what was like the, I think it was like literally a display about what was the final solution.
Yeah.
Like, of course you're going to quote Hitler.
So, it's not some shitty newsletter from a right-wing, local right-wing group.
Exactly.
Okay, well, this has been a great conversation.
Thank you very much for coming on.
It's been really interesting, and as I say, Radical Reports, great newsletter.
This new visualization tool, it's really great.
How can people follow your work, Teddy, which they absolutely should do?
Yeah, so you can find me everywhere on social media.
My handle just about everywhere is Report by Wilson.
So I'm on Twitter, I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Threads, I'm on all the social media stuff.
And then you can find my newsletter on Substack if you go to radicalreports.substack.com.
You can subscribe there.
I have a free version, there's a paid version.
Either one would be great.
If you specifically want to support The Moms4Liberty investigative project.
I also have a Patreon where I'm posting updates about that project, and that's also a report by Wilson on Patreon.
That's where you can find me.
I'm pretty easy to find on the internet.
And as I say, go and do that.
In the unlikely event that you're listening to this and you're not already well aware of Teddy, you are now, so you've got no excuse.
And thanks again for coming on.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
It's been a real pleasure.
I really love the work that you guys do, and I really hope that Daniel feels better and that your listeners get to hear him again real soon.
Yeah, thank you.
It shouldn't be too long now.
And as I say, you have a standing invitation to come back another time to talk about something else.
Maybe let you choose this time.
And when Daniel's back, it'll be all three of us.
Instead of just having to cope with me, you'll have him to talk to as well.
Okay, so thanks for listening, everybody.
That was another episode of I Don't Speak German.
There will be another one along Hopefully, very soon, you'll be able to find it in exactly the same place that you found this one.
But for now, buh-bye!
That was I Don't Speak German.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the show or found it useful, please spread the word.
If you want to contact me, I'm at underscore Jack underscore Graham underscore, Daniel is at Daniel E Harper, and the show's Twitter is at IDSGpod.
If you want to help us make the show and stay 100% editorially independent, we both have Patreons.
I Don't Speak German is hosted at idonspeakgerman.libsyn.com, and we're also on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and we show up in all podcast apps.
This show is associated with Eruditorum Press, where you can find more details about it.
