Last weekend Moms for Liberty held their national conference in Philadelphia. Annika Brockschmidt attended the conference. She talks to Brad about the protests outside the conference, conversations with rank and file members, and speeches from Trump, DeSantis, Haley, and many others.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
I'm here today with my friend and sometimes co-host, Annika Brockschmidt.
Annika, how you doing?
Doing good.
You know, eventful days are behind me, and I think we might talk about some of them today.
Well, you just attended the Moms for Liberty Conference in Philadelphia, so we're going to talk all about that, but I want to start this By saying that as your friend, I'm worried about you because you're German, you live in Berlin, and I know enough German people to know that in July and August, German people usually go on holiday for four weeks.
I mean, I've known German people to go on holiday for five weeks, and I have met them.
They go places like Spain and Croatia.
They go places like Scotland, they go hiking, and you have chosen on your holiday to go to First Baptist Dallas on July 4th to see Robert Jeffress and then Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia.
Now you're in Florida, so are you okay?
I have made some very questionable life choices.
I would not recommend this to anyone.
And I will say, considering for what I've been here to do, I'm doing okay.
But yes, this is not like R&R.
I would not call this R&R.
You're getting a little, you're getting a very intense introduction to the kinds of things that some of us who grew up in this space just, yeah, did a lot.
And it's a lot.
Just like the full fashy hoes right to the face.
Yes.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's talk about Moms4Liberty.
So friends, you have likely heard of Moms4Liberty.
You have likely seen articles and headlines, and you may have known that they were in Philadelphia for their national conference.
Colleague of mine, Gil Frank, writing at the Meteor, describes them like this.
The founders of Moms for Liberty are three Floridian women with deep ties to the state's Republican Party.
They organized in 2021 to oppose masking requirements and other COVID remediation measures.
Their slogan, we do not co-parent with the government, quickly caught on in far right circles and Moms for Liberty leaders became fixtures on right-wing media platforms.
Their organization swiftly growing across dozens of states out there.
After COVID, they got into the business of opposing woke indoctrination.
They went After CRT and these are the folks who are behind book bans and getting teachers fired and other things like this.
So that is who Moms4Liberty are.
Some of you may know that one of the leaders of a local chapter quoted Hitler approvingly about two weeks ago.
Nikki Haley, presidential candidate, said that when they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, well, then count me in as a Mom for Liberty because that's what I am.
So, somebody called the Moms for Liberty terrorists and Nikki Haley said, well, count me in.
One more I'll give you before I just ask you about your experience was Dennis Prager who spoke at the conference.
Dennis Prager of Prager University or PragerU.
And he said something I think is so, so revelatory about Christian nationalism and Moms for Liberty and this entire movement.
He said, God made order out of chaos and the left is making chaos out of order.
The notion that there is no such thing as male or female human being is chaos.
It is a gigantic lie.
But it is more than a lie.
It is chaos.
That's what we are doing.
And why?
Because order reflects God, the Creator.
There is so much in that statement about order and Christian nationalism and the desires of Moms for Liberty and so many other groups.
I will stop and just say, you went to Moms for Liberty.
I want to start outside.
You are going into the event.
What's it like?
Are there protesters?
Is there noise?
Are people yelling at each other?
How does it feel if I'm walking into this arena to go?
So, the first evening, there was a reception being held at the Museum for the American Revolution.
So this is not like a right-wing institution, it's just a regular museum, which is why there was a lot of uproar that they agreed to host the reception there.
And so I I arrived by Uber.
A colleague of mine was already there and she had texted me and said, just so there's protesters outside, that wasn't surprising.
And so you could hear the protest before you could see it.
So there were basically It was a small, I wouldn't say small, like a sizable protest, maybe like a hundred people, which considering that it was boiling hot and humid and the air was horrible with the smog that came over from Canadian wildfires, it was pretty impressive that they were out there because it was still really, really hot.
And they were basically just dancing, having a good time.
I think they were saying something like, I think I read things like clanned Karen-hood, which I thought was very creative.
There were calls of fascist, fascist, you know, which, yeah.
That turned out to be on point.
But they were behind these little barricades and there was a huge police presence.
Huge police presence.
So I had a moment of thinking, how am I even going to get in?
How am I even going to get to the entrance?
Because I didn't want to ride on the bus that would pick us up from the hotel.
Because I was like, okay, I'm going to ease in.
I don't have to get in on the bus with the wall builders.
I'm going to dip the toe in and then I can take the bus back if I want to.
But it turned out to be real, real easy if you're a white blonde woman with the Moms4Liberty pass to get through the police barricade.
And they would then have officers, because I arrived alone, they had officers escort me past the other line of police officers into the building.
Which was already packed because there were so many attendees, I think they said something about 650, that they had to schedule the speeches that Tim Barton would give in, I think, half hour intervals.
So he probably gave the same speech four times that evening.
And you then would walk in And you would have this flag adorned staircase.
You had canapes being given out with waitstaff, who I felt very, very badly for because I was like, you did not sign up for this.
And, you know, just a bunch of people talking very, very avidly how great it was to be here.
And what I noticed right off the beginning was that, yes, the crowd was mainly white, but there was a notable number of women of colour and black women who were there, which I thought was surprising.
And then we listened to Tim Barton tell us the whole shtick about why America is a Christian nation, and he then ended that speech with saying, and this is why we have to make America great again.
So, you know, a political speech.
Yeah, so that was the first impression.
And, yeah.
Well, I was going to ask, what did it...
What was the sort of feel?
Because I've read some right and centrist descriptions of the crowd, and I guess one of the things that continues to sort of be sold on the right is that moms are moms.
They can't be extremists.
I mean, there was actually a headline on Fox one time that said, moms aren't extremists and they know what's best for their kids.
I read a piece at Newsweek that said, you know, moms know how to give hugs unlike anyone else.
As opposed to who?
So here's my question.
Did it feel as if you were being brought into this, like, cocoon of people performing motherhood as a kind of safe and protective modicum of existence or what was the texture of being in the room with everybody?
Hmm.
Motherhood is not the first association I had.
The first feeling, the first thing that came into my mind was this is like a weird kind of sorority.
This is like a bunch of people performing a very specific form of femininity rather than motherhood.
And I think there's a big difference in that, a sort of mixture of sorority mixed with the local, I don't know, Ayn Rand fan club, but also just people who are elating in and bonding over They're hatred.
Hatred of the LGBTQ community, hatred regarding anti-racism efforts, and then kind of as an afterthought, that being dressed up as parents' rights, the love for our children.
But it was very much About the women.
And yes, they always are referred to as moms.
You had them referred to as pitbulls.
You had them referred to as mama bears.
You could buy mama bear t-shirts, you know, in an echo of Sarah Palin, I'm guessing.
Same with the pitbull, really.
Because she had this joke, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull lipstick?
I think that's what she said when she accepted the nomination at the RNC convention.
Um, but it was very much a space That to me, because I knew I was not a part of them, but I was trying to sort of blend in and not draw attention to myself, but to, you know, listen, maybe ask some questions, that also felt very threatening.
And I'm even saying this from a privileged position.
I'm a blonde white lady with a German accent.
You know, even if they discover me, it might be awkward.
But it's probably not going to be dangerous.
For me, but it's still because the hate was so central.
You couldn't speak to anybody for more than 30 seconds without litter boxes being brought up or, you know, a woman with like very, very elegantly coiffed hair and manicured nails telling you with a very soft voice how depraved the left is and that the Marxists just need to be eradicated.
And that is a very eerie feeling and I think it was the performance of a very specific white and southern coded form of femininity that first gave me this sorority connection but also this There's emphasis on bonding.
We are women and we are all in this together.
But also, and this is where I think the distinctly right-wing thing comes in, because they kind of did what the Tea Party did in the beginning, right?
Because in the early rallies of the Tea Party, they would say, we're apolitical, we're just concerned citizens.
And these guys would say, oh, we're just moms.
And because you said moms can't be political, that's so interesting, because In one of the breakout sessions that, as far as I am aware, were close to the media, held by the Leadership Institute, or at least sponsored by the Leadership Institute, there was one of them that was concerned with how to deal with the media, how to spin your message.
And the guy who gave the workshop, he was a local Republican from Sarasota County, by the way, the husband of one of the founding members, Who I think then later made headlines for connection with Proud Boys and that's one of the reasons why she left.
Ziegler is the last name of the two of them.
She introduced him so she was still there even though she formerly has left Moms4Liberty and is now the, I think, Vice head of the school board division of the Leadership Institute.
So, you know, short pipeline.
And he said, what's so great about you guys is that when you're quoted in articles, you're not quoted as with a political position.
You're not the so-and-so chair of the RNC something something.
You're just moms!
And who are the most trusted sources in every country in the world?
Moms.
So they know this and they're using this frame consciously to mislead and to give the impression that this is not a hard right-wing organization.
This is one of the genius aspects of this.
It goes back a long way.
I have spoken about it before that if you have suburban women, suburban white women, if you have them playing the role of mother, it is very hard.
It is very hard.
To somehow paint them as extremist, as dangerous, as menacing.
And it's the same way that I explain Christian nationalism.
If somebody is a Christian rather than just a nationalist, a white nationalist, a white supremacist, you have a similar cover.
So let's talk about DeSantis was there.
Trump was there.
We'll get to them.
Let's talk about some of the opening sessions on the second day, the main day.
What were some speakers that stood out, some messages that stood out?
I mean, you've talked about how if you're just standing around in the hall, you know, meeting people, they're basically bonding in a sisterhood of hatred for the LGBTQ community and for others.
What did it sound like from the stage?
So what I thought was very noticeable, because I expected some religious stuff in there, was how prevalent the religious aspects were.
There were so many prayers, so many invocations from the stage.
A lot of them delivered by women of color, by black women, while the general speaker's roster, the ones whose names you can look up in the program, were still, with very few exceptions, mostly white women and white men.
So I thought that was notable, but what was really one of the through lines was the very explicit rhetoric that was sort of That was sprinkled in, but never really left, of spiritual warfare.
Which I thought was striking, because remember, this is not an organization that is officially affiliated with a church.
Although, to be honest, I think it's probably just a question of time before they do what Turning Point USA did and open a church liaison chapter, if it doesn't already exist.
So there was a lot of talk of spiritual war, of putting on the armor of God, of dodging the flaming arrows of the evil one.
So direct Bible quotes, not just during the prayers, but also something That I just noticed whenever we would leave the building in groups to, for example, to go to buses,
Or whenever we would just leave the hotel and if you would walk past, usually male organizers, they would sort of pull you aside and tell every single one of us, you have to thank the police officers, thank the police officers, thank every single one of the police officers.
And weirdly, similarly with the hotel staff.
So there was very much this notion of we have to get them, both the police And the hotel staff on our side, we have to show them that the protesters are the evil ones.
And we are the loving community of mothers that is really just trying to protect our kids.
And I thought what was really striking, and this is something that multiple speakers said repeatedly, not just, you know, the people from the Mums for Liberty chapters, but DeSantis, Hammett This Home, Rameshwami, Hammett This Home, even Nikki Haley to a certain extent did, was the emphasis of sacrifice.
Sacrifice on part of the moms.
And this sometimes veered, at least from an outside point of view, into the territory of the ridiculous.
Because DeSantis would be like, whether you're hunkering down at Fort Sumter, or crawling through the dirt at Omaha Beach, or walking past a dance protest where somebody yells at you, don't quote Hitler today.
Last part he didn't say.
I'm putting that in.
You know, sometimes we are called to make great sacrifices for our country.
And he then said, maybe to save himself the ridicule when this eventually gets broadcast outside of the right-wing bubble, when, you know, you compare Omaha Beach with walking past some protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, And he did say, well, we are not called to make such great sacrifices for this country.
And then he did a pause and he didn't say yet, but you could feel it hanging in the air.
And that moment he wasn't met with a lot of enthusiasm.
I got the feeling that people were mostly clapping because of what he said, because it checked their boxes and not because they like him.
But there is a Florida Connection, so that's there.
But the excitement and the sort of adrenaline rush that you could feel in the air whenever the sacrifice talk would be, and all of this war talk, was really, really palpable.
And so there was a lot of Energy just in the room.
These weren't people who were like at a conference.
How it is when you go to an academic conference.
You might have one or two people you want to see and then you're chatting with other people.
These people were pumped.
Yeah, yeah.
I think this is something that people can miss about these events.
Trump rallies all the way down to the Moms for Liberty conferences.
You're right.
I have gone to hundreds of conferences and yes, there are speakers you want to see.
Sometimes there's speakers you're like, this person's right after lunch.
I'm going to go take a nap.
I'll be back in a minute.
At these things, it is they are there to get juiced.
They are there to feel like they are part of a rally, like they're part of something transcendent.
Jeff Charlotte describes it as a kind of erotics, like there's an effervescence.
And so you talked about DeSantis.
I'm wondering, everything I've read says that DeSantis was welcomed with open arms, but Trump was really the one they went wild for.
Is that true?
How did that feel to you?
Yeah, so I did notice that DeSantis did get some standing ovations, but as I said, I feel like the noise that was made for him It was less ecstatic than what we later would see with Trump.
We had to queue to see Trump for an hour and a half within the hotel and it was this very bizarre situation because it turns out, I don't know if you've read this, there was some reporting on it before, is that I think the Jewish Men's Club also held a conference there.
And a couple of them were, understandably, not very happy that they were having their conference right next to the Moms for Liberty thing.
Although one of them did stop to talk to us when we were queuing up for Trump and told us very excitedly that he thought Nikki Heddy was amazing.
But so you had all of these people in like Trump gear because everybody had gotten out their Trump gear.
So there would be like, some of them had already been wearing high heels with, so blingy high heels with the American flag on it, which I thought was interesting because I was like, aren't you technically stepping on the American?
Doesn't matter.
But so we were queuing and the only people who for a long time went out to go up there were these like little groups of very old Jewish men you know all wearing colorful kippahs who would go up the escalator and just like regarding the whole Trump coming down the escalator imagery it just was a it was a remarkable piece of irony but yeah so
What I thought was really noticeable was, so DeSantis had originally been announced that he would be coming with his wife.
She wasn't there, allegedly because of travel issues.
I didn't really buy that because what travel issues would there be?
There was no storm.
There was no nothing that would have stopped the flight from Florida.
It's not that far.
But I think that really hurt him.
I think had she been there, because people were really excited to see her, and had she been there, that would have helped him.
And he basically also, he didn't change His speech, so he gave a little speech and then there was like a sit down with one of the founders on the stage and he didn't change what he was going to say.
So he kind of kept talking as if she was sitting next to him, but she wasn't, which kind of pulled more focus on the fact that she wasn't there.
So that was odd.
He's just a weird, he's a, he's an odd guy and even a room full of Moms for Liberty people can kind of tell.
This is one of those things that if you read about the DeSantis campaign and the dynamic between DeSantis and his wife, it really is one where she has more charisma and is much more comfortable
In those live settings where he is kind of like hey I have a speech I gave it and then oh I was supposed to say this I'm gonna say it but she's not here and it's awkward and it's one of those things like we I don't know I'm thinking about going to a barbecue where there's like someone who there's two people in a couple And one of them is very comfortable and easy to talk to.
And then there's their like partner who's just like awkward and stiff.
And when that first partner goes away and you have to talk to that one who's kind of awkward, it's like, oh, all right, I guess we'll do this now.
And it's like DeSantis did that, but he was the main attraction.
I mean, it's an ongoing issue for him in terms of his campaign like...
Like, she is really the Sarah Palin kind of like personality.
She's good at it.
She combines sort of the, she plays the role perfectly.
You know, she's feminine, but she's motherly.
It's very much this like Southern Belle picture of femininity that she employs and she She uses everything that's at her disposal, so for example fashion.
In some contexts it can be sexist to talk about what women are wearing.
I would argue in a context of a political campaign where even she's not the candidate but she is the candidate's wife and she is appearing on all of these things with him.
She is campaigning for him.
She is very much part of this political play that's being put on for all of our benefit or detriment.
Well, I think Casey DeSantis fits in with the Moms4Liberty aesthetic.
Like, if you're a Moms4Liberty, Casey DeSantis is a fashion icon.
You're like, you want to be dressed like her, you want to have her earrings, you want to have her like... She's like the Mom4Liberty par excellence.
And she plays kind of through this American royalty trope of kind of like aspiration, which is funny because so much of it, and I noticed this with some of Melania's clothes, is kind of Kennedy optics, but it kind of gets repurposed inside this right-wing ecosystem.
The white gloves, for example, that she keeps wearing I was very curious if we were going to see the gloves.
Never got to find out.
I was bummed about that.
But she does this very expertly and she is also, you know, if speechwriters write her jokes, she's able to deliver them somewhat naturally.
And there was this one video, I think, where she makes a joke about, I can't remember what it was, like bedtime routine, him doing bedtime routine or Oh, dad is messing something up.
Oh, moms, can't you relate?
It might even have been a Moms4Liberty event.
I can't remember.
A couple of weeks ago and you just see him swinging back and forth and it just looks as if he is pissed that his wife's getting so much attention and he's uncomfortable and she just seems at ease and that is something you can't fake.
And so I would say he did okay, but it was nothing compared to the excitement that Trump got.
And Trump, I will say, there was some talk about like a year ago, where he seemed to be sort of somewhat low energy in his speeches that he gave.
They were very like meandering.
Very rambly, even more rambly than usual.
That has changed.
He is more on message than I've seen him in a while.
He'll still go off on the odd tangent, but he seems energized.
It seems like being on the campaign trail is really where he thrives because he needs attention desperately.
So this is his thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, as we close, I'm wondering, who were the bad guys?
So, there was a lot of speakers.
Tiffany Justice is one of the founders.
She gave one of the final talks.
DeSantis, Trump, the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, on Dennis Prager.
Sure.
I mean, there's so many kind of different members of the right wing cosmos who were here.
Who were the bad guys that the Moms for Liberty are supposed to be fighting and combating?
I mean, obviously it's Marxists and socialists.
Okay, so that's one thing, but is it woke school curricula?
Is it trans people?
Who is it?
So when I was queuing for Trump, it turns out that the woman who was standing next to me was, I think I could say her name because it's public, like the lawsuit is public, was Brooke Henderson.
The woman who filed, I think, the first lawsuit with the support of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, I believe, who also gave a workshop at Moms4Liberty Summit, Against a Missouri, I believe, school district against anti-racist teacher training.
So she was a teacher and she said it was racist that she had to undergo anti-racist teacher training because of discrimination against white people.
Oh well, it's not mine.
And she would tell me, because we were standing next to each other in the line to see Trump, she told me, it's all connected.
It's all connected.
It's the school boards.
It's the school curricula.
It's the guns.
It's the voting rights.
So she listed off basically this toolbox Of Christian nationalists, not just grievances, but policy points.
And she said, it's all connected.
And she repeated what many of the political speakers on the stage also said.
She was, because I asked her, how are you feeling about 2024?
Because primary looks like Trump's going to be it.
But how are you feeling about this?
Are you scared that it's going to divide the vote?
And she was so pumped for the election.
She said, I don't think Republicans are going to struggle with turnout this time around.
I think that moms This very specific type of mums, obviously, that they're possibly going to be the deciding force.
This is also something that DeSantis said.
This is something that I think Trump said, not in so many words, but that was echoed throughout this whole conference.
I think DeSantis, if I might be paraphrasing slightly, but not much, he said You are the defining and the decisive mobilizing force and we have to harness that power.
That was one of the first things he said.
And that is really the thing that this conference showed, I believe.
Because they're very flexible in who they use as the cardboard enemy that they're yelling to fight against.
Because it can be gun regulation, CRG, whatever they want to put in there.
But what it's really all about is it showed, and they even said this, you know, we don't have to interpret this, they're saying it out loud.
They thanked, Morton Blackwell got the Liberty Sword from them, like a blue wooden play sword, as a prize.
Because they said that without the Leadership Institute and without them sharing their resources, they were the biggest sponsor, apparently, for this thing.
This is something that the left just has not understood.
The political establishment on the right is able to recognize the power of grassroots organizing, the potential that is there, and then just heaps resources and resources upon it.
Yep.
And one more thing.
I think it's notable because I was like, okay, because I'm a freelance journalist, I did this in part for research for my new book, which I have to hand in.
Very soon, unfortunately.
So I have to fund the ticket myself, and conference tickets are really expensive usually.
So I was very surprised.
This was for a three-day conference.
This was $250 in total.
Yeah.
That is cheap for a conference.
You know, it still hurts me because it's still $250, but I was expecting something maybe like $700, $800.
No, no, no.
So this is, I can't prove this, but knowing that the Leadership Institute was the biggest sponsor, I would say this was heavily, heavily subsidized.
That is the only way that you can make tickets this cheap.
You can also make it more expensive.
I thought it was quite telling.
That the VIP tickets, which were I think 450, which again for a VIP ticket with all of the access that gets you to speakers is still relatively cheap on the speaker circuit market, they were sold out first.
Yep.
You know, I talked about this with Tim Whitaker of the New Evangelicals.
He went to the TPUSA Pastors Conference.
It was free.
It was free.
Oh my God.
What?
If you could get a spot, it was free.
Now, it's exactly what you're saying.
It's all subsidized, right?
And there's a full, we got to go, but there's a full circle moment here because Morton Blackwell is one of the three founders of the Council for National Policy.
Yeah.
Horton Blackwell along with Richard Vigery and Paul Weyrich all back in the 60s and 70s were some of the first to organize the American right into a networked set of groups who all worked together in a kind of networked cosmos where they provided resource to each other.
The fact that Morten Blackwell is still alive, he's the only one of those three that's still alive and he was there.
I'll be honest, I didn't know he was still alive when he came on stage.
I was like, oh God, no way.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, he held a speech, he got the sword, he held up the sword, put down the sword again.
It's amazing.
All right, Annika, you are, as you said, a freelance journalist.
You have a second book that'll be out in a little bit here.
Where's the best way for people to link up with your work as it's happening right now?
So you can read some of my English work at Religion Dispatches where I'm a senior correspondent.
There's actually a piece on the Moms4Liberty Summit has just gone online that I've written.
You can also find my English sub stack.
It's called Threats to Democracy and you can find my German work if you just Google my name or on my Patreon site.
So that's really where you can find me.
Perfect.
As always, friends, find us at Straight White JC or an indie show.
If you enjoy what we do three times a week, think about Patreon, Venmo, PayPal.
It's all in the show notes.
We will be back later this week with It's in the Code.
Dan is back from vacation, so you can enjoy that and the weekly roundup.
But for now, we'll just say thanks for listening.
Thank you for being here.
Annika, I need you to get off the call.
Go turn the air conditioning on and take care of yourself before you get back to Germany.
