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Several GOP presidential candidates are heading to Philadelphia this week to attend a convention hosted by the right-wing extremist group Moms for Liberty, whose members style themselves as protectors of America’s children.
Members of the organization have been linked to incidents of harassment and threats as well as to the Proud Boys, another far-right extremist group. And Moms' members have led some of the most fervent efforts to ban nonwhite (particularly Black) authors from schools.
But Republican candidates are set to appear at the conference regardless, in a show of allegiance to the far-right. Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy are all scheduled to deliver remarks at the group's so-called Joyful Warriors conference, which begins Thursday.
The Joyful Warriors conference has an ironic name, given the event’s focus on a raft of right-wing cultural grievances.
The summit kicks off at a particularly controversial time for Moms for Liberty. Just last week, one of its chapters apologized after it quoted Hitler in a newsletter to members. The ominous quote — “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future” — was also spotted at a 2021 Moms for Liberty event in Florida, the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America reported last week.
Both incidents fit a pattern of right-wingers name-checking Hitler as they look to commandeer the American education system and indoctrinate children with a Christian nationalist worldview.
The Joyful Warriors conference has an ironic name, given the event’s focus on a raft of right-wing cultural grievances.
A glance at the conference schedule gives you a sense of the type of programming attendees can expect from this four-day affair. At one lecture, a right-wing minister will apparently claim Black people’s so-called victim mentality enables “divisive and manipulative distortions that have attempted to sever Black Americans’ attachment to their own nation.”
To state the obvious, it’s an odd argument to make in a lecture hosted by a group whose members try harder than just about anyone else to ban comprehensive Black history from bookshelves.
But a detachment from reality is on-brand for this year’s Joyful Warriors conference. This isn’t an event designed for conservatives to speak on facts as they truly are — it’s designed to speak of the imagined social battlefield that conservatives have created in their minds and seem set on realizing.
For example, there's also a planned lecture from a speaker who denies the existence of trans children; a lecture advising conservatives on how to “master the spin” and “control the narrative"; a lecture railing against social-emotional learning programs that help kids deal with their emotions in school; and a lecture condemning "comprehensive sexuality education."
Those are just a few of the "standouts." Rest assured, there's more bigotry in store.