Moms for Liberty, conservatives who "do not co-parent with the government" and oppose gender-identity lessons in schools, made the Southern Poverty Law Center's "hate map" of hate groups and anti-government groups. The SPLC report explicitly compares Moms for Liberty to "Southern women . . . yelling obscenities" at a child trying to integrate a New Orleans school in 1960. "It could just as easily be 2022."
The report claims some Moms for Liberty members have threatened teachers and the LGBT community, writes Robby Soave on Reason. But it treats all conservative views as extremist. The section on Moms for Liberty cites what SPLC apparently considers an "extremist" statement by cofounder Tiffany Justice:
"I raise my children. The government does not. We do not co-parent with the government. And there are certain sensitive subjects that we would like to be directing the conversation around for our children . . . Parents are very concerned about this idea about gender identity that was never discussed in our public schools, and it is now taking a front row seat in our children's education. And it is affecting everything they do, including for many of our girls, how safe they feel in the bathrooms at their school."
It's not exactly Mein Kampf.
SPLC condemns Moms for Liberty for advocating "for the removal of books that discuss gender identity, racial identity, and sexuality from public school libraries," writes Soave. It also objects to the group for "fighting against mask and vaccine mandates, seeking to abolish the Department of Education, and undermining the influence of teachers unions."
If that's enough to get an organization labeled "extremist," he writes, "then the term extremism has lost all relevant meaning."
When the number of hate groups and the number of anti-government groups declined, SPLC combined the two categories on the "hate map" to make it look scarier, Soave notes. "The most recent hate map lists 1,225 groups, which looks like a massive increase from the previous year, since the map's interactive function prompts viewers to compare it with 2021's 773 hate groups," he writes. "Apparently, antigovernment groups are added and subtracted as necessary to produce the desired totals."
"Moms for Liberty is a chapter-based organization, which means that it can be counted not once but dozens of times," Soave writes. Of 89 Florida groups on the hate map, 28 are Moms for Liberty chapters. The Moms make up 10 of the 72 extremist groups listed in Texas. "No effort is made to distinguish these chapters based on whether prominent members have espoused genuinely hateful views; they're all just extremists, extremists everywhere."