By Ryan Cook

In an emotional performance on June 17th, a group of Pennsbury’s “concerned parents” and “taxpayers” echoed the same misleading and politicized rhetoric of right-wing media pundits, QAnon conspiracists, and religious fundamentalists. Nearly every speaker who criticized Pennsbury’s diversity initiative is a member of  “ReOpen Pennsbury”, a Facebook group linked to the broader “Reopen” movement. They shouted and screamed, declaring Pennsbury’s new diversity and equity initiatives to be “Critical Race Theory” or “CRT”. Many of them specifically targeted Pennsbury’s director of Diversity Equity & Education, Dr. Cherrissa Gibson.

“I want you, the school board, to terminate the employment of Dr. Cherrissa Gibson, with immediate effect,” shouts Simon Campbell. “And after you’ve terminated her employment, I want all of you to tender your resignations for hating on this country!” 

-LMT GOP Committeeman Simon Campbell

While their anger may be real, the rhetoric from these parents and other schools across the nation has no basis in reality. As many news outlets have reported, this wave of controlled opposition to so-called “CRT” is all part of a fake political crisis dreamed up by Manhattan Institute fellow Chris Rufo toward the end of the Trump administration. Threats of violence at school board meetings have led some districts like West Chester to switch back to virtual. While Rufo may have helped forge the “anti-CRT'” rhetoric, there was already a prominent right-wing activist infrastructure in place at schools in Pennsylvania. For decades, corporate reformists and religious extremists have been using boogeymen like “CRT”, Common Core and “woke indoctrination” to push for voucher programs and full privatization. This sort of billionaire-funded organizing with a grassroots appearance is known as astroturfing. Together with the corporate lobbying group ALEC and the Heritage Foundation, Rufo hosted a workshop in December of 2020 entitled, “Against Critical Theory’s Onslaught: Reclaiming Education and the American Dream”. Somehow Rufo and other conservative strategists keep saying the “quiet part” of their racist political strategy out loud while news media outlets continue to spread their message without challenge, providing a sense of legitimacy to their manufactured crisis.

Parents Defending Education (PDE) is one of the newest organizations in this political scheme. In his personal blog, Forbes contributor Peter Greene describes the group, “This is not just astroturf, but astroturf with its brown shirt on”. Like many of the literally hundreds of new organizations fighting diversity and equity initiatives, it operates under a cloak of liberalism or nonpartisan branding. PDE’s leadership is connected to the Manhattan Institute and numerous other right-wing “policy institutes” and think-tanks. They worked closely with Parents for In-Person Education (PIPE) to recruit parent volunteers and run candidates in Bucks and the rest of Southeastern PA during the May 18th election.

On July 14th, groups from across Pennsylvania demonstrated in support of the Teaching Racial and Universal Equality (TRUE) Act (HB1532) at the State Capitol. The legislation is designed to be a powerful form of censorship that would essentially make teaching about racism a form of “racism”. The law strips funding from schools who violate it and could paralyze the court system as every complaint against every “controversial” subject at every school would have to be defended in court or result in a loss of public funding. Pennsylvania Reps. Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon) and Barb Gleim (R-Cumberland) introduced the bill in June and some of the main groups involved include “Citizens for Renewing America”, run by Trump’s former OBM director Russ Vought; Freedomworks; Tea Party Patriots; and No Left Turn in Education. Freedomworks led a nationwide tour for its “BEST” organization to help train potential school candidates.

Pennsbury chose to delay the release of their June 17th board meeting video while they claimed it was undergoing “legal review”. Some of the recent board meetings have been edited to remove content Pennsbury claims to be “personally directed, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant”. While there are many well-intentioned reasons for doing this, there are also many reasons to be concerned about the practice. The massive right-wing media machine was quick to promote its own edited versions of the June meeting all while complaining their “free speech” was being oppressed.  Pennsbury eventually released an unedited version of the June video on its website and appear to have stopped removing comments.

Death Cult for COVID becomes Notorious C.R.T. 

“Libertarianism” in the U.S. is a political ideology which primarily associates capitalist property rights and wealth accumulation with “liberty”. The movement has always been strongly influenced by a complex network of billionaire-funded political organizations and think-tanks. The massive amount of funding they receive allows them to provide lots of free activist workshops, training and events. These projects redirect attention away from the real sources of economic exploitation and leverage public outrage to advance a right-wing corporate agenda. 

The “Reopen” movement has many shared roots to the Tea Party of a decade ago. The cultural and economic impacts of the pandemic have been hard on everyone. Many working-class people embraced conspiracy in the face of job loss and isolation/alienation that was exacerbated by COVID restrictions. This is especially true for the business owner class which has historically been a driving element in fascist movements. Many Americans were quick to embrace Trump’s brand of nationalism and authoritarianism. With many people working or staying at home, the GOP and their corporate lobbyist friends have been able to outsource much of their work to volunteer activists.

These groups organize fairly openly on social media and while some mainstream platforms have taken steps to moderate “extremist” content, many users have shifted to networks like Telegram, MeWe, or Gab. These smaller networks create even more dangerous feedback loops of hate and disinformation. QAnon is the newest rebranding of the same anti-Semitic “Blood Libel” and satanic panic the Nazis used to gain power. The QAnon conspiracy has driven many extremists to run for school boards. As Steve Bannon recently stated in his podcast “the path to save the nation is very simple. It’s going to go through the school boards.”

When the pandemic began winding down, GOP operatives and school privatization organizations shifted their focus to causing panic over school diversity and equity programs. This is not solely a Trump/GOP issue however, and the “anti-CRT” mob is somewhat diverse for a movement that is based on Klan politics and nationalism. This collaboration between the religious right, New Atheists, Zionists, white nationalists, “Libertarians”, QAnon conspiracists, anti-vaxxers, conservatives and even liberals serves a variety of political purposes.

Fatu Markey dropped out of the Pennsbury race after she chose not to embrace the CRT hysteria. “After reviewing the results from the primary I simply lack the resources to be competitive against the well-funded, special interest operation,” she wrote on Facebook. Soon after, she posted emails leaked from the Lower Makefield GOP. They found a new candidate, Pirooz Abir who was willing to parrot the talking points about how “CRT” will “divide us”. Pirooz has already been endorsed by the Bucks County chapter of the “Proud American Patriots Network”, a militia group that had planned to protest Central Bucks School District over masking. The militia’s website has a forum with links to files on counterinsurgency and booby-trapping.

Sunlight makes the best disinfectant…

In the August 19th meeting, President Christine Toy-Dragoni opened the meeting with the following statement:

“There is a national, politically driven campaign to misrepresent critical race theory and then conflate critical race theory with any work related to equity. Throughout these last several months, there have been a vocal minority seeking to bring this misrepresentation and conflation to Pennsbury.”

-Pennsbury School Board President Christine Toy-Dragoni

With the new McCarthyism of “CRT” paranoia and the county’s decision to require masking, the rhetoric from the right-wing has changed to encourage a new sort of “white flight”. Some parents are threatening to withdraw from the district and “defund” Pennsbury, seeking virtual charters and private schools instead. This reactionary element is being exploited and exacerbated by the GOP and its constituents in the education reform industry.

My interest is in winning an R majority for school board. Not 1-2 people getting on the school board. I’m talking about 5+ candidates getting on the school board. Anything other than majority control doesn’t interest me. If that’s not looking viable then I won’t waste my time and money in Lower Makefield. I’ll go help the Republicans in Palisades raise money instead.

Simon Campbell – Lower Makefield Township GOP Committeman N3

Liza Martin