Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.
But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.
Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.
In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.
Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.
The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.
The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.
“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.
“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”
Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.
Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”
Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.
Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.
“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.
“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”
But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.
Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.
“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.
“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.
“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”
Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.
“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette
