First she told viewers that it wasn't being taught in schools, because it was simply a concept for law school discourse. Then she said that parents who objected to it being taught in schools were merely the pawns of right-wing think tanks and funding groups, but her latest attack on those who oppose the pedagogy is that they are QAnon, Trump supporting, white nationalist, evangelical Christians.
She told viewers on Wednesday's The Reid Out, "that Republicans aren't running an election, they are waging an all out war for power that increasingly is based on and steeped in the Trump cult and even white nationalism."
Reid said that the motive of Republicans is to "move white voters." And this she linked to the controversy that is raging in the US about critical race theory and "race conscious education." Race conscious education, she told viewers, is not critical race theory, anyway.
Reid, who has defended and praised Antifa militants, slammed "radicalized parents activists," who she says are "targeting school boards with behind the scenes help from conservative groups." Right-wing media, she said, is to blame for "fear mongering." Tucker Carlson called critical race theory "civilization ending poison," and suggested that teachers wear body cams, as officers do, when they are teaching.
But, Reid said, what's really behind the opposition to critical race theory, and parents' advocacy to stop it, is that Republicans are trying to scare white people into voting for the GOP. To Reid, this has nothing to do with parents demanding equal education and academic standards that aren't based in race essentialism, but is instead simply a political ploy.
"That hysteria over the perceived encroachment of race conscious education," she said, "is being exploited by another insidious force: followers of QAnon." QAnon, she said, is using these parents to "target school boards."
Reid spoke to Ben Collins, and together the two tied up parents' concerns for their kids over masking, critical race theory, and remote schooling, up into a neat little bow. It was the anti-maskers, Collins posits, who were in bed with QAnon, who has now adopted the fight against critical race theory, or as Reid calls it "race conscious education," to try to frighten people.
Collins said that QAnon is simply "riling people up" to get parents "involved in the education of our children" and to vote out current school boards and replace them with, well, better ones.
For Reid and Collins, its insidious that parents should be so intent on running for school board, or on overturning school boards that have so poorly served their children's educational needs throughout the pandemic, and now in race essentialist curriculum.
Reid's argument in favor of the status quo is that the entire push to overturn school boards, and to get divisive teaching practices out of the classroom, is based in a fear that white children "are being polluted by the woke mob."
Reid said that bible study, and evangelical Christianity, is a gateway to QAnon and white supremacy. "Can you talk about the nexus here with evangelical Christians, because that seems to be the target group for QAnon, and for these other militia types?" She asked Collins.
"Yes, specifically with QAnon," Collins said, "people find QAnon because they are tied up in specific things like bible groups, maybe, and they move over from there. By the way they borrow nomenclature. For example: 'the great awakening,' which is the big QAnon — alot of QAnon people thought that's what January 6 was, right? Where everyone would wake up to the fact that there was this cabal of elites, and all this stuff."
"That's not just a QAnon phrase," Collins continued, "that's from evangelical Christianity over the last 20, 30 years. They work symbiotically. That doesn't mean evangelical Christians are QAnon people at all, but it does mean that QAnon people use the cloak of evangelical Christianity," Collins told Reid, who nodded enthusiastically, "as a way to try to y'know mask this as a benevolent movement. But it's effectively a terror movement, yeah."
"Not even effectively!" Reid exclaimed. "I mean, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray it is a domestic terror movement and they are recruiting and radicalizing people, and people need to wake up to it."
Comment: It's a well-worn tactic to tie a newly emerging group to an existing, already smeared group in order to make the two one in the same in the minds of the public. If people who are against critical race theory, or "race conscious education," are perceived as Qanon followers, no one will take them seriously (which is the entire point).
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