New report looks at the changing face of extremist groups in America

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• John Yang:

  Rarely have Americans been as polarized as they are today. And as hate groups edge toward the political mainstream, experts say they're employing new tactics and taking on new forms. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center added 12 conservative parent's rights groups to its list of more than 1,200 extremist hate and antigovernment organizations.

  Among those added Moms for Liberty, a group that works against school curriculums that includes gender, race and LGBTQ, plus topics. Earlier, I spoke with Susan Corke, who leads the team at the SPLC that tracks extremist groups. I asked her why the center ad these organizations to their list.

• Susan Corke, Southern Poverty Law Center:

  We've been tracking the rise of Moms for Liberty and the other. We're calling them anti student inclusion groups. They're trying to claim that they are just engaged parents, but behind their statements, their actions really show different goals. We included them in this year's report because of their anti-government principles. They traffic and conspiracy theories about an illegitimate government. They take actions to censor school discussions around race discrimination, LGBTQ identities.

• John Yang:

  One of the founders, co-founders of. Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, was quoted in the conservative newspaper the Washington Examiner as calling the inclusion of her group on your list absurd and insulting and saying that it paints a target on the backs of American moms and dads. What's your response?

• Susan Corke:

  I am a mother too. I am a mother to a mixed race child. And what Moms for Liberty is trying to do, essentially, is to turn back the hands of time to the pre-civil rights era. This movement that they are now spearheading is not new. They are trying to change curriculum so that we don't cover our hard history of slavery and racism.

  What they want is a public education that prioritizes white cisgender children and other children of color and different gender identities.

• John Yang:

  They're saying that they're a parental rights group. What would they have looked like in the past?

• Susan Corke:

  So following the 1954 landmark and unanimous U.S. Supreme Court Brown versus Board of Education decision, which outlawed, of course, segregation in public schools, that was when the real backlash arose, the birthing of this parental rights movement.

  The groups that arose comprised mostly middle to upper middle class white southerners that were seeking to preserve their segregationist way of life. What we're experiencing right now is this new wave of so called parent's rights advocates that really gained energy during the pandemic rallying together around COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandate in schools. And then they continued on going after critical race theory, going after LGBTQ trans persons.

• John Yang:

  The SPLC in the past has tracked sort of gained notoriety because of Clan Watch. You track groups like the Ku Klux Klan, neo Nazis, other white supremacist groups, and now you're tracking a group that calls itself Moms for Liberty. What does that say to you about how extremist groups have changed their public face, have changed their tactics over time?

• Susan Corke:

  What we have seen is a change in the composition of the hard right since — before Trump was in office. But particularly when he was in office, these hard right groups really had access to mainstream politics. They had direct access to the White House. So they really gained influence.

  In the wake of the insurrection they had to change tactics, and so they started moving to take the mainstreaming and the political influence that they were able to gain within the Republican Party, and they took it to the local level, and they have defined school boards and public education as one of their new battlefields.

• John Yang:

  What can be done, in your view? What should be done in response to groups like this and to combat groups like this? Are there policy changes you'd like to see?

• Susan Corke:

  One thing that we really recommend is that there be much more investment from government at the national level as well as at the state and local level and partnerships, public and private, to be really investing in preventing hate and violence before they occur, hand and hand with community resilience measures and a greater emphasis and funding for inclusive education and teaching our hard history.

• John Yang:

  Susan Corke of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Thank you very much.

• Susan Corke:

  Thank you so much, John. Happy to be here.