Moms for Liberty's hate group label riles fellow conservatives

The right-wing group Citizens Defending Freedom employed the old "I know you are but what am I?" defense Thursday, attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center for being the real haters.

A vocal advocate for anti-transgender legislation, Citizens Defending Freedom took aim at the Alabama-based civil rights watchdog group after the SPLC categorized Moms for Liberty as an extremist organization. James Judge, spokesman for Citizens Defending Freedom, sent this statement:

The SPLC itself is the actual ‘hate group’ here, and frankly a terror organization. It is absolutely absurd that they would list a parental rights organization alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, when Moms for Liberty's mission is to ensure that parents have a say in their children's public school education, which of course is funded with taxpayer dollars from those parents. The SPLC has caused more real-world hate and violence than Moms for Liberty ever could, all because of the labels it recklessly slaps on ordinary conservative organizations.

Founded in Montgomery in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center aims to champion the plight of the poor and powerless. The SPLC keep a watchlist of organizations fueling racism, division and hate, and this week, they added Moms for Liberty.

Moms for Liberty launched in Florida just a few years ago and has spread quickly, organizing parents to push back against pandemic-era precautions including mask mandates and school shutdowns. Post-pandemic, Moms for Liberty members are among the loudest voices in the many campaigns to scrub children's library shelves of books on sex education, systemic racism and gender identity.

Arkansas Moms for Liberty took a PR hit in 2022 after one of its members, Missy Bosch, mused about gunning down a school librarian at a meeting in Cabot. Audio recordings of the meeting went viral. Bosch wasn't criminally charged, but Cabot Public Schools officials limited her access to school campuses.

Moms for Liberty is on a winning spree of late, though. A member of a Northwest Arkansas chapter, Kristen Hargett, scored a coveted spot on the "parental empowerment/school choice" working group formed to help determine how Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ far-reaching Arkansas LEARNS Act will be implemented.

And Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva will be a featured speaker at the Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia this summer.

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