"Concerned Parents" & the Not So Stealthy Rise of Modern Fascism
A clean cut white man in his twenties spoke into a hand-held microphone, telling everyone that the group he was with was not acting in hate. Belying this message was a mass of bearded men standing in front of him wearing “Leave Our Kids Alone” t-shirts shouting “F*gg**s! Pedophiles! Groomers!” at the small crowd of counter protesters who gathered with rainbow flags. One of the L.O.K.A. men grabbed his crotch, thrusted it, and shouted “Here’s what will fix you, you f*gg*t!” at a petite female counter protester.
Calling themselves “concerned parents” this fascist mob had gathered to protest Glendale Unified School District’s support of Gay Pride Month.
The fascists got violent. Police began kettling the pro-LGBTQ, anti-fascist counter protesters. I had friends among them. They left in groups to avoid being attacked by the small bands of fascist looking men who were lurking in the area watching the pro LGBTQ crowd, especially those who looked femme or female.
Why does this matter?
I’m a middle aged straight white man with no kids. Why do a bunch of Proud Boys in Glendale threatening to sexually assault activists while pretending to be concerned parents matter to me?
We white liberals seem to think of the far right as a bunch of separate collections of single-issue extremists who might be ill-mannered to the point of being offensive.
They’re not extremists, though, but mainstream. 74 million US citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020. 46% of the voting public is not a “fringe group”.
And those single-issue groups have coalesced.
Modern Fascism
Modern US fascism is a far-right, authoritarian political ideology that centralizes power, suppresses opposition through force, and seeks to instill a collective identity among its citizens based on nationality, race, or culture. It also delights in hypocrisy.
It's kind of an umbrella group that pulls in QAnon white lady yoga hippies from the west side, granola eating health food hippie anti-vaxxers, ableist anti-maskers who think the pandemic is over and that disabled and other vulnerable people need to just stay-the-fuck-home so that the rest of us can return to normal.
All of this is straight up eugenics.
And here in SoCali are the don't-tread-on-me skater punks and surfers, all of whom we tend to think of as liberal, maybe because the punks once hated Reagan, 40 years ago.
We all know someone whose "best friends are gay" (or maybe are gay themselves) who seem to have embraced transphobia in a big way.
And then there are those who complain about "cancel culture", which means they are actually complaining about white folks being criticized for racism and/or rape apologia by people, often women of color, who are similarly exercising their right to free speech.
All of these groups have one thing on common: they advocate systems of supremacy. There’s white supremacy, ableist supremacy, male supremacy, straight supremacy, Christian supremacy. And ultimately they all want to take away the rights of everyone else - take away civil rights, take away women’s rights, take away LGBTQ rights, take away the right to medical care for disabled people and for trans people… all of which lead to the premature death of everyone but them.
Modern fascism is a death cult.
Among the people whose premature deaths they support are friends and family, including my sisters, cousins, nephews, and wife.
Look around. Listen to your friends and acquaintances. Watch their posts on social media. Are they, or were they, complaining about mask mandates? Do they mutter about trans-women beating “real women” in sports? Do they complain about “cancel culture” stifling their free speech? Do they make complain about modern “woke” standards, and say “woke” as an epithet? Are they “just asking questions” or “playing devil’s advocate”? Do they listen to Joe Rogan? Are they considering a vote for RFK Jr?
All those friends we dismiss as contrarians, tolerating their views with an uneasy laugh, are in fact converging under the banner of modern fascism.
The far right isn’t really that far anymore.
Saticoy Elementary, North Hollywood
June is Pride Month.
It began with someone burning a Pride Flag that flew on the edge of campus at Saticoy Elementary in North Hollywood, 22 miles away. Police began an investigation as a possible hate crime.
A group of “concerned parents” formed an anti-LGBTQ Instagram account.
A trans man teacher became the target of attacks.
The “concerned parents” blamed the teacher for having suddenly “decided to stir things up and make his private sexual business our kids,” citing no evidence of the teacher stirring anything up.
Fascists showed up to protest Pride and LGBTQ rights, most of them burly guys with beards wearing “Leave our kids alone” t-shirts. Pro LGBTQ, anti-fascist counter protesters also showed up. The protests turned violent when the police stepped aside and allowed the fascists to attack the anti-fascists, in a repeat of what we saw during George Floyd protests and anti-mask protests throughout the country.
Thus far the Glendale and North Hollywood school boards have not surrendered to the anti-LGBTQ fascists. Thirty miles east in Chino, and south of Chino in Temecula, they have.
Chino Valley - 30 miles away.
A few weeks ago, the Chino Valley School Board held a public meeting, and voted on a proposal that would force the outing of queer kids to their parents.
A number of people - students, parents, supporters of human rights, showed up to speak, and to protest the vote. A bunch of folks in “Leave Our Kids Alone” t-shirts showed up to support the vote. As always there were a few Proud Boys and Jan 6 insurrectionists among the “concerned parents.”
Tony Thurmond, the CA State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who is Black, was the first member of the public to speak. Thurmond argued against the proposal. When he hit the minute mark, his mic was cut off and School Board chief Sonja Shaw launched a personal attack, her voice rising in rage "We’re here because of people like you! You’re in Sacramento proposing things that pervert children! You’re not going to blackmail us!"
When Thurmond returned to the podium to respond to Shaw’s attacks, Shaw yelled "This is not your meeting! You may have a seat because if I did that to you in Sacramento, you would not accept it! You are not going to blackmail us!" She called for his ejection from the meeting.
Armed security quickly surrounded the CA State Superintendent of Public Instruction and escorted him out.
Watch the video.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement and sent a letter to Chino Valley USD letting the School Board know that the proposal violates California’s anti-discrimination law.
Shaw and the reset of the school board don't care. Their intention seems to be to directly challenge the state by violating state laws in hopes of overturning them.
"Oh yeah? Well, if a woman talks to me like that, that's how you're supposed to answer!"
Sonja Shaw ejected yet another LGBTQ activist and speaker from the meeting. “Fuck you!” said the activist as police escorted her to the door.
"Oh yeah? Well come over here and fuck me" replied a bearded man in a Leave Our Kids Alone t-shirt, grabbing his crotch in a rapey gesture.
"You don't talk to women like that" someone shouted.
"Oh yeah? Well, if a woman talks to me like that, that's how you're supposed to answer!"
Just another “concerned parent.”
“If these people could, they would kill us”.
I had friends in attendance at the meeting.
"I felt depressed for days after being there. If these people could, they would kill us," said one.
Franklin, Tennessee, 2021
How did a handful of "Christian moms" trying to ban Critical Race Theory all the way over in Tennessee suddenly became Pride flag burnings and hate crimes at Saticoy Elementary in North Hollywood, just 12 miles away from my front porch?
Let's roll back to 2021, Franklin, Tennessee, when what Reuters called "a group of local women calling themselves 'Moms for Liberty'" started protesting teaching about racism, saying that teaching about racism in America's past meant teaching "that one particular race is intrinsically racist." (Hey, if the shoe fits...).
Franklin Tennessee is a rich, very conservative, very "Christian" suburb of Nashville that is 82% white. A Confederate monument sits in the town square, which was the site of an antebellum slave market and the 1888 lynching of a Black man by the Ku Klux Klan.
This kind of stuff is exactly what I expect from a place like Tennessee.
Two years later, 15 states have banned teaching kids about racism or anything that causes white folks discomfort. Bans were attempted in another six states, and are being considered in another 19 states, including reliably "liberal" New York.
California is one of only eight states that have not yet considered banning the honest teaching of American history and/or LGBTQ rights. People in Glendale, Chino Valley, Temecula, and North Hollywood are trying to change that, and it’s spreading all around the southland.
Moms For Liberty
The Moms for Liberty are not a local group of concerned mothers.
They are a Florida based anti-government organization that Southern Poverty law Center has labelled a hate group.
Formed by a trio of Florida school board members, they began as an anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-covid-protocols group and have since branched out to be an anti-student-inclusion, anti-CRT, pro-racist, and anti-trans group claiming to be a "parents rights" organization.
They are tight with the Proud Boys. They quote Hitler in their newsletters.
Woke as the new N-word
"We must fight 'the woke’ in our schools. We must fight 'the woke’ in our businesses. We must fight 'the woke’ in government agencies,” declared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. "We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology. And I’ll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die."
“Woke” has a long history in Black vernacular, as Ishena Robinson, Deputy Editorial Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund writes.
The word originates with Marcus Garvey, and by the early 1960s, was synonymous with being Black. About 15 years ago, the use was either expanded or diluted to include all social justice movements. And once that started to threaten mainstream white folks, it became a pejorative.
Nowadays folks on the right spit it out with contempt. It’s the new coded replacement for the N-word. And it’s also synonymous with “f*gg*t” and other words that can’t be flung about in polite company.
So when Ron DeSantis says “Florida is where WOKE comes to die,” what he is really saying is…
Florida’s New Educational Guidelines
Florida's new education guidelines for teaching African American history include the noxious claim that Black people benefitted from slavery by "developing skills that could be applied for their personal benefit."
These guidelines, which include 190 other "facts", some almost as offensive, were put in place by Florida's board of education. Florida is 46% non-hispanic white, 27.5% Hispanic, and 25% Black. The board of education is 100% white.
This is part of Ron DeSantis' "Stop WOKE Act".
The new Florida "facts" taught in schools say that slavery was common around the world, that white Americans were responsible for putting an end to it, that human enslavement was simply one of a number of labor systems, and didn't involve racism or violence.
Yeah, but Florida is really far away from Silverlake, right? That stuff will never take hold here. Except it already has. Tallahassee, Florida may be 2,253 miles from my front porch, but Temecula is only 83 miles away. Chino Valley is 31 miles away.
Chino Valley and the Calvary Chapel mega-church
Chino Valley is just south of Pomona, at the intersection of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties.
There are five members on the Chino Valley school board. Four of them had their elections financed by Calvary Chapel Church. Unlike campaigns for other elected offices, there is no limit to the size of campaign contributions for school board elections.
The anti-trans parental notification rule that the Attorney General said broke California law passed by a 4 to 1 vote, along Calvary Chapel financed lines.
The Calvary Chapel evangelical mega-church’s leader, Jack Hibbs, has bluntly told the board they need to listen to him or face the consequences. Three of the four fundamentalist members of the school board are members of the Calvary Chapel, and there have been past lawsuits involving turning the school board meetings into tent revivals as well as the school board’s war against state laws protecting trans youth.
Who are Jack Hibbs and Calvary Chapel Mega-Church?
Calvary Chapel was founded in Costa Mesa in 1965 by Chuck Smith, and soon became the center of the hippie and surfer focused Jesus Movement, thanks to charismatic and influential preacher Lonnie Frisbee, who led countless hippies to evangelical Christianity in the late 1960s before being expelled for homosexuality.
“With a sincere concern for the lost, Pastor Chuck made room in his heart and his home for a generation of hippies and surfers” says the Church’s website.
The Church’s logo is the white dove of peace, popularly associated with 1960s counter culture and the anti-war movement.
There is nothing peaceful or counter culture about Calvary Chapel, and Calvary Chapel preacher Jack Hibbs is a particularly loud and violent fundamentalist.
Jack Hibbs claims to be the survivor of a failed coat-hanger abortion.
His stated goal is to break down the barriers between Church and state. He intends to force a showdown between Chino Valley School District and the State of California, and he’s ready to take this fight to the Supreme Court if that’s where it’s got to go.
The folks running Calvary Chapel know all about “groomers”. They have a history of protecting them. As always, it seems that priests and ministers are much more inclined to molest children than drag queens and trans women and men are.
Jordan Henry and Glendale
Jordan Henry is a nice looking young white man who as an associate landscape architect for the City of Los Angeles and lives in Highland Park, the posterchild of gentrification. When he ran for Glendale City Council, his campaign stressed environmentalism and other wholesome, left tilting stuff. The only red flag his endorsement by the Glendale Police.
He is a modern fascist with a violent hatred for LGBTQ rights.
He is Proud Boy affiliated. On his violent social media posts he tags far right groups Gays Against Groomers, Libs of TikTok, and Moms for Liberty.
Henry is the man spearheading the attacks on the Glendale Unified School District. With him are folks who were part of the Jan 6 insurrection, like Tony Moon. None of them have kids enrolled in Glendale Unified School District. They’re just there because they hate. For them, hatred is a sport.
Vote Blue No Matter Who?
My liberal friends have the same solution for everything: vote.
We did vote. We elected Joe Biden as President. Still, Donald Trump, who was voted out of office, remains the most important man in US politics today.
Moms for Liberty were founded during the Biden presidency.
Jordan Henry lost his election for Glendale City Council. We voted and made sure he finished 7th out of 8 candidates.
Like Donald Trump, losing the election hasn’t stopped him.
What can we do besides vote?
We need to stop acting so helpless. We need to understand how real this threat actually is. And we need to stop depending on BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disabled people to save us, over and over again, by putting their bodies and their lives on the line, especially when the most we give in return is a stern admonition to be patient, eventually we’ll get to your issues, but first we need to win over white centrists, vote-blue-no-matter-who.
We need to join the protests, to be out there to show people that we really are allies. To be an ally means to be an accomplice, a helper, a collaborator who fights injustice and promotes equity. An ally is not a spectator who posts the occasional meme and engages with his “just asking questions” buddies on facebook.
And despite the fact that so many of us believe our calling in life is to be middle or upper management, our “leadership” skills are not what is needed. Our bodies are: our bodies between the fascist masquerading as a “concerned parent” and the trans-activist the fascist is threatening to assault is what is needed.
There is a place for everyone in this resistance.
This is so intense and such important information. Honestly, terrifying. How’s the name ‘Moms for liberty’ for some stellar hypocrisy. I agree millions upon billions of Protestors! It’s Now or NEVER🥲