MSNBC has continued its campaign against conservatives, slamming them for opposing the teachings of radical left-wing propaganda in schools, like critical race theory. On Tuesday’s episode of All In, host Chris Hayes brought on NBCNews.com writer Brandy Zadrozny to discuss what they view as “a classic mobilization of right-wing backlash politics that’s really meant to punish and intimidate teachers and educators, administrators, school board members who would deem to discuss racism and white supremacy.”
When discussing a parent’s fight against critical race theory being taught in Maine schools. Zadrozny smeared conservative parents as racist, misinformed individuals who are targeting and endangering school board members. She claimed the Maine parent was:
...on a crusade against what he coins critical race theory, against wokeness, against reverse racism, against all of these sort of invented ideas by conservatives that, you know, teachers in schools are indoctrinated --- indoctrinating children and causing, you know, white kids to feel like they are oppressors or somehow endangering them in that way....And it just turned into this insane thing where now the police are involved, somebody set up a billboard on front of his lawn with school board members. And what it’s really indicative of is that people, school boards, teachers, like you said, are really being targeted.
Zardrozny did not mention that this parent was justifiably concerned about his child’s education because leftist education agendas such as critical race theory and the 1619 Project include numerous historical inaccuracies and paint false pictures of American history and politics.
Hayes and Zardrozny failed to look into the details of the parent’s concerns and shifted the blame to prominent conservative organizations and Donald Trump: “And it’s being left up on by national organizations from the Heritage Foundation, to ALEC, to other groups that have popped up after the Trump presidency to sort of push this American First agenda. And it’s also being, you know, roundly embraced by news organizations, like you mentioned, like Fox News, Breitbart, other right-wing organizations who are just covering this stuff en masse when it’s really a local issue.”
There was no mention of these organization's efforts to defend traditional values and promote education that isn’t based on inaccurate leftist campaigns. These attacks that attempt to discredit conservatives are not surprising as the liberal media continues to spend the majority of its time pushing their radical agenda and villainizing anyone who opposes it.
Also in the segment, Zardrozny belittled the work of the Heritage Foundation through "onerous FOIA requests," which was rather ironic (and pathetic) that a reporter would decry the use of the Freedom of Information Act. But here it was and it was all because she would argue it's being used for a purpose she doesn't agree with.
In response, Heritage published a thread on Thursday that ripped her bad-faith attacks and ended with this mic drop about whether parents have the right to learn what administrators and teachers plan to tell their children: "Do media elites agree that parents should have that right?"
Based on Zardronzy's comments, her answer would be a hard no.
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Below is a transcript of the segment, click "expand" to read:
All In With Chris Hayes
6/15/2021
8:40 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: All right, I’m about to show you a chart and it is not a chart of some massive breakout of COVID somewhere though it does feature exponential growth. This graph represents the number of times the words critical race theory were spoken on Fox News over the last few months, 1300 times, growing every day. Look at that. Critical race theory, as a sort of technical term is basically a set of analytic tools that academics in some fields used starting in law for studying systematic racism in our society. The right has rendered the term meaningless rule over deployment making an injured cultural war rallying cry. Since February, month over month, the mentions the term have more than doubled.
The entire right-wing media machinery has become obsessed whipping up a moral panic almost entirely among white people that their children are being taught toxic truths about America’s long history of racial oppression hierarchy. Now, the history of race in the U.S. is obviously an extremely complicated subject. All kinds of scholarly historical debates about the proper emphasis, stuff I tend to get into myself. But this is really not a debate about all that. Instead, we are seeing just a classic mobilization of right-wing backlash politics that’s really meant to punish and intimidate teachers and educators, administrators, school board members who would deem to discuss racism and white supremacy.
Our colleague Brandy Zadrozny co-authored an incredible piece today on NBC.com about how one disgruntled parent in small-town Maine launched a relentless campaign against school administrators with the help of a national right-wing organizations and Fox News. In an e-mail to the school superintendent last month, he wrote, "This is just the tip of the iceberg on media coming your way and national support aligned with our cause to fight CRT." The next day he appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. Brandy Zadrozny is senior reporter for NBC News, one of the authors of that article, joins me now. Brandy, just tell us about this town and how this all got started.
BRANDY ZADROZN: Well, first of all, I think we’ve watched over 100 hours of school board meetings. So, I’m going to tell you this crazy story. But this is in no way central to this place. It’s in Maine. There was a -- there was a parent who saw that the school board had sent a letter after the murder of George Floyd saying basically we denounce white supremacy. And that single action led this parent on a crusade against what he coins critical race theory, against wokeness, against reverse racism, against all of these sort of invented ideas by conservatives that, you know, teachers in schools are indoctrinated --- indoctrinating children and causing, you know, white kids to feel like they are oppressors or somehow endangering them in that way.
And so that that’s what happened in Maine. And it just turned into this insane thing where now the police are involved, somebody set up a billboard on front of his lawn with school board members. And what it’s really indicative of is that people, school boards, teachers, like you said, are really being targeted by conservative, provocative or is by parents who maybe are fueled with misinformation and by people who want to really sit on the school board. And they’re being targeted for this thing that again, doesn’t truly exist.
HAYES: Right. So, in this case, there was no change in the school curriculum. It was just this letter that used the term white supremacy in the wake of the George Floyd murder. There was I think --- there’s then followed all these FOIA applications up to 50, I think. And that’s where it takes this interesting turn, which is at this one parent who was sort of launching this struggle was getting help from a national organization that is just helping do this everywhere and help file these FOIAs to try to get at these school boards.
ZADROZNY: Yes. So, it’s hard for me as a reporter because I don’t want to put FOILs in a bad light, right? Freedom of Information Laws are wonderful things. But it is in fact, a tactic of national and just hyper -- and fast- growing local organizations to use onerous public records request. So, we’ll see what we saw in Maine is asking for all of these records requests of, you know, how much money did you spend on anything involving race. And then that is used to sort of frame, again, the school board as being --- as paying for CRT, which, again, is just not the case.
And so, that’s what happened there. In Nevada, we saw, again, this local group called Nevada Family Alliance, who was really known for trying to get drag queen story hour stopped at the local libraries, and now she --- one activist there told me that this was the opportunity she had been waiting for. So, she files these onerous FOIA requests, gets them, and then translates them in a way that’s just not correct or accurate in a way to suggest that, again, the school board is coming for your children and teachers are specifically teaching kindergarteners --- white kindergarteners that they’re somehow oppressors. It’s just not really true.
So, onerous FOIA request, school board meetings being showing up in mass and yelling at school board members, all of this is sort of a tactic. And it’s being left up on by national organizations from the Heritage Foundation, to ALEC, to other groups that have popped up after the Trump presidency to sort of push this American first agenda. And it’s also being, you know, roundly embraced by news organizations, like you mentioned, like Fox News, Breitbart, other right-wing organizations who are just covering this stuff en masse when it’s really a local issue.
HAYES: Yes. And that e-mail basically, from that one parent in Maine being like, here it comes and then appearing on Tucker Carlson, like, that is the threat. Like, it’s explicitly like, oh, now we’re going to come for you. This is Jeff Porter, the superintendent of schools in Cumberland, Maine. "I was very naive at the beginning of the year. I thought it was a concerned parent who had taken it a little too far. I didn’t understand this until recently. These are tactics from national organizations to discredit the entire districts." So, you’ve got these like local officials who have now ended up the crosshairs of big national media and organizing, and it’s like, they’re now public enemy number one. Again, not even -- there was no substantive curriculum change in this place. There wasn’t a thing that happened that prompted this, right?
ZADROZNY: Not a thing. No, not at all. It was just someone with a direct line to Tucker Carlson and his producers. And then you can see how long it takes by after --- by that evening, you know, you’ll be on his cable news show sort of promoting this lie. And again, like you said, really targeting and endangering the school board members.
HAYES: Brandy Zadrozny, excellent reporting. You should check it out at NBCNews.com thanks for making. time tonight.
