In a segment that further illustrated her deep-seated racism and a juvenile yet repugnant disgust for any human who disagrees with her, MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid used Wednesday’s show to insist that concerned parents and citizens who’ve spoken out at school board meetings over anti-racist and critical race theory curriculums were part of an “insidious underbelly of the GQP culture war” led by white people who were “steeped in...white nationalism” and QAnon.
With help from bad-faith actor and NBC reporter Ben Collins (who sees QAnon around seemingly every corner), Reid spent another evening implying conservatives and Republicans were enemies of the people and white people crippled in fear that hoards of Black people will steal and inflict pain upon their children.
Reid began by warning of an expansion in “the insidious underbelly of the GQP culture war” serving as a contrast to Democrats being focused on working for the American people and winning the midterms. However, she said they risk “running headlong into a culture woodchipper because Republicans aren't running an election.”
Without a hint of irony, Reid said the right has “wag[ed] an all-out war for power that increasingly is based on and steeped in the Trump cult and even white nationalism” in hopes white voters will shriek at the idea of “race-conscious education.”
Portraying yet another movement as astroturf, Reid gaslit viewers by saying “[r]adicalized parent activists across the country are targeting school boards with behind the scenes help from conservative groups” and conservative media (click “expand”):
So, the goal now is to terrify those white voters into voting for a party that is offering nothing on policy. Zip, zero, nothing. By zeroing in on the amygdala of white suburbanites and scaring the hell out of them that Black Americans are conspiring to pollute their precious childrens’ minds with dangerous knowledge and then turn them into woke future Democrats.
And in the wake of the disgraced, twice-impeached President’s defeat, that hysteria over the perceived encroachment of race-conscious education is being exploited by another insidious force. Followers of QAnon, who are now using the battle cry to similarly target school boards, with many who have espoused QAnon theories now melding their own conspiracies with the lies about critical race theory.
Collins laid out what he saw as a coordinated conspiracy, arguing that outrage at school boards began with parents opposing masks mandates and — gasp — wanting their children back in schools for in-person instruction (and away from the disastrous distancing learning). With COVID waning, Collins said that race-based curriculum simply became their new focus.
Collins then brought up how the outlandish and dangerous QAnon movement has supposedly been running the show with right-of-center school board candidates doing so because of Mike Flynn and QAnon message boards. This led Reid to argue it reminds her of those who fought Reconstruction (click “expand”):
COLLINS: And what we’ve seen is QAnon followers going to these meetings, seeing this big public spectacle. Some of these things are on YouTube, so they can go up there and give these big speeches about the kabal or something and they can say, “hey, we need to rile people up. We need to get people ready to take over these school boards over the next year.” They’ll post that, by the way, on their Instagram later on. But that’s the point. They are using Michael Flynn's rally crying to, you know, take over the school boards. Run for school board. Run for public office, he said. He said we need to get involved in the education of our children. And right now, on the top of the biggest QAnon message board, that's what you'll see. You'll see the quote from Mike Flynn saying run for school board.
REID: Yeah. And I mean, the thing is the sort of through line here is to say that, essentially, white America's children are being polluted, their minds, their bodies by the woke mob, by the left, by the multicultural party and that that’s a threat. It sounds very much like the Reconstruction era when, like, the black and tan Republicans were a threat because they were this multi-racial coalition that was polluting the minds of white women and children. It's very 1860s.
If that wasn’t enough, Collins and Reid suggested that QAnon had infiltrated evangelical Christianity, so not only should school boards be on the lookout for those parents who dare to inquire about what their kids were learning, but also those devilish Christians!
Reid wouldn’t let go of her semantics that CRT wasn’t being taught in schools but race-based education was, telling Kentucky senatorial candidate Charles Booker (D) that incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R) and the Republican Party were so racist that they want restaurants to be able to ban Black people.
It’s stating the obvious, but Reid did little to help Booker in Kentucky with her assertions that those speaking out at school board meetings believe “white children's minds and bodies are being attacked by black people” who want to feed them to “Satan-worshipping pedophiles” (click “expand”):
The thing is, when — when Rachel Maddow interviewed him in 2010, he couldn't say restaurants should not be able to discriminate against people because they are black. He tried to do all these analogies — “well, what if you say you don’t want guns in your restaurant?” As if somebody coming in with a gun who could kill people is the same as a black person coming in to have a pie, right? So — but — so, that's Rand Paul's strategy.
To me it feels very much like we're in the Reconstruction era again, right? The idea is that Republicans are saying that white children's minds and bodies are being attacked by black people that want to steal their history and make them ashamed of being white and they want to, you know, make them vulnerable to this kabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. It’s very Reconstruction Era. How the hell do you beat someone in a state that has only seven percent African-Americans. You’re going to have to win white voters in order to win, Charles. How do you do this when they are being hit with this every day?
Following a Howard Beale-like charade mocking her critics as white people deathly afraid of people of color, Reid fired off another galaxy-brain take by claiming that, during a segment about the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Republicans want to ban the teaching of both Haitian history and the Louisiana Purchase.
Put simply, this rhetoric smearing parents who don't want their kids to hurt themselves because they'll wish they were never born is going to get someone hurt. With Collins and Reid hurling such invective against parents who say the rhetoric from teachers and their union isn’t right, it's only a matter of time.
Reid’s insistence that those who simply want a voice in their children's education are QAnon supporters was made possible thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of advertisers such as Crown Royal, HughesNet, Kayak, Liberty Mutual, and Prevagen. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from July 7, click here.
