Anne Lutz Fernandez notes that MAGA has time in their campaign to go after a favorite class of villain– teachers.
A well-funded propaganda effort that intensified with MAGA’s rise has depicted teachers as a dangerous force exerting outsized power over America’s children. Panic about teachers “indoctrinating” and “brainwashing” students on behalf of alarming causes—and actively hiding it from parents—is standard fare on sites such as Heritage Foundation’s and The Federalist and across the Murdoch universe. Social media teems with activists, acolytes, bots, and trolls echoing the fear-mongering.
Legacy political media tends to frame this activity as part of culture wars designed to garner votes, and so it seemed around the 2022 midterms. The GOP exploited fears around children and schools and frustrations with pandemic schooling to win gubernatorial and legislative seats and politicize traditionally nonpartisan school boards, an effort that continues this cycle.
Both Trump and Vance are smearing teachers on the campaign trail. At a recent rally, Vance positioned himself as a warrior against school “indoctrination.” Earlier comments of his incorporate the conspiratorial tone and personal attacks typical of far-right groups like Moms for Liberty and attack dogs like Christopher Rufo and Corey DeAngelis:
“Randi Weingarten—who’s the head of the most powerful teacher’s union in the country—she doesn’t have a single child,” Vance said. “If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” said the father of three biological children. “…That really disorients me. And it really disturbs me.”
Language suggesting teachers are coming after children to possess them has become common: “They think your kids belong to them.” This line of attack is increasingly bizarre, like Trump’s imagining that educators have the power not just to rewire children’s minds but to reshape their bodies. More than once, he’s lied that schools are performing secret sex-change surgeries on kids:
Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?
It sounds like a pitch for a sick MAGA remake of the mid-century witch hunt film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
