Moms for Liberty, FreePA flagged as ‘antigovernment’ groups by watchdog

• By Brett Sholtis/LNP | LancasterOnline

Moms for Liberty and FreePA, two political groups that have been at the vanguard of Republican politics in Lancaster County since 2021, were labeled on Tuesday as “antigovernment” groups that oppose democracy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center included the two organizations in its annual report on hate and extremism. Both groups have Lancaster County chapters and have been embraced by some Republican elected officials. Critics of the groups say the designation will help spread the word about broader threats to electoral democracy, while defenders accuse the center of playing politics.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an Alabama-based nonprofit legal advocacy group that formed in 1971 and rose to prominence for filing lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. It has also fought against discrimination due to sexual orientation and other violations of civil rights. More recently, it drew attention to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys years before their leaders helped coordinate and participate in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“In the aftermath of Trump’s election loss and the insurrection at the Capitol, the right shifted tactics: Without Trump at the helm, activists have made a concerted effort to organize in the local arena, pursuing their agenda in venues where it is easier to gain power,” the report states.

Schools have been a locus of these attacks following a backlash to COVID-19 public health measures, the report notes. “But they have grown into an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities.”

Moms for Liberty

The Florida-based parental rights group Moms for Liberty features prominently in this year’s report and is identified as one of the most widespread actors at school districts. The center identified 25 Moms for Liberty chapters in Pennsylvania.

Moms for Liberty chapters “combat what they consider the ‘woke indoctrination’ of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group’s views,” Southern Poverty Law Center states. “They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”

That has played out in Lancaster County, where Moms for Liberty has had an outsize influence in shaping school district policies and helping elect candidates.

Chapter Chair Rachel Wilson-Snyder, who lives in Warwick Township, didn’t respond to requests for comment but posted on Facebook about the Southern Poverty Law Center designation on Wednesday.

“This is just another attempt to silence and discredit the effective work we are doing,” Wilson-Snyder wrote. “We will not stop. We cannot stop. Our children are depending on us. A mother’s love and desire to protect her children is the strongest force on earth.”

But Karen Svoboda said the center’s designation will help her group educate people about Moms for Liberty. Svoboda is president and CEO of Defense of Democracy, a nonpartisan, New York-based organization advocating for public schools. The group formed in 2022 in response to attacks against inclusivity.

“I was kind of watching with horror in response to these white, straight Christian groups trying to get their agendas into schools,” Svoboda said. “Now it becomes less of us shouting into a void, and more of us saying, ‘OK, this is what we have to do.’ ”

FreePA

Like Moms for Liberty, FreePA emerged out of opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates. According to its website, the group seeks to educate people about the Constitution and history, organize physical meetings, vet conservative political candidates, push for pro-parental rights educational policies and “support businesses that defy tyranny.”

“FreePA strives to be a constitutionally conservative patriot organization that is filled with people who love our country,” said Danielle Lindemuth, an Elizabethtown Area School District board member who also serves as a point of contact for the group. Lindemuth declined to answer additional questions.

The SPLC places FreePA within “the antidemocratic hard-right movement,” a category it says includes people who “believe the federal government is tyrannical” and “traffic in conspiracy theories about an illegitimate government of leftist elites seeking a ‘New World Order.’ ”

These issues have featured prominently at Lancaster County FreePA meetings, according to the group’s meeting minutes posted online. The group’s website prominently displays videos falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. The group also has shared videos and hosts lectures by people warning against perceived threats of 5G cellphone towers and COVID-19 vaccinations.

Last May, the group featured Tom DeWeese, a conspiracy theorist described by the center as a key figure in the anti-government movement. DeWeese often focuses on a sustainability initiative advocated by the United Nations, suggesting that it’s actually a leftist plot “to destroy America through creeping socialism.”

Criticism of SPLC

FreePA also has hosted Lancaster County’s two Republican County Commissioners, who were quick to defend the group and attack the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“This is a political tactic to try to oppose those groups who they see as conservative,” said Commissioner Josh Parsons, whose photo with FreePA activists is on the group’s website. “And the reason you cite the SPLC’s history, which has a proud history during the civil rights movement, is to try to show you that they have gravitas. But they have changed. It’s now a political organization, and this is simply a political tool. And you then amplify it. Rather than being skeptical about it.”

Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, who spoke at a FreePA gathering in February, downplayed the significance of some of the group’s conspiracy theories while defending people’s rights to share ideas.

“We are dividing ourselves in ways we shouldn’t be dividing ourselves, by labeling people,” D’Agostino said. “It’s dangerous to good public discourse.”

Parsons’ and D’Agostino’s criticisms of the Southern Poverty Law Center mirror ones made about the group by national conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a ‘hate map’ plotting ‘hate groups’ across the United States,” wrote Tyler O’Neil, the managing editor of the think tank’s online publication. “Of course, the map features chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups like the National Socialist Movement, but it also includes a broad swath of conservative organizations whose major crimes amount to disagreeing with the SPLC’s policy positions.”

Critics also often point to the 2019 dismissal of Morris Dees, the center’s longtime leader, over allegations that women and nonwhite staffers at the group were paid less and treated poorly under his leadership.

In discussing FreePA on Wednesday, D’Agostino said he wanted more information about how the center came to its decision to label the group as antigovernment. Responding to a request by LNP | LancasterOnline, Southern Poverty Law Center Senior Research Analyst Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon provided a statement.

“Overall, FreePA trades in the rhetoric and goals of the larger antigovernment movement, fearing UN power and calling their political opponents Marxists and communists,” Wiinikka-Lydon wrote. “They demonize their opponents, attack inclusive education and scapegoat LGBTQ persons, and they work with other organizations to undermine faith in legitimate democratic elections. They have also engaged in extremist activities and with extremism groups, from the January 6th insurrection to Moms for Liberty.”

They have connections to violent extremism demonstrated by their involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Wiinikka-Lydon added. He pointed out that three members of FreePA were arrested for their participation in the Jan. 6 riot, including Sandra Weyer, of Mechanicsburg, who was convicted this week of obstructing Congress’ work and illegally entering the Capitol.

Influential

In Elizabethtown, FreePA members have taken over the local Republican committee and helped get Lindemuth and others elected to the local school board, said school board Vice President Michael Martin.

Martin, who did not seek reelection this year, described himself as a “fiscally conservative lifelong Republican,” and said he feels little in common with the FreePA board members and candidates.

“My concern would be that they are going to potentially embark on a Christian Nationalist agenda that will end up tying up the school district in lawsuits that could really exceed $1 million in legal fees,” Martin said. He pointed to ongoing lawsuits at Central Bucks School District in Bucks County as an example of where that’s already playing out.

Martin wasn’t hopeful that the Southern Poverty Law Center designation would change anyone’s minds on the group. He said people should be concerned about overreach that would especially target LGBTQ+ people.

“They think there’s a liberal bogeyman around every corner, and there just isn’t in Elizabethtown,” Martin said. “So they’re going to put forward solutions in search of a problem.”