How right-wing extremists weaponize the idea of motherhood

[Algernon Moncrieff]

MSNBC

But above all, women have historically engaged in extremist movements through their domestic roles and identities as wives, daughters and mothers. They use these roles to support “backstage” activities — like sewing KKK hoods, cooking meals for gatherings and home-schooling children — but also to mobilize men as “protectors” of their purity and vulnerability in the face of a range of purported threats.

Motherhood plays an especially key role in the kinds of rhetorical strategies far-right extremists use, including the kinds of “utopian propaganda” that calls on followers to reject modernity and embrace “traditional values” and roles. But women aren’t called upon to be entirely passive as mothers, or to be relegated completely to domestic tasks. Rather, motherhood is used to justify women’s engagement in activism and to “depoliticize” their actions by positioning them as acting on behalf of their children and families.

Themes about the need to protect children are especially powerful in drawing women into extreme and even violent action, as illustrated by the rise of conspiracy theories and propaganda that mobilize mothers around themes of child exploitation and protection. Some women have been drawn into QAnon through relatively banal entry points like wellness blogs and yoga studios, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. In these spaces, healthy skepticism of traditional medicine and a propensity for alternative models of wellness can create inadvertent gateways to entire rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and disinformation, much of which calls on women to protect children.

Mom lifestyle influencers who have embraced the QAnon conspiracy have integrated posts about child trafficking into their regular content feeds with home decorating, cooking and child rearing tips, a challenge for parenting website editors, who have reported an uptick in conspiracy theory posts.