Report: US Culture Wars in UK schools
A strategy of creating distrust in educators
On 23 January the Telegraph continued to build a narrative regarding “dangerous ideology” in schools.
As is often the case with culture war stories in schools many more people will read the headline than the full article, which is problematic because near the end of the piece we discover that parents aren’t being blocked by schools from seeing resources.
Culture war stories focused on schools generally have a consistent format, platforming the relevant; often opaque lobby groups who have usually generated the story through misrepresentation.
There are a number of MPs and Peers who are willing to amplify the stories by proving quotes to papers or asking questions in Parliament. The stories match their confirmation bias so they won’t check for accuracy leading to discussions in Parliament on issues that aren’t actually occurring.
Suspended MP Andrew Bridgen's championing of the anti-vax movement is an extreme example of this.
While claims are made of a sex education “wild west” with evidence of “adult ideology” that is “doing them harm”, a solid example of this evidence has yet to have been provided.
It appears this story has come from Baywater, an organisation to support parents of trans children. Their website links to other organisations known to be hostile to the trans community such as Transgender Trend, and a graphic on their website seems to suggest trans identity is a mental health condition.
There are many similarities with this to support for gay conversion therapy and the implication made that PSHE lessons make children become trans is reminiscent of the 1980s and section 28 that banned the “promotion of homosexuality”. Baywater regularly appear in the UK media and only ever represent the parents of trans children not the children themselves, they have been described as a vehicle for parents who wish to prevent their children transitioning by any means nessecery.
John Denning of the Christian Institute also mades claims about concerning RSE resources but once again without providing any examples.
The Christian Institute is a fundamental Christian lobby group that opposed the repeal of section 28, civil partnerships, the ban of gay conversion therapy and abortion laws. They recently held a joint event with Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with Frank Furedi of Living Marxism/Spiked Online as a speaker.
Miriam Cates MP has become a conduit for many culture war groups to gain parliamentary representation. A vice chair of the covid recovery APPG whose secretariat are members of the covid disinformation group HART, she has repeatedly called for an end to offering covid vaccinations for children, even leading a debate in Westminster Hall on behalf of UsForThem. Cates also makes the claim of “sexually explicit and damaging materials” without evidencing any examples.
This narrative is a reoccurring theme in the UK media, the impression that schools are unsafe due to dangerous ideology and indoctrination going on. The steady drip drip of this articles had been increasing and the narrative is shifting from simple outrage to calls to police lesson plans. As demonstrated by several articles in The Times last summer.
It began with other accusations of secret plans, however The Times failed to mention the outraged parent was a writer for Don’t Divide Us, an organisation with its own links to Toby Young’sFree Speech Union and the Living Marxism crowd.
Someone who was working at the school at the time informed the Counter Disinformation Project that the lesson in question was a zoom lesson taught during lockdown, the school was so determined to keep the lesson secret that they projected it into living rooms where parents could watch. Despite this Claire Page the parent at the centre of this story has set up her own campaign group which was effectively launched via the Murdoch owned The Times.
The Don’t Divide Us organisation was established in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 as a counter to the wider BLM and decolonisation movement. Like the anti-trans movement which has a cluster of astroturf groups like Safer Schools, LGB Alliance, Transgender Trend and Baywater, Don’t Divide Us also has a cluster of groups all linked to the Free Speech Union and the Living Marxism crowd. This cluster includes Free Speech Champions that seeks to recruit school students to set up Free Speech chapters in every school to “challenge woke ideology” and the Equiano Project founded by former Brexit Party candidate and Inaya Folarin and her fellow GB News presenter Calvin Robinson who misrepresents himself as an Anglican priest on Carlson Tucker's show.
Don’t Divide Us follows a path well trodden in the US by Koch Network astroturfs, providing a guide for parents on how to investigate their schools for Marxists seeking to indoctrinate children with hard left ideology and Critical Race Theory. Without providing any evidence Don’t Divide Us claims indoctrination is rife in schools particularly those in urban areas.
The guide includes demands to review and edit lesson plans, and also to provide alternative reading materials which includes books by Douglas Murray of the Free Speech Union who has said that Islam is incompatible with Western Democracy.
Thread covering these groups in more detail.
This appears to be reheating language from the 1980's and elements of McCarthyism in regards to scare stories about Critical Race Theory and "Marxist indoctrination". Articles like the examples given are defamatory towards educators and minority groups, accusing people of grooming children with harmful content is pitched to provoke outraged reactions and it leads to real world abuse.
A few years ago their were protests outside a primary school regarding a new RSE curriculum being introduced, claims were made by the protestors that young children were being taught about masturbation and anal sex, these claims were repeated across the media and by politicians, however the school had made the teaching resources public and the actual extent of the lessons was to explain about respecting personal body space and that there are a number of variations on the nuclear family including single parents, step parents, and same sex parents. Sexual acts were never discussed.
While free speech warriors claim they are just calling for balance and for both sides to be heard, in reality the war on woke consists of a lot of hypocrisy.
The Free Speech Union claims it opposes all forms of cancel culture in particular forcing people out of their jobs but they celebrated the resignation of a universities vice-chancellor citing their own campaign being the cause. This is after the vice-chancellor had even given in to their demands.
The Free Speech Union has considerable influence among Conservative MPs, members were even involved in writing the higher education Free Speech bill.
Another example of the influenceof these culture war groups is the Online Harms bill which provides a perfect example of the cognitive dissonance on display. Free Speech advocates, such as Miriam Cates pressed to have measures in the bill regarding harmful content watered down in the name of free speech, she also opposed PayPal blocking the accounts of a number of organisations that have been responsible for covid disinformation including claims that could be considered to be inciting abuse and potentially violence such as calling for policy makers and healthcare workers to be put on trial. The government is considering changes to the Finance Bill that under the banner of free speech would prevent private companies like PayPal from withdrawing their services, effectively overriding their conditions of use.
However after celebrating the watering down of measures in the Online Harms bill to tackle harmful content Cates then tabled an amendment to the bill calling for the leaders of social media companies to be fined and imprisoned if children are able to access harmful content on their platforms.
In a political and media environment where inaccurate outrage stories are setting the narrative there is a danger regarding what might end up being labelled as harmful content. Could we see LGBT+ organisations included alongside child abuse, pro suicide and pro anorexia content?
Cates and many supporters of her ammendment's say that recommending children wear masks is a form of child abuse and the offer of covid vaccinations was harmful coercion. While the feasibility of these proposals are in question, there’s nothing wrong with the principle of holding tech companies to account, however what ends up being categorised as harmful could prove problematic.
In the US books have are a battleground and it appears this is beginning to happen in the UK too.
Republican politicians across the US are banning books in schools at the behest of culture war outfits running remarkably similar campaigns to their UK equivalents.
In some cases it’s gone as far as book burnings, this book burning was led by Bill Cook founder of the Christian militia the Black Robe Regiment and a member of Truth For Health covid disinformation organisation which peddles unproven treatments.
It’s difficult to imagine the UK reaching the level of burning book for promoting witchcraft, particularly when JK Rowling combative attitude towards the trans community has gained her a lot of culture war supporters, however the vetting of books and teaching resources is clearly on the agenda of the culture war organisations being platformed in the UK media.
Under the guise of free speech and child protection, the radical right seeks to dictate what can be taught in our schools.
Again Florida provides an example of what politicial interference looks like.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3821500-desantis-sparks-outrage-with-rejection-of-african-american-studies-class/
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/floridas-dont-say-gay-law-takes-effect-schools-roll-lgbtq-restrictions-rcna36143
This won’t just be an issue in the US and the UK, as with covid disinformation, culture wars are an international project for the radical right.
These single issue groups all add up to an infodemic assault, the end result of which isn’t a paradise of free speech but a stifling of any voices and expression that has been labelled as “woke”.
It should come as no suprise that Toby Young and the Living Marxism/Spiked crowd are playing a central role in fostering culture war organisations, ever since the Revolutionary Communist Party's reinvention in the early 2000s they’ve been a vehicle for advancing the CNP/Koch agenda in the UK alongside the Tufton Street think tanks. Frank Furedi was even a speaker at the Hungarian CPAC last year
