Topic: WorldNetDaily
If the Media Research Center and CNSNews.com were going to glom onto the false story that a national school board group depicted all parents who spoke up at school board meetings about right-wing culture-war issues as "domestic terrorists," you can bet that WorldNetDaily -- whose standards for accuracy are much lower than that of the MRC and CNS -- wanted in on that bogus action too. Bob Unruh embranced the false narrative in an Oct. 5 article:
Only days ago the National School Board Association asked Joe Biden to use federal anti-terror laws against parents who are protesting – and fighting – the leftist agendas of their school boards, who want to install Critical Race Theory and other indoctrination in classrooms.
Now the administration has responded with orders from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI to move against those parents.
Without citing any instance of criminal activity, he cited a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff."
Later that day, Art Moore advanced the narrative:
True to form, the "mama bear" mothers and the fathers who have been passionately speaking out at school-board meetings against "woke" curricula and mask mandates have something to say to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the National School Boards Association for effectively branding them as domestic terrorists.
"I am what a domestic terrorist looks like?" asked Asra Nomani, vice president of investigations and strategy for the non-profit Parents Defending Education. "You owe parents an apology!"
Her group, in a statement Monday night, accused activists of "weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice."
"This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America's underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced," the statement said.
Unruh returned two days later with a dubious conflict-of-interest attack on Garland in which he repeated the false narrative:
Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, who recently unleashed a formal Department of Justice attack on parents opposing extremist ideas like Critical Race Theory in their public schools, is being accused of a conflict of interest for his agenda.
It's because his son-in-law runs a company that sells products to school districts, and those products apparently include data tools involving surveys that gauge students' "emotional and mental wellbeing" as well as surveys on sexuality and promotions of CRT, which claims that all of the United States is racist, all whites are offenders, and all blacks are victims.
Another Oct. 7 article by Unruh regurgitated an attack on an Associated Prsss fact-check about the National School Boards Association letter about the threats by dishonest anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, in which he deliberately misrepresents the letter by falsely claiming its warnings applied to all parents. As we've noted, even the MRC couldn't find anyplace where the group explicitly stated that parents were "domestic terrorists" simply for speaking out.
Chuck Norris ratcheted up the lie in his Oct. 11 column while repeating Fox News' alarmist take on the story:
Watching an episode of Tucker Carlson this past week, I was shocked to learn that the Biden administration is making plans to actually deploy FBI agents to round up American parents in every state who are disagreeing with public school boards.
Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to address what he called a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence" against educators and school board members.
[...]
Are American parents now domestic terrorists because they disagree and dissent? Are parents really a national security threat? The feds are potentially criminalizing parenting because of protests!
How excessive is federal government overreach when American parents can't even disagree with school officials about subjects pertaining to their children that they conscientiously object to? Will the American public tolerate every breech of the federal government, even when the Biden administration gets it wish for the IRS to track every bank account with $600?!
At least Norris felt just enough shame that he added, "Let me state categorically that any acts or threats of violence against school board members are wrong."
Unruh came back again for an Oct. 12 article:
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is improperly chilling Americans' speech with his attack on parents, according to prominent legal commentator Alan Dershowitz.
Garland recently released a statement that essentially threatened parents who are opposing their local school boards' leftist moves, such as promoting transgender ideology and Critical Race Theory discrimination, with FBI investigations.
Unruh went on to reference "Garland's agenda against parents."
Unruh misrepresented the situation again in an Oct. 18 article, in which he referenced "a letter from National School Boards Association to the Biden administration demanding he use the nation's anti-terror laws against parents who object to and oppose the leftist agenda items," going on to claim that Garland issued a "memo against parents."
In an Oct. 25 article, Unruh attacked the school boards group itself: "The National School Boards Association, the education industry group that suggested parents protesting leftist school-board agendas were "domestic terrorism," owes some $20 million to the IRS, according to a report."
A Nov. 12 article by Unruh complained that "the National School Boards Association coordinated with the White House before it requested that Joe Biden consider parents objecting to leftist ideology in their public school as domestic terrorists," though he didn't explain why the group and the Department of Justice were not allowed to be proactive over the situation instead of waiting for an act of violence to occur before anything would be done. Unruh then seemed to justify the attacks by playing whatabnoutism:
The dispute focuses on the leftist campaigns many school boards are adopting, including COVID-19 mandates, and the fact that parents object to those. While a handful of parents have shouted down board members, at least as often board members have ordered parents to be quiet, shut down meetings in order to silence them, and even called police to remove members of the public speaking at board meetings.
Unruh didn't explain why school boards should not be permitted to enforce order at their meetings.
