'Unquestioning right-wing soldiers': Analyst issues stark warning about MAGA's school plan

With Donald Trump set to return to office, the Christian nationalist far right is already plotting how to take control of the schools, and indoctrinate children with "mindless obedience" for their cause, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon.

Trump is no stranger to working alongside these activists, who want America to be remade as an explicitly Christian country under their interpretation of Biblical law. His previous administration shared their goal of weakening public education, with Betsy DeVos, the billionaire heiress who was put in charge of the Department of Education before she ultimately fell out with Trump.

But this time, the Christian nationalists aren't even waiting for Trump to take office before gaming out their scheme, the Salon writer claimed.

This was demonstrated clearly in recent weeks by Pete Hegseth, the Crusade-obsessed Fox News personality nominated to head up the Pentagon. On a Christian nationalist podcast last week, he said that America needs an "educational insurgency" where "you build your army underground" to make children into radical fundamentalists. It was also shown by Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools chief who used taxpayer money to purchase Trump Bibles for state classrooms, and by the Texas Board of Education's vote to authorize Bible stories in elementary schools.

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"Authoritarians are notoriously hostile to teaching kids intellectual autonomy, preferring children to exhibit mindless obedience," wrote Marcotte. And experts are warning this is what's already being set up, she continued.

"Southern Methodist University religious studies professor Mark Chancey, who has been speaking out against the Texas curriculum, worries that 'when the lesson has a teacher read that Jesus was resurrected from the dead,' students 'are going to hear their teacher promoting that as a factual claim.' That is, of course, very much the point."

All of this comes after years of far-right groups like Moms for Liberty waging war on kids' access to literature in schools, often working hand in hand with insurrectionist organizations like the Proud Boys.

What is becoming increasingly clear, she concluded, is that Trump allies like Hegseth envision schools as "not places where children learn to think for themselves, but where they are unquestioning right-wing soldiers, following MAGA orders."