Far-right 'Moms for Liberty' promotes RFK Jr. as guest speaker at national event

A far-right group that promotes book bans and COVID conspiracies and seeks to limit classroom discussion about race and LGBTQ identities is promoting the appearance of a Democratic presidential candidate scheduled to appear at an event the group is holding this summer.

Moms for Liberty on Tuesday announced that anti-vaccine advocate Robert Kennedy Jr. will be among the group’s guest speakers at its “Joyful Warriors National Summit.”

Kennedy Jr. joins a who's who of MAGA-land figures including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The event is scheduled for June 29 to July 2.

Kennedy has a history of trafficking in conspiracy theories and was considered the intellectual godfather of the anti-vaccine movement before the pandemic.

Among his most bizarre claims are that mass shootings are linked to the antidepressant drug Prozac, vaccines cause autism, Dr. Anthony Fauci conspired with Bill Gates to exaggerate the pandemic to promote vaccines, and the demonstrably false assertion that Switzerland has roughly the same rate of gun ownership as the United States.

Kennedy during an appearance on the right-wing network Newsmax on June 14 claimed the Chinese government is behind the development of a race-based biological weapons program.

“We know that the Chinese are developing ethnic bio-weapons. Bio-weapons that are designed to attack people of certain racial types. And we’re doing the same thing. We’ve been collecting Chinese DNA. We’ve been collecting Russian DNA specifically for that. [This] arms race is a catastrophe,” Kennedy told host Greta Van Susteren.

Moms for Liberty, founded in 2021, has emerged as a powerful movement, flexing its political muscle in school boards across the country by promoting far-right candidates despite its claim that it’s a non-partisan group.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified Moms of Liberty as an extremist group.

“Moms for Liberty and its nationwide 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,” The SPLC said of the group on its website.

“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.”