After SPLC ‘Extremist’ Designation, Moms for Liberty and Ramaswamy Come Together in New Hampshire

Vivek Ramaswamy, author of "Nation of Victims" and "Woke, Inc.," in New York on Nov. 3, 2022. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

Just days after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the parental rights organization Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” on its new hate map, the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, took to the stage with Vivek Ramaswamy in a New Hampshire church.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center is also now providing the blueprint used by even the police state, like the FBI, which collaborates with the SPLC,” said the 2024 presidential hopeful, who has vowed to shut down the bureau if elected.

An FBI memo that leaked earlier this year cited the SPLC to link so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholics” with “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” The agency later disavowed the document.

“That’s how this game is played. It’s this merger of state power and private power together to do what neither could do on its own. But the greasing of the wheels takes place by these invisible nonprofits,” Ramaswamy said during the June 8 event, which took place at Grace Ministries International.

The Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., in June 2019. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Moms for Liberty and Ramaswamy

It’s the candidate’s second event at the house of worship in rural Brentwood, a town set in rolling, forested country about 15 miles east of the Atlantic Ocean.

“We are a nation that prides [itself] on diversity of faith. And I think he [Vivek] is so knowledgeable, not just about Hinduism, but in Christianity,” said the church’s pastor, Allen Cook, in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Justice told The Epoch Times that her appearance with Ramaswamy was scheduled before the June 6 report from the SPLC. (That’s consistent with a press release from the campaign dated June 5.)

She said she didn’t get any warning from the SPLC before they released the map. Justice added that her organization is “reviewing” possible legal options. The prospect of litigation may look more promising for conservatives after a Georgia judge let a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC move ahead in April.

The activist said that, for now, she hasn’t formally communicated with the nonprofit, which reported an endowment of more than $639 million as of Oct. 31, 2022.

“I have no reason to reach out to them. They’re an absurd organization,” Justice told The Epoch Times.

Moms for Liberty founders Tiffany Justice (L) and Tina Descovich give the opening remarks before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit in Tampa, Fla., on July 15, 2022. (Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

“We aren’t going to stop. We’re going to continue focusing on our mission,” she added.

Justice and Tina Descovich launched Moms for Liberty during the COVID-19 response, when remote learning alerted many parents to teaching practices and philosophies, such as critical race theory, that many see as radical.

According to the SPLC, though, Moms for Liberty are the radical ones. More specifically, the new SPLC report tags them as an “antigovernment movement.”

Justice noted that the group’s record reflects a concerted effort to work for change within the system–for example, through its endorsements of scads of school board candidates across America.

“What an amazing opportunity to reengage the American public in our civic process,” she told The Epoch Times.

Onstage with Ramaswamy, Justice said it was strange that “the family is seen as such a threat,” judging by many responses from federal and local authorities to parent activism.

“Karl Marx actually viewed the nuclear family structure as a threat to the communist order because that’s a different ordering of society than centrally doing it from the state,” Ramaswamy said.

He pointed out that Black Lives Matter also called to dismantle the nuclear family, in language later removed from its website.

A Black Lives Matter banner is displayed on the U.S. embassy in Seoul, South Korea, on June 14, 2020. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Sounding a now-familiar theme to close observers, Ramaswamy stressed how troubled he was by Americans’ apparent fear of speaking their minds rather than constantly self-censoring.

“There’s something about showing up in public. Maybe it’s because [of] the Southern Poverty Law Center,” he said, drawing laughs from the audience.

“The best measure of the health of American democracy is the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public. And I can’t remember a time in my life where there has been a bigger gap between what people will say in public and what they'll say in private. The government’s not going to solve that,” he said.

Gaining Ground in the Granite State

The biotech entrepreneur and anti-woke activist investor is making a name for himself in the second state on the Republican primary season calendar.

RealClear Politics’ aggregator has him fourth, behind former President Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the state’s current governor, Chris Sununu, who on June 5 announced that he won’t run.

Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s senior adviser, told The Epoch Times at the June 8 New Hampshire event that her candidate wants a second-place finish or even a win in the state.

He will face steeper odds in first-in-the-nation Iowa and in South Carolina. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will be among his competitors on their home turf, and the entrepreneur is polling behind many candidates in Iowa.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) meets with guests at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition in Clive, Iowa, on April 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Cook told The Epoch Times that DeSantis and Trump are still the biggest names in the Granite State.

“I do think Vivek doing these kinds of small meetings is gaining some momentum,” he said.

Cook said Ramaswamy is “the only one” calling for what he characterized as a restoration of the Constitution by eliminating the Department of Education and other agencies.

Speaking from his church in a land once guided by Puritan divines, the Christian minister alluded to earlier spiritual revivals in America.

A portrait of Jonathan Edwards, who helped lead the first Great Awakening in Northampton, Mass., during the 1730s. (Public Domain)

“Call it a Great Awakening,” he said.

This one, he added, would involve not just Christianity but “an awakening to the idea of what America was.”

A Ramaswamy victory might take a miracle, but after 2016, spectacular upsets seem a little more mundane.