Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit, home-schooling advocate, and prolific social media poster, is running for county school board — as a Democrat.
Though the school board race in deep-blue Montgomery County, Maryland, is technically nonpartisan, Mandel’s campaign published a graphic on Tuesday listing her as a Democrat. The move quickly raised eyebrows online, and prompted a community note on X (formerly Twitter) stating, “Bethany Mandel has identified as a Republican numerous times on her personal Twitter account.”
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Those who know Mandel recognize her for writing molten-hot takes and far-right political commentary. The most infamous was a column, published in the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, titled “We Need to Start Befriending Neo Nazis.” (Mandel is Jewish.) Her content can be cringey, like her column defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife: “If Casey DeSantis is a Karen, she’s our Karen.” She’s posted dehumanizing rhetoric, too. “Not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect and that’s only because the cloud would hurt Israelis,” she’s written about Palestinians.
My guy, the dude literally called it child abuse without any evidence or position of expertise whatsoever. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you can point to me where homeschooling is classified as child abuse under any major regulatory body or psychology association, I’ll eat my words.
There is evidence that homeschooling yields more effective outcomes, so while your response is cute and snarky, it isn’t really grounded in anything substantive. One would know this if they actually knew anything about homeschooling.
Fuck it. Since nobody seems to care about hyperbole I’ll just call public schooling child abuse. After all, I’d bet money that even after factoring proportionality more suicides and homicides occur as a direct result of public schooling.