Former Saturday Night Live cast member and far-right conspiracy theorist Victoria Jackson has teamed up with Moms for Liberty to ban books. 

Jackson headlined “Library 101,” an event hosted by the Williamson County, Tennessee, chapter of Moms for Liberty to, per the event flier, expose “sexually explicit content in school libraries and its effect on children’s brains.” 

After leaving SNL in the early 90s, Jackson reemerged in the 2000s as an unhinged right-wing commentator. Lowlights from Jackson's career in right-wing media include her claiming former President Barack Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ” and saying that he is an “Islamic jihadist” who was “aiding and abetting ISIS.” (She also has a history of making anti-LGBTQ comments, including saying she opposes marriage equality and lashing out at the TV show Glee for featuring a “sickening” gay kiss.) 

Unsurprisingly given her history, Jackson’s performance of “School Library Story Time” was bizarre and nearly incoherent. Her shtick of reading “sexually explicit” excerpts of books she allegedly checked out from public libraries (even though the event was about public school libraries) in an attempt to outrage the audience with obscenities fell flat.

When the word “goddamn” appeared in text, Jackson refused to read it (instead reading the abbreviation “G-D” aloud). But when the N-word appeared in text, Jackson bulldozed through without hesitation. Multiple times.

“School Library Story Time” was clearly meant to stoke moral panic in parents. There was no substantive discussion about the books referenced in the performance and Jackson certainly didn’t contextualize any of the excerpts she read aloud. Instead, in the brief transitions between books, Jackson made comments opposing sexual education while pushing baseless “groomer” rhetoric. 

On the morning of the event, Jackson published a truly deranged blog post on the Williamson County Moms for Liberty website titled “MAKE ME A LIBERAL.” In the short post, Jackson managed to fit in a number of outrageous claims, including that Obama was a communist.

Jackson said the left uses climate change (a “hoax created by the global elite to control the masses”) as “an excuse for population control (abortion, euthanasia).” Jackson advocated against the COVID-19 vaccines and claimed she has “researched the vaccine,” encouraging readers to visit a website that claims the vaccines cause cancer. 

She claimed “progressive” is “the new word for communist” and that “Liberal/Progressive/Left means abortion, global Marxism, illegal immigration, censorship, bigger government, breakup of the family, anti-God.” Ironic, considering Jackson spent an hour explicitly advocating for literary censorship that same day. 

Even though it was featured on the Moms for Liberty website, Jackson's post had essentially nothing to do with schools or education; instead it just pushed extreme right-wing politics. And this was no accident or outlier -- it's in keeping with Moms for Liberty’s values as an organization.

Just a few weeks ago, conspiracy theorist and QAnon sympathizer Lara Logan headlined a Moms for Liberty chapter launch and recited outlandish claims for 45 minutes, including that Hollywood elites use the blood of babies to maintain youth, that the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting was an inside job, and that the Rothschilds hired Karl Marx to develop a “system of social control.” 

The organization’s partnership with far-right figures like Jackson and Logan makes it abundantly clear that Moms for Liberty is part of the same movement to advance dangerous conspiracy theories and bigotry. 

This is even more concerning as Moms for Liberty continues to amass power within the Republican Party, with co-founder Tiffany Justice testifying in a GOP-led congressional hearing yesterday.