Watchdog group says Texas education adviser espouses racist conspiracy theory

A watchdog group is calling for the ouster of an adviser to the Texas State Board of Education because he has echoed a racist conspiracy theory and has described Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election as a “literal coup.” “So damn the COVID, the president must now lead his followers into America’s streets and squares,” the adviser, Stephen Balch, former director of The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization at Texas Tech University, wrote in November 2020. Balch was appointed to the unpaid advisory position by two Republican members of the education board to help guide a rewrite of the state’s curriculum for civics, history and government classes — the new curriculum will be the first written since the enactment of a new state law banning so-called critical race theory, which will reshape how systemic racism and slavery are portrayed in class.

He wrote in August that the federal government seeks to promote unchecked immigration to “destroy traditional America by whatever means are deemed necessary and expedient,” describing this as “top-down sedition.” Members of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit that studies the State Board of Education and monitors right-wing extremism in the state, say it is a reference to what is known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” which some state leaders have espoused. The theory has been promoted by white supremacists and far-right nationalists in the U.S. and Europe for a century. Its basic tenet is that nonwhite people are attempting to take power from whites, with the ultimate goal of domination or extermination of the white race. Of late, its expression has predominantly been political, according to the Anti-Defamation League, such as a suggestion Democrats are attempting to seize political power by importing nonwhite voters through immigration. “We live in an extremely diverse state with kids whose parents are immigrants or who are immigrants themselves,” said Carisa Lopez, the political director for the Texas Freedom Network, pointing particularly to Balch’s essay from last August saying immigrants could “destroy traditional America.”