La Falange Juvenil Fascimo

The far-right indoctrination of Texas youth began years ago.

Francisco Franco was a Spanish general and politician who ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975. After the Spanish Civil War, Franco established a dictatorship that lasted almost four decades. He was a fascist and nationalist, and his regime was marked by authoritarianism, repression, and censorship.

Under Franco’s leadership, the Falange Española, a far-right political party inspired by the Italian Fascist Party and the Nazi Party in Germany, became Spain’s only political party. They believed in creating a new Spanish state based on the principles of fascism.

The La Falange Juvenil Española (Spanish Falange Youth) was the youth wing of the Falange party. Its members were indoctrinated in fascist ideology and trained in military-style discipline. The organization’s activities included political propaganda, military training, community service, and organizing rallies and marches.

The La Falange Juvenil Española was vital to Franco’s fascist regime, and its members were taught to believe in the superiority of the Spanish nation and the need to defend it against internal and external enemies. The La Falange Juvenil Española were indoctrinated to be fascists.

The English translation of “La Falange Juvenil Fascismo” would be “The Fascist Youth Phalanx.”

Earlier this week, the far-right media arm of the Republican Party of Texas, the Texas Scorecard, published an article entitled “Pushing Hate: ‘The Woke Mind Virus.’” To say the article was rocket-fueled gaslighting would be an understatement. I would have sworn it was satire if it didn’t come from the Texas Scorecard. I was alarmed at the hateful tone that permeated every line. The author seemed to push an agenda of anger and aggression, using every tactic possible to manipulate the reader's emotions and warp their perceptions.

While I’ve sometimes mentioned the Texas Scorecard (also known as Empower Texans) over the last few years, I’ve never directly addressed their work. However, the horror I felt over the vitriol and animosity directed at people of color and the LGBTQ community was insurmountable.

This was my response:

Little did I know that the Texas Scorecard planned on making it an entire series. After that, they published “Pushing Hate: Wokeness Invades Texas, Pushing Hate: Making Texas California, and Pushing Hate: Woke War in Texas.”

Trigger Warning: for those who click on one of those articles, each is full of bigotry and racism. They distort and manipulate facts, as their agenda appears to be anger and fear.

The authors of these articles were Robert Montoya and Kristen Stanciu. Montoya is a right-wing activist with long-time ties to the Texas Scorecard. Stanciu is someone new, someone, I had never heard of before, so I looked her up. She’s young, in her early 20s, still in college at Baylor University in Waco, and heavily involved with the Convention of States. The Convention of States is pushing for a radical rewrite of our Constitution to serve right-wing corporate interests, demolish the social safety net, strip away all environmental protections, and roll back all our civil rights.

The next question became, “How is someone so young, in this day and age, full of so much hatred and malice?”

It’s because she’s a graduate of Patriot Academy.

Patriot Academy is La Falange Juvenil Fascismo.

The Patriot Academy and La Falange Juvenil Española have a similar goal of indoctrinating young people with their political ideology. While Hitler's Youth Party had a militaristic approach, the Patriot Academy and La Falange Juvenil focus on religious and political indoctrination. The Patriot Academy trains young people to influence government policy with a biblical worldview. Similarly, La Falange Juvenil's ideology was grounded in conservative Christianity, and they often invoked biblical principles in their training. The focus on religion sets these organizations apart from Hitler's Youth Party, but the ultimate goal of indoctrinating young people with a specific ideology remains the same.

There are some concerning similarities between the two organizations. For example, the Patriot Academy offers a week-long gun training course, and La Falange focused on military tactics and combat. Furthermore. More troubling is the reports that Patriot Academy's shooting targets are pictures of people of color, which raises questions about those running the organization's underlying motivations and attitudes.

While there are some differences between the Patriot Academy and La Falange Juvenil Española, both organizations desire to train young people to become leaders with a Christofascist ideological worldview. The use of religion to influence government policy and the troubling aspects of Patriot Academy's gun training course is cause for concern and should be carefully examined.

Who is Patriot Academy?

The founder and president of Patriot Academy are Rick Green, a former Texas State Representative and radio host. The Academy has been funded and supported by David Barton, an evangelical author who promotes pseudohistory about the religious basis of America. In 2012, an NPR article called Barton, “The Most Influential Evangelist You've Never Heard Of.” That was a decade ago. Since then, he’s been running Wallbuilders, pushing religious conservativism into our government, and got his own page on SPLC.

Green claimed that while he was in the Texas Legislature, he felt like his peers weren’t conservative enough, so he left to begin indoctrinating Texas youth. To learn more about Green’s ideology, one only has to scroll through his Rumble page, which is full of anti-vax conspiracies, bigotry, racism, and the Big Lie.

Now that you know some of the ideology behind Patriot Academy, you should also know that their target customer is between the ages of 16-25, and they’ve been in operation for 20 years.

Some of their graduates include:

• Congressman Juan Ciscomani.

• Raz Shafer, a political operative with the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

• Jonathan Hill, South Carolina State Representative.

• Jake Robinson was Tony Tinderholt’s chief of staff and worked next to out-and-proud Christian Nationalist Jake Niedert.

• McKenzie Taylor, the senior editor of The Texan, another far-right online news site.

Those are only a few of Patriot Academy’s graduates. Many have run for office, some are in office, and others have gotten jobs with far-right Christofascist PACs or think tanks. Over the last two decades, Patriot Academy has worked diligently at churning out brand new baby fascists and sending them out into the world to spread their intolerant and narrow-minded worldview.

La Falange Juvenil Fascismo. This is how you indoctrinate an entire generation.

Don’t worry about whether or not fascism is coming to America. It’s already here.

What are you going to do to stand up against it?

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