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In 2023, an antifascist collective\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0the results of their deep-dive investigation into Dissident Homeschool, a channel on the messaging app Telegram where self-avowed neo-Nazi parents shared educational materials and ideas for raising their children to embrace racial hatred. \u201cTeach\u00a0race realism<\/a>\u00a0first,\u201d one of the Ohio-based founders, who went by Mrs. Saxon, advised the group of approximately 2,300 subscribers. Use math lessons, for example, to talk about\u00a0crime statistics<\/a>\u00a0and how it\u2019s dangerous to associate with other races. Teach them \u201cto keep things quiet around certain people,\u201d she added. That selective silence affords them the space to build adherence to a Hitlerian ideology without scrutiny.<\/p>\n Outlets such as\u00a0VICE Media<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Guardian<\/a><\/em>\u00a0picked up on the story, verifying and expanding on the collective\u2019s initial reporting and kicking off a wave of public shock and outrage. Stories\u00a0named and shamed<\/a>\u00a0Dissident Homeschool\u2019s founders. Officials\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0for investigations. And homeschool activists\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0the community as an aberration\u2014one, they noted, that shouldn\u2019t affect the way the public thinks about at-home instruction. Then the founders went underground, the group faded away into digital obscurity, and the news cycle moved on from this hate-filled little anomaly.<\/p>\n But Dissident Homeschool was not an anomaly. More than a year before the group went viral, I\u00a0broke a story<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/em>\u00a0about a former teacher in Arizona who created another openly white nationalist homeschooling community, the School of the West\u2014a more organized endeavor that created and still offers its own curricula and course materials. In the five years since I dug into that group, I\u2019ve identified more than a half dozen additional highly organized white nationalist homeschooling networks, as well as many more informal digital groups similar to Dissident Homeschool. Some of these networks have been humming along since the late 2010s, but others are new and expanding\u2014such as the\u00a0homeschooling initiative<\/a>\u00a0within\u00a0Return to the Land<\/a>, a group that started\u00a0building<\/a>\u00a0explicitly white nationalist communities in the American Southeast in 2023. I have reached out to many of these groups for comment; none ultimately spoke with me.<\/p>\n \u201cWe still don\u2019t have good quantification on white nationalist homeschooling,\u201d says Amy Cooter, co-founder of the\u00a0Institute for Countering Digital Extremism<\/a>. \u201cBut based on online chatter and advertising, it seems likely this is an increasingly common practice.\u201d<\/p>\n Homeschooling is not inherently conservative or reactionary.\u00a0One founder<\/a>\u00a0of the modern homeschooling movement, John Holt, was actually an anti-authoritarian leftist who\u00a0believed<\/a>\u00a0decentralizing education would help children find their own paths and passions. From the 1970s onward, notes Cooter, many families have pursued homeschooling not as a matter of ideology but of practicality: Because they\u2019re too rural for busing hours to school to make sense. Because their children have special needs their local educators may not be able to accommodate. Because of concerns about bullying. Over the past couple of decades, homeschooling has\u00a0exploded<\/a>\u00a0in large part due to\u00a0fears<\/a>\u00a0about school safety, classroom overcrowding, and academic rigor. Some families actually remove their children from school due to educators\u2019\u00a0perceived<\/a>\u00a0conservative biases, and Black families have become the\u00a0fastest-growing<\/a>\u00a0homeschooling demographic largely because of\u00a0concerns about institutional racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2026, it is easy to find\u00a0diverse homeschooling<\/a>\u00a0networks and curricula if you go looking for them. And although studies on homeschooling populations are sparse, some seem to\u00a0indicate<\/a>\u00a0that some students who go through the process\u00a0come out<\/a>\u00a0the other end well-educated, well-rounded, and well-socialized.<\/p>\n But in the 1960s, conservative Christian groups grew concerned about\u00a0court rulings<\/a>\u00a0and district policies that stripped practices like Bible readings and communal prayer out of public schools. In the 1980s, hardline conservative Christian activists started to\u00a0promote<\/a>\u00a0homeschooling as a means of extricating children from an increasingly secular world and reasserting parental control over family life and values. They also spearheaded campaigns to deregulate homeschooling\u2014to eliminate restrictions and oversight on what parents can teach their children and how. While overtly religious homeschooling is\u00a0less prevalent<\/a>\u00a0today than it was a few decades ago, these groups are still a powerful bloc within the homeschooling ecosystem.<\/p>\n Between this lobbying and wider national don\u2019t-tread-on-me tendencies,\u00a0by 1993<\/a>\u00a0homeschooling was not only legal in every corner of the United States, but the country also had some of the world\u2019s\u00a0laxest regulations<\/a>\u00a0on home-based education: Although\u00a0laws vary<\/a>\u00a0from state to state, in most of the United States, parents do not need any credentials to teach their own children, nor do they need to tell officials what they plan to teach.\u00a0About a dozen<\/a>\u00a0states don\u2019t even require parents to let state officials know they plan to self-educate their children, allowing them to operate entirely off the grid. Functionally, stresses James Dwyer, a professor at William & Mary Law School and an expert on homeschooling policies, \u201cthere is no public oversight of homeschoolers\u201d in most of the country. Parents \u201ccan teach whatever they want.\u201d On top of that, he adds, \u201cNo one has legal authority to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n In the early twentieth century, supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan were \u201cstaunchly in favor of public education,\u201d notes homeschooling historian Adam Laats of Binghamton University, State University of New York. \u201cTheir idea was to get Catholic children in particular into public schools to \u2018cure\u2019 them of their \u2018foreign\u2019 ideas,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n As the United States slowly\u00a0enforced<\/a>\u00a0school integration starting in the late 1950s, white nationalists\u00a0took an interest<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0de facto\u00a0all-white private schools. But moving into the 1980s, explains Indiana University Bloomington professor of education policy Christopher Lubienski, diehard racists started to\u00a0form<\/a>\u00a0insular communities\u2014the seeds of the modern militia movement\u2014to wall themselves off from mainstream society. Like conservative Christians, they\u00a0turned<\/a>\u00a0to homeschooling as a fundamental tool for protecting themselves from what they considered corrosive forces.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my day, homeschooling was pretty limited,\u201d says Christian Picciolini, who led a skinhead group in Chicago as a teenager in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before\u00a0renouncing<\/a>\u00a0hate in his twenties. Picciolini now helps others adjust as they exit hate groups.<\/p>\n By the mid-1980s, more organized groups like the Aryan Nations and World Church of the Creator had\u00a0created<\/a>\u00a0informal academies for homeschooled children on or near their main compounds. Other communities circulated newsletters, then in the early 2000s shifted to Internet forums, which they used to swap information on homeschooling laws, advice on how to build a curriculum, and lists of recommended readings. But none of them actually developed plug-and-play programs that would-be white nationalist homeschoolers could adopt, nor bespoke instructional materials. Most simply relied on old books, such as early twentieth century encyclopedias, which were to them devoid of objectionable political, social, or racial viewpoints. Some simply taught curricula and used class materials designed for fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers. To this day, it\u2019s easy to find hardline Christian texts and workbooks that present revisionist history and\u00a0convey bigoted views<\/a>\u2014notably describing Indigenous peoples as primitive, Islam as inherently violent, and the evils of slavery as overblown.<\/p>\n Several experts I spoke with believe it didn\u2019t make sense for white nationalists to build their own content. Historically, only a fraction of the people willing to chat about hacking together a racist lesson plan were also willing to pay for and use explicitly racist class content. Working with hardline Christian materials just made more sense, if only as a matter of plausible deniability when discussing their homeschooling activities with others. But over the past decade, movements like Trumpism have\u00a0emboldened<\/a>\u00a0racist groups, helping their views\u00a0seep back<\/a>\u00a0into mainstream discourse with alarming speed. \u201cRacialized language is now somewhat more acceptable,\u201d Lubienski notes. \u201cPeople are more open about some prejudices.\u201d<\/p>\n Limited research on white nationalist communities suggest that only a minority actually\u00a0pursued<\/a>\u00a0homeschooling as of the 2010s. But the 2020 pandemic\u00a0shift<\/a>\u00a0to remote learning pushed homeschool-curious parents of all political persuasions to actually try it. The number of homeschooled children in the United States\u00a0more than doubled<\/a>\u00a0from 2019 to 2021, creating new demand for teaching resources. Even as schools returned to in-person classes between 2021 and 2022, many families\u00a0stuck with<\/a>\u00a0their new homeschooling norm.<\/p>\n Also in 2021, conservative media\u00a0latched onto<\/a>\u00a0critical race theory (CRT) as a new culture war wedge issue. CRT is in reality a niche academic field that\u00a0analyzes<\/a>\u00a0systemic racism. But conservative activists claim it is a new liberal dogma infecting schools nationwide, which teaches white children to hate their culture and themselves. The artificial panic created around CRT has combined with anxieties about vaccine mandates, inclusive sexual education, and general liberal indoctrination in schools to create a new push for homeschooling among conservatives. Far-right figures like Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and social media influencers like \u201ctradwives\u201d\u00a0now<\/a>\u00a0actively<\/a>\u00a0encourage<\/a>\u00a0their followers to take their children out of school.<\/p>\n White nationalist activists recognized that these trends not only increased the pool of their existing ideological peers open to buying explicitly racist homeschooling materials, but also opened new doors for recruitment and radicalization. The\u00a0mostly white parents<\/a>\u00a0taking children out of schools over fears of supposed anti-white bias want \u201cpro-white\u201d curricula, which white nationalists could supply\u2014and ideally use to\u00a0slowly draw<\/a>\u00a0these nervous families into the movement.<\/p>\n Families often \u201cchoose one curriculum or another simply based on what\u2019s in front of them,\u201d says Lubienski, \u201cor because somebody at church or on the Internet told them about it.\u201d Unfortunately, anecdotes from\u00a0homeschooling conferences<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0content fairs<\/a>\u00a0in recent years suggest that some are trying to weed out \u201cwoke\u201d lesson plans, creating more space for dubious racist content. A 2023\u00a0review<\/a>\u00a0of homeschooling materials mentioned in homeschool groups on Gab, the far-right social media platform, found tons of white nationalist material, soft-peddled to a wider conservative audience using the language of anti-CRT activism.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you asked straight up if they identify as a white supremacist, they\u2019d shudder and say, \u2018No, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m better than you,\u2019 \u201d says\u00a0Ye Bin Won<\/a>, the researcher behind that study. \u201cBut how they talk about education values and the reasons they pull their kids out of school is very racist.\u201d<\/p>\n As to whether white nationalists achieve their goals via homeschooling, adds Cooter, there is not yet enough data to say.<\/p>\n Former homeschoolers\u2014parents and students\u2014and outside observers have for decades voiced concerns about the space that deregulation created for the isolation, indoctrination, and abuse of children. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education, formed in 2013,\u00a0tracks<\/a>\u00a0cases of misconduct and advocates for what it sees as commonsense\u00a0regulations<\/a>. These include measures like identifying when students are being pulled out of school, requiring parents to disclose what they\u2019re teaching, and periodically assessing the quality of at-home education. This approach, Cooter says, \u201cwould not completely prevent white supremacist families from teaching false histories and hatred\u201d but would \u201cmitigate some of the more extreme outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet groups like the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a Christian parents\u2019 rights organization, reject any form of oversight. Earlier this year, Connecticut and Nebraska passed\u00a0watered-down<\/a>\u00a0laws<\/a>\u00a0making it slightly harder for families to start homeschooling if someone in their household is under investigation for abuse or neglect, or on a register of abusers. The\u00a0HSLDA characterized<\/a>\u00a0the legislation as dire assaults on educational autonomy.<\/p>\n These groups\u00a0fund and promote<\/a>\u00a0studies showing positive homeschooling outcomes and mobilize their supporters to counteract stories of homeschooling misconduct with stories of misconduct in public schools. An HSLDA representative tells me that the group \u201ccondemns white nationalism\u201d as an ideology, but does not believe that \u201cindividuals exploiting homeschooling\u201d is grounds for any action that may \u201charm the liberty and parental rights of millions of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe HSLDA is extremely effective at lobbying,\u201d Lubienski notes. Even as officials call for more oversight as groups like Dissident Homeschool are exposed, most of the policy experts I spoke to for this story doubt that we\u2019ll see any regulatory change in the near future.<\/p>\n Fortunately, white nationalists disagree about everything from who actually counts as white to what a \u201cpro-white\u201d legal framework should look like. Hate monitoring experts I spoke with agree that white nationalist homeschooling programs will likely end up competing with each other for racist hearts and minds rather than collaborating, limiting their potential for profit and thus proliferation.<\/p>\n Mainstream conservative support for homeschooling is also a double-edged sword for extremists, Lubienski argues. Since the early 2010s, politicians have\u00a0gradually<\/a>\u00a0expanded<\/a>\u00a0the ability to use \u201cschool choice\u201d tax credits, exempt savings accounts, and vouchers not only for charter, magnet, and private schools but also for homeschooling expenses like curricula, textbooks, and social programming. Expanding support for homeschooling was a\u00a0part of<\/a>\u00a0the 2024 GOP platform, and new provisions\u00a0made it into<\/a>\u00a0the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.<\/p>\n This has\u00a0raised concerns<\/a>\u00a0about tax dollars going to white nationalist groups via their homeschool materials, Lubienski points out. But many conservative groups\u00a0also want oversight<\/a>\u00a0of the programs they end up funding. As one pro-homeschooling group\u00a0put it on<\/a>\u00a0a protest flyer back in 2024, \u201cWhere there is \u2018free\u2019 money there is also a \u2018poison pill\u2019 of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Hay would like to thank Elizabeth Bartholet, Heath Brown, Mark Pitcavage, Patrick Riccards, Robert Kunzman, Sophie Bjork-James, and Stephanie Foggett, all of whom offered insights that informed this article.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2023, an antifascist collective\u00a0published\u00a0the results of their deep-dive investigation into Dissident Homeschool, a channel on the messaging app Telegram where self-avowed neo-Nazi parents shared educational materials and ideas for raising their children to embrace racial hatred. \u201cTeach\u00a0race realism\u00a0first,\u201d one of the Ohio-based founders, who went by Mrs. Saxon, advised the group of approximately 2,300 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7048449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[190309,7415,25878,29129,2083,211087,46470,28404],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7048448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-august-september-2026","tag-education","tag-hate","tag-homeschooling","tag-magazine","tag-mark-hay","tag-progressive-org","tag-white-supremacy"],"yoast_head":"\n