As we approach Mother’s Day, many of you might want to reconsider who your mother is or was in light of new information I just obtained today from the CIA. But I’ll warn you: the truth may be too painful to bear.
Recently Americans learned that in 2021 the CIA prepared an influential internal document to help in the fight against terrorism. “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment,” dated Oct. 6, 2021, was just recently made available to the public. It was prepared for the intelligence agencies of Europe and the “Five Eyes” group of countries with advanced intelligence agencies: the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It warned of women who were furtively supporting the REMVE movement – Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists, which of course includes white supremacists and other dangerous extremist groups. But some are more dangerous than others.
While violent terrorists are often men, the report notes that women have become an increasing threat in their support of the REMVE agenda. An important and chilling characteristic of REMVE women can be found under the summary of the CIA document:
Female members abroad have been emerging as prominent players in the transnational white racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) movement, spanning traditional motherhood-focused roles aimed at advancing white REMVE goals and roles that capitalize on their skills in propaganda to bring in new recruits.
A shiver went up my spine when I read this. My own mother, who traveled internationally several times, often displayed many “traditional motherhood-focused roles.” And she often tried to influence her family and her neighbors when it came to politics, and even joined a political party and got involved in local politics. I trembled as I recalled her “skills in propaganda” and efforts to “bring in recruits” in the name of “defending the Constitution” and opposing corrupt government. Surely that sweet but rather feisty and outspoken woman wasn’t a real terrorist, right? To make sure, I read on.
I next noticed that REMVE women encourage white women to have as many children as possible, which is exactly what my white mother did! I went into a cold sweat as I recalled the incriminating evidence. Her doctor warned her against having a fifth child—advice she rejected. Then he warned that she might die if she had a sixth child. She had prayed and felt she was supposed to have a sixth baby, so she ignored him again. But the doctor was right—she almost did die. Near the end of her pregnancy, she had a hemorrhage while in downtown Salt Lake City that would have killed her if she had not been very near the hospital at the time. She and my youngest brother both survived. I always thought of her devotion to having children as a noble thing, unaware until today of the violent terrorist implications.
The case against my dear mother was sealed when I read that REMVE women may not actually be violent per se, but oppose “perceived threats from those they see as advocating multiculturalism and globalization.” Another chill! More sweat! And a pain in my gut. Oh, my dear mother! She was vocally distrustful of globalists and didn’t like the United Nations. When I was about eight years old, I remember her putting a “Get US Out of the UN!” bumper sticker on the old white Plymouth car we had in Boise, Idaho. She was so against globalism and global government that to honor her after she passed away recently, I obtained another “Get US Out of the UN!” bumper sticker and slipped it into her casket right before her funeral. I once respected her for principled objections to that which she saw as harmful to America and against the Constitution, never suspecting that she was so dangerous all along.
It’s so painful to discover that someone you loved was actually a non-violent REMVE engaged in dangerous extremism such as not wanting unelected foreign entities to tell America what to do and wanting to have a big family. Perhaps not as dangerous as the parents who spoke at school board meetings that required FBI tracking as if they were domestic terrorists or the Catholic families that protested peacefully at abortion clinics who had to be violently arrested by federal officers.
Sadly, my own government at least for several years believed that people like my mother were threats to “our democracy” and needed to be resisted.
I hope you won’t discover something awful about your mother as you read the CIA’s document. Fortunately, the current CIA apparently has withdrawn this document from their official guidelines and does not necessarily see a need to monitor groups advocating for traditional motherhood and homemaking, but it’s troubling that a powerful government agency would connect traditional motherhood with evil organizations. It could easily happen again.
To be fair, the CIA document does list a number of radical European groups that do seem quite bad, based on being labeled as neo-Nazis or other dangerous extremists, if those labels are correct. And it does not say that all advocates of motherhood are terrorists, but raises suspicions about groups pushing motherhood and homemaking, especially if they don’t align with the political and social views of those in power. This was not a healthy development.
I don’t know if any of the Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremists listed in the CIA document were receiving funds from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or other NGOs that make their money by fighting extremism, but one can see how tempting if not how necessary it was to keep stoking fears of racial and ethnic bigotry and extremism to ensure that the supply matches the “demand” (the level needed to keep donations coming in and to support other political objectives).
As reported in a Department of Justice Press Release from April 21, 2026, the SPLC has been charged with conspiracy and fraud for giving money to the very extremist groups they were supposedly opposing and using to gain donated funds (yikes, another conspiracy theory that may become fact?). The SPLC, posing as experts in fighting racism and hate, was also directly guiding the FBI and others in their domestic terrorism work, as The Federalist reports.
I need to dig into this story more deeply to see if they were secretly funding my mother (do they still owe her anything?) or perhaps were subsidizing Mother’s Day itself to keep the danger of extremist motherhood alive.
Have a great Mother’s Day. Just be careful – or perhaps caring – when it comes to those dangerous non-violent REMVE women in your life.
