A stay-at-home mom of six is the bigoted face of Mormonism’s budding alt-right subculture, spreading pro-white memes on social media that she insists are about “heritage” rather than hate.
The blogger known as Ayla tweets regularly from her Wife With a Purpose account to more than 22,100 followers and writes a blog called Nordic Sunrise, where she aims to “support the revolution” of radical traditionalism.
‘Feminism, homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and transgender-ism are being promoted while the hard work and priorities of family and faith have all but died away.’
“We have an epidemic in the Western world right now,” the blog reads. “In America and Europe citizens have become self obsessed [sic], lazy, fat, demanding, spoiled, loud, controlling, egotistical and mentally ill. Feminism, homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and transgender-ism are being promoted while the hard work and priorities of family and faith have all but died away and this pattern is killing us, physically and spiritually.”
The blog, which Ayla makes clear is not connected to the Mormon church, features a meme posted on Friday depicting an Amish family with the caption: “You never hear the Amish proclaim they are the religion of peace because they don’t need to convince anybody.”
Earlier posts include her takes on rap music’s “destruction of white, Western Mormon culture” and offers for free “pro white” children’s books created using copyright-free art.
“Yes, if you live in America, no matter what color you are, especially if you’re in Utah, you live in a culture built by white, western, Europeans, sorry if you don’t like that fact but it’s true,” she wrote Wednesday. “Rap is also destructive, maybe more so, on black culture but that’s a post for another time.”
The blog also includes links to several radio interviews featuring the blogger, including one in which she details her take on the roles of traditional women versus the feminist lifestyle and why she launched her YouTube channel of the same name.
“I am extremely opinionated and I like being on Twitter to kind of get my opinion out and kind of get things off my chest,” she told Red Ice TV in 2015. “And the 140-character limit reins me in a lot.”
Recently retweeted posts from the self-described alt-right poster girl’s account include references to the Black Lives Matter movement as a racist group promoting anarchy and a defense of a so-called “white baby challenge.” Those topics are mixed in with others that are decidedly less controversial, including selfies and pictures of overflowing baskets of laundry.
Ayla, who was featured earlier this week in a BuzzFeed story on the growing Mormon subculture that espouses alt-right views, did not return a request for comment. Messages seeking comment from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were also not returned.
It’s unclear how many Mormons consider themselves part of the alt-right movement, and one political scientist at the LDS-owned Brigham Young University said there’s no real way to know.
“Certainly these folks exist, but the size of the group has never been measured,” Quin Monson told the Salt Lake City Tribune. “To say it’s large or growing [as BuzzFeed does] is absurd in the absence of any real evidence.”
But it’s undeniable that racism continues to “persist in the hearts and minds of some Mormons around the globe,” University of Utah historian Paul Reeve told the newspaper.