Children’s YouTube and Netflix star Ms. Rachel’s political activism has sparked pushback from concerned parents, with one saying she serves as a mouthpiece for a false Hamas narrative, and puts activism ahead of education by exposing toddlers to ideas that erase basic sex categories at a stage when children first learn to organize the world that way.
Rachel Accurso, who is better known by her online persona Ms. Rachel, has been at the center of political controversy, which intensified after she started opining about Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war.
The children’s entertainer has also been accused of boosting Hamas figures and promoting claims that are later revealed as false.
“This is the case for a lot of liberals,” Bethany Mandel, a Washington Examiner contributor, author, and homeschooling mother of six, told Fox News. “They don’t see it as a political perspective at all. They just see the world in black and white and what they are doing is so clearly correct.”
Mandel argues that this mindset comes from creators who rarely leave their ideological “bubble” to engage people with people who have opposing views.
“It’s important to understand that she only cares about one narrative,” Mandel said of Accurso. “She only cares about this very false narrative where what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide, falsely categorizing it as such.”
“She amplifies numbers that are not real, the numbers of deceased children, the numbers of people who have died in general, she’s accepting a Hamas narrative on every single thing and amplifying it,” the author added.
Last year, for example, Accurso called Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza her “friend” — just days before Azaiza admitted he hid footage of Israeli hostages being beaten by a crowd in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Earlier this year, the children’s entertainer faced scrutiny after she appeared to “like” a comment that said “free America from the Jews.”
“She is serving as their mouthpiece for a lot of Americans not just children and not just the adults that follow her,” Mandel told Fox News, adding that Accurso “cares more about activism than education.”
Mandel went on to cite the toddler entertainer previously hosting a non-binary musician as a guest on her show.
“This is something that’s really very damaging to children who are in the early stages of development, because one of the first ways that children learn to organize the world around them is by categorization, and the easiest way for a toddler to categorize the world around them is by female and male,” she said.
Mandel argued that erasing sex for children “absolutely will have detrimental consequences,” and warned against changing basic developmental milestones, noting this are largely unexplored territory in early childhood education and socialization.
“This is what Donald Rumsfeld talked about, the unknown unknowns,” the mother said. “When we take that ability to categorize away from children, we’ve never done that in human history before.”
“Parents need to choose these entertainers wisely,” she added. “Perhaps parents don’t care about the gender stuff, perhaps parents don’t care about what she’s saying about Gaza — but if they are not ultra-ultra-liberal, Ms. Rachel will eventually land on something that they do feel discomfort with.”
Alana Mastrangelo-Wrask is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.