Named for the socialist labor organizer Mary Harris Jones (1830-1930), Mother Jones is a bimonthly magazine and website, which — in conjunction with videos, podcasts, email newsletters, and social media presence — draw more than 10 million visitors each month. Headquartered in San Francisco, the publication also has bureaus in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The genesis of Mother Jones was a failed attempt, in the fall of 1973, to save the reigning radical magazine of the day, Ramparts. When labor journalist Paul Jacobs (a Trotskite/Socialist), leftist entrepreneur and economist Richard Parker (who later became president of Americans for Democratic Action), and leftist millionaire Adam Hochschild were preparing at that time to take over as the editors of Ramparts, they had a major falling out with the publication’s existing staffers. Thus the trio elected to leave Ramparts and create their own magazine, which was launched as Mother Jones in February 1976.

For the first five years) after its inception, Mother Jones was run by an editorial board whose members included not only Jacobs, Parker, and Hochschild, but also authors and journalists like Jeffrey Bruce Klein, Mark Dowie, Amanda Spake, Zina Klapper, and Deirdre English.^[1]

In the spring of 1986, Mother Jones hired a young Michigan underground newspaper founder named Michael Moore as its editor. Four months later, in early September, Moore was fired after he rejected an article by socialist Paul Berman, a piece that Moore claimed was “unfairly critical” of the Communist Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua. Moore subsequently sued Mother Jones, claiming wrongful dismissal. He pocketed $58,000 in an out-of-court settlement of his lawsuit, and then used that money to produce his first film documentary, Roger and Me.

A number of well-known leftists have served as editors and writers for Mother Jones over the years, including such notables as David Corn, Todd Gitlin, Molly Ivins, Bill McKibben, and Orville Schell. For an up-to-date list of Mother Jones‘s current staffers and contributing writers, see Footnote #2 below.^[2]

Through investigative reporting that mostly targets corporations, capitalism, conservatism, and Republican political officeholders, Mother Jones subdivides its content under the following major headings:

• Politics: depicts conservatives as violent and greedy racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, sexists, and elitists;
• Environment: promotes the notion that anthropogenic “climate change” poses a grave threat to life on earth, and portrays capitalism an economic system with an inherent disregard for the well-being of mankind and the natural environment;
• Food: derides the capitalist system wherein the “unaffordability of healthy food options” has led to “social inequalities” manifesting themselves as obesity epidemics that affect poor minorities disproportionately, and alleges that corporations and industrialized farms are content to maximize their profits by poisoning the population with harmful pesticides and genetically modified crops;
• Media: promotes leftist messages while seeking to mock and delegitimize conservative perspectives;
• Crime & Justice: characterizes the American criminal-justice system as a cesspool of racism and corruption;
• Investigations: alleges widespread criminality, malfeasance, and corruption by conservatives and Republicans.

The Mother Jones magazine and website are both owned by the nonprofit, tax-exempt Foundation for National Progress, which has received financial support from a large number of left-wing philanthropies, and whose board once included the wealthy Democrat donor Robert Glaser.^[3]

In April 2013, Mother Jones released a set of secretly taped recordings (along with a transcript) of a February 2 opposition-research meeting that Republican Senator Mitch McConnell had held with his staff, prompting McConnell’s re-election campaign to denounce the magazine’s “Nixonian tactics.”

That same month, Mother Jones ran an article claiming that more Americans had been killed by conservative terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since the 9/11 attacks of 2001. “While America has been fixated on the threat of Islamic terrorism for more than a decade,” said the piece, “all but a few domestic terror plots have failed. Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2012, there were no successful bomb plots by jihadist terrorists in the United States…. [R]ight-wing extremists killed 29 people during those 11 years.”

In its May/June 2017 issue, Mother Jones celebrated the rise of far-left, Marxist, anarchist organizations that were prepared to engage in everything from nonviolent protest to armed revolt against conservatives, frequently caricaturing the latter as “white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen.” Among the groups that Mother Jones praised were:

• By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), an outgrowth of the Revolutionary Workers League, a Trotskyite entity that favors worldwide socialist revolution and was once the largest black Marxist organization in the openly pro-violence New Communist Movement;
• The Bastards Motorcycle Club, described by Mother Jones as an “anti-racist, LGBT-friendly motorcycle gang” that “has rolled up to oppose racist events across the South, sometimes armed and ready to rumble”;
• The Huey P. Newton Gun Club, a coalition supporting armed self defense and named in honor of the late drug dealer, rapist, and murderer who founded the Black Panther Party in the 1960s; and
• Redneck Revolt, a network of anarchists and libertarians focused on “anti-racist” and “anti-fascist” organizing among the white working class.

Footnotes:

1. For more information on each individual, click on his or her name: Paul Jacobs, Richard Parker, Adam Hochschild, Jeffrey Bruce Klein, Mark Dowie, Amanda Spake, Zina Klapper, and Deirdre English.
2. “Our Staff” (MotherJones.com)
3. “Building a Radical Foundation: The Glaser Progress Foundation Makes No Bones about Its Focus on Far-Left Activism” (By Matthew Vadum, Capital Research Center, 3-4-2014).

Additional Resources:

Further Reading: “The History of Mother Jones” (MotherJones.com); “MoJo’s Secret Recording of McConnell Meeting Called ‘Nixonian Tactics’” (Daily Caller, 4-9-2013); “Mother Jones: ‘Right-Wing Extremism’ Killed More Since 9/11 Than Islamic Terror” (Breitbart.com, 4-25-2013); “A New Wave of Left-Wing Militants Is Ready to Rumble in Portland—and Beyond” (Mother Jones, May/June 2017).