Seth Cotlar: It should probably go without saying that the further right faction in the OR GOP is in favor of removing fluoride from the public water supply. noncompliantamerica.transistor.fm/episodes/joe...

A big fault line has opened up inside the OR GOP between two factions. The relatively more moderate faction believes the 2020 election was stolen, Covid was a hoax, GOP county chairs will be rounded up & arrested by the FBI any day now, & Dems are communists. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/down-the-d...

Down the Derp State Rabbit Hole with the Chair of the Marion County (OR) GOPsethcotlar.substack.com Cleon Skousen's conspiracy theories, Chinese commandos invading from Mexico, and other oldies but goodies from the right wing playbook

The faction that considers itself more "in touch with the grassroots" & wch almost got their candidate appointed to be OR's representative to the RNC, consists of radio hosts/podcasters like this "noncompliantus" guy who thinks Israel maybe killed JFK, chemtrails will kill you, & Alex Jones rules.

If you feel like spending a few hours listening to two of the far right, conspiracy-obsessed media figures behind the movement that is on the verge of taking over the OR GOP from the far right, conspiracy-obsessed people they think are RINO squishes, here you go. rumble.com/v4krkg0-frid...

Friday Night Rant with Joshua Michael & Rob Taylorrumble.com 7:00 PM Friday, March 22, 2024 So much to rant about and so little time, but we are going to do it anyway. Joshua and I are going to rant about the state of the Oregon Republican Party, the Yue Crew,

For you Cleon Skousen fans out there, one of his relatives, Joel Skousen (who makes Cleon seem like a very sober-minded, reality-based commentator) is running for president. That further right faction in the OR GOP is quite Skousen-curious. Spread the word! rumble.com/v4k159h-pres...

Presidential Candidate Joel Skousenrumble.com 3 PM Monday, March 18, 2024 The Constitution Party has asked Joel Skousen to be their presidential candidate for the 2024 General Election. Joel and I had a very intriguing conversation about his cand

It should probably go without saying that the further right faction in the OR GOP is in favor of removing fluoride from the public water supply. noncompliantamerica.transistor.fm/episodes/joe...

Playing all of your favorite hits from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s!!! sethcotlar.substack.com/p/those-funn...

Thosesethcotlar.substack.com Or, how I learned to stop laughing and love talking seriously about the anti-fluoridation movement

The more moderate OR GOP faction has already embraced a conspiracy theory to explain where the further right "grassroots insurgency" is coming from. It's ackshually a bunch of Democrat/CCP chaos agents who have been sent into state GOPs to sabotage the party. bsky.app/profile/seth...

New explanation for GOP infighting just dropped. It’s the fault of the Democrats who moved to purple states and became GOP precinct captains!

Anyway, when an interlocking set of cockamamie conspiracy theories come to dominate a party's political culture, it can produce situations like this where your party gets ripped apart by competing conspiratorial factions who each think the other are commies. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/the-anti-c...

The anti-communist circular firing squad that is the Oregon GOPsethcotlar.substack.com Some observations on yesterday's failed effort to recall Oregon Republican National Committeeman Solomon Yue

Ultimately, the OR GOP just replaced the ultra-MAGA, former RNC national committeeman Solomon Yue with a still MAGA, but more normie-looking Republican. Both the super-far-right anti-Yue folks AND the pro-Yue, slightly less far right folks are suspicious of the new guy. bsky.app/profile/seth...

The new guy wiped his Twitter tl clean, but his FB is still there and he appears to have a long track record as a rather normie Republican...he should probably get rid of some of these photos before he has some explaining to do to his new boss at the RNC.

From what I can tell, the three leadership positions in the OR GOP (national committeeman/woman and state chair) are held by folks who have a far more normie-looking public profile. All are 100% on Team ultra-MAGA, but present to the public as Youngkin-esque "business conservatives."

It'll be interesting to see how long they can remain perched atop the smoldering "grassroots" volcano that is the political culture of the OR GOP. If the 2024 elections turn out as poorly for the OR GOP as past ones have, it could get rough for the folks in charge.

Is this also what is happening within the Michigan GOP?

I don't know enough about the details of that situation to say how it compares to the OR story. The people in OR, however, believe that in MI it's the same set of Democrat/CCP disruptors who are trying to weaken the GOP.

wait so is it too late to reveal our secret years-long scheme to infiltrate the oregon GOP and turn it into a dysfunctional sack of wingnuts worried about Fluids?

The first rule of "Democrat infiltration of OR GOP club" is that we don't talk about Democrat infiltration of OR GOP club!!!!

aw crap. I had a really good screed worked up on how covid vaccines make your kids gay, flouridation makes your kids communist, and flouride and vaccination together make your kids competent community organizers fighting for a living wage, trans rights and single-payer healthcare.

Seth, have you written anywhere a general explanation of why OR seems to have had more than its share of these kinds of thinkers? Or is that I just haven’t found the scholar posting about (say) CA’s legacy of lunacy?

This is probably the closest I've come to something that broadly-focused. It's not the full answer, but part of the answer has to do with the far right grassroots insurgency (led by Walter Huss) that slowly took over the OR GOP beginning in the early 1960s. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/when-did-t...

When did the conspiracy-obsessed, fascist-friendly far right first get a foothold in the Oregon Republican Party? Would you believe me if I said 1962?sethcotlar.substack.com A story about that time in 1962 when a group of former Silver Shirts and present white nationalists and Christian supremacists came close to taking over the Multnomah County Republican Party.

Things went a bit too far when an ex-Democrat infiltrated the party, got elected President, and turned the entire damn party into a sack of wingnuts worried about fluids.

My casual observations of local Republicans is probably as close as it gets to "infiltrating" them around here. I signed up for their newsletter! I've even attended some events! It was three years into my very publicly writing about them before they even noticed...

I'm not a reporter. I'm just a schmuck with a blog. But conversation on the Deschutes County Republican Party's facebook group turned to "The DRP should go after this schmuck." -- as in the party should do that. Hopefully I'll think twice before posting about the party's endorsements! Cool stuff.

I locked my Twitter because of Elon, not these dipshits. Anyway, Bilderback ran for school board in Sisters, Oregon (and lost). Connie is the vice chair of the Deschutes County Republican Party.

Shocking that you would write about things they publish in their newsletter! Talk about unethical.

Exactly what I was thinking. "How *dare* you use our own words against us!"

That instance was when the business Republican running for Bend's mayor was trying to play both sides -- reasonable Chamber luncheon attendee while hosting events at the coffee shop famous for flouting covid regulations. He wanted the support of the radicals, but not to be seen with them. He lost.

It's interesting how the "party of personal responsibility" is never to blame for their own actions...

This checks out. Ds are so bad at organizing themselves - insert overused Will Rogers quote here - that seeding R party organizations with D secret disruptors will bring the same chaos to the R table. We're brilliant.

I hope they cut themselves on Occam's Razor.

Of course the party of "remember when it was ok to be racist, sexist, homophobic? It sure was great. Let's bring it back" have people who are actually democrats infiltrating them to make them look bad? Bc that's more believable than "the extremes are extending"?

So I recently learned that Portland itself doesn't put flouride in the water, and if put to voters, they will vote No Flouride. I can't understand what is going on there?

Put most simply, it’s the horseshoe merger of far right anti-government and anti-science suspicions with a left variant of the same impulses. Sometimes being suspicious of what “the man” is up to is quite wise and healthy. Sometimes it’s just silly.

I wrote a bit about that "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" here. In these days of "organic food loving trad wives" and "clean-eating wellness influencers" who also spread far right conspiracy theories, this history has come to seem even more relevant. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/sending-sp...

Sending Spit to Ms. Safronsethcotlar.substack.com Walter Huss and the little-known subculture of

Yes, I suspected it to be connected to the leftie anti-vaxers from well before the pandemic. Have one in my family (but not talking to me for years). Had a super premie baby who survived well but somehow turned them against the medical establishment (without whom the baby definitely would have died)

I hears the floride was put in water in some places to try to support dental health to cut costs or something. Is that true?

Yes, they discovered that kids who lived in areas where the water had naturally high levels of fluoride got far fewer cavities than kids elsewhere. So in 1945 they experimented with adding fluroride to the water in Grand Rapids, MI and it was a smashing public health success.

And unlike many areas of human health and biology, the explanation was dead simple. The main mineral constituent of teeth is a calcium phosphate that includes an (OH, Cl, F) group. In areas with high background levels of F, it enters the mineral and makes it more resistant to dissolution and decay.

I've never had a cavity, even though my parents, who grew up before the DC area started fluoridating water, had bad teeth The last time I went to the dentist, about 7 years ago, they said in all their years practicing in Portland, they had never seen anyone over 40 with no cavities. 53 now, still 0

funny to think about it starting in such a conservative area!

Horseshoe theory and/or evidence that the two-dimensional (Nolan) chart is at least somewhat useful: Some people are more Authoritarian (Christofascist, Tankie) than they are Right or Left, and some are more Libertarian (Paleoconservative, Crunchy) than they are Right or Left.

A lot of people are proud of the purity of the Bull Run watershed, where the city gets its water (mostly.) To add anything to it is considered is akin to hocking a lugee on da Mona Lisa. Plus, dentists are cool.

Despite the obvious benefit to them, dentists do not seem cool with this regulation or whatever it is. I can see an attraction to purity of the water, even though it immediately sounds like this guy and his precious bodily fluids.

Omg. Never knew this connection. I was astonished to learn that we would have to give our kids fluoride supplements because the water wasn't fluoridated. I thought it was national best-practice.

Yeah, many communities in Oregon have a very odd relationship to things like fluoride. It isn't all about fascism, but the fascists were part of an odd anti-fluoride coalition of food faddists, organic gardening types (JJ Rodale was a big anti-fluoride guy), etc.

It would be interesting to cross-map the towns that had intentional communities and those that banned fluoride.

Not Dr. Bonner! 😭😣

I was disappointed to learn that as well.

We can't have anything nice. SMH

... But Seth, we don't HAVE fluoride in Oregon drinking water?... maybe that's why we are rich in mental cavities...

Oh, Jesus. I grew up w/o fluoridated water, you you should see my molars -- it isn't pretty.

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