Posts by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AVuUwHg86zM0ltvVui by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T03:59:54Z
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In 1954 Benjamin ran for school board in Seattle. He advocated bringing the Bible into public schools and rejecting newfangled "progressive" approaches to education in favor of old fashioned reading, writing, and math. Benjamin got 4000 votes, but lost handily.
(DIR) Post #AVuUwJRfXiyWFdAzeS by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T04:02:11Z
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Back in the 1920s Benjamin had been an itinerant KKK preacher who drove around in a car that had "Keep Kalvin Koolidge" written on its side. He also was charged with sexually assaulting young women parishioners. Covington Virginian, July 1925.
(DIR) Post #AVuUwLMQQBy8Bwjpku by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T04:03:50Z
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Benjamin was run out of town when reports of his sexual violence came out. His car was destroyed by townspeople who tarred and feathered it. Buffalo News, June 1925.
(DIR) Post #AVuUwMwGYQET5OVyG8 by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T04:04:29Z
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Benjamin is on my radar screen because he is one of the many rabid racists who were political collaborators with Walter Huss, who would become chair of the OR GOP in 1978. Here we see them working to advance the candidacy of George Wallace in 1964. Oregon Journal, January 1964.
(DIR) Post #AVuUwOecB1IkPEGu1Y by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T04:06:08Z
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Once Goldwater got the GOP nomination Huss jumped off the Wallace train and onto the "racists for Goldwater" bandwagon. He even wrote and recorded a Goldwater campaign song with his friend Jim Bisel, Portland's leading Christian Ventriloquist who had a dummy named Tony.https://youtu.be/v1VUJMrUqss
(DIR) Post #AVuUwQQVaRCpu3gfJY by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-05-22T04:07:03Z
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Benjamin was just one of hundreds of, shall we say "colorful," weirdos who I've encountered in the 57 boxes of archival material left behind by Walter Huss. https://open.substack.com/pub/sethcotlar/p/on-the-road-with-walter-huss-and?r=alsf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #AWNyE8v1TgHxxSVgJM by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-05T15:19:35Z
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This weekend a faction of the Oregon GOP tried to recall long-serving National Committeeman Solomon Yue. They narrowly failed, but the resulting kerfuffle tells us a lot about the current state of the party's political culture.https://sethcotlar.substack.com/p/the-anti-communist-circular-firing
(DIR) Post #AWNyE9gWd4HoKmjcLw by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-05T15:25:44Z
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When the OR GOP is not fighting amongst itself, shadowboxing against imaginary Communists in their midst, they are doing everything they can to grind the process of governance in the state to a halt. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/04/us/oregon-legislature-republican-walkout.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(DIR) Post #AWNyEAN44uJWSidaeu by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-05T15:28:06Z
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One of the most important stories of our time is that our political institutions are failing. They are not rising to meet the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face. That failure has many causes, but the radical dysfunction of the GOP has played an outsized role.
(DIR) Post #AWNyEB17fyMASxNa64 by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-05T15:32:51Z
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When the most energized activists in your party are devoting a significant portion of their time and attention to the question of which people in the OR GOP are *really* doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party, you've really lost the plot.
(DIR) Post #AWNyECeVb1SJXOoY7s by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-05T15:38:32Z
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That said, it's hard to imagine what "the plot" would be that would result in the GOP winning statewide elections any time soon. And this just incentivizes folks in the party to double down on the politically self-destructive but emotionally-satisfying apocaplyptic rhetoric.
(DIR) Post #AWYQA3INBSMjekrvhw by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-06-10T05:11:47Z
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I’m starting to think that many of the people who chanted “lock her up” at Trump rallies in 2016 did not do so out of an authentic commitment to the principle of equality before the law.
(DIR) Post #AXQkVg1Y7Zr0TPO1Ls by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-07-06T19:02:42Z
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Some thoughts on the whole Josh Hawley/Patrick Henry kerfuffle that went down on July fourth. https://sethcotlar.substack.com/p/senator-josh-hawley-tweeted-a-christian
(DIR) Post #AXQkVhut5JiILKHjFI by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-07-06T19:04:22Z
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I had a conversation yesterday with an op-ed writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who wrote insightfully about the Hawley affair here. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/column/tony-messenger/messenger-josh-hawley-tweeted-a-quote-it-turned-into-a-chilling-history-lesson/article_bdf7ce02-1b73-11ee-989c-1752b8e0d340.html
(DIR) Post #AZ242mFG9XoVqx3yTo by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T19:07:56Z
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We've had some far right/Nazi-adjacent local drama here in Salem, OR over the past few days. This post covers it well. https://www.salemkeizer.news/p/kslm-interview-puts-salem-business-in-danger?r=alsf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #AZ242pi5GpeYbDZXKC by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T19:09:35Z
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Basically, the owner of a local children's shop was exposed as being married to a (perhaps former) Nazi, and then claimed that the exposure of that fact drove her out of business. The timing doesn't really line up in terms of the business closure. And while they admitted his Nazi past in an interview with the local right wing AM radio station, they were quite vague and evasive about it, and the friendly interviewer didn't push very hard on it.
(DIR) Post #AZ242vUpl0cSXrQ2VM by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T19:10:58Z
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FWIW, that former Nazi attends the local far right/Christian Nationalist church here in Salem that has ties to a wide range of far right preachers like Sean Feucht and Artur Pawlowski, as well as Bundy-linked lawyer KrisAnne Hall.
(DIR) Post #AZ242zyP70eKQjHi9Q by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T19:11:33Z
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The chair of the Marion County (OR) GOP attends the same church and regularly appears on a radio show with the church's minister. I wrote about these various manifestations of Christian Nationalism in Salem in this post. https://sethcotlar.substack.com/p/salem-hosted-not-one-but-two-christian
(DIR) Post #AZ2435gBtde67yoFay by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T19:12:30Z
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The chair of the Marion County GOP is a woodworker and he has made (and sells) a literal graven image of his pastor, which that pastor uses as his FB profile pic. I don't even know where to start unpacking that.
(DIR) Post #AZ2EkHJtUbPGDuc2S0 by sethcotlar@mastodon.social
2023-08-23T21:32:51Z
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Till the one day when the kraken met this fellow And they knew that they barely had a hunch, But they'd meet at Four Seasons landscaping, That's the way they all became the Rudy Bunch.