Hanukkah Presents 6/8
Progressive Portland has a problem with their social media likes and mutuals.
There’s an SNL gameshow sketch called “Why’d You Like It?” Contestants are confronted with posts they liked on Instagram and forced to explain or justify their actions. Other variations on the premise include “Why’d You Post It?” and “Why’d You Say It?”
The sketch is a modern classic and the original Jake Gyllenhaal appearance is probably the strongest.
It works because we do judge what people post and like on social media and it often reveals more than they’d like us to know. Checking on the craziest posts I’ve mentioned in this newsletter and who “liked” them is educational.
Don’t Rank Rene
Rene Gonzalez retweeted “infamous right wing journalist” Andy Ngo. We know this because the Portland Mercury ran a story on it. And The Portland DSA. And Jonathan Maus of Bike Portland. And Multnomah County Democrats. And Antifa activist Miguel Louis. And, of course, Don’t Rank Rene listed it as a reason why he was a bad fit for Portland.
Maybe this matters to you. Maybe retweeting Ngo is a red line. It’s your vote and you get to decide, but why don’t we get the same treatment of far-left candidates who follow, retweet, or engage with domestic terrorism fans and politically violent lunatics?
This is where Andy Ngo can be useful. He covers these people, obsessively. He documents all of their nonsense, but he’s not widely read in Portland because he’s infamous and transparently biased. Let’s use Rene as our example.
That Time a Car Caught on Fire
When a car was fire bombed in front of Rene Gonzalez's home (#notfriendly) Ngo monitored which local actors championed this and/or joked about it. Here are a few who are directly connected to our new councilors:
Piper here is the former co-host of Portland From the Left along with Joshua Blount. Blount’s partner was a leader in the Recall Ted Wheeler campaign and the Portland Teacher’s Strike. This is pretty typical of their views.
That’s Seth Caddy, a “Revenue Integrity Specialist,” DSA Member, and conspiracy theorist. He was obsessed with Rene and tiptoed right up to the edge of calling Terrence Hayes an Uncle Tom for working with him.
That’s OPB’s (formerly Portland Mercury’s) Alex Zielinksi reminding us about the lack of evidence for domestic terrorism. Zielinksi wrote up the breaking news piece, which was brief and neutral. Only Fox News followed up when local anarchists took credit for the firebombing.
Here’s Alex reporting, yesterday, on new developments in that story. She originally reported the story as Rene being mad about the arson investigation, and had to “add context” (aka a correction) to explain that, actually, Gonzalez was mad about the city’s failure to address political violence toward any local politician.
Look, there’s Seth Caddy taking another victory lap. But maybe he’s right, fuck Gonzales for… not wanting local politicians attacked without consequence?
Zielinski might be OPB’s worst hiring decision. She’s more of an activist than a reporter. She also helped promote the narrative that Democrat Maxine Dexter was bought and paid for after her own progressive favorite Susheela Jayapal lost the primary.
Here’s her colleague Dirk VanderHart posting what retired OP-Ed editor Naomi Kaufman Price correctly called “Jewish money slurs.”
What followed was a little interaction between Kaufman Price and TJ aka Torrid Fergi, a local DSA & Antifa affiliated Twitter troll. None of us are responsible for what our wildest social media followers say or do, but if you’re attracting this sort of person, it’s time to reevaluate your life.
Now, if TJ was an internet nobody who liked to harass local politicians and Jewish women online, I probably wouldn’t bother mentioning him…
But I know another TJ who is is a housing activist, DSA connected, very-online, obsessed with Israel, and chronically toxic to local politicians…
Meet TJ Noddings, Renters Action Network member and former opponent to Julia Brim-Edwards for Multnomah County District 3. Renters Action Network are behind the little “Rate Your Landlord” stickers. Are they DSA affiliated? You bet they are!
Can I prove conclusively that Torrid Fergi is TJ Noddings? No, he’s a bit more careful that. Both accounts follow the same people, post about the same issues, use the same tone and language, and are owned by people named TJ who are housing policy activists.
I’m not a “real” journalist. You can draw your own conclusions.
The Alt-Left?
There are also characters like Genderless Rodent. You shouldn’t need to know about this person, but Portlanders elected the Twitter/X/Bluesky class into City Hall and this is what I’m working with. I have to explain an anonymous Communist shit-poster named GENDERLESS RODENT to normal, sane people.
The rodent’s recently deleted twitter account was a treasure trove of harassment, violent rhetoric, and unhinged nonsense. Tight with the DSA. Big Luigi Mangione fan.
This quote shows a tremendous amount of self-awareness:
There's an alternative version of my life where I easily fall down an alt right pipeline and I'm always thankful that I didn't.
This is an important truth. These people hate the alt-right because they are its cousin. This is an accidental acknowledgment of the Horseshoe Theory.
I’ll spare you the worst October 7th takes but want to remind you that these people took to the internet en masse, like they are doing over the Mangione story, to celebrate murder. They did it loudly and without consequence.
I asked Tiffany Koyama Lane if she was comfortable with the DSA celebrating a pogrom. She blocked me. I asked Mitch Green and Angelita Morillo the same question. I messaged the Portland Associate of Teachers and other groups who endorsed DSA candidates. They all ignored me.
The answer is obvious.
Rene Gonzalez was sometimes rude. I don’t remember him ever celebrating or threatening murder.
What Can They Really Do?
When I call these kids Communists, I see faces wrinkle. Trump called Harris a Communist and that was bad and wrong plus he’s bad and wrong, etc.
But these people are Communists and they hated Kamala Harris too. They liked Tim Walz for some reason, but they hated “Cop-mala” and “Genocide Joe.” They also hate you and continuing to ignore this has disastrous results.
I don’t think the local Communists are going to stage a revolution and burn the city to the ground. They simply don’t have the power, numbers, or follow-through to do that. Most of them don’t even want it. Like the January 6th rioters, a few probably have evil intent but the majority would end up wandering around taking selfies.
What they will do is cripple our economy trying to “end capitalism.” It’s not an existential crisis. The communists won’t take City Hall and build guillotines or gulags. The anarchists (probably) won’t fire bomb corporate offices. The antisemites won’t be able to stage a pogram. But they will play at these things and pull the loose strings of government until some of them unravel. They will disrupt, smash, and waste a tremendous amount of money in the process.
We won’t lose democracy or the city. Things will just suck. Stupid plans will be carried out by stupid people. Somewhat similar to the Trump Administration. Everything will suck a bit more and feel increasingly pointless. Haven’t we had enough of that?
Will there be collateral damage from bad policies that really hurt people? Yes, that’s possible. The weight of responsibility at even local government scale is heavy. Bad policy can kill people. It can ruin lives.
Let’s start calling a spade a spade (or a Communist) and stop letting these people run as the party of nice/friendly/welcoming. They keep showing us they aren’t. Portland Nice needs to die, Oregon’s Democrats need to figure out who they’re standing beside, and a few of them will need to be primaried.
The other blue cities are figuring this out well ahead of us. You’re going to see some exciting stuff out of Seattle and San Francisco over the next few years. Portland? We’re taking the scenic route.
Next time I’ll tell you a bit more about the Omnitheory, why these kids hate you, and why it’s “suddenly” about the Jews.
OPB keeps sending people in my neighborhood to get people to give them money. The last time they did it wasn't just one person but two. When I told them I was not interested, they asked me why and I told them that their reporting was too regressive left. They looked surprised, as if no one had ever told them their reporting was too biased. I had no idea that OPB had hired Alex Zielinksi, a rage-filled narcissists who obsesses over her hatred of Andy Ngo and anyone who disagrees with her.
FYI, when someone asks you for a donation for a not-for-profit, they usually keep 70-80% of the money they collect. OPB usually sends single people to my door, but this time it was a pair, which is more typical of Mormon missionaries. I wonder if they are concerned at harm coming to a single person hearing how much they hate OPB.
It’s concerning that a subset of the Portland political left tacitly or explicitly endorse violence as a legitimate means of pursuing their agenda. We have seen this in our neighborhood.