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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThey Came To Oregon To Take Pictures Of The Fires, Armed Locals Thought They Were Antifa Arsonists
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/oregon-fires-antifa-rumors
Gabriel Trumbly, a Portland videographer who has spent roughly 90 of the past 100 days capturing the protests, wanted to take footage of the forest fires raging in Oregon. So on Wednesday night, the 29-year-old Army veteran, set out with his partner, Jennifer Paulsen, 24, to see what was happening near her childhood home of Molalla, a town of 9,000 people known for its annual rodeo, the Buckeroo. Fires surrounding the town were so intense they had prompted a level-3 GO NOW warning to evacuate.
Little did they know when they arrived that Trumbly and Paulsen's presence would spark national rumors that far-left activists were starting fires across the West Coast.
After parking their car on the side of a road, the couple pulled on gas masks and shot video of towering flames. As they worked, they encountered people who had rigged a garden hose to a water tank in the bed of a truck and were trying to put out a fire in the driveway. Trumbly and Paulsen briefly spoke with them, as well as a driver who asked them if they needed any water.
Trumbly and Paulsen, both of whom spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone from Portland on Thursday, said the interactions seemed normal. They said the fire was moving quickly, so they didnt stay long in Molalla. We thought it was getting a bit dangerous, so we left, Trumbly said.
They've been promoting paranoia for years. Dangerous people are coming to do bad things to you. Before it was immigrants. Now it's Antifa. People always think I'm an immigrant despite being born/raised in the USA. Anyone looking vaguely liberal can be Antifa these days. Some armed idiot might decide you are Antifa.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Last edited Fri Sep 11, 2020, 11:51 AM - Edit history (1)
I live out west and am an outdoors guy so I spend alot of time on hunting and fishing sites on SM
So the posts about these fires are all like: Its Libruls! Its Antifa! Its Biden! Its Tree huggers! (that makes sense?) Its Obama!
IronLionZion
(45,261 posts)They love the environment so much they want to burn it all down and pollute the air?
GusBob
(7,286 posts)These folks aint so brite*
Permanut
(5,439 posts)Oregon is a blue state, but we have our share of right wingers, gun huggers, Bible thumpers and racists. Pickup trucks with huge US flags and Gadsden flags flying, Trump cult rallies with not a mask in sight, and local hate filled radio.
IronLionZion
(45,261 posts)Which is a key reason GOP wants to sow conflict in cities like Portland. It helps feed the paranoia among rural conservatives. This town in the OP is close to Portland. And the woman in the OP grew up in the small town that now thinks she's Antifa.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Rumors running wild about people throwing molotov cocktails out the windows of speeding cars and suspicious people lurking around neighborhoods. I think back to my anthro classes and ponder the proposition that our modern society is not all that far removed from the primitive societies that we remember mostly through their folklore and mythology.
roamer65
(36,739 posts)and higher populated Western Oregon is largely solid blue.
Correct on that assumption?
I imagine the closer you get to Idaho, the more Idahoish it becomes.
doubleplusgood
(944 posts)In general, once you get out of the Portland, Eugene and a few other large population centers, it gets extremely conservative real fast. It's not just eastern Oregon, either. Southern Oregon seems to be a hotbed of R/W nutcases.
IronLionZion
(45,261 posts)so it's probably more of an urban vs rural divide. Even Idaho has liberals in some areas like Moscow, a college town.