#2820: Paul Esprante (?)

Paul Esprante is a self-proclaimed ‘researcher’ from California; indeed, Esprante seems to consistently refer to himself as “Professor Paul Esprante”, though he gives little indication of what his putative field of expertise might be or what sort of institution has hired him in that position. In any case, Esprante has ostensibly, and like many before him, found Noah’s Ark, or at least found wooden structures that clearly stem from said vessel on Mount Ararat. And he has enthusiastically presented his findings e.g. at the International Symposium of Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark, which was ostensibly attended by “over 100 scientists” and where Esprante said that “The result of my findings will be published in books, publications and journals, but at this point it is too early to know what we are going to find. Once the scientific community knows about the existence of Noah’s Ark in Mount Ararat, we can make it available to the general public.” This was in 2017, so there has evidently been some delays in the peer review processes at distinguished journals since then.

 

Diagnosis: We have, admittedly, not managed to find any information about Paul Esprante from any resource not directly related to the 2017 story, and those sources are hardly reliable. We can, in other words, not quite dismiss the suspicion that Paul Esprante is a fictional character produced by some fake news factory – hence the question mark in the headline. But that there are plenty of people sharing his delusions is undeniable. 

#2819: Maria Espinoza

The Remembrance Project is an anti-immigration organization founded by Texas couple Maria Espinoza and Tim Lyng in 2009 and devoted to “[e]ducating and raising awareness about the epidemic of killing of Americans by illegal aliens” through promoting harrowing anecdotes of crimes committed by illegal such. Espinoza had, by 2009, already made a name for herself as president of the Houston chapter of the Eagle Forum, which should give you an indication of what kind of group TRP actually is. To Espinoza, there is conspiracy afoot: immigration isn’t just a threat; it is a manufactured threat and a deliberate attempt by the powers that be to ruin America: “This Biden-Harris administration, I believe, just hates America. To your point with the border, this is intentional, it's for a reason, and the reason is to destroy our country. And we have to get a hold of it”. And it’s not like she didn’t warn you; prior to the 2020 election, Espinoza claimed that the US is “at risk of invasion under a Biden Adm[in]!”

 

And even before QAnon, Espinoza had determined that “Child molestation and rape are very numerous in this illegal alien demographic!”; indeed “unsecured communities, human trafficking, molestations of our children, are all part of the vernacular of this disease that illegal immigration speaks”. The TPR has also promoted conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rife with fraud and that Trump’s reelection was stolen from him – “Trump Won! STILL My President! Cheaters never win...wait and see!” tweeted Espinoza in February, 2021. Of course, Espinoza’s respect for the democratic processes she claims to champion is not unequivocal; in 2018 she suggested that anti-immigration actvists should find some kind of “little loophole” to remove officials who disagree with her on immigration from public office before the next election.

 

TRP is, however, at the forefront of the anti-sanctuary-cities movement and has had some serious impact, especially with the Trump administration, and it enjoys the support of a number of members Congress. TRP is also closely connected to people central to the white nationalist movement, like Paul Nehlen.

 

Indeed, Espinoza has herself tried to run for Congress, both in 2016 and in 2020, on a platform of “work[ing] to stop Socialism and the Democrats' liberal agenda, and work to peel-away the indoctrinating tentacles of education that has encroached upon parental rights and the privacy of our children.” Her 2016 platform also included e.g. a moratorium on Muslim immigration, prohibiting same-sex marriage, drug-testing welfare beneficiaries, and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

Diagnosis: It’s hard to motivate much more than an exasperated sigh here, but yeah, Espinoza is yet another conspiracy theorist in a position of somewhat significant influence and power.

 

Hat-tip: SPLCenter

#2818: Scott Esk

More shit from the past! Scott Esk is an Oklahoma fundie who supports stoning gay peopleto death. In particular, Esk was a 2014 Oklahoma state House candidate for the Tea Party, and although the state was already famous for its anti-gay policies back then, Esk was apparently dismayed by his fellow candidates’ reluctance to grow a real spine on the issue: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it,” said Esk, adding that stoning gay people to death “goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.” You see, stoning “was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God” and “what was done back then was what’s just. … And I do stand for Biblical morality.” Now, to pacify those with some concerns about his suitability for the legislature, Esk was quick to add that “I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals to death, but I didn’t have a problem with it.” So there.

 

And if you consider aspects of his view to be offensive, Esk is ready to set the record straight: “The fact is, that it’s much more offensive knowing what obscene things homosexuals do with each other than it is for somebody to hold the view that it is indecent.” Esk ultimately received 5% of his district’s vote in the primary; not much, perhaps, but it means that a number of people did vote for him, and he received some 43% when he tried again in 2022.

 

Diagnosis: Thing is, Scott Esk and his views represent a major strand of American “libertarianism” – one that makes “libertarianism” hard to distinguish from Taliban- or ISIS-style theocracies – and he does, apparently, enjoy far more support than reasonable people would like to think.

#2817: Thomas Ertl

Veterans Today (VT) is an infamous conspiracy website focusing (primarily) on various anti-semitic conspiracies about, well, virtually any event taking place anywhere in the world, including, in particular, Holocaust denialism; VT did, for instance, famously publish (VT editor) Jim Fetzer’s Sandy Hook truther conspiracy theories (‘Did Mossad death squads slaughter American children at Sandy Hook?’).

 

Most of all, however, VT is a Russian propaganda outlet consistently pushing the Kremlin party line, and it is formally partnered with several Russian institutions – like New Eastern Outlook – as well as with with the Iranian state media outlet Press TV. Thomas Ertl is among the writers for VT who toe the Kremlin party line: His February 2022 piece ‘The Ukraine Crisis: Facts Versus Lies — An American Christian Perspective’, for instance, is an attempted justification of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in which Ertl also claims e.g. that it is a lie that Ukraine is a sovereign country.

 

We assume that VT’s Ertl is the same Ertl as the Florida homebuilder and former member of the Council for National Policy who in 2016, for the dominionist Oak Initiative, published a gloriously insane rant about the Access Hollywood video, the release of which Ertl blamed on “the establishment”. The Establishment, you see, is “desperate” to “destroy” Trump because Trump is a threat to “their plans for their New World Order and surrender of U.S. sovereignty”, including “the big banks, and multi-national corporations” [he seems somewhat unclear on Trump’s background]. But more importantly, Trump challenges the satanic underpinnings of The Establishment: “Who of us can know the will of God and plan He has for our great country? But can you not see He is up to something big in the candidacy of Donald Trump?” asks Ertl, asserting (he may be among the first to do so) that Trump may be “a modern-day Cyrus and as President a great defender of the Christian religion.” The Establishment is also working with mainstream media (“deep state papers”) to “keep the pedophilia and assorted sexual perversions of their political associates under wraps.”

 

Diagnosis: For all intents and purposes a Russian bot, and a fine example of how toeing the Kremlin party line, anti-semitism, QAnon and religious fundamentalism blends together to in the dark, rotten stew of hatred in which the US is currently mired and which rather seriously threatens to topple the whole civilization project.

#2816: Joni Ernst

Joni Ernst is the US junior senator from Iowa, a hardcore wingnut and versatile conspiracy theorist. Ernst emerged from the Tea Party in the early 2010s, and was by 2016 sufficiently prominent to be (rumored to be) initially offered Trump’s VP spot, an offer she declined.

 

Like many wingnuts, Ernst has an idiosyncratic and/or poor grasp of the US Constitution, believing e.g. that states can nullify laws passed by the federal government and that local law enforcement officers can freely arrest federal officials attempting to implement Obamacare. She also argued vociferously that then-President Obama had become a dictator that needed to be removed from office and prosecuted for crimes against the Constitution, without being able to identify what those crimes were supposed to be or how they violated the Constitution. In 2014, she also argued that same-sex marriage should be left to the states while simultaneously arguing for a federal marriage amendment that would prohibit gay marriage.

 

Thus far, however, we have mostly dealt with standard wingnut fare; examples of the stuff that really qualify Ernst for an entry here, however, include at least:

 

-       Endorsing and promoting Agenda 21 conspiracy theories, claiming e.g. that the non-binding guidelines would lead to farmers being forced off their land and made to live in cities

-       Believing that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.

-       Being a climate change denier: “I have not seen proven proof that [climate change] is entirely man-made”, said Ernst, committing over the course of ten words a lie, a ludicrous strawman, a red herring, and an appeal to ignorance, while simultaneously displaying complete and utter misunderstanding of how science works.

 

Ernst is also on record fuelling COVID-19 conspiracy theories, e.g. by claiming early on that case numbers were greatly inflated and that healthcare providers might be falsifying them.

 

Diagnosis: A good illustration of the fact that the distinction between the mainstream right and the conspiracy-driven wingnut cuckoo-land has been blurry for a while, Ernst definitely has investments in the latter. She is nevertheless a US senator who seems to enjoy quite a bit of authority, recognition and influence among what many would describe as the “mainstream” parts of the right. Scary and dangerous.

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

#2815: Katherine Erlich

Pretty sure this is the right one.

 

Katherine Erlich is a Michigan-based “holistic pediatrician”. And as so many pseudoscientifically oriented quacks who label themselves ‘holistic’, Erlich is antivaccine. Indeed, Erlich is so pseudoscientifically oriented and anti-vaccine that she credulously promotes an online survey marketed at anti-vaccine parents on their opinions of vaccines (conducted by anonymous trolls affiliated with something called the Progressive Health Consortium, which was endorsed by Rashid Buttar) as some sort of evidence that vaccines are dangerous. Despite being obviously delusional, Erlich was nevertheless recruited as some sort of expert witness by the resident antivaxx loon in the Michigan State legislature at the time, Tom Hooker, to testify in favor of his proposed bill HB 5126 that would make it easier to obtain nonmedical vaccine exemptions.

 

Now, Erlich is, in fact, a board-certified pediatrician, but that does, of course, not mean that the advice and treatment regimes she offers at Healing the Whole Child are reality-based. Now, according to herself, she “takes a practical and individualized approach to pediatric care that focuses on the principles of health, wellness, and the safe resolution of illness”, which, of course, all pediatricians do, but for Erlich, that’s not really what ‘holistic’ approach means (even though it’s what she claims it means):‘holistic’ means that she integrates what she calls ‘natural methods’, which is code for woo, into what she offers. And Erlich promotes a wide range of woo, including homeopathy; her website also features a section called ‘Health Tips’, which requires registering and which features a Quack Miranda Warning. Moreover, Erlich is co-author of Super Nutrition for Babies, which is, among other things, a pseudoscientific guide to ‘toxins’ and which has been endorsed by e.g. Natasha Campbell-McBride and the Weston Price Foundation, which really should tell you everything you need to know.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, she endorses it all, as long as it can be marketed with a ‘wellness’ or ‘natural’ tag (so: anything) – unless, of course, it is something that is actually beneficial to your health, like vaccines. Erlich doesn’t endorse that. Stay away from this one, and even more importantly: keep your kids away.

#2814: Allan Erickson

We admit that we have no precise idea who Allan Erickson is, but at the very least he is a wingnut with a blog and and a major persecution complex. And who is he afraid of? Zeh commies, of course. Communists and atheists – which, to Erickson, are two sides of the same coin (we haven’t seen him try to explain what he thinks communism is). And given that the commies are everywhere, everything Erickson doesn’t like is interpreted as part of a communist ploy. So it goes. That communism is a serious threat is shown by what Erickson (hilariously) believes is the outsize influence of the rightwing’s favorite imaginary boogeyman, Saul Alinsky, whose Rules for Radicals Erickson consistently fails to grasp (and at least grasp the context for) and has read, because he is stupid and afraid, as some sort of Satanic manifesto.

 

And Erickson, in the manner of conspiracy theorists in general, uses his paranoid understanding of Alinsky as the framework with which he interprets the actions and utterances of anyone he disagrees with. Obama, for instance, as Erickson wrote in 2015, “loves Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which sanctions violence and thuggery”, an “atheist thug motivated by hate using violence to achieve only strife and division” who, like the DNC (“a virtual army of Alinsky assassins”) and leftists in general, “refuse to take personal responsibility, always blaming someone else, and demanding the rich pay their bills”. Yes, those poor rich people are heavily oppressed in the US: “Since the rich are in the minority, the rich are an easy target because they cannot adequately defend themselves”. In short, “Man without God is a beast. Beasts like Alinsky and Obama now roam the country,” and it’s all “about gaining more iron-fisted control, for the Left is all about control, total control”.

 

Fortunately for Erickson, Ben Carson was there to fight them: Carson “makes Obama look bad, real bad. And in that, he makes the Democrats look bad, really, really bad. He increasingly makes the MSM look bad. With each attack, Carson gets stronger. Figure that. And so Carson must be destroyed, otherwise, the work of the atheistic communists will be for nothing these last 100 years.”

 

Diagnosis: Probably very minor, but also very typical.