Crunchy conservatives want to 'Make America Healthy Again'
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Have you or someone you love been confused by the push to make America healthy again? Side effects may include being inundated by uncredentialed wellness influencers and crunchy mommy bloggers selling supplements. Feeling perplexed by how RFK Jr. went from an environmental champion to an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. Or maybe seeing the names Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz more and more in your feeds. If that's the case, then you, my friend, are in dire need of our new series. The Road to Make America Healthy Again.
Don't you want a president that's going to make America healthy again?
For the next few weeks, we're delving into some of the origins, conspiracy theories, and power grabs that have led us to this moment and what that could mean for our health. Today, you and I are going to go down the crunchy to conservative pipeline with some guidance, of course. Now, when you hear the word crunchy, you may think about hippies in the 60s and 70s or people making their own kombucha, you know, practicing veganism, folks with left-leaning politics who are living off the land, stuff like that. But these days, that's not quite right.
That also is a misnomer if you think it's only always been hippies or leftists, because the very ideology of conservatism is this notion of protecting what has already existed. And we want to keep perpetuating that.
That is Derek Barris, writer and co-host of the Conspiratuality podcast. a show dedicated to dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis. And he says that the link between this return to nature ideology and conservatism is a pattern we've seen throughout history.
You referenced the 60s and hippies, well, you had the John Birch Society, which was a conservative organization in the 1960s that spread a lot of misinformation in order to drive people toward conservative values. That was agreeing with a lot of the hippies and actually influencing them at that time on things like fluoride in the water.
Now, you may be wondering, what does a crunchy conservative look like today? Well, there are the crunchy moms.
I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I'd rather go thirsty than drink tap water. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I assume nobody uses fluoride anymore, right? I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I'm not using fluoride.
The wellness influencers who spread misinformation about the food we consume.
Did you know that this toxic chemical could be on your food?
Even right-wing commentators who suddenly have the cure for poisons and toxins.
We are being poisoned. Our fertility is being targeted and it's dropping across the Western world. Ladies and gentlemen, AnthroPlex is the newest addition.
And more. You have this kind of ecosystem where now it's the wellness industry and all these podcasters who are telling you the truth that the scientists and the doctors and the government are hiding from you. And that has led to the explosion of kind of this alt-right wellness industry.
That is Dr. Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist who has been ringing the alarm on the harm of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and of course, crunchy conservatism.
If you look at people who believe in those medical conspiracies, like we're hiding the natural cures for cancer or fluoride in our water is poisoning us, those same people that believe those, they're the ones that participate in the wellness behaviors, like eating organic, going to the farm stand and taking supplements and herbs and vitamins. And simultaneously, they're the ones that are not doing the proven things to improve health, like preventive well visits, vaccines, wearing sunscreen and going to the dentist.
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