The wellness to fascism pipeline.

[EllieBC]

I’m pretty certain the story that I’m linking in this post was probably discussed here already, but the idea has been weighing on my mind again.

I’ve seen it happen with celebrities and athletes and even people that I know in real life.

Everything starts out pretty simply. Sure we would all like to go back to eating more of a natural diet with less additives but before you know it, we go from maybe only having McDonald’s once or twice a year to suddenly being bombarded with 911 didn’t happen and if it did, it was the fault of the Jews. Or Covid isn’t real. And if it is real it’s a deep state plot to control us.

How the hell does wanting to eat better and exercise more drag so many people into the whackadoodle dark corners of the CT world?

Anyway if you never read The Guardian article, here it is: https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline

[jaxexpat]

1. Whacky diets and fuedal extremism connection? Good catch there, EllieBC

[EllieBC]

3. It's shocked the shit out of me.

I’m a huge baseball and hockey fan. Jonathan Toews, former captain of the Chicago Blackhawks, got Covid has had concussions, ended up with long Covid, and has some sort of other immune disorder. Man went from just wanting to eat cleaner to all of a sudden going on these wacky ass retreats and following RFK Jr and Joe Rogan.

It’s fucking weird.

[Blue_Tires]

2. This is definitely a topical region

where the two ends of the "horseshoe" meet...

[EllieBC]

4. You see that a lot in anti vax movements.

You end up with a lot of crunchy hippie at one point mostly liberal people and a whole bunch of conservatives who have both decided that big Pharma is trying to kill their children.

[Sympthsical]

6. There's a sharp rise of whooping cough in the Bay Area

When I looked at the article, the first thing it noted was a concentration in Marin County.

Yeah, that tracks.

Pre-Covid there was this great play I went to see called Eureka Day about anti-vaxxers and aging hippies sending their kids to school in Berkeley without vaccinations - which was a legitimate problem in the Bay Area. I worked with patients in Berkeley for years, and it was a constant fight of, "Oh my god, just listen to your doctor. A tea doesn't fix MS. We're not bringing in a shaman. And no, we can't list the vibration machine you built in a garage as an official treatment."

I could (maybe should) write a book about magical thinking, medicine, and how modern spiritualism has made smart people tangibly dumber.

[EllieBC]

9. I might be wrong but

I seem to recall many years before Covid mother Jones published an article talking about vaccine compliancy, and some of the lowest rates were in the Pacific Northwest and coastal California.

I live in BC near Vancouver and yeah it tracks. People would sooner take their two month old baby to a chiropractor and have their neck cracked before they would consider making sure that they had their hep B and DTaP vaccinations.

[Sympthsical]

11. Covid was a really strange watch

Because previously to that, all my experience with anti-vaxx, anti-medicine views (outside of a few religious pockets) was with what I always referred to as Wacky Californians. A lot of New Age spiritualism, people who had at one time or another lived in communes or off the grid, Eastern healing, etc. That kind of milieu that came out of the 1970s and evolved over time into modern wellness schemes. (Who doesn't love homeopathy?!)

So when right-wingers went whole hog on Covid, it was like "Finally. Something that brings both fringes together." Except the Right ended up being more than mere fringe in this case.

[Blue_Tires]

10. Oh, I remember in the old days of DU

I think it was some fringe leftists who first started that "vaccines gave my kid autism" bullshit 15+ years ago....

[Sympthsical]

5. Once you sell "the establishment is lying to you" you can get people to buy into a lot

This has been a thing long before social media and Covid, but social media has allowed it to spread exponentially. I remember the halcyon days when I only had to deal with people like Mercola. But the entire "wellness" industry is chock full of quackery and snake oil whose entire basis is "Medicine likes keeping you sick". It really doesn't help when M.D.'s and other health professionals realize they can cash in on quackery and go to town. (Ahem, Dr. Oz - thanks Oprah!).

And once authority isn't trusted, well, you can fill that empty space, uncertainty, and suspicion with a whole lot of things. The mindset allows for tentacles to branch out into all kinds of areas, which inevitable includes politics.

[milestogo]

7. There was a trainer at my local health club who got cancer.

She was in great shape, early forties, two kids. She had a rare GI cancer which was diagnosed at a nearby teaching hospital. Instead of getting treatment there, she rejected chemotherapy and found a doctor in FL who put her on a "grapes only" diet. The idea here was to rid her body of toxins which cause cancer.

She did it her way, and she died about 18 months after the diagnosis.

[eShirl]

8. I got cancer 10 years ago

Stage IV. Hit it hard with everything the doctors could give to me. chemo, surgery, radiation. Ten years later here I am still shitposting.

[milestogo]

14. Good for you!

[EllieBC]

15. Listen to science and you hugely increase

your chances of continuing on to shit post. Glad you are with us!!!

[Skittles]

16. "shitposting"

STOP IT eShirl, yer killing me!

[DBoon]

12. The ties beween Fascism and belief in the occult are well documented

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultism_in_Nazism

[keep_left]

13. There's also a connection to silly social media stuff like Joe Rogan...

...and the alt-right. I know that Rogan's had numerous guests who have some kind of conspiracy theory about "seed oils" and think everyone should be cooking using beef tallow and coconut oil. (Ask any reputable cardiologist about the folly of that advice--I did). Some of those guests have no expertise and have no business speaking to an audience of millions when they haven't spent as much as a day in a college biology class. Rogan's guests were sometimes "health gurus"; others were prominent alt-right idiots like Michael "Know-Less" Knowles (from the Daily Wire).