Are hippies MAHA?
How my hometown hippie lifestyle became mainstream, for the wrong reasons
“Is your hometown like MAHA?”
Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, a town full of hippies, I get asked this a lot. For awhile, I wasn’t sure how to answer.
That is, until I listened to episodes from Alex Clark’s Culture Apothecary. She’s a leading influencer in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement with almost 800,000 YouTube subscribers. Her guests talk about things that are SO familiar to me: naturopathy, organic, whole, unprocessed food, and more. And yes, they talk about vaccines and food dyes.
I didn’t seek these episodes out; I found them through Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath, a virtual club that listens to right-wing podcasts to understand the media ecosystem. For the most part, the episodes are wholly unfamiliar; they describe a world I only vaguely hear about.
This week, I got to write an op-ed for their newsletter. If you want to understand the right-wing media ecosystem, what the right does (and doesn’t do) well to engage their followers, and see how people like me are making sense of our changing politics, give them a follow.
In the article, I break down…
What it feels like to listen to a MAHA podcast
My own experience with hippie lifestyles and alternative healthcare
How hippies expanded options for healthy living—rooted in values like anti-capitalism and environmentalism
How MAHA is so much more commercial and top-down
The perspective of a farmer and acupunture practitioner—my childhood friend Rachel Hinnen of Vorfreude Dairy Beef
How we might find common ground in a movement that is SO much broader than vaccines and food dyes
Also, laugh at my meme.
