I’ve noticed a bit of a trend on Instagram. While perusing my feed, I’ll see someone repost something health- or fitness-related that strikes me as a little … off. Maybe it’s about the purported virtues of drinking raw milk — which, seriously, you should not do — or organic skin care, but it’s rarely overtly right-wing. Yet when I visit the original page that posted it, in many cases, it usually only takes me a few scrolls to realize it belongs to some MAGA kook who espouses conspiracy theories and pushes far-right propaganda under the guise of health consciousness.
And a new report shows how these ostensibly health-conscious accounts are helping steer users toward accounts that promote right-wing extremism, illustrating how such content can “serve as an entry point from wellness to narratives associated with the far-right.”
While perusing my feed, I’ll see someone repost something health- or fitness-related that strikes me as a little … off.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s report — headlined “How women seeking information about health and wellness are recommended sites that promote election denialism” — uses Turning Point USA spokesperson Alex Clark as an example. She hosts a wellness podcast called “Culture Apothecary,” on her rebranded POPlitics account, that’s essentially used to welcome women into the MAGA fold.
Clark is known for spreading right-wing health misinformation and has been part of the right-wing push to promote raw milk, which garnered justifiable backlash — and mockery, too. The ISD’s report explains how using search terms like “workouts for women” or “#fitspo” — or engaging with “Culture Apothecary,” which might not seem political at first glance — can lead to Instagram suggestions to follow other right-wing political accounts, such as TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk’s and the Tucker Carlson Network.
The report also shows how the “Culture Apothecary” account, which has a little under 200,000 followers, is able to gain millions of views with its wellness-focused content. The report makes clear how Instagram’s algorithms can serve as a dangerous mechanism for pushing unsuspecting users toward extreme and conspiratorial content:
Engaging with Clark’s content leaves a user (and potential voter) a mere one or two steps away from extreme election-denying content, and narratives popular on the far right, despite no demonstrated interest in those topics.
The report notes that this kind of manipulation could be a way for conservatives to try to cut into the voting gender gap that has seen women largely supporting Democrats, particularly after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The problem of wellness-related accounts helping promote far-right ideas, of course, isn’t confined to Clark’s content. The tradwife and homesteader movements — the latter of which was recently promoted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — are both anti-modern movements largely driven by online influencers who use health, food and wellness content to promote ultraconservative extremism.
Keep this in mind as you scroll online.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.