Alex Clark, the anti-vaccine health and wellness influencer who helped Trump on the campaign trail
Alex Clark, the anti-vaccine health and wellness influencer who helped Trump on the campaign trail . The online celebrity has found in Donald Trump’s victory and the announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services new reasons to raise her voice even louder and with less shame
EL PAÍS América
When Alexandra Cooper interviewed Kamala Harris on her popular podcast Call Her Daddy, she lost thousands of followers, even though her show is not particularly political and despite the presidential candidate’s own admission that the interview was never intended to change the political affiliation of listeners. However, this radical drop in followers is further proof that content creators who flirt with politics can pay dearly for it… Nevertheless, many influencers known for generating content that revolves around wellbeing have decided to take a political stand to support the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement. As journalist E. J. Dickson explains in The Cut, there has been a shift to the right on social media platforms, and there are many studies that show that right-wing content tends to generate greater engagement and visibility than content that promotes progressive values. “With the news and viral content cycle churning at a virtually unprecedented rate, it’s arguably more difficult than ever for influencers to attract eyeballs — but it also grants them more license to be incendiary without facing long-term consequences for it,” she says, noting that cancellation, far from being permanent, is increasingly ephemeral.

In this context, Alex Clark, a content creator specializing in wellbeing and health — despite having no training in the field — who is described by the media as “the modern woman of the right,” shines with particular force. She presents the video podcast Culture Apothecary twice a week, which aims to “heal a sick culture — physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” and whose themes revolve around, among other things, heterosexual couples, motherhood, and discontent with feminism and hormonal contraception methods. The podcast, which launched in September, is already among the 10 most-listened to in the wellbeing and health category on Apple and Spotify and has a private Facebook group called CUTEservatives, whose rules make it clear that they do not want “anyone from the left” on the forum and that in order to be accepted, users must follow Alex Clark on Instagram.

Make America Healthy Again

Clark’s interest in the world of wellness began, as it has for so many other influencers, during the pandemic. “I didn’t like that we were mandated to take a vaccine,” she told The Washington Post, explaining that after reading Dopesick (2021) by Beth Macy, an investigation into the opioid crisis, she came to the conclusion that the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were complicit, and when researching hormonal contraceptives, she discovered a series of side effects that made her distrust the pharmaceutical industry.

This is how the MAHA movement now has a powerful figure acclaimed on social media, who has become a Gwyneth Paltrow-like lifestyle guru, albeit deeply conservative, generating a type of content that continues to gain followers. In fact, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Trump, conservative wellness influencers did not hesitate to approach his social networks, so they are undoubtedly now in luck after he was announced as Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health. The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country. Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!” Trump wrote on his social network, Truth.

While it might seem logical that young women would be against Trump’s political positions, Clark is the best proof that the opposite is happening in the United States. “Clark’s project might be especially valuable to Trump’s movement by appealing to interests — and anxieties — that aren’t overtly political. She’s an influencer for pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA and the face of its Young Women’s Leadership Summit, an annual confab that has featured the likes of Lara Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,” writes Kara Voght in the aforementioned article in The Washington Post about this “conservative war on wellbeing.” Emily Amick, a former Democratic Senator now turned liberal influencer, explains to the same media that Clark is “really talented at reaching politically disengaged women and pulling them into the right-wing ecosystem.”

“I want to be seen as: Alex Clark, cool girl, loves health and wellness, happens to be conservative. I’m not trying to beat people over the head with that. I don’t think that’s persuasive,” Clark clarifies. “Because we are so sick from the food and then being prescribed their pills, we’re not able to think critically or clearly. Therefore, it’s so much easier, in my opinion, for them to control us,” adds Clark, who interviewed Dr. Jennifer Simmons, who claims that mammograms make women sick, in her video podcast.

Politics 3.0

“What she is doing is a campaign. Now that Donald Trump has won the election, she has declared herself totally right-wing because she knows that by being in his favor, the chances of her audience, her algorithms and her way of communicating being limited are smaller,” Ignacio Cabra Bellido, director of influencer marketing at Piazza Comunicación, explains to EL PAÍS, highlighting the growing role of politics in the universe of content creators in the United States. “Spain is a country that is always at the bottom when it comes to influencer marketing, with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States always at the top. The trend of taking a political position has not yet reached our country; influencers only do so when, unfortunately, a catastrophe occurs. What happens then? As we have seen, many content creators have replicated news and made comments without having a clear idea of where the information came from, doing it only to please the people, to go with the flow, and because of the fear they have of expressing a real opinion,” he says. He adds that the problem of positioning themselves in Spain is that content creators do not have the necessary training in terms of politics. “They are neither consistent nor coherent with the opinions they express. They do not want to position themselves, not because brands are not going to hire them, but for fear of losing followers, because in reality, firms do not declare themselves to be part of a political party. The fear of not getting involved is not motivated by a veto, but by the loss of followers,” he says.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., Clark is part of a growing wave of influencers who boast conservative stances, like Vani Hari and Jordan Younger, because as marketing consultant Lauren Lipsay explains to The Cut: “We’re in a different climate now. A different era. Trump gives people permission to be the worst versions of themselves. And with him winning, we’re seeing that again on a much larger scale.”

For her part, Clark has already gone to the U.S. Senate to speak about chronic diseases. On her own YouTube channel, she shares the video claiming that, in Legally Blonde mode, she has denounced “all the lies that millennials, especially those who are mothers, have been exposed to by the agricultural and medical industry. We have reached historic levels of childhood obesity, fertility problems, anxiety, and depression because of the legal poison sold in supermarkets and pharmacies. It is time to stop corruption and start prioritizing the health and well-being of the next generation.”

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2024-11-21
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The online celebrity has found in Donald Trump’s victory and the announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services new reasons to raise her voice even louder and with less shame
Alex Clark, the anti-vaccine health and wellness influencer who helped Trump on the campaign trail