Alex Clark, the anti-vaccine health and wellness influence that helped Trump campaign

When Alexandra Cooper Kamala Harris interviewed on her popular podcast Call Her Daddy, she lost thousands of followers, even though her show is not particularly political and despite her own presidential candidate’s admission that the interview was never intended to change listeners’ political affiliation. However, this drastic drop in followers is further proof that content creators who flirt with politics can pay dearly for it… However, many influencers known for generating content revolving around wellness have decided to take a political stand to support MAHA (Make America Healthy). Again) movement. As journalist EJ Dickson explains in The Cutthere has been a shift to the right on social media platforms, and there are many studies showing that right-wing content tends to generate greater engagement and visibility than content that promotes progressive values. “As the news and viral content cycle spins at a virtually unprecedented pace, it’s arguably more difficult than ever for influencers to gain attention — but it also gives them more license to be incendiary without is facing long-term consequences for it.” she saysnoting that cancellation, far from being definitive, is increasingly ephemeral.

In this context, Alex Clark, a content creator specializing in wellness 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 hosts the video podcast Apothecary of culture 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 dissatisfaction with feminism and hormonal methods of contraception. The podcast, which launched in September, is already in the top 10 in the wellness and health category on Apple and Spotify, and has a private Facebook group called CUTEservatives, whose rules make it clear they don’t want “anyone from the left” on 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 did for many other influencers, during the pandemic. “I didn’t like that we were mandated to get a vaccine,” she said The Washington Postexplaining that after reading Dopeack (2021) by Beth Macy, an investigation into the opioid crisisshe concluded that the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were complicit, and when she researched hormonal contraceptives, she discovered a series of side effects that made her distrust the pharmaceutical industry.

This is how the MAHA movement now has an acclaimed strong figure on social media who has become a Gwyneth Paltrow-like lifestyle gurualbeit deeply conservative, generating the kind of content that continues to gain followers. Actually, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supported Trumpconservative wellness influencers haven’t hesitated to flock to his social media, so they’re undoubtedly in luck now that he’s been announced as US Secretary of Health and Human Services. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and pharmaceutical companies that 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 an important role in ensuring that everyone is protected from the harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and food additives that have contributed to the Health Crisis overwhelming in this country. Mr. Kennedy will return these agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard scientific research and beacons of transparency to end the chronic disease epidemic and make America great and healthy again!” Trump wrote on his social networkThe truth.

While it might seem logical that young women would be against Trump’s policy positions, Clark is the best evidence that the opposite is happening in the United States. “Clark’s project could be especially valuable to the Trump movement, appealing to interests — and anxieties — that aren’t overtly political. She is an influencer for the 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. up from The Washington Post about this “conservative war on welfare”. Emily Amick, a former Democratic senator turned liberal influencer, explains to the same media outlet that Clark is “really talented at reaching out to politically disaffected women and drawing them into the right-wing ecosystem.”

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

Politics 3.0

“What she’s doing is a campaign. Now that Donald Trump won the electionshe 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 to be limited are smaller”, Ignacio Cabra Bellido, director of influencer marketing at Piazza Comunicación, explains 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 in terms of influencer marketing, with France, the United Kingdom and the United States always at the top. The tendency to take a political position has not yet arrived in our country; influencers only do it when, unfortunately, a catastrophe occurs. What happens then? As we have seen, many content creators have replicated the news and made comments without having a clear idea of where the information came from, doing it just to please people, to go with the flow and because of their fear of to express a real opinion,” he says. He adds that the problem with positioning in Spain is that content creators don’t have the necessary political training. “They are neither consistent nor coherent with the views they express. They don’t want to position themselves, not because brands won’t hire them, but for fear of losing followers, because, in reality, companies don’t declare themselves as belonging to a political party. The fear of not engaging is not motivated by a veto, but by losing followers,” he says.

Meanwhile, in the US, Clark is part of a growing wave of conservative-leaning influencers, such as Vani Hari and Jordan Younger, because, as marketing consultant Lauren Lipsay explains, 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 bigger scale.”

For her part, Clark has already gone to the US Senate to speak about chronic disease. On her own YouTube channel, she shares the video claiming that, in Legally blonde way, she denounced “all the lies that millennials, especially those who are mothers, have been exposed to by the agriculture and medical industries. We have reached historic levels of childhood obesity, fertility problems, anxiety and depression due to the legal poison sold in supermarkets and pharmacies. It’s time to stop the corruption and start prioritizing the health and well-being of the next generation.”

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