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The New Hippies

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Spend a little time on Far-Right social media and you can’t help but notice that a big chunk of it is now exhibiting and parroting the worst tendencies and ideas of the Old Hippie Left — nutrition and “health food” pseudoscience, dopey spiritualities, anti-CIA/FBI/cop/military paranoia, bizarro conspiracy theories, homeopathic nonsense, “back to nature” sentimentality, a rejection of science and The Establishment, and an impulse to isolate and purify themselves from the rest of society, and America from the rest of the world.

https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1766092662317129996?t=lU23sl7chJz0oH_Dj67NBw&s=19

True. And hippies, at least, invented their own crap. The far-right wokes are parroting the crap invented by the people they claim to despise. That’s very pathetic.

Back in 2000-2001 I briefly hung out with a far-left crowd. They were all rich, spoiled kids who ranted about the evil “establishment” because their futures were guaranteed to be comfortable by that very establishment. They were self-flatrering but never self-defeating.

Their imitators on today’s far right, on the other hand, are cutting themselves off from any hope of accumulating wealth by their conspiracy theories about “vaccinated cheese”, and all that.

15 responses to “The New Hippies”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Or maybe we just like gardening, have high rates of homeschooling, and prefer less-toxic cleaning products. And also we are religious (that’s the element that makes us “far right” these days) and we don’t really trust the government.

    Yeah, there are some zealots about it, but I have also seen *exactly* the stuff that our family actually does, characterized as freakazoid hippiedom by commentators who’ve never met us.

    I have a garden. I grow vegetables in it, which we then eat. We use unscented detergent and Dr. Bronner’s soaps. We homeschool our kids and we recycle stuff. We buy things secondhand. We make our own yogurt and soup stock and cook basically everything at home, from ingredients. In general, I don’t try to convert others to our lifestyle. We do it largely for practical reasons. We do not wear Birkenstocks, but much of what we actually do is indistinguishable from many hippie stereotypes.

    This sort of thing is very, very easy to caricature, for those hostile to it.

    The real question is: why the hostility?

    I have seen far too many screeds lately telling people that looking up your health problems and trying to treat at home is basically *dangerous witchcraft*, that growing food in your own yard is *damaging the environment* and other such malignant nonsense. 

    Example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-allotment-increase/

    As if “the environment” were the primary reason to grow your own veg, and not, you know, the animal pleasure of playing in the dirt, and tomatoes that taste good, and vegetables you simply can’t buy anywhere. Greens that are actually fresh. Nah, clearly their only concern is that money is changing hands somewhere. Anything you do where money doesn’t change hands is deeply suspect. My back-fence neighbor just gave me a carton of eggs from her flock. No profit was made, no taxes were paid, no papertrail was created, and no bureaucrats were involved. Some people find that sort of thing deeply alarming.

    They are the ones writing about these new (ha!) “Far Right Hippies”. Whatever. I was raised by actual hippies. I’m not into free love, communes, or psychedelic drugs, but they did have some good fixations, like the whole don’t-poison-everything bit, recycling, repairing, re-using, growing food, learning some practical craft skills so you’re not totally dependent on The Man for everything. Do-It-Yourself. Not maximizing income at the expense of quality of life.

    Yes, there are wild rumors about vaccinated cheese. Is anybody actually doing anything in response to those rumors? No. Not as far as I can tell. Personally, I think the thing most alarming about us is that we are not slotting neatly into the categories we’ve been assigned: i.e. if you’re into “natural” anything, you can’t be religious; if you’re religious, you must also be unquestioningly pro-corporation (who makes these rules and why is it still 1990?); If you’re against poisoning the soil and water, you also have to be a commie… why? Like, really, why? Violate any of those antiquated and arbitrary tribal boundaries, and you’ll find yourself being attacked by somebody. Some people are awfully bothered that we aren’t staying inside our neat little fences and growling at each other through the wire.

    The more interesting question is… why do you personally have such a strong reaction to it? 

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The people I’m talking about believe that there’s a conspiracy of CIA and the FBI to cover up for satanists who literally drink children’s blood. This isn’t about gardening but about conspiratorial mentality where people think cheese is spying on them.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        I think there are a lot more of us than there are of them. We just don’t make so many shrill videos and tweets. They are used by the opposition to smear the rest of us.

        Every subculture has its cartoonish self-parodies. As much as we might wish that all the schizoids and grifters out there would organize under the same religious/political umbrella… no, they’re everywhere. The trick is to stop paying attention to them and keep doing what’s important to you. 

        It wasn’t that long ago that Westboro Baptist was being publicized every minute of every day by MSM outlets in hopes that we’d all stop identifying as Christians in abject humiliation. Guilt by association and all. WB isn’t fake. It really exists, and they really are a completely bonkers cult. The free publicity though… that was motivated.

        Nobody likes seeing someone they know get sucked into a cult, a multi-level marketing company, or a telephone scam. 

        The key takeaway is that you shouldn’t be on social media, “far-right” or otherwise. The people who get most into that are the craziest, and the medium amplifies the crazy. I do not believe you get an accurate picture of *anything* that’s going on IRL from social media, but you can certainly be led into a whole lotta creepy packrat dens there.

        Any news item that is talking about the alarming “xyz on social media” is not about real life, and people who spend too much time contemplating the online version are getting seriously mindf***ed. I’m not saying the crazy cult far-right isn’t a thing. Just that trying to assess it from “social media” is going to give you the same seriously inflated view of it that it has of itself. I don’t concern myself with flat-earthers or Jehovah’s Witnesses either.

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        1. Avi Avatar
          Avi

          @methylethyl

          Dear Methylethyl, thank you. I find your words illuminating, and the underlying discourse bright and sharp as usual.

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “people think cheese is spying on them”

        And you say you’re not creative! That’s a great idea for a sci fi story!

        Liked by 1 person

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      3. Avatar
        Anonymous

        the only thing is, we know that the CIA and FBI enable and/coverup sex rings that involve underage women and men, so how is it a huge stretch from that to covering up ritual murder of children?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I heard this exact same line about the CIA running a sex slavery ring in Nicaragua from a far-left dude in 2000.

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        2. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          I expect every large company or govt institution that runs offices in poorer foreign countries has got at least a casual business relationship with the local flesh dealers.

          Doesn’t make it OK, just… no grand conspiracy required. Unattached men with money away from home– whether they’re Japanese businessmen, militaries, diplomats, or mining companies, It’s gonna happen. The jobs attract that sort. Everybody knows there’s a market there. Yes, their bosses cover for them. Yes, there are people who serve that market.

          Is it a conspiracy? Technically. Those do exist– and companies conspire to cover up the bad behavior of their employees. But not in the, uh, satanist adrenochrome lizard people genre. Probably.

          The conspiracy kook stuff is fascinating in its own right though. I think people tend to have the gist of the thing– that there’s something deeply wrong with people who have that much money, power, and influence, that they do bad things and get away with it because of their money, power, and influence, and conspiracy-mongers in general have correctly identified where the rot lies. Does anybody believe that HRC is a squeaky-clean paragon of virtue? I’m pretty sure we don’t have to believe she eats children to still have doubts about her character. But not having the precise details of the rot, the schizo edge cases fill in the worst thing they can think of. And that varies with the priors of the storyteller. Monsters exist. Very often, monsters have been correctly identified as such. And then we all stand around and quibble over exactly what *kind* of monsters they are. How important is it that we are correct on the fine details? I think quite a lot of conspiracy-mongering is actually on target, if you take it as metaphor.

          I have no trouble at all imagining organizations like Vanguard and Blackrock as nests of vampires. Probably not literal bloodsuckers, but close enough… I submit that the whole conspiracy-thing stays in circulation because much of it is at least metaphorically true. You see the actions of these companies, you see these people on TV with their stiff faces and fake expressions, and any reasonably observant person can say: you know, there’s something really very wrong going on there. It’s not a long jump from there to even the wildest tales about them. I mean, have you *seen* that Hochul character talk? Do you not come away profoundly disturbed? Sure, that’s likely the result of way too much plastic surgery. But wouldn’t it be a more interesting story if she just got her skinsuit from a discount retailer and it doesn’t fit very well?

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “ideas of the Old Hippie Left”

    The problem here is there are several separate cultural strands here that intertwine in American culture.

    Very quick…

    First, “health” movements, probably stem from the 19th century German back to nature movement. It was brought by German immigrants and it took root and has been around ever since. (German immigrants were easily the most influential in shaping American culture after England… if an American spends time with Germans and Brits in Europe they almost inevitably find the Germans culturally… closer in many respects). Essentially it pre-dates the hippies and outlasted them.

    Second, the hippy movement itself was a combination of different cultural strands, most notably the health movement and the drug movement which ramped up in the 1950s and the beatniks (silent generation rebellion). But from what I recall conspiracy thinking was never a significant part of the hippy movement. They were much more into overt attacks against institutions on material and social grounds. The hippy movement was never as widespread as some who weren’t around then like to think. Nevertheless it touched broad swathes of the American public and many people (who were in no way shape or form) adopted elements of it.

    Third, the conspiracy movement goes back probably to the 19th century but burst into public consciousness in the late 1950s (John Birch) and has never really left though the identities of who was conspiracing against who for what reason tends to change over time. Conspiracy culture is essentially non-elite gnosticism and usually functions in place of rather than alongside more mainstream religions.

    The tweet seems to make sense until you start thinking about it at which point it falls apart and seems more like wannabe elite dunking on the proles….

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    1. Avi Avatar
      Avi

      @cliff arroyo

      Thank you for bringing this to people’s attention. Although superficially Britain might look more similar to America from a social point of view, culturally speaking Germany is by far the closer of the two to America and the American mindset.

      Personally, Germany is the only country in Europe – apart from Russia and the Caucasus – that I find almost alien to the European spirit. I tried twice to live there but both times I had to leave as I really could not acclimate myself to their mentality. I have lived for long periods of time in a number of countries (England, France, Switzerland, Spain and Denmark), and apart from superficial differences I felt at home everywhere, but not in Germany. Might be “uncoscious bias”, though, as I am Jewish by birth and heritage.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “I tried twice to live there”

        I don’t know if I could live there… I sort of have the feeling Germany is best in small doses… but then I live in a country heavily influenced by Germany (in the part where that influence is particularly strong).

        I remember a conversation with a Polish person who’d worked on ships that usually had predominantly British passengers. He’d been convinced that Poland and Britain were very similar (I’m not sure how….) but then had a ship full of German passengers and realized they were far more similar to Poles than Brits were… the realization shook him up.

        .

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Why proles, though? The people I know who are into adrenochrome and Rothschild conspiracies have fancy college degrees, prestigious jobs, and in one case large inherited wealth. This is an identical demographic to the people who narrated similar conspiracies on the Left 20 years ago.

      Tucker Carlson – rich, inherited wealth, fancy degrees – is saying identical stuff to what rich, highly educated liberals were saying in 2002. Identical.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “similar conspiracies on the Left 20 years ago”

        I was out of the loop then (in terms of conspiracy theories)… I only got back in a bit later when online radio became more of a thing…

        I do remember in the… wake of Waco there was a massive left-and-right break from the mainstream which for a couple of years took the form of non-AM/FM radios. I remember a (mostly leftish) friend had a radio that picked up the stations and spent a long time listening to them and we even drove a couple hours to the station once (housed in a bed/breakfast and restaurant with a bookstore attached).

        The books were mostly rightish theories I recognized from the 70s though with a lot of the racism/anti-semitism bleached out and some UFO stuff added in.

        My broader point is that conspiracy thinking is a constant that switches homes (from right to left to right in this case apparently) the same way that ‘natur-ist-besser’ ideas switch ideological homes over time…

        I no longer believe anything Cucker says (that is I don’t think he sincerely believes in anything – he’s just clout chasing).

        And I do still think the purpose of the tweet was to dunk on the proles.

        Liked by 1 person

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Are you telling me you eat unvaccinated cheese? The horror, the horror!

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  4. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
    Post Alley Crackpot

    … psst, I know I’m late here, but …

    …

    …

    …

    Did any of you get the Cheesevax?

    🙂

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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