.CULTS OF THE CULTURE WARS: “Politics and the Conspiracy of Vaccines (part 2)” Posted on September 4, 2021 (A.Glass 2021)
New age alternatives to medical science and rightwing populism
When the Spanish Flu, which was brought into America shipping ports by returning services men from World War One, tore into American life. The already established fears of vaccinations and defiance against being vaccinated for Smallpox merged into elements of fringe health proponents, right wing conservatives under a conspiratorial libertarian banner to which they believe governments are trying to control and coherence the populous with so called experimental medical sciences. Despite the progress of reducing the scourge of smallpox with vaccinations, the science was still new and evolving with the discovery of new illnesses plaguing humanity, which were not seen as viruses until over a decade later in 1930’s under the new lore of Virology that recognized and began to study this micro entity which was indeed a culprit to the plethora of diseases affecting human beings, plants and animals. As the world, particularly America moved into what was deemed the Progressive Era of the 1920s and 30’s, technological advancement in medical sciences became more frequently embraced by the wider society, yet antivaccination movements remained and the more prominent and politically motived was the American Medical Liberty League to which, antivaccine advocate Lora Little was a part of. It was this very organized discord and widespread distribution of printed propaganda in the form of pamphlets which offered a greater coverage to the backlash against government sanction vaccination. However, alternative lifestyle choices, which was the first of new age philosophy and fitness which became a center point in the early 20th Century as an added direction to antivaccination movements in the form of entrepreneur and America’s first fitness guru Bernarr Macfadden.
Bernarr Macfadden was born in Mill Spring, Missouri in 1868, as a young child he had witnessed the ill health and death of his parents, particularly his mother who died form Tuberculosis, from an early age which from all accounts, through this childhood trauma, he began to look at alternative aspects of health, more so by pushing the ideas of exercise and diet as not only a personal perspective, but also as a societal importance. By 1899 after developing exercise equipment in England, he created the first fitness and muscle magazine called Physical Culture, despite his eccentric and at times bizarre behavior, Macfadden was highly influential for the time, representing fad diets through his publications, he also showed how mass media can create the groundwork for alternative medicines, diets and the early incarnations of New Age health movements. Macfadden was also a staunch antivaccinationist.
As the populism and right wing libertarian aspects gathered momentum into the 1920s, so did the backlash towards what the conservative mindset of American values feared, that government sanctioned socialism is threatening the constitution and the freedom of choice through vaccinations. As faddish diets were pushed and the beginning of the fitness industry developed, Macfadden showed, despite his eccentricity, a more authoritarian perspective to health and fitness, going as far as offering a decree “Weakness is a crime, don’t be a criminal!” Alluding to his believe that America has become saddled down with laziness, poor diets and an over reliance of the medical profession. With Fascism gaining traction in Italy, Macfadden’s might-is-right rhetoric and his confidence trickery was able to captivate not just the likes of celebrates at the time, but even the American President Theodore Roosevelt. Yet, it was in 1931 that the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who showed a keen interest in Macfadden’s exercise regimes, conjoined with Mussolin in a vis versa appreciation of Fascist ideology to which Macfadden stated after meeting with the Italian dictator, “There are times when I believe that America needs a Mussolini, as never before.” Macfadden eccentricity to the alternative health practices stayed with him until the end of his life, seen in his later years as more of a clown like figure, his initial imprint on how to spread misinformation through mass media, which included the skepticism of medical sciences and New Age beliefs in faddish diets and exercise that will solve societies ills resonated well after he died in 1955, after refusing medical treatment for a digestive disorder.
However this flirtation with extreme ideology of the right wing, particularly from Macfadden’s cult like fixture as an alternative health advocate, never the less creating a foundation of quackery that was, by its foundation anti-science and beliefs in a conspiracy based platform. Took on a bizarre turn when the predecessor, pulp fiction writer to Macfadden’s magazine empire Edward Longstreet Bodin, became the President of Bernarr MacFadden foundation in the late 1950s, maintain the anti science aspects and faddish diets, yet Longstreet Bodin went further exasperating the right wing conspiracy theories under his tenure, from claims that death of Franklin Roosevelt, who was friends with Macfadden, was due to psychic intervention to prevent America’s government from being taken over by Communists. This oddity of conspiratorial and the mistrust with Government sanctioned medical sciences continued on throughout the 20th Century as it melded onto the more extreme of libertarian beliefs.
Ref:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bernarr-Macfadden
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1920s-american-medical-liberty-league-1920741074
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Longstreet_Bodin
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A.Glass 2021
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