RFK Jr.'s tour with Jordan Peterson: “Make America Healthy Again" shows why "alt medicine" went MAGA

In his endorsement of Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr. continued to insist he remains "independent" and not a full-blown MAGA crank, laughably claiming that he has meaningful political disagreements with Trump. The pandemic didn't convert people to the right, so much as it revealed the reactionary and even fascistic leaning of so many people who insisted they offer "natural" alternatives to "medicalized" health care. For the reactionary wellness crowd, it's about rejecting the scientific advances of modern medicine for their imagined past when people used "natural" remedies and were, in their dream world, healthier and happier for it. We need your help to stay independent Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism It's surprising there wasn't a "tradwife" at Kennedy's Senate stop of his so-called "Make American Healthy Again" tour, as these online influencers may be the purest manifestation yet of how the rhetoric of "natural" and "wellness" has been wholly cannibalized by a far-right movement that longs to return to an era of white supremacy and overt patriarchy. People like Kennedy and his compatriots in the alt-medicine world often invoke words or phrases like "pollution" or "Big Pharma," which allow people to assume a progressive, if misguided, motive for their anti-science delusions.