CLUB RECAP: SUPPLEMENTS NOT SOCIALISM! CULTURE APOTHECARY WITH ALEX CLARK AND RAZI BERRY
How vague historical anecdotes and even vaguer solutions generate deeper confusion and rage toward the healthcare system.
UNASB recently dipped our toes back into the (triple-filtered, fluoride-free) waters of the MAHA movement with Culture Apothecary, the Turning Point USA wellness podcast hosted by Alex Clark. This was the third time UNASB has listened to Clark over the past 18 months. Culture Apothecary is “rooted in conservative values,” claiming to empower its listeners to lead “healthier, counter-cultural” lives, by making “one informed decision at a time.”
In the episode “Why Smart People Are Ditching Their Doctor For A Naturopath,” Clark speaks with Razi Berry, founder of the Naturopathic Doctor News & Review (NDNR) journal, about flaws in the American medical system, preventative and “root cause” based healthcare, and getting soda pop, synthetic fabrics, and fluorescent lighting out of hospitals.
Checking in on how such prominent members of the MAHA movement are feeling about said movement’s progress felt important 1.5 years into the Trump administration, and with midterms just months away.
“Corporations are rigging the system,” Clark tells Razi Berry. “You know, you’re seeing this like, disinterest in politics completely. [The American people] feel like every single side is bought and paid for… I think a lot of the pesticide, glyphosate stuff, at least with the MAHA space, that’s really making people upset” she says, referring to the Trump executive order in February that invoked the Defense Production Act to mandate increased production of the glyphosate-based weedkiller, Roundup. Glyphosate is a MAHA-detested and widely used pesticide that has been implicated in lawsuits against Monsanto/Bayer for its known links to cancer. (After the executive order was issued, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. was notably silent on the issue, despite campaigning on a platform of removing toxins just like this one from our food and water supplies.)
“The vibe shift is palpable, of people just saying, I give up. I’m over this,” Clark continues. “And so, I know my audience isn’t going to like to hear this, but what I predict… I think we’re going to swing the other way now … we’re going to elect some extreme socialist like AOC.”
Our meeting covered common MAHA rhetorical tactics, talking points, and strategies. We discussed potentially effective ways for us to talk to our MAHA friends and family and, importantly, how the left can welcome MAHA voters back into our coalition.
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS, VAGUE SOLUTIONS, BUT DEFINITELY NOT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
“I’m not blaming doctors,” Berry insists over and over again. “Most doctors go to medical school because they want to help people.” It is the system, and the lobbyists who uphold the status quo, who are to blame for the lack of thorough and supportive medical care Berry says most Americans are receiving.
But what do Berry and Clark suggest we actually do when the “Foundation for Optimum Health” that naturopathic medicine seeks to establish before administering medication has become inaccessible? When attempts to “Stimulate The Body’s Self-Healing Mechanisms” fail, because the approaches prioritized in naturopathic medicine (nutrition, botanical medicine, movement, hydrotherapy) have been rendered moot by the systemic constraints that American capitalism has placed on people’s ability to access the basic building blocks for good health?
What do we do when the liposomal phospholipid complex supplements we’re taking simply aren’t absorbent enough to sop up the systemic forces making so many of us so sick?
Here’s what we don’t do: socialized medicine.
Similar to episodes we’ve previously listened to of Michael Knowles and Joe Rogan, Clark taps into listeners’ fears about the systemic problems affecting Americans’ lives today, then provides them with no concrete solutions to the problem from the Right. Instead, she rails against potential left-wing (“socialist”) solutions and AOC, warning her listeners to stay wary.
Spending the majority of podcast time discussing problems and vaguely criticizing “the left,” “socialism” and “AOC,” without providing much in the way of critical thinking about solutions, is a common strategy in the right-wing podcast-sphere. Solutions are like politicians: easy to challenge, easy to loathe. Whereas the vague offerings that Berry proposes – “reconnect with your body,” “seek root causes” – feel more like customizable invitations, do-it-yourself calls to action, easy to interpret broadly and helpful for growing an audience. Fear keeps people listening; solutions make people critical and offer more opportunity for disagreement.
The message is less about inviting behavioral or practical change than it is about shifting the Overton window further to the right, in the process fostering an identity shift in Clark’s listeners, encouraging them to identify as counter-cultural, as people who question conventional medicine, conventional processes, and conventional politics.
“IT’S IN THE LITERATURE”
Another similarity to Knowles and Rogan, Berry makes vague references to history as a means of legitimizing her claims. “These drugs were what killed our president, George Washington,” she says of early pharmaceutical interventions, explaining that naturopathic medicine arose as a backlash against conventional medical treatments of the late 1700s and mid-1800s. It feels jarring to hear the founder of a medical journal that explicitly rejects Randomized Control Trials in favor of anecdotal reports claim “this is all in historical documents.” But it’s a common right-leaning rhetorical strategy we’ve seen before. Like Knowles’s explanation of English Common Law and its relations to U.S. birthright citizenship, or Joe Rogan’s allusions to Christopher Columbus, vague and factually dubious historical references pepper many a right-wing podcast. They’re little legitimacy tokens designed to seduce the reader into a belief in their accuracy of the information being presented.
CENTERING THE INDIVIDUAL
Clark, like most right-leaning public figures, tends to conveniently ignore that we exist in a collective society, and instead emphasizes the role of individualism in making healthcare decisions.
Throughout the episode, Clark and Berry tell the listener to re-center their own agency, rather than offer collective solutions to the healthcare system. They support this approach with anecdotes of others who have cured their autoimmune conditions, emphasizing how great it is to be able to pay out-of-pocket for hour-long appointments with naturopathic doctors who take your entire health and trauma history into consideration. As listeners, we hear “your experience matters,” “your body matters,” and “you can take control of your own health.” In a world where so many people feel let down by their doctors, health insurance plans, and American healthcare infrastructure as a whole, this messaging has obvious psychological appeal. Instead of looking for solutions from a healthcare system that has repeatedly failed us and then overcharged for it, we are told to re-center our own agency, then given anecdotal evidence of others who have done the same, and cured their autoimmune conditions in the process! None of this is inherently “Republican.” Democrats can, and probably should, communicate at the individual level, before diving into how a system meant to support 350 million people is going to be overhauled so you can be healthy.
PETER THIEL’S WET DREAM: SYSTEMS FALL APART, DEREGULATION PREVAILS
“Fire Your Doctor” (and then quit your health insurance, too!) is emblematic of the Tech Right’s plan for the future and the MAGA playbook. (See how it all connects?!) Sow mistrust in systems → encourage people to seek solutions outside of established systems → systems lose resources and crumble → leaving a vacuum for billionaires and for-profit corporations to create new and unregulated solutions that serve only a privileged few.
The narrative consistency is striking. From Walsh & Bongino on the Iran war to Sankar & Ryan on AI to Berry & Clark on medical care: institutions are the problem; individuals are the solution. While the villains vary (bureaucracy, legacy media, conventional medicine…) the heroes remain the individual thinkers, the rebels, those questioning or toppling the status quo.
Clark’s branding of her podcast as a force for “counter-culture” fits perfectly within a system that values rule-breaking and disdains regulation. Except, as we continue to learn and re-learn in UNASB, that these counter-cultural forces are becoming increasingly mainstream.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
MAHA is built on real, relatable, existential fears.
At first glance, their worldview is neither unreasonable nor uniquely right-wing. I (progressive, toddler mom, pregnant person, owner of a wheat allergy that magically vanishes when I eat bread in European countries) also do not want glyphosate or microplastics in my food or water supply! Historically, critiques of environmental pollution, corporate influence on public health, and industrialized food systems have come from the left. They should be viewed by Democrats as openings, opportunities to build broad coalitions by building trust while taking care to avoid mockery and shaming.
Most people come by their MAHA allegiance honestly, through medical trauma and personal experience.
UNASB members shared stories of friends who took the COVID vaccine and then entered years-long battles against cancer or infertility, family members who were ignored by doctors after years of chronic illness, or told their symptoms were psychosomatic. Often these struggles were followed by heated, lengthy, expensive battles with health insurance companies over rejected claims and poor coverage. While MAHA voters try to express their frustration, loss of trust, and desire for more control over their own health outcomes, the Democratic coalition has a tendency to respond to these expressions with facts and studies and whitepapers, insistence on Science! as! Truth!, and condescending reminders of how nuanced and complicated these issues are. Amid the veracity of some of these rebuttal tactics, they tend to miss the emotional core of the conversation that MAHA voters seem to be longing for.
Americans Want to Feel in Control
At one point during this podcast, Razi Berry says that “people need to reassert their priorities, because I don’t hear people saying like, ‘Well, I can’t get my roots done because my insurance company won’t pay for it.’” Obviously, this is a gross minimization of the staggering cost of medical care in this country (shoutout to my $13,248.36 emergency c-section). It’s giving “stop buying so much avocado toast.” Clark’s interview with Razi Berry was just as rife with the privileged ignorance about and indifference to the economic realities of most American voters as many of our moderate Democratic establishment politicians tend to be. But the tone of their conversation was empowering and even inviting, offering its listeners the illusion of control in a world that feels increasingly unhealthy and unaffordable. It also offers our coalition an opening to have real conversations with fellow skeptics of the US healthcare system.
What We’ve Been Reading
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Grace, thanks for the summary. You nailed how they tap into genuine healthcare anguish while wrapping it in a classic, "Ayn Rand in full display" individualism. There’s something undeniably appealing about the John Wayne archetype they evoke—the idea of Americans as strong, self-reliant individuals taking control of their own well-being. . To counter these supplement-driven arguments, we can acknowledge that very real system failure first, rather than only dismissing the products out of hand. Your analysis perfectly captures why these movements resonate so deeply right now.