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The Emerging Raw Food Movement and the ‘Great Reset’

The Emerging Raw Food Movement and the ‘Great Reset’
10th October 2022 Joshua Molloy
In Insights

Introduction 

Food has become an increasingly visible topic across far-right digital subcultures as well as the broader right-wing online ecosystem. On Telegram, neo-Nazis claim that the war in Ukraine is a Jewish conspiracy to manufacture a food crisis and usher in a New World Order (NWO). In comparison, right-wing users on Twitter supporting Dutch farmer protests frame proposed government regulations to reduce livestock and fertiliser use as a plan to orchestrate food shortages. Meanwhile, influential figures ranging from Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tucker Carlson have promoted conspiracy theories that fires at food processing plants across the U.S were purposely set to disrupt the food supply chain. 

These conspiratorial narratives have surged as threats of an impending global food crisis have emerged over the last year and align with the rising ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory. The ‘Great Reset’ was a term used in 2020 by the World Economic Forum to outline a vision for a post-Covid-19 economic recovery plan. The far-right has seized upon this term to push a conspiracy theory that ‘globalist’ elites wish to install a liberal authoritarian one-world government and refer to state responses like lockdowns and mask mandates as forms of biopolitical control. 

Food is viewed as playing a major role in the Great Reset in terms of how we produce and eat food in response to projected global population growth and as a means of tackling climate change. Raw food proponents argue that globalists will oversee the removal of meat and dairy products from modern diets and replace food consumption with novel sources of protein such as plant-based and lab-grown meat. Insect-based foods occupy a particular fixation in this dystopian vision, in which an elite will live on a luxurious meat-based diet while ordinary people will be forced to live in small ‘pods’ and subsist on bugs.

To advance their ideology, far-right narratives claim that modern health alternatives such as plant-based milk or meat are harmful and affect sexual reproductive abilities due to the presence of hormones. Additionally, industrial control over the food supply, i.e. Big Agriculture (BigAg), and patterns of food consumption by elites is believed to be a powerful tool for societal control. Reverting back to foods deemed to be more traditional or natural, such as raw meat, milk, and eggs, is therefore seen as a way to rebel against modern ‘unhealthy’ diets and break away from the system of control, while also regaining a sense of masculine natural order through consumption.

Raw Egg ‘Slonking’

Perhaps the most prominent and one of the most influential voices on this issue, who was recently featured in Tucker Carlson’s much-discussed ‘End of Men’ docuseries trailer, goes by the pseudonymous Twitter handle ‘Raw Egg Nationalist.’ A key thinker within ‘Frogtwitter’, a loose network of pseudonymous Twitter accounts with alt-right origins, and the Right Wing Bodybuilder (RWBB) community, his esoteric cookbook Raw Egg Nationalism was published by the white nationalist Antelope Hill Publishing Company. ‘Raw Egg Nationalism’ describes itself as “a physical and political ethic built around the massive consumption of raw eggs”, and promotes ‘slonking’ a 36-raw-eggs-a-day diet. It is said to have been followed and perfected by American bodybuilder Vince Gironda as a more effective means of attaining protein, enhancing muscle mass gains, and increasing testosterone levels.

Raw Egg Nationalist frequently spreads ideas relating to diet and nutrition and features full-page ads promoting the consumption of a variety of food products from raw milk and honey to animal fats and olive oil, all the while promoting Great Reset narratives. In his article ‘Beyond The Wall: Becoming a Barbarian in the Age of the Grain State’, he declares “If we care about freedom today, we need to think carefully about the relationship between control of the food supply and social control. The Great Reset, the latest iteration of the globalists’ plan for world government, has at its centre a new agricultural revolution.” Raw Egg Nationalist encourages regenerative farming, buying local produce, and the decentralisation of agriculture as ways to push back against the Great Reset’s aim to control the food supply.

Dr. Benjamin Braddock is another promoter of ‘raw egg slonking’, who describes raw egg nationalists as emphasising “the health and vitality of the nation-state and all who live in it.” Braddock states that the “corrupted toxic food supply is an outgrowth of the large-scale low-quality mindset of globalism that has no concern other than the bottom line. No loyalty to the health and vitality of the country or anyone in it.” Nationalism is closely linked to physical health, with the health of the nation-state dependent upon the health of men who can stand up to the globalist agenda. Braddock says, rejects “establishment” narratives that eating raw eggs can cause salmonella: “They want you weak. I want you strong. That is why I now bring to you the esoteric knowledge of the raw egg cult.”

Finally, another figure within this subculture is Mike Mahoney, also known as Mike Ma, whose website describes himself as “a proponent of raw milk, raw eggs, raw organs” and features links to sites that warn of the dangers of fluoride in tap water and locations for buying raw milk. Ma has authored the accelerationist novels Harassment Architecture and Gothic Violence, both of which are regularly advertised in Raw Egg Nationalist’s Man’s World magazine. Harassment Architecture is also a popular text among neo-Nazis and has been shared on Telegram alongside far-right terrorist manifestos. 

At the end of his novel Gothic Violence, Ma includes a “nutrition addendum” which declares that “the world of today is more desperate for a dietary renaissance than any other point in time,” warning against the consumption of fluoridated tap water, packaged foods, and seed oils, and calling on his followers to “eat meat and drink raw milk every day”. While meat can symbolise masculinity for the right, the more extreme paleo-style diets advocated by Mike Ma can be seen as a far-right form of hypermasculinity, symbolising potency and a “communion with nature”. Meanwhile, raw milk advocates claim that nutritional and health benefits are reduced through the pasteurisation process, while far-right activists have seized upon raw milk as a symbol of white supremacy, with white Europeans said to have a genetic mutation to continue digesting lactose into adulthood.

Seed Oils, Soyboys and Anti-xenoestrogen Activism

In addition to the raw egg, meat, and milk craze, the gastropolitics trending in online far-right subcultures include hostility toward seed oils, the latest food product undergoing a backlash, with a notable anti-seed oil movement thriving on Twitter over the last year. Most scientific experts reportedly don’t cite seed oils as unhealthy. However, several nutritionists have warned of health problems associated with high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in seed oils, and these claims have recently gained traction in mainstream spaces. While the movement against seed oils is quite diverse, far-right activists are particularly keen supporters of the cause, promoting abstention from consuming anything containing the product, with claimed health benefits including protecting skin from sunburn.

An equal fixation has previously been placed upon soy-based products, which are said to increase men’s estrogen levels and decrease testosterone (although scientific studies reportedly dispute this). The term “soy boy” is used to describe weak and effeminate men who lack masculine characteristics. At the heart of the alt- and far-right’s obsession with soy, writes journalist Will Sommer, are “fears of internal weakness, and a distrust of the food supply and the rest of the modern world”. These anti-soy conspiracies gave rise to a new issue area within far-right politics, with rising influential thinkers labelling themselves ‘anti-xenoestrogen activists’, meaning those who are against the consumption of food believed to produce estrogen.

One of the most well-known of these voices is the pseudonymous Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), whose now banned Twitter bio previously described himself as a “Free speech and anti-xenoestrogen activist”. Bronze Age Pervert is host of the ‘Caribbean Rhythms with BAP’ podcast and author of self-published Bronze Age Mindset, a cult reading among far-right internet circles that promote atavistic masculine virtues rooted in classical antiquity as a means of enacting political change. While much of his discourse is laced with irony and characterised by trolling, his persona has been described as ”unmistakably fascistoid“.

Like Ma, Bronze Age Pervert is an anti-xenoestrogen activist who laments the destruction of beauty in modern society and idealises previous civilizations. BAP is fixated on the aesthetics of the male human body and presents images that worship the “natural beauty of man”, which he deems to have been buried by the modern “trash” world. One of the corrupting ills of the modern world that he identifies is the modern food industry, described as full of harmful chemicals “that slowly destroy your essence”. He similarly blames the pollution of the earth’s waters on chemicals emitted by “obese high-fructose-corn-syrup-guzzling beasts”. 

Finally, although the consumption of raw eggs, meat, and milk has been framed as a masculine practice within these online subcultures, it has gradually been adopted by more mainstream far-right figures, including female influencers. These women in particular promote the narrative that consuming raw meat, dairy, honey, and anti-seed oils, has beneficial properties for both male virility and female fertility. As the central producers of food within their households, far-right women showcase various cooking recipes to incorporate these products into everyday meals for the whole family. These influencers claim nutritional benefits while also incorporating a far-right ideological message of a pending Great Reset that can be avoided through self-sufficient homesteading and connecting with local farmers who support ‘our’ values.

Conclusion

Many of these anti-modern ideas concerning diets are not necessarily new. The mass consumption of raw eggs can be traced to a “broader trend of fitness minimalism”, while the consumption of raw milk and meat can be linked to alternative nutritionist Aajonus Vonderplanitz, who Mike Ma directly cites. Vonderplanitz pioneered the “primal diet” and fought legal battles for consumer access to raw milk. Anti-xenoestrogen activism also predates the adoption by far-right activists, with alternative nutritionists like Ray Peat having written extensively on the harmful effects of estrogen. His works are shared alongside Man’s World magazine and content by BAP on sites linked to the manosphere. Both Peat and Vonderplanitz are being increasingly embraced by figures on the far-right. This importantly represents a common far-right strategy which taps into pre-existing communities and offers ideologically-driven solutions as a means of radicalisation and retention for broader appeal. Overlap between various communities, such as the prepper/survivalist scene and accelerationist movement, merge through shared practices like raw food consumption.

Similarly, gastropolitics has long played a historical role within the far-right. Maintaining the ideal masculine and feminine body devoid of modern influences is a far-right fetish that aestheticises the purity of racial reproduction. As indicated above, a healthy body is projected as a healthy nation, which is atomised into individual heteronormative family units. The contemporary far-right continues this legacy through raw meat and dairy, as well as anti-seed oils, production and consumption. No longer is a reliance on BigAg, representing state control, necessary for survival. However, one key aspect of situating the importance of this movement is its high visual and aesthetic reproduction within digital cultures. While its origins are esoteric and fringe, it has steadily become more visible and recognised as a form of in-group community building among the broader far-right ecosystem, largely mainstreamed through prevalent right-wing figures. This type of conspiratorial spread, when linked to the Great Reset, may present the potential for violent consequences.

Dr. Eviane Leidig is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on the far-right, gender, and digital cultures, as well as platform governance and regulation.

Joshua Farrell-Molloy is a Research Fellow with the Accelerationism Research Consortium. He holds an MA in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies from the University of Glasgow and his research focuses on the far-right, online extremist subcultures and foreign fighters.