Experts Say These Seemingly Innocent Social Media Trends Could Sway You To The Far Right
Lots of factors converged to get Trump elected, but we can't ignore the influence social media can have in swaying voters toward the right.
Online content creator Jess Britvich has posted multiple videos about the 'alt-right rabbit holes' that target women on social media— just a few that she cites are clean eating, clean-girl makeup, girl dinner and homesteading. In her video, she said they're the 'trends that can lead to the alt-right pipeline. Because while these things aren't inherently conservative or, dare I say, even fascist sometimes, they can be a starting point for a very slippery slope.'
Britvich's videos have received upward of a million views on both TikTok and Instagram.
Britvich told HuffPost she was inspired to make these videos after reflecting on how she, as a millennial, was told over and over that Gen Z was going to help make the country more progressive when they were able to vote.
'And then, it turns out this past election that Gen Z men were one of the big factors in in getting Trump elected, and that kind of got me started to think of, where did this shift come from from?' Britvich said.
If the social media trends Britvich referenced don't go so far as encouraging the alt-right movement, which is against 'political correctness' and criticizes social justice as it's viewed as a 'threat' to white ideology, experts say they certainly do often lead users to right-wing content.
Here's what to know about these trends and how they relate to far-right politics, according to the experts we spoke to.
Lots of people shop for clean beauty products and opt for foods with fewer chemicals; no one is saying that everyone who does these things is on their way to the alt-right pipeline, stressed Britvich.
'That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the algorithm can indoctrinate you and radicalize you. One does not necessarily equal the other,' Brivitch said.
But the social media algorithm is now set up to push certain political agendas.
During the pandemic, 'people were hungrier than ever for agency in the information they were consuming and relying on for their own safety and their family's safety ... but ... you really weren't actually able to search for content without then having it lead you down pathways — some people will say rabbit holes,' said Jiore Craig, a resident senior fellow of digital integrity at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue. Craig studies how online content can harm society.
'A mom searching for what to do about her child's allergy, or a mom searching for her horoscope reading that day, would have equally been led, likely, to anti-vaccine content during COVID, just because of the way that the suggestions were being made, and how prominent the topic of vaccines and COVID became in the context of all these other cultural topics,' Craig noted.
We may be years out of lockdown, but this has only continued today.
'A lot of the groups that had stakeholders in the COVID conversation were political stakeholders, and the far right in particular took a position anti-science, anti-vaccine, and that has carried forward to this administration and their positions on many of these things,' Craig said.
'I like to eat healthy, I'm expecting a kid, so you would not imagine the amount of stuff that is coming at me all the time about being 'clean,'' said Catherine Tebaldi, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Luxembourg.
'What I'm noticing around clean beauty, first, is there's a lot of very much these eugenic discourses of purity, bodily purity, pureness in your food, pureness in your makeup, that is very closely aligned to white supremacists [and] eugenics,' Tebaldi noted.
It's also not clear what these terms like 'clean,' 'non-toxic' and 'natural' mean.
'Even words that we're using, like clean, what does that even mean? And from there, just unregulated terms like saying things like, 'oh, bad chemicals.' Well, everything's a chemical. Water is a chemical,' said Brivitch.
'These are unregulated terms that don't really mean anything, but they get an emotional response,' Brivitch added.
While opting to use makeup that contains fewer chemicals is not a bad thing, where this could go via the social media algorithm is not ideal.
'This can kind of lead to this anti-science rhetoric and this distrust in our regulatory bodies, which then leads down this path of, 'OK, well, this is toxic. What else is toxic?' And the more you start rejecting science, it could trend closer and closer to what I think has a huge impact on what we're seeing with anti-vax, the rise of measles, etc. It just opens the gateway to these larger ideological shifts,' said Brivitch.
Going back to the 'ancestor's way of living,' tradwives, homesteading and a more 'natural' life are more social media rabbit holes that often come up via gardening videos, cooking content and more. While these topics have some admirable qualities, they, too, can lead to some of these problematic pipelines.
'It's an ideological construction of, what is natural, that uses this idea of nature and beauty to signal what? You're meant to be desired,' said Tebaldi.
'It's propaganda ... you're supposed to be glowing and look really healthy and beautiful and this is sort of signaling that you're worthy,' Tebaldi said.
It also feeds into this idea of looking at medicine and health care as 'unnatural,' Tebaldi added.
More, going back to the way the ancestors lived is a very privileged, very white idea — Black people with enslaved ancestors, Japanese people whose ancestors were wrongly imprisoned and forced to do labor in the U.S. or Jewish people with ancestors who died during the Holocaust.
'Nobody should want to return to that, but I think that the returning to a time before women had the right to vote, returning to a time before the abolition of slavery, this is definitely a feature of it,' said Tebaldi.
When it comes to comes things like 'girl dinner' and 'girl math' it's a little more nuanced — having a snacky dinner of your favorite foods is fun, and finally purchasing a pair of shoes you've been eyeing is equally fun, but Brivitch noted that categorizing these types of things as 'girl' can be problematic.
'Just the overall trend promotes the infantilization of women in a time when our reproductive rights are on attack ... and this infantilization almost kind of promotes this idea of like, 'Oh yes, it's girl math. We don't understand this, we don't know what's best for us,'' Brivitch added, 'and it can be a dangerous way to go and just a way to shift public opinion.'
It also erases nonbinary folks and promotes gender essentialism, Brivitch said, meaning women have certain traits while men have certain traits and there's no in-between (which we know is not true). More, this is reflected in politics, as Trump recently signed an executive order that states the U.S. will only recognize two sexes.
'One of the things I'm consistently frustrated with is the way in which people who try to tackle some of these challenges miss the fact that a lot of what makes these challenges possible is the systemic problems that people are facing in their real, offline lives,' said Craig.
Many women deal with burnout, loneliness and frustration when it comes to finding a partner, which makes these alternatives — things like homesteading, clean beauty and finding a community of like-minded folks online — appealing and is why these alternatives to these problems get popular, according to Craig.
'So, whenever I see any of this, let's take clean beauty, or let's take raw milk, I think about the ways that the system has failed people in terms of them feeling confident that the system is going to keep their kids safe, or that the system is going to keep chemicals out of their kids' food,' Craig said.
These social media trends also put the onus on the individual, which is not actually how a healthy society operates.
'To be healthy, you shouldn't, say, have a better environment, better social determinants of health, better medical care, but instead, it's about the practices that you do that make you the most healthy, or your 'innate better genetics,' said Tebaldi.
Until some of the systemic reforms necessary for the the health of Americans happen, there will continue to be versions of this, added Craig.
Craig said there are a few helpful things to keep an eye out for when using social media. Remind yourself that what you're seeing in your social media feed is designed to keep you online, and that's true across the board, whether you're looking at left-leaning or right-leaning content. More, know that creators want you to watch videos to the end because it helps them make money.
'Ideally, we'll sort of get folks' guards up,' Craig added.
Craig also recommends that you click through to bios and websites to learn more about the influencers you follow and see who's involved in their content or who's paying for their account. For these influencers who are trying to sell you a certain political message, they'll be funded by organizations that lean a certain way.
'And then any opinion that you are hearing about that is making you close to changing a part of your lifestyle, you should double check. You should check multiple sources, not just with your friends. You should look for, is there anyone out there who has said anything about this being a trap before? Have you really done enough research to warrant a behavior change?' Craig added.
It's hard to give very specific advice as this content shows up differently depending on the platform you're on and depending on what content you're consuming, but these blanket reminders can be useful for building up resistance overall, Craig said.
Is Your Favorite Summer Dress Anti-Feminist?
As Doctors Predicted, RFK Jr.'s Bogus Vitamin A Claims Are Making Some Measles Patients More Sick
Social Media Is Obsessed With Beef Tallow. Experts Reveal If It's Really That Healthy.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Are US tariffs starting to bite? Trump, in denial over rising prices, targets Fed chief Powell
Memo from the White House: inflation is 'right on track', it declared this week, citing the latest official data. Price growth is now 'very low', according to Donald Trump. The actual statistics paint a markedly different picture. Just six months after he regained power, in part by promising to rapidly reduce prices, Trump has presided over the chaotic rollout of tariffs on an array of overseas products that many have argued risk having the exact opposite effect. After a lull, the consumer price index (CPI) is back on the rise. In June, everything from fruit and washing machines to dresses and toys became more expensive. Businesses in the US and around the world have struggled to keep up with the Trump administration's erratic rollout of its aggressive trade strategy: the daily White House soap opera of warnings, threats, confusion, deadlines, delays and drama. Related: Can Trump fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell? Putting to one side the steady stream of twists, cliffhangers and all-caps declarations, each episode has pushed US tariffs higher. The overall average effective tariff rate is now set to hit 20.6%, according to the non-partisan The Budget Lab at Yale, its highest level since 1910. Eventually, someone has to foot the bill. Interactive By Trump's telling, the countries he targets will be forced to pay up. But in reality, tariffs are paid by the importer – US-based companies, in this case – and often passed on. Tariffs are a burden. One way or another, the impact typically is felt along each link of the supply chain, from the initial manufacturer to the customer who buys the finished product. 'All through that chain, people will be trying not to be the ones who pick up the cost,' noted Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, at a recent press conference. 'But ultimately, the cost of the tariff has to be paid and some of it will fall on the end consumer,' added Powell. 'We know that. That's what businesses say. That's what the data says from past evidence. So we know that's coming.' The effect is not immediate, though. It might take Trump a matter of minutes to announce a tariff on Truth Social, but the full effects can take months to work their way through the economy. Interactive And so Powell, and the Fed, has waited. For seven months now, at four consecutive meetings, the US central bank's policymakers have sat on their hands and kept interest rates on hold. After dramatically raising rates to combat inflation, they want to see how prices respond to Trump's tariffs before cutting them back. It's early days. Prices are still rising, and by more than the Fed's target of 2% each year. Officials want to know if Trump's plan will make them rise faster. The evidence has so far been mixed. While consumer price growth accelerated slightly between May and June, the annual rate of wholesale price growth slipped. The Fed's latest 'beige book', a semi-quarterly report of anecdotal economic insights from across the US, also released this week, described a relatively calm business landscape, despite persisting uncertainty. Assuming Trump's announced tariffs are enforced, they will dent US economic growth by 0.1 percentage point this year and 0.3 percentage points next, according to modeling by Oxford Economics. 'The drag on the economy is predominantly tied to core inflation, which will temporarily be 0.2bps [basis points] higher than in the current baseline,' said its chief US economist, Ryan Sweet. 'Though the boost to consumer prices is modest, it still reduces growth in real disposable income and, by extension, consumer spending.' Inside the Fed's headquarters in Washington DC, Powell and his officials are patiently monitoring the data while deciding their next steps. But less than a mile away, one man is not prepared to wait. In a series of increasingly bitter attacks, Trump has publicly lambasted Powell for being 'too late' to cut rates, and claimed the Fed's inaction is costing the US economy. He has called on Powell (whom he first tapped to be Fed chair in 2017) to quit, and unnerved Wall Street by raising the prospect of firing him. Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the national economic council under Joe Biden, said: 'If you replace Jay Powell with someone who is clearly doing whatever Donald Trump wants them to do, expectations about what inflation is going to do in the long run are going to spike and that's going to create a real problem for the Fed in the long term.' The supreme court signaled it views the Fed chair as legally shielded from presidential removal, describing the central bank as a 'uniquely structured, quasi-private entity' in a May ruling about two of Trump's other firings. Trump is 'highly unlikely' to fire Powell, he has asserted, before floating one reason he might have to go: a $2.5bn renovation of the Fed's buildings. 'I mean, it's possible there's fraud involved,' the president claimed. Powell has reportedly asked the central bank's inspector general to review the project. Powell is due to finish his term in May, and has stressed he will remain in post until then. Advocates of the Fed's independence insist the more important question is not whether the president can remove him before then, but if he should. 'Once you no longer have the check of the central bank, which can raise interest rates as needed to curb inflation, you really start to raise the specter of runaway costs, runaway inflation, and it makes the US economy less attractive for investors domestically and abroad,' said Ramamurti. Inflation is 'right on track', according to his administration. Economists are already concerned it is tilting off course – and Trump won't rule out taking action that critics warn would shunt it off the rails altogether.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump fires US labor official over data and gets earlier than expected chance to reshape Fed
By Lucia Mutikani, Nandita Bose and Michael S. Derby WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Friday fired a top Labor Department official on the heels of a market-shocking weak scorecard of the U.S. job market, accusing her without evidence of manipulating the figures and adding to already growing concerns about the quality of economic data published by the federal government. In a second surprise economic policy development, the door for Trump to make an imprint on a Federal Reserve with which he clashes almost daily for not lowering interest rates opened much earlier than anticipated when Fed Governor Adriana Kugler unexpectedly announced her resignation on Friday afternoon. The two developments further rattled a stock market already reeling from his latest barrage of tariff announcements and the weak jobs data. The benchmark S&P 500 Index sank 1.6% in its largest daily drop in more than two months. Trump accused Erika McEntarfer, appointed by former President Joe Biden, of faking the jobs numbers. There is no evidence to back Trump's claims of data manipulation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the statistical agency that compiles the closely watched employment report as well as consumer and producer price data. A representative for the BLS did not respond to a request for comment. Friday began with BLS reporting the U.S. economy created only 73,000 jobs in July, but more stunning were net downward revisions showing 258,000 fewer jobs had been created in May and June than previously reported. "We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. DATA CONCERNS A Trump administration official who requested anonymity said that while all economic data is noisy, the White House has been dissatisfied with how large the revisions have been in the recent data and issues with lower survey responses. The problem started during COVID and has not been addressed in the years since. "There are these underlying problems that have been festering here for years now that have not been rectified," the person said. "The markets and companies and the government need accurate data, and like, we just weren't getting that," the official said. The BLS has already reduced the sample collection for consumer price data as well as the producer price report, citing resource constraints. The government surveys about 121,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 631,000 individual worksites for the employment report. The response rate has declined from 80.3% in October 2020 to about 67.1% in July, BLS data shows. A Reuters poll last month found 89 of 100 top policy experts had at least some worries about the quality of U.S. economic data, with most also concerned that authorities are not addressing the issue urgently enough. In addition to the concerns over job market data, headcount reductions at BLS have resulted in it scaling back the scope of data collection for the Consumer Price Index, one of the most important gauges of U.S. inflation, watched by investors and policymakers worldwide. Trump's move fed into concerns that politics may influence data collection and publication. "Politicizing economic statistics is a self-defeating act," said Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute's Roosevelt Forward. "Credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America's economic data is the foundation on which we've built the strongest economy in the world. Blinding the public about the state of the economy has a long track record, and it never ends well." FED CHANGE SOONER THAN EXPECTED Meanwhile, Kugler's surprise decision to leave the Fed at the end of next week presents Trump an earlier-than-expected opportunity to install a potential successor to Fed Chair Jerome Powell on the central bank's Board of Governors. Trump has threatened to fire Powell repeatedly because the Fed chief has overseen a policymaking body that has not cut interest rates as Trump has demanded. Powell's term expires next May, although he could remain on the Fed board until January 31, 2028, if he chooses. Trump will now get to select a Fed governor to replace Kugler and finish out her term, which expires on January 31, 2026. A governor filling an unexpired term may then be reappointed to a full 14-year term. Some speculation has centered on the idea Trump might pick a potential future chair to fill that slot as a holding place. Leading candidates for the next Fed chair include Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh and Fed Governor Chris Waller, a Trump appointee who this week dissented with the central bank's decision to keep rates on hold, saying he preferred to start lowering them now. Trump, as he was leaving the White House to spend the weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate, said he was happy to have the open slot to fill. "I would not read any political motivation into what [Kugler is] doing, although the consequence of what she's doing is she's calling Trump's bluff," said Derek Tang, an analyst at LH Meyer, a research firm. "She's putting the ball in his court and saying, look, you're putting so much pressure on the Fed, and you want some control over nominees, well, here's a slot." (Additional reporting by Jasper Ward and Trevor Hunnicutt; Writing by Daniel Burns; Editing by Chris Reese and Nia Williams and Anna Driver) Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump to appoint new Fed board member after governor Kugler announces resignation
Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler is stepping down from the central bank's board, giving President Donald Trump the chance to appoint an early replacement amid his monthslong campaign to badger Fed officials into lowering interest rates. The announcement comes just two days after the Fed said it would hold its key interest rate steady, despite mounting pressure from Trump to trim rates. Two Trump-appointed board members in favor of lower rates, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, dissented from the decision. Kugler was absent from the vote. Kugler's resignation gives Trump an opportunity to at least partially shape the Fed's makeup to his liking ahead of her original departure date. Kugler, a Biden-appointed governor, joined the seven-member board in 2023 and was set to serve through January 2026. Kugler didn't offer a reason for her Aug. 8 departure. A statement from the Fed said she would return to Georgetown University as a professor this fall. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Kugler said it has been the 'honor of a lifetime' to serve on the Fed's board of governors. 'I am especially honored to have served during a critical time in achieving our dual mandate of bringing down prices and keeping a strong and resilient labor market,' Kugler said. 'The Federal Reserve does important work to help foster a healthy economy and it has been a privilege to work towards that goal on behalf of all Americans for nearly two years.' In a July 30 note, Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, noted that Trump may use Kugler's opening to appoint his pick for Fed Chair Jerome Powell's replacement. Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, will have his term as Fed chair end in May 2026. The president, who has recently backed away from threats to fire Powell, has made clear that he's unhappy with the Fed's decision to hold off on rate cuts. In June, Trump said he's hunting for a new Fed chair and has narrowed his search to 'three or four people.' Adams said Trump's next pick for chair could be a current Federal Open Market Committee member or an external hire. "Perhaps the next Chair will have a different approach to monetary policy than Powell, but it's hard to say—recall that Powell himself is a Trump appointee," Adams wrote on July 30, before Kugler announced her resignation. "In any case, the Fed seems likely to cut interest rates between now and when Powell's term ends, which would make the transition feel less fraught." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fed governor Kugler to resign, offering Trump early vacancy to fill Sign in to access your portfolio
