Thread by @kathleen_belew

Since the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a conversation, people may be interested in the longer history of the white power movement's investment in crunch (crunchiness) (1)

All the way back in the 1970s and '80s, white power women (in the Klan, skinhead groups, Christian Identity churches, and beyond) were interested in a bunch of things you might think of as crunchy: (2)

These include organic farming, macrobiotic diet, paganism, avoiding fluoride, traditional midwifery (3)

Someone could write a great book on whether all of this was 1) genuine belief 2) a way to recruit from the leftist fringe that was also anti-state and was very crunchy or 3) (my bet) a mix of both) (4)

The Klan, the white power movement, the militant right, the alt-right have all been opportunistic social movements. That means they have always tacked to the prevailing cultural winds and taken advantage of whatever recruitment avenues were available. Crunch is this now (5)

However, and this is a big however, this OF COURSE does not mean that crunchiness is the same thing as being in or being vulnerable to extremism. What it is, is a window of opportunity being manipulated and exploited BY extremists (6)

If you are crunchy and not an extremist and feel offended by this, well, yeah, you should. It's an attempt to manipulate you into an ideology. (7)

(The place that this started in the most recent iteration of the movement is, I suspect, in antivaccination--not covid antivaxxing, but the anti-measles and anti-childhood vaccinations discussions in mom groups.) (8)

It's worth learning about how this worked in the earlier period to understand what's going on here. There's a chapter on this in Bring the War Home amazon.com/Bring-War-Home…. You should also check out @seywarddarby's Sisters in Hate and Kathleen Blee's Women in the Klan (9)

This is also a really good example of how the white power/militant right is not just men marching in the street, it's also women sharing antistatist cultural materials through social networks. (10, end)

By request: "crunchy" is a cultural identity around clean food, avoiding chemicals and toxins, and natural foods and medicines. It's got a wide continuum ranging from people who, say, avoid red dye #3 all the way to people who avoid ANY preservative, additive, etc. (11)

It is brilliantly satirized and loved here: buzzfeednews.com/article/katien… and if you're following this, she is definitely NOT alt-right, just a hilarious crunchy mom (12)

PS if any aspiring historians want to write that dissertation/book, I would be really excited to read your application to @NorthwesternU

"Crunchy" like granola.

Also, in the '80s, if you lived in a white separatist compound, you had two sets of likely neighbors: farmers (we know a lot about white power and the farms crisis) and hippies (no book about this yet)