As with most things, the truth about Beverly Massengee is FAR more interesting than the bullshit conspiracy stories.

I mean, how can you NOT want to spend part of your Sunday reading about this person?

If you want to read more about Cold War era Christian ventriloquists like this woman and Walter Huss's friend Jim Bisel, and how they helped feed a culture of right wing Christian conspiracism, this post is for you! rightlandia.ghost.io/walter-husss...

In terms of "reasons to be suspicious of conspiracism," have I mentioned lately that the Christian ventriloquist who made this album was a former TX stripper who claimed to have known Jack Ruby & witnessed JFK's assassination? She was also married to a mobster before kicking heroin and finding God.

There are many good reasons why people on the left shouldn't promote conspiracy theories. First off, they're always wrong. But more importantly, they create a cultural and political environment that bends toward right wing authoritarianism...a tendency that is being amplified today by social media.

The point here is not that every person who was suspicious of the Covid vaccine or wondered about the origins of the pathogen or who likes to eat beef tallow chips is secretly a Nazi. The point is that conspiracism is a powerful cultural force with dangerously reactionary political effects.

This early, "granola Nazi" iteration of the MAHA/MAGA overlap we're seeing today was hard for people to make sense of politically back in the 1980s and 90s, just as it is today. "How could that guy be a fascist, he's drinking raw milk, opposing fluoride, and taking herbal supplements like a hippie!"

For Huss (the owner of this magazine), the connective tissue between his Christian Identity theology & his faith in "natural" foods was the idea that there were "pure" things (like white Christians & spirulina) & "impure" things (like Jews, non-white people, & soda pop).
bsky.app/profile/seth...

Walter Huss was what some have come to call "a granola Nazi." He was into alternative medicine, organic foods, experimental whole foods diets, herbal remedies, etc. He also thought Jews controlled the world and were out to eliminate Christian Patriots like him. rightlandia.ghost.io/sending-spit...

8 blocks from the Anarchist-run art gallery where Ace Hayes gave his Secret Government Seminars was a health food store run by a former chair of the OR GOP named Walter Huss. He had been a Silver Shirt in the 1930s and had ties to neo-Nazis. He was the Spirulina king of PDX. bsky.app/profile/seth...

The same flavor of Portland leftist who was drawn to Ace Hayes's conspiracy stylings about Mossad and the Bush family and the CIA, were also drawn to conspiracy theories about fluoride. This is in part why Portland's water is still not fluoridated.
rightlandia.ghost.io/those-funny-...

The anti-fascist activists of that era took Hayes to task, pointing out that while his conspiracism was supposed to be building a left opposition to global capitalism and imperialism, he was in many ways feeding the same fires that were fueling rising fascism in Portland.