MAHA and Nazi Germany
The "crunchy to fascist pipeline" isn't new
When people talk about the Make America Health Again movement (MAHA), I see two mistakes they make. The first is assuming that if someone claims to have a mission to improve our country’s health, they must have some good intentions even if some of their ideas are flawed or dangerous. I see people criticizing MAHA while agreeing with some of their less obviously dangerous ideas, and saying they should simply go about their goal of “making Americans healthy” in a different way. This is too generous and legitimizes the ideas of the movement. The second mistake I see is claiming that the “crunchy-to-fascist pipeline” is new, something that either formed very recently or in the last couple decades. It’s actually much, much older than that. Even though the eugenicist preoccupation with health and wellness didn’t even start with the Nazis, I’m going to focus on that time period. This is a new topic I’ve been interested in reading about, and it’s very relevant to the topic of this blog, so I’m sure I’ll write about it again in the future. In the last week, MAHA has been compared to Nazi Germany with the announcement of the autism registry, but I believe this lesser known aspect of Nazi Germany is important to highlight right now as well.
According to Robert N. Proctor in the book The Nazi War on Cancer, natural, organic, healthy food was promoted by the Nazis. They believed that modern food was unhealthy due to preservatives and artificial additives. They also believed in a strong connection between chronic health issues and diet. During a time when eugenics was especially popular (note: it’s still popular, just in slightly different ways), this led to anxiety about health, as Germans were sent the message that people with health issues were “biologically inferior” and, at its most extreme, not worthy of life. Nazis viewed good health as a duty to one’s country, and Germans received this message through Nazi propaganda related to health.
It’s already easy to see parallels with RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. RFK Jr and his followers believe most health issues are caused by poor dietary choices and the quality of American food, with all of our additives and preservatives. This theory that all or even most chronic illnesses are caused by diet is clearly false when you take into account the fact that different health conditions have different causes, and that one can make all the “correct” choices when it comes to their diet and still end up with a chronic illness. Like RFK Jr, Nazis also believed that Germans were being encouraged by doctors to “senselessly” swallow drugs due to the influence of the corrupt pharmaceutical industry. We all know the issues with the pharmaceutical industry, but it doesn’t change the fact that many do need medications to manage their conditions and to survive. It also doesn’t change the fact that many people don’t have access to necessary medication due to lack of health insurance or, in the case of many marginalized patients and chronic pain patients, bias from healthcare providers.
As part of the promotion of “health,” Nazis advocated for specific dietary choices (less meat, sugar, and fats) and promoted organic, “natural” food as inherently healthier and more virtuous. Franz G. M. Wirz, a member of the Nazi party’s Committee on Public Health, complained about the number of military recruits who weren’t “fit for service” due to health problems. In early 2025, an executive order establishing the “Make America Healthy Again Commission” stated “Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.” Just last week, Dr. Oz said it is every American’s patriotic duty to take care of themselves for the purpose of military service. It should be clear to everyone by now how terrifying and dangerous this fascist rhetoric is. In Nazi Germany, 1939 was declared the year of the “duty to be healthy.”
Nazi propaganda often targeted housewives, instructing them on which ingredients to use to take care of their families. Similarly, MAHA and wellness propaganda often target mothers, preying on their anxieties about raising healthy children. “MAHA moms” can be moms who are anxious about the chemicals in their children’s food, moms with autoimmune diseases they want to heal naturally, mothers of autistic kids who mistakenly believe the vaccine or environmental toxins are the cause of their child’s autism. Women, whether mothers or not, are targeted by wellness content because of the various health conditions that we’re more susceptible to and because of misogynist beauty standards that glorify thinness and shame anyone whose body doesn’t match the fatphobic ideal. Just like in Nazi Germany when mothers were targeted by propaganda, the prominence of mothers in the MAHA movement is likely at least partially due to patriarchal gender roles, as mothers are made to feel more responsible for preparing meals for their families and looking out for their children’s health.
As I mentioned before, the Nazis were concerned about preservatives and artificial ingredients. This is also an obsession in the MAHA movement. Some prominent figures in the MAHA movement regularly speculate that food dyes are the “cause” of chronic illness in our country and even try to get them banned. Interestingly, when reading Robert N. Proctor’s The Nazi War on Cancer I learned that the Nazis also worked to get food dyes banned. “Butter Yellow,” a food dye found in products like margarine, was one example of a food dye that the Nazis were eventually successful in banning. Another way ingredients are labeled “good” or “bad” are through the MAHA-adjacent movements “clean eating” and “clean living” that stress the importance of eating a diet of “natural,” minimally processed foods and using “clean” household products. Having the word “clean” implies the morality of certain types of food. Just as the Nazis did, followers of MAHA perpetuate the “appeal to nature” fallacy, the belief that “natural,” “organic,” and “clean” are inherently good or “healthier” and all other ingredients are bad and “unhealthy.” They do this with food ingredients, “natural” remedies, and household products. The obsession with “purity” when it comes to food can easily get into fascist eugenics territory, as it can imply some people are inferior for consuming “impure” food and that their dietary choices are to blame for any illness they end up with. In the article “Nutribollocks: The ‘Clean Eating’ Movement is a Toxic 21st-Century Religion,” Christiane Spring argues “It has become militant, evangelical and ritualistic. Clean eating has developed into an attempt to connect our moral worth and identity to something as simple as what we fuel our bodies with.” Assigning the ideas of “purity,” “morality,” “virtue,” “good/bad,” and “clean/dirty” to food can lead to anxiety, shame, disordered eating, and feelings of superiority towards those who don’t have the same dietary habits – and it’s all based on the myth that “natural” is inherently healthier, something the Nazis believed as well.
None of this is to say that everyone who cares about eating organic food is exactly the same as the Nazis. It should be clear to people by now that like Nazis, RFK Jr and Dr. Oz are eugenicists, and their followers in the “MAHA” movement share many of their beliefs about “health” being in our control and poor health being a moral weakness. These are fascist beliefs that the Nazis used to control Germans and spread eugenic propaganda. I encourage anyone who has internalized the beliefs of MAHA and wellness culture to work on unlearning them. We all need to examine our beliefs around health and diet because none of us are immune to propaganda. Try to understand that people who don’t eat organic food are not necessarily “unhealthy” and that chronically ill people didn’t cause their illnesses through their dietary choices because these are myths rooted in ableism and fatphobia. I think the most important lesson from this history right now is that when people like RFK Jr claim to care about the health of a nation, their intentions can be much more sinister than people would like to believe.
Sources
Cocks, G. (2007). Sick Heil: Self and Illness in Nazi Germany. Osiris, 22(1), 93–115. https://doi.org/10.1086/521744.
Dumitrescu, I. (2019, April 18). “Bio-nazis” Go Green in Germany. POLITICO. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-bio-nazis-go-green-natural-farming-right-wing-extremism/
Proctor, R. N. (2000). The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton University Press.
Russell, M. (1998). Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract. Common Courage Press.
Spring, C. (2021, September 29). Nutribollocks: The “Clean Eating” Movement is a Toxic 21st-century Religion. EateCollective. https://www.eatecollective.com/journal/clean-eating