BOYCOTT WOKENESS, SHOP LIKE A PATRIOT: A DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS OF CONSERVATIVE MLM PROMOTION ON INSTAGRAM

Resumen

Female conservative political influencers are an obscure but growing force within American politics, steadily sewing distrust in public institutions. By exploiting the inadequacies and inequalities in a capitalistic society, these women profit off the fears they cultivate through conspiratorial narratives such as the government poisoning food and indoctrinating children to encourage their Instagram audiences to boycott “woke” corporations by purchasing their household supplies through Patriot Wellness Boxes and other conservative MLMs. Guided by Abidin’s (2021) framework of refracted publics and Cotter’s (2019) concept of “playing the visibility game,” this study seeks to understand the ways that vaguely coded conservative MLMs such as Patriot Wellness Box enable conservative female influencers to circumvent algorithms and sentiment seed more radical conspiracies within lifestyle content. The major findings reveal that these women utilize self-amplification groups to simultaneously to grow their audiences and obscure their connections to the far-right and one another. Second, the MLMs are discussed in ways that mirror sovereign citizen/white militia rhetoric that positions the government as an existential threat they must be prepared to fight. While they are not organizing militias, they are promoting anti-democratic messages, xenophobia, and authoritarian-esque sentiments under the guise of a conservative lifestyle achievable through MLM participation. As the 2024 presidential election looms large, we must analyze the ways that trust in government and public institutions is being undermined through neoliberal conservative MLMs one subscription box ad at a time