The wonder that was Freelee (RT4 in the past tense).
23 November 2016 [link youtube]
An analysis.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I've talked to people from the whole
range the whole spectrum of the freely ratha for phenomenon I've talked to true believers of talk to people who lost their faith I've talked to people who participated you know in person and events in Thailand people who used to be leaders and who went from being leaders to becoming critics we definitely come to a point in this phenomenon where people are starting to look back at it as something that's in the past tense they're writing the history so to speak of the wonder that was freelee the banana girl and her short-lived but seemingly important and influential dietary / political movement but we've also come to a point where people forget people forget what it was they believed it and people forget why and how this became such a big deal to people and how it totally changed people's lives um give an example you talk to people today and they often refer to the rato for diet as if it were the somewhat relaxed diet you see freely herself what what you see her eating on her own videos today there was a time not too long ago when this diet really taught people that in order to be one of us in order to be an insider in this movement you needed to completely refuse to eat salt completely refused to eat oil or any food that had overt fats in an oil of any kind you need to completely refuse to eat garlic so a normal meal at a Chinese restaurant a Chinese restaurant that might have a couple of vegan options became impossible for people and you know the passion and fervor with which people denounced one another for failing to live up the standards of this diet I can remember very clearly I think a lot of people they sort of forget and then in conversation if you remind them they you know different examples that they saw themselves come to mind but I remember one video in which a raw till 4 follower of true believer was bitterly viciously denouncing hennya Hannya mania a vegan who used to be a leader in that movement used to be a true believer and became a became a disillusioned crestfallen person outside of the movement um I remember this vitriolic bitter critique of Hannya because she ate oatmeal for breakfast and the guy making this video he had seen her eat oatmeal for breakfast at a time when she claimed to be on the Rafah tell for diet now obviously oatmeal is not a raw food um she wasn't eating raw shoes he cooked and happy she was eating breakfast for 4 p.m. so there's a sense in which this is just self-evidently true but I think it's easy for people now to forget no this is something people really believed in people really shamed each other for failing to live up to these standards and people so passionately want to be insiders in this movement that in the one hand they did they did reshape their lives they totally changed their lives to fit in and the other hand when they failed to fit in they lied about it like lying about eating oatmeal for breakfast and you know part of the crumbling of the movement no doubt has been a relaxation of those standards to the point where people now started to forget about just how crazy was people let's sketch out here what were the sort of fundamental elements what were the fundamentals that defined this movement when it came up when it became such an important thing to so many people point one on my list here I think is the rejection of medical science itself and the so called self healing movement or self healing aspect of what was taught again people now forget this was huge and when Frehley was first emerging from the chat rooms and message boards of the vegan demi-monde and there's a time when she was new on YouTube and when YouTube wasn't the most important platform there were really a lot of chat rooms she came up out of a subculture that was already very hardened in its opposition to the medical establishment to the medical mainstream and I think one of the deepest beliefs one of the most powerful sentiments at the basis of the popularity of rato for in its early days and maybe now along with the dying away of rattle for itself maybe now it's dying away was the conviction that food could be used as medicine that the vegan diet was itself a challenge to the whole medical establishment to the whole pharmaceutical industry that this was a notion that you could heal yourself you could quit your meds whether you had a tremendously serious physical disease like Crohn's disease like diabetes that you could reject the authority and expertise of your medical doctor and get on this vegan diet and heal yourself or even if you had a psychological disorder even if you for example even if you were for example diagnosed with schizophrenia or perhaps you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder you were on heavy medication for those types of mental problems so there was a deep-seated conviction here that sort of cuts both ways on the one hand it claims that you ought to be able to heal yourself simply through diet exercise and sleep sleep is in there improving your your sleep um and the other hand there's also approach to anyone who claims to be an expert whether it's a dietitian or a medical doctor chemist or what-have-you just as the followers of this movement claim that they can heal themselves through food as medicine through so-called natural hygiene natural medicine these notions they also think that if these doctors were truly experts they would be able to heal themselves so suddenly I mean this this links up to the fat shaming elements fat for that frankly the fat shaming psychosis of the movement this is paired with the attitude that your doctor can't possibly know what he's talking about if he doesn't have a body like freely and meanwhile freely openly says she has always said she still says that her credentials are her body her physical appearance is the only credential she needs and she claims the fact that it is effortless for her to maintain that body so freely herself is someone who actively rejects the authority of doctors dietary experts etc because they claim to know what they're talking about while lacking this crucial credential of having having a body with visible abdominal muscles they're not beautiful enough they're not slim enough they're not healthy enough using a very superficial measure of Health and at the same time she's claiming that the results she gets from her own diet that this makes her more of an authority than the accumulated wisdom of all the medical experts in the establishment now again today that may seem laughable for someone who looks at those old videos with the sober second thought of the world as we know what 2016 may seem ridiculous but again this really emerged from a subculture on message boards and chat rooms that already really accepted a certain degree of anti medical establishment hysteria and for many people that was linked to the anti-vaccine movement the belief that vaccines were a massive medical conspiracy for people who were members of the real so-called natural hygiene movement they they even believe that the concept of a virus is a sort of conspiracy that governments and hospitals are engaged in and that most of the pharmaceutical industry is some kind of vast immoral conspiracy now that's partly of course vegan opposition to vivisection experimenting on animals but I mean it extends to I've had vegans passionately and sincerely tell me that I ought to believe and take seriously a theory that hiv/aids doesn't exist that hiv/aids is fictional so to just call this pseudoscience is a little bit too shallow as a little misleading and sentimentally I think some of these people truly hate I mean hate is the word medical doctors the you know heat and fear they hate medical doctors they fear hospitals they fear the cold hard truths of modern medical science and obviously the line that freely was presenting freely and Rotel for broadly speaking this was a much needed shelter for some people who wanted to escape that reality it presented a very appealing escapist fantasy for some of those people point two on my list here so we've talked about rejection of Medical Authority scientific Authority is the rejection of parental authority and I think it's important to point out this is really a kind of double-edged sword this cuts into directions on the one hand yes there's a there's a rich discourse here of actually challenging or rejecting your own parents so saying to your mom and dad you don't understand me I need to go to Thailand and become an athlete an athlete in quotation marks a comeback to that the meaning of the word athlete within this movement is itself bizarre um rejection of the authority of one's own parents but it's also a rejection of one's self as a parental authority so these are linked in a psychologically dynamic way that will be familiar to people of a background in cult studies or in studying religions that get into the cult category of things and social sciences um [Music] the obsession with vasectomies the obsession with rejecting the possibility that you will become a parent that you could be a good parent that parenting and raising children could be a positive part of a vegan lifestyle on the one hand yes this is linked to a sort of teenage ecological extremism the idea that the whole planet is just overpopulated but again it's also linked to this general anti-authoritarian notion that you kind of spit in the face of your own parents and really sorry I mean it's slight exaggeration Frehley doesn't seem to disrespect her own mother but there was a lot of material I don't want to estimate how many hours worth of material there is on YouTube here about the presumed you know confrontation with and rejection of one's own parents that you should reject the expectations your parents place on you you should reject the expectation that you will be economically productive economically successful economically competitive you reject the rat race so to speak you reject a false notion of happiness of accomplishment of false ideology of upward mobility you you reject if you like the roots of capitalism as they were encountered within your own family unit and then you're also rejecting the expectations your parents may place on you that you should one day become a parent yourself that you should carry on the legacy you should have your own children so that your parents can eventually so there's a rejection in both directions here the generation before and the generation to come it's very powerful and again it resembles some elements of some cults that you are exempting yourself from the economic and social fabric of society you are exempting yourself from your family you're no longer a regular child and you're never going to be a regular parent you're supposedly an exceptional person to whom those rules don't apply and to whom those expectations don't apply somehow what you're doing in pursuit of the permanent vacation in pursuit of weight loss and health raises you up above these people and their expectations of you and again when you consider what the praxis of this cult or this movement really is that's surprising because I mean now if a buddhist cult tells you that that to you you say well okay but this buddhist cult is also teaching you meditation and it's teaching you some supernatural magics and a supernatural cosmology like maybe you're even a member of a buddhist cult that is involved with ghosts you know ghosts rituals okay so alright you joined the Ghostbusters so it makes sense that you're a special magical person because you believe you have magical super powers all right okay you can see the logic of that um but this is a set of cult beliefs that are based on happiness health happiness physical beauty a challenge to the medical system a form of radical ecology it is it is very peculiar but there's a dotted line tracing this sense of personal exceptionalism to saving the planet you know to an ecological notion but it's a it's a very difficult to trace started lying hmm so yeah that's actually the next point in my list is is radical ecology and really I'm not gonna say too much about this but people forget if you've been keeping up with what's been going on in veganism for say four years I think you'll remember this but many many people just forget how deep this ran how crazy this was how many people today who even people who are really fans of rato for fans of freely many of you today can really remember catchphrases like burn rubber not gas there were other variations of it like burn calories not fossil fuels you know that by riding a bicycle this was part of the moral backbone of the movement and there was a lot of really crass and insulting talk along the lines of anyone who drives a car is a parasite on the planet is destroying the planet sense of moral superiority and complete contempt for anyone who has a job that involves driving a car now I just mentioned it serves my own ads here I have never driven a car I've never owned a car but everything I buy like this shirt or you know these books they were delivered at some point on a truck or a car or all you know or train or all the above so it is obviously on some level I have my own ecological sentiments on some level all of us can relate but this movement raised those sentiments to a to a fever pitch of self-righteousness that certainly resembles insanity and again I think you have to talk to people face-to-face in a context where they really feel comfortable admitting to you how much this reshaped their lives but there were people who got rid of their cars there were people who quit their jobs so that they could ride a bicycle you know there were people who really felt this as a moral you know call as something that that took ahold of their soul obviously all these points this list they're all rolled into one package but part of the initial impetus the moral superiority complex that was built into this cult-like movement for people um definitely you know the radical ecology aspect so again this is linked to that refusal to have children their refusal to own a car their refusal eat garlic their refusal to drink coffee even those the these each one of these things may seem small and meaningless role together it's quite powerful now already most vegans are on a bit of an ego trip that I'm aware of and I'm self-critical of where they regard meat eaters as morally inferior but now this defense that anyone who drives a car is morally inferior to you anyone who drives a car and eats meat is this again social parasite destroying the planet this is the the view of the world that these people are drawn into step by step and again some of you watching this will be sitting or going yeah that's right but even though maybe it's only one year ago or two years ago since you really saw that edge of it it seems so distant now because so many of the fundamental aspects of the movement have been discredited so that's why I say worth reflecting on worth remembering and also course worth progressing past one of the characteristics of this movement that in some ways makes it resemble a cult and some ways makes it strikingly different from a cult is that it is welcoming but severe it is open to everyone and yet nobody is ever good enough to me that's a very interesting element that bears comparison to other cults other new religious movements etc what do I mean by this well the doors are open anyone could watch freely on YouTube anyone could buy an airplane ticket to Thailand unless they were blacklisted in the dance and so on [Music] there's a sense of which anyone could sign up without even signing a piece of paper anyone could start to participate in the forums anyone could buy the diet book anyone could buy a juicer and start juicing and again when he talked people are honest they often reflect on exactly these things I've seen several people reflecting the fact that they even changed the furniture within their own house to more closely resemble the furniture they saw at that time on freelee's channel you know so that we're sitting on the floor instead of eating at a table so that their fruit was laid out on a tarp on the ground instead of you know having normal kitchen habits you know anything this wasn't required of people they just a lot of people really respond this cold way has opened all and you could start of course uploading your own videos you could start repeating the same mantras the same slogans you could in a sense join this political movement and start making this difference in this imaginary way you could start engaging in the same lifestyle activism which crucially was centered on convincing other people that you were so happy that you were so healthy because you were living this way it was welcoming it was open to all but as soon as you come in you learned that nobody's ever really good enough it seems like nobody's getting the results that they're supposed to be getting that's one riddle because of course the diet advice doesn't really work but also the code of purity involved that seems like nobody's ever pure enough people are always getting denounced for things know already the lists have mentioned you're supposed to eat zero salt zero oil zero overt fats zero garlic zero caffeine you're not allowed to eat oatmeal for breakfast people's brothel for obviously etc etc you're now not allowed to drive a car and allowed to use gasoline but there's always an invisible list of things where people could cross some unknowable line and get denounced which happened week by week on YouTube and people watched and respond to that very closely I talked to one man who was gay and is gay and you know when certain statements were made about homosexuality suddenly the sense was the lines shifted who's in and who's out who accepts this new doctrine that you know being gay as a choice this was at the time this is big news and some people got kicked out and some people adjusted their attitudes in order to stay in and so on um so as I say welcoming but severe open to all but as soon as people come in you realize that nobody's good enough nobody's living up to the standard again interesting comparison to some some Buddhist cults and where the objectives of what you're doing are supposed to be supernatural or inevitable ineffable or you know involve a you know surreal cosmology with ghosts and gods and multiple incarnations but while on the one hand there are all these elements of the cult that elevate your sense of self-esteem that tell you you're special you're exceptional you're buckin ly you're better than your own brothers and sisters you're better than your boss at work you're better than almost everybody you know because everybody you know is either you know eating meat or using gasoline you know these other things um but on the other hand you're dealing with this sense of dejection because you're never as good as freely never and of course she especially viciously denounced some women who were competitors you know who could have been claimants to the same type of fame same type of influence same to have a dietary advice or what have you I think enough said about that those who who remember you'll know what I'm talking about but I admit I'm not really spelling out fully here the types of lines that people were always crossing and people were being punished for people being denounced for but definitely anyone who slips through this fair time will remember people who one week were being praised as being real you know diehard supporters the cause and leaders of the cause the next week would be denounced as fake as fake as as being not real and and as violating some combination of the the precepts stated and unstated that defined who was an insider who was an outsider um I think another element here I was reminded of recently is actually open opening up the identity of the jock of the athlete itself now just digress for a moment here what does it mean to be an athlete where I grew up in Canada the notion of who is an athlete is very narrow indeed you're not an athlete just because you go to the gym you're not an athlete just because you casually play basketball for instance on the street you know on a street court or we play hockey on the street and Canada people play hockey on the street in Canada where I grew up to be an athlete means you play competitive sports at a competitive level period so you rank your in the charts and the you know swagger the self-importance that athletes exhibit in Canadian society which may be less than Australian society it may be more than some other society that corresponds to the type of sacrifices they're supposed to be making to be at that competitive level all kinds of people countless I mean I've seen so many examples of people who in reality were shy hippie types let's be quite specific they were shy hippies who maybe did yoga before they got into Rocco for suddenly started describing themselves as athletes and acting with the self confidence and arrogance of an athlete or of a stereotypical jock people who had never been tough guys started imitating the tough-guy behavior of the leaders of righto four people started talking about themselves as athletes and talking about athleticism as part of this movement in a way that to me is surreal and now I don't I don't really want to hate on any of these people like in a sense anyone can come on the internet and say they're an athlete you know I don't hate you for that but that contrast is really bizarre and the self-confidence those people are exhibiting to me rings hollow and false all the time I've seen people come on again imitating the leaders of rato for describing themselves as jocks as athletes as alpha personalities as domineering natural leaders and even while they're saying it I look in their eye I think you've never led anything you've never been in a competitive sports league of any kind like not even you know not not even at a low level you don't know what it's like to have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and show up at 6:00 a.m. and be yelled at by your coach to be denigrated by a coach in a team sport which is not nice I mean again one of the reasons why a lot of athletes can be nasty is that their themselves getting yelled at and denigrated by their coach or by the more senior players by the better players they're they're being held up to kind of impossible standards all the time now again I'm not saying this I'm not glorifying what it means to be an athlete but this movement suddenly opened up the identity of the athlete and again in a really kind of morally seductive way linked at lettis ISM to activism and erase the boundary between the two so that people began to think of athleticism as activism and began to think that the only true activists were athletes so I guess that leads in nicely to the next topic which is the concept of lifestyle activism itself which presented a powerful and seductive illusion that what you needed to do to change the world to save the planet to save the animals to promote veganism was simply to communicate that you were healthy and happy was simply to glorify the lifestyle itself in part through self-indulgence that by being on permanent vacation for example but not necessarily not everyone was on permutation but by going on vacation and filming yourself in your bikini showing what you eat showing how happy you are showing how health you are making testimonials which is like many other cult groups coming on camera and saying you used to have this disease and you cured it used to have this disorder and you cured it how you bought the diet book you followed the diet you changed your whole life you became athletic before you are couch potato you started riding your bicycle you started eating exactly what the book tells you to eat and lo and behold your diseases were cured and fill-in-the-blank as some of you guys have heard this a hundred times before and some of you will have heard like maybe not a hundred times but at least 20 times people who read who performed that script people who came on camera with great conviction and told that's you and they later admit actually their illness was never cured their illness kept coming back again and again actually their medical problem whatever it was wasn't solved by this peculiar vegan diet and you know they're all they're often other you know confessions maybe the the change in their exercise habits wasn't so great maybe the change in their their weight loss or what key he wasn't so great and so on many many people who later reconsider their position within the cult have recanted that narrative but for a brief period is very stuck to two people the line between activist and athlete was blurred and the notion that the the the great secret I mean the the great catalyst for social change in this planet is happiness is you is your personal happiness that all you have to do is share with the world how happy and how healthy you are that's a powerful delusion that appeals to people at all ages people who feel powerless I think there are sixteen year olds who are still in high school who saw that and it called out to them they thought that's me that's what I can do I can put on a bikini I can tell people that I've cured my acne or cured Crohn's disease or cure diabetes or cured schizophrenia through this diet I can come on and make these testimonials I can film myself having fun I can show how happy I am to ride a bicycle riding a bicycle does not make you that happy okay that's ridiculous that in itself is ridiculous I can talk about my personal transformation how five minutes ago I was a hippie who had no self-confidence and was shy and now I'm an athlete with this very confrontational attitude this type of because if this is part of it right was this transformation that made powerless people feel powerful and it linked their totally subjective sense of health and happiness to saving the planet and again looking at that now in 2016 it seems like a totally absurd delusion but looking back over the last four years there were people who wanted to believe in that and who fiercely defended their right to believe in it and again I mean someone like Kenya panamania who later lost her faith you can hear her reflecting that whenever someone said something to challenge the orthodoxy of the diet even when that diet was making her personally more and more sick or actually her health problems were continuing she was going to hospitals trying to get help she's having many many health problems she would herself viciously attack and denounce other people who questioned the health impacts of the diet or question the the miraculous results that you know she's admitted this in reflecting afterwards that she that the need for her to defend the cause was so strong you know she had to believe in this book shed believe in this in this method and so on so what I've left of the absolute end of this video was health weight loss physical beauty and I think that's just because I've had other videos talking about that I got an email with in patreon I got a message from a patreon supporter and she was over well into her 20s over so let's see she was 24 years old he was just 24 26 but she admitted to me that the first time she saw the image of freelee's midsection of those abdominal muscles of that shape of that part of her body she just thought I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do whatever this woman says I'm gonna fold whatever advice she says so I can get those results so I can look like that and ironically I've seen photos of this woman in videos this woman you know before during and after she was in great shape she was already a very athletic person before she became a follower at this cult and she gained weight and got out of shape because she did follow the rato for diet as many many people have of a long interview with Leah Leah pram so it gained a lot of weight on this channel just scroll back a few videos you'll see that it's an interview with someone who had that experience um yes vanity yes wanting to be beautiful yes that's something that drew people in but as much as we might talk about it I think now in looking back and writing history the wonder that was freely in the auto for phenomenon I think we forget that even though that got people's attention it's easy to forget that these other factors that I've just enumerated were what kept people inside well what made this something that had political and even spiritual ramifications that made people believe this wasn't just about their vanity this wasn't just about having great abdominal muscles or a great figure that this was about saving the planet and on some level I wish I could say that that spirit that enthusiasm could be recaptured could be saved could be channeled into a more positive a more political more pragmatic a more genuinely helpful and even dare I say a more nutritious form of veganism but I don't think you can I think the wonder that was freely in the righto for diet as a chapter in history of this movement as unique and bizarre as the an Urkel primitiveness chapter you can search that much channeling here my work said that that came and went before as unique in bizarre as the Deep Ecology movement that came and went one ideology after another comes and goes I think right now the abolitionist movement of Gary France neonate we're seeing it come and go direct action everywhere I think we've seen one fad after another come and go and yes a lot of people have powerful sentiments they want to help they want to make the world a better place but they become members of cult-like movements that have all the wrong answers because fundamentally they start by asking all the wrong questions
range the whole spectrum of the freely ratha for phenomenon I've talked to true believers of talk to people who lost their faith I've talked to people who participated you know in person and events in Thailand people who used to be leaders and who went from being leaders to becoming critics we definitely come to a point in this phenomenon where people are starting to look back at it as something that's in the past tense they're writing the history so to speak of the wonder that was freelee the banana girl and her short-lived but seemingly important and influential dietary / political movement but we've also come to a point where people forget people forget what it was they believed it and people forget why and how this became such a big deal to people and how it totally changed people's lives um give an example you talk to people today and they often refer to the rato for diet as if it were the somewhat relaxed diet you see freely herself what what you see her eating on her own videos today there was a time not too long ago when this diet really taught people that in order to be one of us in order to be an insider in this movement you needed to completely refuse to eat salt completely refused to eat oil or any food that had overt fats in an oil of any kind you need to completely refuse to eat garlic so a normal meal at a Chinese restaurant a Chinese restaurant that might have a couple of vegan options became impossible for people and you know the passion and fervor with which people denounced one another for failing to live up the standards of this diet I can remember very clearly I think a lot of people they sort of forget and then in conversation if you remind them they you know different examples that they saw themselves come to mind but I remember one video in which a raw till 4 follower of true believer was bitterly viciously denouncing hennya Hannya mania a vegan who used to be a leader in that movement used to be a true believer and became a became a disillusioned crestfallen person outside of the movement um I remember this vitriolic bitter critique of Hannya because she ate oatmeal for breakfast and the guy making this video he had seen her eat oatmeal for breakfast at a time when she claimed to be on the Rafah tell for diet now obviously oatmeal is not a raw food um she wasn't eating raw shoes he cooked and happy she was eating breakfast for 4 p.m. so there's a sense in which this is just self-evidently true but I think it's easy for people now to forget no this is something people really believed in people really shamed each other for failing to live up to these standards and people so passionately want to be insiders in this movement that in the one hand they did they did reshape their lives they totally changed their lives to fit in and the other hand when they failed to fit in they lied about it like lying about eating oatmeal for breakfast and you know part of the crumbling of the movement no doubt has been a relaxation of those standards to the point where people now started to forget about just how crazy was people let's sketch out here what were the sort of fundamental elements what were the fundamentals that defined this movement when it came up when it became such an important thing to so many people point one on my list here I think is the rejection of medical science itself and the so called self healing movement or self healing aspect of what was taught again people now forget this was huge and when Frehley was first emerging from the chat rooms and message boards of the vegan demi-monde and there's a time when she was new on YouTube and when YouTube wasn't the most important platform there were really a lot of chat rooms she came up out of a subculture that was already very hardened in its opposition to the medical establishment to the medical mainstream and I think one of the deepest beliefs one of the most powerful sentiments at the basis of the popularity of rato for in its early days and maybe now along with the dying away of rattle for itself maybe now it's dying away was the conviction that food could be used as medicine that the vegan diet was itself a challenge to the whole medical establishment to the whole pharmaceutical industry that this was a notion that you could heal yourself you could quit your meds whether you had a tremendously serious physical disease like Crohn's disease like diabetes that you could reject the authority and expertise of your medical doctor and get on this vegan diet and heal yourself or even if you had a psychological disorder even if you for example even if you were for example diagnosed with schizophrenia or perhaps you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder you were on heavy medication for those types of mental problems so there was a deep-seated conviction here that sort of cuts both ways on the one hand it claims that you ought to be able to heal yourself simply through diet exercise and sleep sleep is in there improving your your sleep um and the other hand there's also approach to anyone who claims to be an expert whether it's a dietitian or a medical doctor chemist or what-have-you just as the followers of this movement claim that they can heal themselves through food as medicine through so-called natural hygiene natural medicine these notions they also think that if these doctors were truly experts they would be able to heal themselves so suddenly I mean this this links up to the fat shaming elements fat for that frankly the fat shaming psychosis of the movement this is paired with the attitude that your doctor can't possibly know what he's talking about if he doesn't have a body like freely and meanwhile freely openly says she has always said she still says that her credentials are her body her physical appearance is the only credential she needs and she claims the fact that it is effortless for her to maintain that body so freely herself is someone who actively rejects the authority of doctors dietary experts etc because they claim to know what they're talking about while lacking this crucial credential of having having a body with visible abdominal muscles they're not beautiful enough they're not slim enough they're not healthy enough using a very superficial measure of Health and at the same time she's claiming that the results she gets from her own diet that this makes her more of an authority than the accumulated wisdom of all the medical experts in the establishment now again today that may seem laughable for someone who looks at those old videos with the sober second thought of the world as we know what 2016 may seem ridiculous but again this really emerged from a subculture on message boards and chat rooms that already really accepted a certain degree of anti medical establishment hysteria and for many people that was linked to the anti-vaccine movement the belief that vaccines were a massive medical conspiracy for people who were members of the real so-called natural hygiene movement they they even believe that the concept of a virus is a sort of conspiracy that governments and hospitals are engaged in and that most of the pharmaceutical industry is some kind of vast immoral conspiracy now that's partly of course vegan opposition to vivisection experimenting on animals but I mean it extends to I've had vegans passionately and sincerely tell me that I ought to believe and take seriously a theory that hiv/aids doesn't exist that hiv/aids is fictional so to just call this pseudoscience is a little bit too shallow as a little misleading and sentimentally I think some of these people truly hate I mean hate is the word medical doctors the you know heat and fear they hate medical doctors they fear hospitals they fear the cold hard truths of modern medical science and obviously the line that freely was presenting freely and Rotel for broadly speaking this was a much needed shelter for some people who wanted to escape that reality it presented a very appealing escapist fantasy for some of those people point two on my list here so we've talked about rejection of Medical Authority scientific Authority is the rejection of parental authority and I think it's important to point out this is really a kind of double-edged sword this cuts into directions on the one hand yes there's a there's a rich discourse here of actually challenging or rejecting your own parents so saying to your mom and dad you don't understand me I need to go to Thailand and become an athlete an athlete in quotation marks a comeback to that the meaning of the word athlete within this movement is itself bizarre um rejection of the authority of one's own parents but it's also a rejection of one's self as a parental authority so these are linked in a psychologically dynamic way that will be familiar to people of a background in cult studies or in studying religions that get into the cult category of things and social sciences um [Music] the obsession with vasectomies the obsession with rejecting the possibility that you will become a parent that you could be a good parent that parenting and raising children could be a positive part of a vegan lifestyle on the one hand yes this is linked to a sort of teenage ecological extremism the idea that the whole planet is just overpopulated but again it's also linked to this general anti-authoritarian notion that you kind of spit in the face of your own parents and really sorry I mean it's slight exaggeration Frehley doesn't seem to disrespect her own mother but there was a lot of material I don't want to estimate how many hours worth of material there is on YouTube here about the presumed you know confrontation with and rejection of one's own parents that you should reject the expectations your parents place on you you should reject the expectation that you will be economically productive economically successful economically competitive you reject the rat race so to speak you reject a false notion of happiness of accomplishment of false ideology of upward mobility you you reject if you like the roots of capitalism as they were encountered within your own family unit and then you're also rejecting the expectations your parents may place on you that you should one day become a parent yourself that you should carry on the legacy you should have your own children so that your parents can eventually so there's a rejection in both directions here the generation before and the generation to come it's very powerful and again it resembles some elements of some cults that you are exempting yourself from the economic and social fabric of society you are exempting yourself from your family you're no longer a regular child and you're never going to be a regular parent you're supposedly an exceptional person to whom those rules don't apply and to whom those expectations don't apply somehow what you're doing in pursuit of the permanent vacation in pursuit of weight loss and health raises you up above these people and their expectations of you and again when you consider what the praxis of this cult or this movement really is that's surprising because I mean now if a buddhist cult tells you that that to you you say well okay but this buddhist cult is also teaching you meditation and it's teaching you some supernatural magics and a supernatural cosmology like maybe you're even a member of a buddhist cult that is involved with ghosts you know ghosts rituals okay so alright you joined the Ghostbusters so it makes sense that you're a special magical person because you believe you have magical super powers all right okay you can see the logic of that um but this is a set of cult beliefs that are based on happiness health happiness physical beauty a challenge to the medical system a form of radical ecology it is it is very peculiar but there's a dotted line tracing this sense of personal exceptionalism to saving the planet you know to an ecological notion but it's a it's a very difficult to trace started lying hmm so yeah that's actually the next point in my list is is radical ecology and really I'm not gonna say too much about this but people forget if you've been keeping up with what's been going on in veganism for say four years I think you'll remember this but many many people just forget how deep this ran how crazy this was how many people today who even people who are really fans of rato for fans of freely many of you today can really remember catchphrases like burn rubber not gas there were other variations of it like burn calories not fossil fuels you know that by riding a bicycle this was part of the moral backbone of the movement and there was a lot of really crass and insulting talk along the lines of anyone who drives a car is a parasite on the planet is destroying the planet sense of moral superiority and complete contempt for anyone who has a job that involves driving a car now I just mentioned it serves my own ads here I have never driven a car I've never owned a car but everything I buy like this shirt or you know these books they were delivered at some point on a truck or a car or all you know or train or all the above so it is obviously on some level I have my own ecological sentiments on some level all of us can relate but this movement raised those sentiments to a to a fever pitch of self-righteousness that certainly resembles insanity and again I think you have to talk to people face-to-face in a context where they really feel comfortable admitting to you how much this reshaped their lives but there were people who got rid of their cars there were people who quit their jobs so that they could ride a bicycle you know there were people who really felt this as a moral you know call as something that that took ahold of their soul obviously all these points this list they're all rolled into one package but part of the initial impetus the moral superiority complex that was built into this cult-like movement for people um definitely you know the radical ecology aspect so again this is linked to that refusal to have children their refusal to own a car their refusal eat garlic their refusal to drink coffee even those the these each one of these things may seem small and meaningless role together it's quite powerful now already most vegans are on a bit of an ego trip that I'm aware of and I'm self-critical of where they regard meat eaters as morally inferior but now this defense that anyone who drives a car is morally inferior to you anyone who drives a car and eats meat is this again social parasite destroying the planet this is the the view of the world that these people are drawn into step by step and again some of you watching this will be sitting or going yeah that's right but even though maybe it's only one year ago or two years ago since you really saw that edge of it it seems so distant now because so many of the fundamental aspects of the movement have been discredited so that's why I say worth reflecting on worth remembering and also course worth progressing past one of the characteristics of this movement that in some ways makes it resemble a cult and some ways makes it strikingly different from a cult is that it is welcoming but severe it is open to everyone and yet nobody is ever good enough to me that's a very interesting element that bears comparison to other cults other new religious movements etc what do I mean by this well the doors are open anyone could watch freely on YouTube anyone could buy an airplane ticket to Thailand unless they were blacklisted in the dance and so on [Music] there's a sense of which anyone could sign up without even signing a piece of paper anyone could start to participate in the forums anyone could buy the diet book anyone could buy a juicer and start juicing and again when he talked people are honest they often reflect on exactly these things I've seen several people reflecting the fact that they even changed the furniture within their own house to more closely resemble the furniture they saw at that time on freelee's channel you know so that we're sitting on the floor instead of eating at a table so that their fruit was laid out on a tarp on the ground instead of you know having normal kitchen habits you know anything this wasn't required of people they just a lot of people really respond this cold way has opened all and you could start of course uploading your own videos you could start repeating the same mantras the same slogans you could in a sense join this political movement and start making this difference in this imaginary way you could start engaging in the same lifestyle activism which crucially was centered on convincing other people that you were so happy that you were so healthy because you were living this way it was welcoming it was open to all but as soon as you come in you learned that nobody's ever really good enough it seems like nobody's getting the results that they're supposed to be getting that's one riddle because of course the diet advice doesn't really work but also the code of purity involved that seems like nobody's ever pure enough people are always getting denounced for things know already the lists have mentioned you're supposed to eat zero salt zero oil zero overt fats zero garlic zero caffeine you're not allowed to eat oatmeal for breakfast people's brothel for obviously etc etc you're now not allowed to drive a car and allowed to use gasoline but there's always an invisible list of things where people could cross some unknowable line and get denounced which happened week by week on YouTube and people watched and respond to that very closely I talked to one man who was gay and is gay and you know when certain statements were made about homosexuality suddenly the sense was the lines shifted who's in and who's out who accepts this new doctrine that you know being gay as a choice this was at the time this is big news and some people got kicked out and some people adjusted their attitudes in order to stay in and so on um so as I say welcoming but severe open to all but as soon as people come in you realize that nobody's good enough nobody's living up to the standard again interesting comparison to some some Buddhist cults and where the objectives of what you're doing are supposed to be supernatural or inevitable ineffable or you know involve a you know surreal cosmology with ghosts and gods and multiple incarnations but while on the one hand there are all these elements of the cult that elevate your sense of self-esteem that tell you you're special you're exceptional you're buckin ly you're better than your own brothers and sisters you're better than your boss at work you're better than almost everybody you know because everybody you know is either you know eating meat or using gasoline you know these other things um but on the other hand you're dealing with this sense of dejection because you're never as good as freely never and of course she especially viciously denounced some women who were competitors you know who could have been claimants to the same type of fame same type of influence same to have a dietary advice or what have you I think enough said about that those who who remember you'll know what I'm talking about but I admit I'm not really spelling out fully here the types of lines that people were always crossing and people were being punished for people being denounced for but definitely anyone who slips through this fair time will remember people who one week were being praised as being real you know diehard supporters the cause and leaders of the cause the next week would be denounced as fake as fake as as being not real and and as violating some combination of the the precepts stated and unstated that defined who was an insider who was an outsider um I think another element here I was reminded of recently is actually open opening up the identity of the jock of the athlete itself now just digress for a moment here what does it mean to be an athlete where I grew up in Canada the notion of who is an athlete is very narrow indeed you're not an athlete just because you go to the gym you're not an athlete just because you casually play basketball for instance on the street you know on a street court or we play hockey on the street and Canada people play hockey on the street in Canada where I grew up to be an athlete means you play competitive sports at a competitive level period so you rank your in the charts and the you know swagger the self-importance that athletes exhibit in Canadian society which may be less than Australian society it may be more than some other society that corresponds to the type of sacrifices they're supposed to be making to be at that competitive level all kinds of people countless I mean I've seen so many examples of people who in reality were shy hippie types let's be quite specific they were shy hippies who maybe did yoga before they got into Rocco for suddenly started describing themselves as athletes and acting with the self confidence and arrogance of an athlete or of a stereotypical jock people who had never been tough guys started imitating the tough-guy behavior of the leaders of righto four people started talking about themselves as athletes and talking about athleticism as part of this movement in a way that to me is surreal and now I don't I don't really want to hate on any of these people like in a sense anyone can come on the internet and say they're an athlete you know I don't hate you for that but that contrast is really bizarre and the self-confidence those people are exhibiting to me rings hollow and false all the time I've seen people come on again imitating the leaders of rato for describing themselves as jocks as athletes as alpha personalities as domineering natural leaders and even while they're saying it I look in their eye I think you've never led anything you've never been in a competitive sports league of any kind like not even you know not not even at a low level you don't know what it's like to have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and show up at 6:00 a.m. and be yelled at by your coach to be denigrated by a coach in a team sport which is not nice I mean again one of the reasons why a lot of athletes can be nasty is that their themselves getting yelled at and denigrated by their coach or by the more senior players by the better players they're they're being held up to kind of impossible standards all the time now again I'm not saying this I'm not glorifying what it means to be an athlete but this movement suddenly opened up the identity of the athlete and again in a really kind of morally seductive way linked at lettis ISM to activism and erase the boundary between the two so that people began to think of athleticism as activism and began to think that the only true activists were athletes so I guess that leads in nicely to the next topic which is the concept of lifestyle activism itself which presented a powerful and seductive illusion that what you needed to do to change the world to save the planet to save the animals to promote veganism was simply to communicate that you were healthy and happy was simply to glorify the lifestyle itself in part through self-indulgence that by being on permanent vacation for example but not necessarily not everyone was on permutation but by going on vacation and filming yourself in your bikini showing what you eat showing how happy you are showing how health you are making testimonials which is like many other cult groups coming on camera and saying you used to have this disease and you cured it used to have this disorder and you cured it how you bought the diet book you followed the diet you changed your whole life you became athletic before you are couch potato you started riding your bicycle you started eating exactly what the book tells you to eat and lo and behold your diseases were cured and fill-in-the-blank as some of you guys have heard this a hundred times before and some of you will have heard like maybe not a hundred times but at least 20 times people who read who performed that script people who came on camera with great conviction and told that's you and they later admit actually their illness was never cured their illness kept coming back again and again actually their medical problem whatever it was wasn't solved by this peculiar vegan diet and you know they're all they're often other you know confessions maybe the the change in their exercise habits wasn't so great maybe the change in their their weight loss or what key he wasn't so great and so on many many people who later reconsider their position within the cult have recanted that narrative but for a brief period is very stuck to two people the line between activist and athlete was blurred and the notion that the the the great secret I mean the the great catalyst for social change in this planet is happiness is you is your personal happiness that all you have to do is share with the world how happy and how healthy you are that's a powerful delusion that appeals to people at all ages people who feel powerless I think there are sixteen year olds who are still in high school who saw that and it called out to them they thought that's me that's what I can do I can put on a bikini I can tell people that I've cured my acne or cured Crohn's disease or cure diabetes or cured schizophrenia through this diet I can come on and make these testimonials I can film myself having fun I can show how happy I am to ride a bicycle riding a bicycle does not make you that happy okay that's ridiculous that in itself is ridiculous I can talk about my personal transformation how five minutes ago I was a hippie who had no self-confidence and was shy and now I'm an athlete with this very confrontational attitude this type of because if this is part of it right was this transformation that made powerless people feel powerful and it linked their totally subjective sense of health and happiness to saving the planet and again looking at that now in 2016 it seems like a totally absurd delusion but looking back over the last four years there were people who wanted to believe in that and who fiercely defended their right to believe in it and again I mean someone like Kenya panamania who later lost her faith you can hear her reflecting that whenever someone said something to challenge the orthodoxy of the diet even when that diet was making her personally more and more sick or actually her health problems were continuing she was going to hospitals trying to get help she's having many many health problems she would herself viciously attack and denounce other people who questioned the health impacts of the diet or question the the miraculous results that you know she's admitted this in reflecting afterwards that she that the need for her to defend the cause was so strong you know she had to believe in this book shed believe in this in this method and so on so what I've left of the absolute end of this video was health weight loss physical beauty and I think that's just because I've had other videos talking about that I got an email with in patreon I got a message from a patreon supporter and she was over well into her 20s over so let's see she was 24 years old he was just 24 26 but she admitted to me that the first time she saw the image of freelee's midsection of those abdominal muscles of that shape of that part of her body she just thought I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do whatever this woman says I'm gonna fold whatever advice she says so I can get those results so I can look like that and ironically I've seen photos of this woman in videos this woman you know before during and after she was in great shape she was already a very athletic person before she became a follower at this cult and she gained weight and got out of shape because she did follow the rato for diet as many many people have of a long interview with Leah Leah pram so it gained a lot of weight on this channel just scroll back a few videos you'll see that it's an interview with someone who had that experience um yes vanity yes wanting to be beautiful yes that's something that drew people in but as much as we might talk about it I think now in looking back and writing history the wonder that was freely in the auto for phenomenon I think we forget that even though that got people's attention it's easy to forget that these other factors that I've just enumerated were what kept people inside well what made this something that had political and even spiritual ramifications that made people believe this wasn't just about their vanity this wasn't just about having great abdominal muscles or a great figure that this was about saving the planet and on some level I wish I could say that that spirit that enthusiasm could be recaptured could be saved could be channeled into a more positive a more political more pragmatic a more genuinely helpful and even dare I say a more nutritious form of veganism but I don't think you can I think the wonder that was freely in the righto for diet as a chapter in history of this movement as unique and bizarre as the an Urkel primitiveness chapter you can search that much channeling here my work said that that came and went before as unique in bizarre as the Deep Ecology movement that came and went one ideology after another comes and goes I think right now the abolitionist movement of Gary France neonate we're seeing it come and go direct action everywhere I think we've seen one fad after another come and go and yes a lot of people have powerful sentiments they want to help they want to make the world a better place but they become members of cult-like movements that have all the wrong answers because fundamentally they start by asking all the wrong questions