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Welcome back to False Flag! I regret to tell you that Turning Point USA has a terrible new cause: preventing newborn babies from getting birth certificates.
On Monday, TPUSA host Alex Clark gave her leading MAHA show “Culture Apothecary” over to midwife influencer Lindsey Meehleis, who used the platform to argue that true “sovereign citizens” never report their childrens’ births to the government.
“Why is it better to not have a Social Security number or a birth certificate?” Clark asked.
“They are the ones that have full sovereignty of their child,” Meehleis explained. “Their child is not owned by the state.”
Clark, who boasts 720,000 subscribers on YouTube, is no stranger to crazy ideas. My favorite may have been the theory discussed on her show that sunglasses should be worn only indoors.
How crazy is this recommendation to eschew birth certificates? Sure, you and I may think it’s totally nuts. But the idea that children lose their freedom and become property of the state once their births are registered is getting surprisingly popular in certain circles. Last year on a podcast for the “Free Birth Society,” a nightmarish organization devoted to avoiding traditional medicine during pregnancies, anti-birth-certificate guru Veda Ray explained that she didn’t get her baby a birth certificate after the baby sent her messages to that effect while still in the womb. She also argued that not getting a birth certificate is a great way to help your future child avoid ever paying taxes. (Who knew that was all it takes.)
That said, Meehleis’s appearance on “Culture Apothecary” marks a significant new level of prominence for the anti-birth-certificate movement, giving it the imprimatur of TPUSA, one of the right’s most important institutions.
And speaking of the power influencers have on the right, Minneapolis has for weeks been roiled by the power of MAGA YouTubers. It’s the latest, most vivid, example of how political battles aren’t waged just in the halls of Congress or on the streets at protests, but in the online forums where each side is fighting for algorithmic dominance.
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–Will
A Government Of Influencers, By Influencers, For Influencers
The perverse race to find—or gin up—viral footage in Minnesota and other ICE hotspots.
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The Minneapolis Influencer Wars
LIKE MANY OF HIS FELLOW right-wing influencers, Nick Sortor came to Minneapolis this month. Sortor—made famous last year when he was briefly arrested after a scuffle with left-wing activists outside an ICE facility in Portland—once again had come to a troubled city looking for content.
But Sortor’s plans to shoot video of the unsettled city were delayed on Sunday after, in his telling, a woman stole his $1,000 camera.
As fellow influencer Cam Higby faced off near Sortor with a crowd of people filming on their own smartphones, Sortor tried to grab hold of the woman’s car. Instead of giving up the camera, the woman drove off down a snowy sidewalk with Sortor clinging perilously to the side.
While the FBI has vowed to find justice for Sortor, the bizarre incident has become just one more scene in the flood of social-media content coming out of Minneapolis. Following the ICE deployment and the shooting of Renee Good, much of the fight over who the good guys and the bad guys are in Minneapolis has played out among social media personalities.
Of course, there’s no bigger name in Minneapolis content at the moment than another twentysomething Nick S.: Nick Shirley, the 23-year-old right-wing influencer whose video on supposed fraud at Somali-American daycares went viral in late December. While many of Shirley’s claims have been debunked, and there are obviously other reasons daycares might not be willing to open up and allow Shirley to inspect their children, the controversy provoked by his video was used by the Trump administration to justify the surge of ICE agents in the city.
Watching Shirley in a follow-up video this month as he pursues supposed fraud in healthcare transportation companies, I’m struck by the looseness of his connection to what qualifies as evidence. He’s led around by an older Minnesota activist who has called Muslims demonic, and quips to Shirley that Somalis are “the most violent community.” That guy takes Shirley to various storefronts or apartment buildings where transportation companies are registered—and if no one opens the door, Shirley declares that it has to be fraud.
It sure seems like a libel lawsuit waiting to happen, but for now, it’ll also win Shirley some more attention and give Republicans more reasons to cut funding from Minnesota or surge federal agents into the state.