It's a small operation, started in August by Kyle Hunt, a year-old with light blue eyes, auburn hair and a close-cropped beard. Originally from the quiet town of Mashpee on Massachusetts's touristy Cape Cod, Hunt attended a prestigious and politically progressive liberal arts college before moving to the San Francisco Bay area to start a tech career in the late aughts. About the same time, he started exploring alternative health and fitness lifestyles.
Hunt, who now lives in Florida, often uses social media to share his thoughts on the merits of vegan diets and eating simple, natural foods "like our ancestors", the value of sustainable agriculture and the challenges of living a healthy life in the modern world. On Arcadian Wellness's Instagram account, he shows people how he makes his brand's Muscle Builder supplements out of powdered ashwagandha extract, fenugreek and shilajit on what appears to be a kitchen counter.
Hunt makes and sells natural deodorant sticks and hair regrowth tonics, sulphate-free soaps and tooth-cleaning powder made with ingredients like activated charcoal and baking soda. But behind its seemingly apolitical, health-driven digital storefront, Arcadian Wellness is part of a small but surging wellness subculture that uses ideas of purity, health and fitness to support and spread white nationalism. Arcadian Wellness's products are advertised on Renegade Broadcasting, a digital radio station where far-right figures air their conspiratorial, racial grievances.
The common thread: Hunt, the founder of both the wellness store and the radio station. In when Hunt created Renegade, his first broadcast rehashed anti-Semitic conspiracies about Jewish cabals manipulating the world. In , he launched a blog, Renegade Tribune, to publish far-right essays. One of his first, "a theory on race mixing", envisions a utopia in which white people never have to encounter "a 'darkie'" in "our lands". He told a Cape Cod newspaper in that in his 20s he had become convinced that America is biased against white people.
That year, he tried to organise "white man marches" across the United States to protest against "government-sponsored racism", such as affirmative action, and promote race realism, an ideology that argues each race is fundamentally different.
