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The toxic side of BiL
For a time I believed that the "Barefoot is Legal" group had some
good potential.
I even had a positive phone conversation with Nick Deutschmann at one
point, discussing possibilities for doing supportive work with them.
But that never got any followthrough, and further contact
simply failed.
In the meantime, the group's visible outlets on Facebook, Twitter,
a website that seldom gets meaningful updates and an online "radio
station" that nobody listens to, have become less and less useful --
and at times, harmfully misinformative.
Sure, BiL gets the basic facts right about barefooting and the law and basic
human rights, and they frequently post meme-ized pictures about that.
Here's a rework
of one of their more relevant pictorial statements.
But when they start with the woo-woo nonsense about "earthing" and
"chemtrails", that's just a pseudoscience distraction.
They seem to wholly buy into that crap as well, along with popular
conspiracy-theories about government-tainted drugs and "prepping" for
whatever zombie apocalypse is supposedly coming at us this week.
More recently, their core members have been exhibiting hate toward other
groups and interests such as LGBTQ, which despite the inherent irony
is the point where it's time to call it all out and sever any
further links.
It does pain me to have to discredit another group that is basically in
favor of barefooting, but its recent methodologies are unacceptable.
BiL also has the temerity to ask for donations and "membership"
fees amidst all that.
They frequently post made-up lies about their
inflated membership numbers, or make off-the-cuff exaggerations
like they are reaching "millions" of followers.
We all could only *wish*
that there really were "millions" of confident and well-intentioned
barefooters out there!
Sadly, even with a scattering of sites and interest
forums either good or bad around the internet, our real-life
numbers across all of those resources are still a tiny minority.
Due in part to these philosophical and behavioral differences, there has
been some serious historical bad blood between the BiL founders and some
of the core barefooting advocates in the original Society for
Barefoot Living.
[Not the FB group of the same misappropriated name,
but rather the folks behind barefooters.org].
BiL's frequent wingnut armwaving from Dave and Nick isn't actually doing
the *real* barefooter community any good -- rather, it makes us all
come off as flaming radicals who only want to disrupt society.
Quite the contrary, true barefooters simply want to live peaceably within
it, in a way that harms no one and is provably healthy.
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