The Australian Antivaxxer Selling Alligator Alcatraz Merch and the Dark Future it Might Portend

This Aussie antivax grifter should remind us of the slippery slope from fascist campaigns for national health and “racial hygiene” to imprisonment and genocide.

Trump traveled to Florida this week for the grand opening of his new concentration camp. In response, MAGA has attempted to profit off the start of this new, shameful chapter in American history by selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise online. Florida Republicans were proudly selling such “merch” on their Florida GOP Store. But this pales in comparison to the number of MAGA true believers and profit seekers selling hats, shirts, stickers, and more on Etsy that celebrate the concentration camp.

Democracy advocates have been quick to note the trend and call for Etsy to take action to remove such items. They are also organizing campaigns to mass report these items for violating Etsy’s own policies against hate speech and promotion of violence.

We were curious about who some of the sellers are who are profiting off of such a grotesque celebration of cruelty. We decided to look through some of the stores to get a sense of what else they were selling and where else they might show up online. One store caught our eye because the owner uses her own, real name to respond to her customers.

The Aussie Antivaxxer

Just one of the several Alligator Alcatraz items being sold by the store, RebelWanderer.

The store’s owner is Meryl Dorey, who is quite responsive to customer feedback.

Our interest was really piqued, however, when we noticed that the Rebel Wanderer store is based (pun intended) in Bangalow, Australia.

A quick search for Meryl Dorey of Bangalow, Australia returns a LinkedIn page that confirms her as the owner of Rebel Wanderer.

But why would a woman in Australia be selling merch on Etsy about a concentration camp in Florida?

It turns out that Ms. Dorey is a long-time and well-known anti-vaccine activist in Australia. According to her group’s Wikipedia entry, she founded the Australian Vaccination-risks Network in 1994 and still serves as its head spokesperson.

Ms. Dorey perfectly illustrates the growing transnational nature of the far-right movement. She does not limit her political activism to Australia or to health. Indeed, her Etsy store not only sells “Alligator Alcatraz” merch, but Trump, MAHA, and DOGE merch as well. Her Facebook page features a header image that includes a t-shirt that reads, “Voting for the convicted felon - Trump 2024.”

On her LinkedIn and Substack accounts, she celebrated the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent firing of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, declaring, “MAHA is here - finally!” Who knew Australians were so committed to making Americans healthy?

Health, Hygiene & Holocaust

It may be no exaggeration to call Trump’s Florida concentration camp “Alligator Auschwitz.” Many rightly point to the disgusting similarities between the scenes out of Florida this week and the scenes from the opening of the Dachau concentration camp in 1933, during the first year of Adolf Hitler’s rule.

Sticking with Nazi Germany as our guide, the overlap between MAHA propaganda and the establishment of concentration camps in America should also come as no surprise. At Dachau, in particular, after the initial focus on jailing political opponents (Social Democrats and communists), those with mental or physical disabilities began to arrive starting around 1935.

This was part of the Nazi regime’s obsession with public health and “racial hygiene.” Indeed, the overlaps with the “finally arrived” MAHA are quite telling. Here are just a few:

• National Focus on Health: Both movements frame health as a national crisis requiring urgent, government action. MAHA emphasizes combating chronic diseases and improving nutrition, positioning these as matters of national importance. Similarly, Nazi Germany promoted public health campaigns to address what they saw as threats to the “national body,” including efforts to reduce tobacco and alcohol consumption, and to encourage “healthy” lifestyles.

• Government-Led Initiatives: Each movement established government commissions or agencies to direct and oversee health initiatives. Trump created a commission involving multiple federal departments to develop and implement strategies for improving public health. Nazi Germany established offices and laws (such as the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases) to enforce its racial hygiene policies.

• Emphasis on Prevention: Both stress the importance of prevention over treatment. MAHA seeks to address the root causes of chronic disease, such as diet and nutrition, and to shift the healthcare system toward prevention. Nazi Germany’s campaigns also focused on preventing the transmission of what they deemed hereditary diseases, albeit through coercive and violent means.

• Public Messaging and Responsibility: Each movement employs broad public messaging about health as a shared responsibility. MAHA’s rhetoric encourages individual and collective action for health, sometimes blurring the lines of institutional versus personal responsibility. Nazi Germany’s campaigns similarly invoked collective duty, urging citizens to adopt “healthy” behaviors for the good of the Volk (people/nation).

Beyond these health-specific similarities, there are also ideological and ethical similarities of concern. Ideologically, Nazi Germany’s health campaigns were inseparable from a racist, eugenic ideology. The goal was to “purify” the German race by excluding, sterilizing, or murdering those deemed “hereditarily unfit” or racially “foreign,” including Jews, Roma, disabled people, homosexuals, and others.

While MAHA focuses primarily on lifestyle factors at the moment, Trump has commented in the past that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. Likewise, knowledgeable observers have likened the anti-vaccine movement, which is central to MAHA, as a form of “soft eugenics.”

In terms of methods and ethics, Nazi Germany’s health and hygiene policies were enforced with coercion, violence, and state terror: forced sterilizations, criminalization of certain marriages, imprisonment, and ultimately genocide. While MAHA currently emphasizes voluntary lifestyle changes, certain statements and actions on the part of its leaders raise the prospect of something more coercive.

Health and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. has suggested in the past that neurodivergent children be sent to government “wellness farms” to be “reparented.” He has also created a government database to track patients with autism and hired a disgraced researcher who tried to “cure” autistic children by treating them with a drug that is used for chemical castration.

Conclusion

We do not claim that Ms. Dorey is personally advocating imprisonment of, violence towards, or genocide of immigrants or those deemed to be unhealthy. Her sale of concentration camp merch should, nonetheless, call our attention to the transnational nature of the far right movement today. Foreign actors, from adversaries and allies alike, have political and financial incentives to stoke fear and hate inside the United States.

Even more importantly, this case should remind us of the historical role of obsession with national “health” and “hygiene” in fascist movements, as well as the potentially slippery slope from such obsessions to the atrocities that can be carried out in their name. We now have all the necessary ingredients--institutional, rhetorical, material--for such atrocities to be carried out in the United States of America in 2025. If we are truly committed to Never Again, as we must be, now is the time for all decent Americans to stand up and fight back.

Find a protest near you and make your voice heard. Americans must get in the streets and stay there! Join the campaign to report concentration camp merch on Etsy. Help the effort to document, name, and shame those who would seek to profit off of mass horror.

Generative AI Use Disclosure: This article was written and edited entirely by the humans who run the Resistance Sentinel. Generative AI was used alongside the Google and DUckDuckGo search engines to help identify relevant sources.