#2869: Anita Fuentes

Legendary quack and imminent threat to health and welfare everywhere Viola Frymann died a few years ago, but her deranged legacy unfortunately seems to live on. Internet evangelist Anita Fuentes seems somewhat lost to the world the rest of us live in, too, though in a somewhat different way; hopefully her influence is more limited.

 

Fuentes is best known from her end-times podcast Open Your Eyes People, which is devoted to “bringing Breaking News World Headlines MATCHING Bible Prophecy, worship, praise and preaching the Gospel of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ”, where – well, you probably see where this is going – she rants about current events through the lens of radical fundamentalism and extreme paranoia. Back in 2014, for instance, other extremists too picked up Fuentes’s analysis of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which she judged to be a sacrilegious, cultic Satanic Ritual – a twisted parody of a baptism replete with occult symbolism that only utterly deranged people like Fuentes are able to see; apparently the fact that Oprah took it is significant, too.

 

Usually, the news she discusses signals the end times; she has the uncanny ability to discern such signs of the endtimes virtually anywhere, and Fuentes is, unlike most self-declared prophets, not above being specific. For instance, in 2016 she predicted that the end of humanity would occur on March 8, as shown by the occurrence of an eclipse, a freak supermoon and asteroid TX68 – though some observers noticed that she had, at the time of the prediction, nevertheless scheduled programs the days following March 8.

 

Then there is the grift, of course. Fuentes’s show is financed by donations, and she is hard on solicitation. Since she has a special line to God, people who listen to her and send her money will also receive special blessings; they will for instance have their marriages automatically blessed. On the other hand, not donating to her is exactly like “starving a child”. During Covid, she also solicited some criticism by offering religious exemptions for COVID vaccines in return for donations. 

 

Diagnosis: Our experience of shock and/or amusement over these kinds of lunatics has faded over time, but we still feel dutybound to cover them. Hopefully, Fuentes’s influence is limited, but she seems able to keep her podcast running and there’s a lot of fundie loon preachers like her out there.