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By Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
4
16461,646 ratings
The podcast currently has 502 episodes available.
Just two days after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump announced JD Vance as his VP pick. Vance has made a dramatic U-turn from calling Trump a "reprehensible idiot" and "America's Hitler" in 2016. But who is this 39 year old, really—who after less than two years of on-the-job experience, is now almost a heartbeat away from leading the free world?
Well, not unlike other right-wing populists in Europe and at home, Vance has an idiosyncratic political affinity for JRR Tolkien. We might even call him America’s conspiracy hobbit at this point, fresh from the Appalachian Shire but inexorably drawn by the burning crypto rings of Silicon Valley to eventually land at the feet of Sauron to meet his fate.
But to answer this question and examine where JD Vance fits into the conspirituality landscape, we’ll be breaking down a speech recently released by ProPublica. It’s from an intimate invitation-only conservative event hosted in 2021 by a group called the Teneo Network. Behind closed doors, Vance encouraged his audience to get away from that weird feeling in their chests when listening to the unique truths of conspiracy theorists. Like, Alex Jones sees the world more clearly than MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. The right also apparently needs more oligarchs. Oh, and the literal Devil is at work in the world around us.
Show NotesJ.D. Vance Speaks at a Private Teneo Network Event, Sept. 2021
Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance”
How Lord of the Rings Shaped JD Vance’s Politics
The Influences on JD Vance’s Political Philosophy
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Project 2025's plan for workers is clear: crush unions, eliminate minority protections, curtail reproductive health care benefits, and make the workplace biblical again.
Derek and Julian unpack the details of another insane chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that describes their vision for the reduced rights of the working class. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.
Show Notes
Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy
Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education
The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem
The GOP Takeover of Media
The Plan to Dismantle Health Care
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We cover conspiracy theories, spiritual abuse, and religious and right-wing extremism. We cover showmen and charismatics suffering from King Victim Complex. Last week we had to study a goddam assassination attempt.
But sometimes we get to peek into the worlds that younger people are making within our cursed digital environments, and we realize they might be laughing at some of the problems that fill us olds with despair right out of existence.
Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod joins Matthew to talk about whether the hit indie game Cult of the Lamb might be all the inoculation against cultic dynamics that generation Alpha ever needs.
Show Notes
Riley MacLeod - Aftermath
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Two landmark Supreme Court decisions—the Trump immunity case and the overturning of the Chevron doctrine—represent the legal institutionalization of the core values of conspirituality: self-sovereignty, natural immunity or divine protection, and “doing your own research.”
The attempted assassination on the former president forged the essence of these two rulings into a stunning still life of Trump’s image for those who love him and those he’s appointed to serve him.
Julian and Matthew wade into the flood, and what might happen at ground zero of conspiracy theory formation—this time veering left as well as right.
Show Notes
Former classmate of Trump rally gunman says he was ‘bullied almost every day’
The FBI Identifies Suspected Gunman in Trump Rally Shooting: What to Know - The New York Times
FBI identifies Thomas Crooks of Bethel Park as the suspect in Trump assassination attempt
FBI probing motives, background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt
A shooting range, a gun store, and a ladder purchase: Tracking the Trump rally gunman's movements leading up to his attack
Trump rewrites Republican convention speech to focus on unity not Biden - Washington Examiner
Vance shooting response: https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1812280973628965109
Musk shooting response: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1812256998588662068
Rubio shooting response: https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1812256529296613657
Boebert shooting response: https://x.com/KyleClark/status/1812316469016846373
Brief: The Theatre of Trump (w/Hank Willenbrink) — Conspirituality
23-939 Trump v. United States (07/01/2024)
Clarence Thomas Raised Another Issue: Was Jack Smith Legally Appointed? - The New York Times
22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (06/28/2024)
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Project 2025's approach to environmental issues is pretty straightforward: deny climate science, dismantle the EPA, clear a path that prioritizes corporate profits, and let the world burn.
Derek and Julian unpack the details on the chilling chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that outlines their plans for the Environmental Protection Agency. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.
Show Notes
Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy
Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education
The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem
The GOP Takeover of Media
The Plan to Dismantle Health Care
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While speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast, The War Room, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts recently stated, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts is the mastermind behind Project 2025, Heritage’s 920-page “presidential transition” agenda that seeks to implement authoritarian power in America. The text combines the anti-regulatory stance of libertarianism, laissez faire capitalism on steroids as espoused by conservatives, and the heinous and anti-democratic religious dogma of Christian nationalists, and it’s finally receiving a lot of attention.
Derek and Julian look beyond the “bloodless” comment to hear what else Roberts and crew have in store for America should Donald Trump regain the presidency. As you might imagine, it has nothing to do with democracy.
Show Notes
Taraji P Henson Calls Out Project 2025 at BET Awards
‘Complete and utter B.S.’: Trump DEFINITELY knows his own team authoring Project 2025
Kevin Roberts on The War Room
Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy
Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education
The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem
The GOP Takeover of Media
The Plan to Dismantle Health Care
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Today we’re looking at a lavish infomercial put out by New Age oligarch and RFK Jr superfan Aubrey Marcus, in which he tries to show the world that his very expensive encounter group, Fit For Service, is definitely not a cult. And at how Matthew got quoted in the opening montage as though he endorsed FFS as an “anti-cult.” He hasn’t.
Marcus might be protesting too much. Because no one with any credibility has actually called FFS a cult, and they couldn’t, because no one has done the investigative work that would take. In a lot of ways, that question is beside the point. It’s not the ‘70s anymore. If you have 604K YouTube subscribers, and millions in the bank from oil money and supplement sales, you don’t need to coerce anyone into staying on your ashram compound and working on your spiritual ideas for free. You too can have an unlimited supply of well-heeled seekers cycling through your coaching encounter group.
So the real questions are: what is it really worth, and what does it really serve?
Show Notes87: The Aubrey Marcus Spectacle
Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign
107: An Open Letter to Aubrey Marcu
86: Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q
Why Kyle Kingsbury Quit The UFC
Myths That Make Us | Godsey Montana Summit talk
The music festival that wants to know your deepest secrets
[Annihilation] Can someone explain the shimmer from the movie scientifically?
Dharma Artist Collective—Godsey’s online community
The Poet Queen
'I Was 13 When Marc Gafni's Abuse Began'
Former Rabbi Accused of Improper Sexual Conduct Now Rising Star in U.S. Spiritual Movement
Gafni Faces Fallout From New Age Community
Marc Gafni Named In Latest Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Against Yeshiva University
Popular New Age author Marc Gafni molested 13-year-old girl in 1980, lawsuit says
Sara Kabakov lawsuit docket
Aaron Rogers in Marc Gafni’s library
Has Aaron Rodgers been learning Torah at his offseason retreat?
My Dad Died: The Blessings Of The Father Pt 1 w/ Dr. Marc Gafni
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Back in 2011, Ward and Voas wrote that conspirituality was a mainly-online movement, and they were right about that. They didn’t do fieldwork at events. They didn’t attend trainings and rituals. They combed the internet for evidence of what they were looking for.
They found strange and anxious spiritual themes. But they also found evidence of what the internet does in all of its speed and dissociation, in its invitation to seize attention through contrarianism and amplify jagged anxieties and glittering pieties.
In finding conspirituality, they may have proven that you can’t do religion on the internet. And maybe, that’s part of why conspirituality exists.
Religious impulses are ancient and primal, centering communities as campfires do. But they also throw off sparks of narcissism and extremism, which the algorithms must capture to drive engagement.
Show Notes
MMMEATTT — “A newsletter about things that can’t exist on the internet” by Beau Brink
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The stress of influencing in the New Age / alt-med world is rough. You have to pretend to know everything, from vaccine science to the origins of autism, to how feminism has desecrated the sanctity of motherhood. It’s not surprising that a growing number of the conspirituality influencers we know and love are all tuckered out, and now choosing to let Jesus take the wheel.
Freebirth mogul Yolande Norris Clark now joins the growing ranks of converts from conspirituality to Orthodox Christianity. How will she square her politics of the divine feminine with a hyper-patriarchal tradition? Or is it really such a stretch?
Show Notes"Giving Birth in Yogaland"
She wanted a 'freebirth' with no doctors. Online groups convinced her it would be OK.
From Costa Rica, Yolande Norris-Clark Free-Births COVID News About “Hellscape” of Canada
Free-Birther Yolande Norris-Clark Promotes “The Secret Covenant”
COVID-Denialist: “Rona Is as Real as You Want it To Be”Argentino on Pastel Q — Twitter
Pastel QAnon
The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful
The Instagram aesthetic that made QAnon mainstream
The Conspiracy Theory to Rule Them All
'Pastel QAnon' Is Infiltrating the Natural Parenting Community
First appearance of "The Secret Covenant" online
Secret Covenant: Freedom-Force (2004)
Secret Covenant boosted on a QAnon channel, 2020
PolitiFact | John D. Rockefeller did not write a ‘secret covenant’ about world domination Transphobia in the Midwifery Community
Yolande Norris-Clark: Transgenderism, Feminism & C0Vid (Content warning: transphobic creator)
Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts
Matthew Heimbach excommunicated
Justin Trudeau & The Misuse Of Words
Giving Birth in the Church
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Can yoga bring hostages home? No. Can yoga stop a genocide? Also no. But this won’t stop earnest practitioners from instrumentalizing practice for both purposes.
For supporters of Israel, practice is dedicated to the protection of land, the return of hostages, and to uphold the spiritual valor of soldiers. Among supporters of Palestine and a ceasefire, yoga practice and community is an organizing principle for decrying genocide, building mutual aid, and resisting global colonialism. Both factions cite the Bhagavad Gita.
Does yoga support nationalistic violence and body fascism? Isn’t that where its modern origins lie? Or does it have deeper, intersectional roots in universal liberation?
The interpretive war, articulated and inflamed online, only accelerates the material war.
But there is a third space we examine today: the gap between how spiritual aspirations appear and are praised or condemned in the world of the spectacle, and how they play out in the flesh.
Show NotesTel Aviv Yoga Event
About : Israeli hostages taken by Hamas
We Are Still Standing handstand event
Carmel Gat | Yoga in captivity
Taken captive: Carmel Gat, seen doing yoga with hostage children
Initial Twitter posting of Alfie's yoga class in Gaza
Reserve combat engineer practices yoga with soldiers in a house in Gaza
IG post | criticism of Yoga Journal cover
In Israel, Chanting 'Om' Between Missiles
What does Israel's rescue of 4 captives, and the killing of 274 Palestinians, mean for truce talks?
AP: Calculating death numbers in Gaza
Sarah Martin Little Rock yoga benefit event
Rasha Madkour fundraiser for The Longhorn Muslim Alumni Network
UK yoga event for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund
Hot Yoga Glasgow yogathon for the International Rescue Committee
A look inside the growing Pro-Palestine student solidarity encampment at UCSB
Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators At USC Join Camp-In Movement On Heels Of Valedictorian Controversy
Sheena Sood's Yoga for Palestine series at Bhakti Yoga Movement in Portland
50. Sellouts & Zealots (w/Sheena Sood)
Samson's Foxes insignia
Reserve combat engineer practices yoga with soldiers in a house in Gaza
The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric
Dark Mirror: A Torah View of Revenge, and its Reflection in Israeli Media During Operation Iron Swords
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