Conspirituality

The events of September 11, 2001 changed the world. Julian reflects on several interpretations of what they meant, proposing that each is a kind of Rorschach-test result based on our own religious and political beliefs, backgrounds, and social conditioning. 

The conspiracy theorist simply can’t believe something like that could happen to America, going in search of complicated alternative explanations that exist outside of the “official narrative,” even of reality itself.

Where the Christian conservative might see a call to Holy War signaling that the End Times is near, Neocon warhawks surrounding Bush observe an opportunity to enact plans for maintaining economic and political power and security.

Meanwhile, many on the left see the attack as justifiable “blowback” against American imperialism, Cold War atrocities, and Western colonialism. Religion is merely an inflaming of a fundamentalist minority based on political injustices.

What about the Soviet Union? The history of political Islam and massive Muslim caliphates that ruled for nearly 1,300 years? The intractable sectarian conflicts and the multiple internal ideologies vying for control over the Middle East?

There may be no easy answers, but perhaps engaging with these different perspectives can allow us to name some of the many factors that got us to 9/11 and the seemingly unsolvable dilemmas of our world today.

Show Notes

Popular Mechanics on 911 conspiracies

Noam Chomsky on 911 conspiracies

Pilger on Project for A New American Century

NYT 2023 Piece on the Reasons for Iraq War

Saddam’s Ruthless Purge

CNN on Kabul attitudes after US Invasion

Polling of Iraqis

Mahmood Mamdani Good Muslim, Bad Muslim Interview

Human Rights Watch on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Taimur Rahman’s Red Star History of Political Islam Lectures

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Derek worked for nearly 10 months on a NY Times opinions video, "You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories," which was published this week. He discusses what it took to produce this video with his collaborator, Alex Stockton, as well as the role journalism has to play in dispelling health misinformation.

Show Notes

You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories

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If it wasn't all so tragic, politics might seem like a bad joke. But how did comedy become so unfunny, so politically toxic? 

From his hideout in a remote mountain cabin, anonymous video collage artist and essayist The Elephant Graveyard has finally cracked the code. According to him, Joe Rogan has created a doomsday death cult that feeds the dad-shaped hole in the hearts of its followers. In this allegory, his Comedy Mothership theater in Austin is like the alien spacecraft zooming in from behind the Hale Bop comet to take the Heaven's Gate group suicide victims home, freed from their earth-suits. 

And it turns out tech oligarchs Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are really behind it all.

Show Notes

Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media

How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult

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Biostatistician Halbert Dunn's 1961 book, High Level Wellness, set the stage for the modern wellness movement. Derek reads it alongside some of today's top conspiritualists, noticing the themes (and differences) that run throughout Dunn's work.

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The recent killing of two police officers (and wounding of a third) in Porepunkah, Australia has highlighted the dangers of sovereign citizen-style conspiratorial beliefs. The alleged shooter is still at large, but his social media footprint shows anti-vaccine, COVID-contrarian, and even QAnon-aligned beliefs, as well as a long history of violent threats against police.

Julian talks to journalists Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, co-authors of an excellent new book, Conspiracy Nation: Exposing The Dangerous World of Australian Conspiracy Theories. As with everywhere else in the world, the pandemic poured gasoline on what would become a familiar set of incendiary false beliefs—but the sociopolitical and historical context down under has its own unique details.

The conversation spans claims of government false-flag operations, real legacies of institutional abuse, and Australia’s most famous conspiracy export and celebrity chef, Pete Evans.

Show Notes

Conspiracy Nation

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Trump is still alive, though a lot of folks are excited that won't last. Maybe it’s testimony to the allure of the fantasy that he really is powerful, that his strongman schtick has legs, that he really has cast some magical spell over everyone—and that if he drops dead we’ll all wake up to a different world…

Of course we won’t.

But we’ll go through the fantasies today: the wishes, the schadenfreude, the diagnosis-at-a-distance, and what it means to imagine the death of a king.

Show Notes

ŌURA Announces U.S. Manufacturing Operations in Support of Scaling Defense Business

Oura Ring makers working with military to open first U.S. factory in Fort Worth

What Does Palantir Actually Do?

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel to lead 4-part series on the Antichrist

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Matthew recounts the story of a young, hoity-toity soft-nationalist German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who discovered the radical soul of antifascism by hanging out in a Black Baptist church in Harlem in 1930. He came to the US believing in the white Jesus of European empire, but left enthralled by the Black Jesus of the oppressed. Back in Germany, he played 78s of spirituals and gospel tunes for the students of his illegal seminaries as he and other members of the Confessing Church issued some of the earliest formal rebukes to the Reich. And then he joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. 

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Matthew recounts the story of a young, hoity-toity soft-nationalist German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who discovered the radical soul of antifascism by hanging out in a Black Baptist church in Harlem in 1930. He came to the US believing in the white Jesus of European empire, but left enthralled by the Black Jesus of the oppressed. Back in Germany, he played 78s of spirituals and gospel tunes for the students of his illegal seminaries as he and other members of the Confessing Church issued some of the earliest formal rebukes to the Reich. And then he joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. 

Show Notes

UCLA Fires Beloved Professor Over 2024 Encampment Arrest – Poppy Press 

NY Mayoral Candidates Address Sanctuary, Trump and Religious Hatred at Interfaith Forum 

Religion and Socialism Working Group - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)  

Undersold and Oversold: Reinhold Neibuhr and Economic Justice 

Swing Low Sweet Chariot - Fisk Jubilee Singers (1909) 

St. James Missionary Baptist Church of Canton: Wade In the Water (1978) 

Evangelische Kirche Halle Westfalen

Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Translated by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, and William Glen-Doepel. Revised and edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R. H. Fuller, revised by Irmgard Booth. New York: Touchstone, 2018.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. Translated by Reginald Fuller, Frank Clark, and John Bowden. New York: Touchstone, 1997.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Bonhoeffer Reader. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.

Marsh, Charles. Strange Glory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Martin, Eric. The Writing on the Wall: Signs of Faith Against Fascism. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022.

McNeil, Genna Rae, Houston Bryan Roberson, Quinton Hosford Dixie, and Kevin McGruder. Witness: Two Hundred Years of African-American Faith and Practice at the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, New York. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014.

Tietz, Christiane. Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016.

Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind. Translated by Arthur Wills. With a preface by T. S. Eliot. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2014.

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The unavoidable question of the week: why is Jillian Michaels on CNN commenting on slavery, exactly?

As it turns out, Netflix provides the answer. The three-part docuseries, Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, creeps behind the scenes of this uber-popular and uber-disturbing reality show that weirdly promoted fat-shaming while simultaneously pretending to alleviate it.

As we’ll discuss today, we can’t shake the feeling that the biggest loser from this entire mess is all of us.

Show Notes

As Republicans spar over IVF, some turn to obscure MAHA-backed alternative

RFK Jr. Is Getting Personal Authority Over Who to Kick Off Medicaid

Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Within Months’

Scientists Strip ‘Diversity’ Language From Research to Keep Federal Grants

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

ACOG on "Restorative Reproductive medicine”

Arkansas’ RESTORE Act

MAHA-backed IVF-alternative

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Levitation, world peace, and blissful enlightenment were all essential to the hippie counterculture. But it came at quite a price. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made billions selling magical mantras and the promise of perfect happiness. Most well-known for being endorsed by the Beatles and David Lynch, he was also feted by world leaders and prestigious universities. The true story behind this 5’1” marketing genius is complex and layered: illicit sex, paranormal promises, alternative medicine, palatial estates, overpriced courses, bogus quantum physics, indoctrinated children, and mass group meditation combined with “yogic flying” would supposedly bring about world peace.

For his latest stand-alone episode in the Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian dives deep into the money-scented blissful waters of Transcendental Meditation and reports back on the sharks that swim beneath the surface. Stay tuned for some reflections at the end about the differences between cults and more familiar, normalized religions.

Show Notes

David Wants to Fly

Robes of Silk, Feet of Clay

The Deceptive World of ™

Maharishi Exposed

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