Conspirituality

In this listener story, Julian talks to disabled rights activist and journalist Abby Mahler about how the fake COVID-cure grift endangers people who really need hydroxychloroquine to survive.

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"Cleansing is no longer an option, it's a necessity.”

From wellness influencers obsessed about the meat-body, to Christofascists obsessed about the body politic, rhetoric bombards us from all sides.

Professor of Rhetoric Colleen Derkatch joins Julian to discuss the techniques of the meaning miasma. Her focus is on wellness rhetoric specifically, and how it points to incipient illness, encourages recreational diagnostics, and describes daily routines as liturgies that grant membership in divine communities.

Also we can't avoid talking about Russell Brand on Bill Maher. Sorry. 

Show Notes

Meet Colleen Derkatch

Gish Gallop: When People Try to Win Debates by Using Overwhelming Nonsense

Pharma Wants In - Rina Raphael

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Can Marianne Williamson maintain street cred as a progressive while promoting New Age Jesus?

Can she hammer out functional policy while preaching out of A Course in Miracles—the most anti-political pseudospiritual text on the planet?

Can she advocate for public health despite a history of waffling on vaccine science? Can she make a strong argument for health care reform while giving sermons from a book that says people get sick because they are not spiritual enough?

Can she really help fat people with her book that says that fatness is a "repository of twisted thoughts and feelings?"

Matthew doubts it, but hey—miracles happen!


Show Notes

William Thetford's CV (MKUltra reference)

Marianne Williamson's Democratic debate performance raised eyebrows. But she's no friend of the left.

Marianne Williamson is a controversial AIDS-crisis figure for gay men.

Kevin Sessums on MW, FB post: "I am an HIV+ man who lost lots of friends to AIDS and I know the harm she did conning many into believing they deserved their biological condition - and even their deaths- because they weren't spiritually fit enough to visualize the AIDS virus away."

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Let’s not forget that masks aren’t our only protection against Covid. Strengthening the immune system is also very important: recommendations like vitamins C and D, healthy food and exercise, positive/spiritual consciousness." / Twitter

A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever

Marianne Williamson promoted anti-vaxxer theories on her radio show in 2012 episode | CNN Politics 

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For three years, we’ve covered a forest fire of body fascism, unleashed by the culture wars and the pandemic. With the help of many esteemed guests, we have tracked its hateful and eugenicist impacts on marginalized groups: the disabled, the racialized, the fat, the neurodivergent. 

We have taken too long to host a trans person who can give us both a front line personal and analytical report on what it feels like, and what it means, to live under the current regime of moral panic and legislative assault.

Today we welcome artist and journalist Beau Brink. Beau is a longtime activist and advocate for LGBTQ+ communities, and a member of the Trans Journalists Association. After hours, he’s an outsider artist who works primarily with cosmetics and crafting materials.

Please visit the episode page on our website for all of the citation links we didn't have room for here!

Beau Brink has created a resource page for this episode, which includes a statement on the labour that went into this episode. It's here. 

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Answering the current wave of confusing vaccine misinformation. Julian is joined by molecular biologist Dr. Dan Wilson. "Died Suddenly," correlation vs. causation, the vaccine court, and the recycled anti-vax tropes gaining fresh traction are all addressed in this succinct PSA.

Correction: Julian incorrectly calls Dr. Dan a "microbiologist" at the start of this Brief—but he actually holds a PhD in molecular biology.

Show Notes

Vaccinated/Unvaccinated Viral Load Study

Vaccination Reduces COVID Transmission

Standard Child/Adolescent Schedule

What is Gene Therapy?

Accelerating Vaccine Trials

"Died Suddenly" Debunk

Vaccine Court and Lawsuit Realities

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So much suffering occurs because we romanticize a past that never actually existed in the belief that it's destined to become the future. In the middle we sit, here, now, with time marching forward. Derek explores how wellness influencers weaponize this psychological phenomenon and describes his personal remedy for such thinking. 

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Continuing a conversation from EP142, Derek looks at the cultural damage done when musicians co-opt musical styles to promote their own propaganda, which is often at odds with the social struggles of the oppressed class that created the music. 

After briefly investigating the history of reggae through the lens of indentured servants from India, he discusses artists using two genres—reggae and hip-hop—in such a way that strips the original intention of the music of all value.

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Do visiting inter-dimensional spirits and stowaway UFO passengers use the LAX Airport to touch down among us? Well they do if they're in town for the Conscious Life Expo, conveniently located at the LAX Airport Hilton for those who rely on otherwise mundane modes of travel.

The Valentine's Day weekend crystals and angel cards fest of disjointed spirituality meets dodgy science just celebrated its 21st year as the premiere gathering point for awakened seekers choosing to come out of sovereign superposition and manifest in space-time reality.

But, as visiting Vice News correspondent Anna Merlan tells us, it turns out the organizers have grappled for years with how to reconcile the tensions between obvious charlatans and those who really, truly can talk to the dead, psychics who can diagnose your dog's mystery ailments, and those making artificial claims about all-natural elixirs, prophets of light and love, and QAnon promoting anti-vax conspiritualists.

This year's solution? Tuck the most radicalized New Age hate-preachers away in the Rabbit Hole Room, and charge top-dollar for the red-pilled faithful to swoon at their feet.

Show Notes

Thrive review by Eric Johnson

COVID-19 misinformation contributed to 2800 Canadian deaths, report suggests

Fault Lines Report: Canadian Council for Academics

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Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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How does it feel to grow up in a back-to-the-land house that vibrates with the anxious passion of conspiracy theories?

What would happen when the world began to disconfirm the conspiratorial lore? How would you maintain your relationships, nurture the good, and gently let go of everything else?

Maggie joins Matthew for this Listener Story to explore these questions in relation to her journey from childhood to today.

Note: my question about conspirituality being an ethnicity was inspired by a conversation with listener Lilium Rajan, a writer who I hope to learn more from.

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Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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Is Canada trying to euthanize the mentally ill?

Self-professed "theocratic fascist" Matt Walsh says so. So does the OG anti-woke agitator, James Lindsay. Both cravenly distort Canada's proposed expansion of its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) laws to include people suffering from mental illness.

But are they entirely wrong? From the left, Jeremy Appel writes in Jacobin:

I’ve come to realize that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life, demand you pay back pandemic aid you applied for in good faith, and if you don’t like it, well, why don’t you just kill yourself?

Psychologist and ethics professor Dr. Taslim Alanii-Verjee joins Matthew to discuss the ethical labyrinth of MAiD expansion, and how the altruistic quest for patient autonomy and dignity can run afoul of the neoliberal state's failure to provide the necessaries.

Show Notes

Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee

Federal government moves to delay MAID for people suffering solely from mental illness | CBC News

The Problems With Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Policy

Special Joint Committee on MAiD - Dr. Sonu Gaind

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Support us on Patreon

Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada

Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian

Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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