Conspirituality

QAnon emerged out of a perfect storm of evolving technology, social psychology, and global crisis. But it exploited pre-existing neural architecture already easily hijacked by addictive drugs, junk food, porn, persuasive marketing, and cultish religions. It also relied on how mobile social media, running on cellular and wifi technology, amplifies and speeds up the algorithmic impact of hyper-contagious cultural memes on the material world. Maybe 5G was the real threat all along?

Julian explores our conspiritualist tendencies toward patternicity and apophenia, which can be super-stimulated by well-adapted memes, complex puzzles, and grandiose in-group purpose—and suggests a possible antidote.

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It takes patience, empathy, and a steady hand to paint a detailed landscape of the politics and culture that connect anti-feminism to ethnonationalism to the broader obsessions of conspirituality.

Dr. Annie Kelly’s scholarship in these spaces reveals a network of “subversion anxieties”: that patriarchy will be replaced by social justice autocrats, that the privileged will be brought low, that feminism will destroy hetero freedoms and pleasures, that human bodies will become cyborgs, that collectivism will replace capitalism. As our guest host this week, she’ll be our tour guide through the last decade of hot internet garbage, and explain how she’s kept her manners and wits intact enough to gain the trust of QAnon moms on the front lines of the U.K.’s anti-lockdown movement. We’ll also talk about her new brilliant podcast “Vaccine: The Human Story,” which takes the history of smallpox and its eradication as an object lesson for the COVID era.

On the vaccine tip, our brief Ticker will address how the yoga world showed its anti-vax ass by trolling a Yoga Journal writer who dared to argue that getting vaccinated was a practice of non-violence.

Show Notes

Wolf Terry: Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine Was My Act of Ahimsa

Matthew Remski: How Yoga Journal Set Off an Anti-Vax Backlash

Kelly: Opinion | The Housewives of White Supremacy

Kelly: The alt-right: Reactionary rehabilitation for white masculinity

QAA Episode 110: Mothers For QAnon w/ Annie Kelly by QAnon Anonymous

Kelly: Vaccine, the Human Story

Anti-Vaxxers Could Be Helping Create Deadlier Versions of Covid

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A closer look at the content and constellations of Josh Rainer Goldstein, who livestreams himself eating raw meat.

Presented in three parts:

Show Notes

Eating Raw Meat, Dreaming of Fatherhood — Matthew Remski on Medium

Goldstein’s raw lamb mukbang.

“You own your land. You defend your land.”

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Are you crypto-curious? This past year has shown that an increasing number of people are dreaming of becoming crypto millionaires. But what is blockchain and this strange new digital currency and, more pertinent to this podcast, how are conspiritualists trying to exploit it, even when they don’t understand what “it” is?

Matthew drills Derek, who worked in blockchain for over two years with two different companies, on the basics, before Derek interviews David Morris, the Chief Insights Columnist at Coindesk who also just happens to have a longtime interest in MLMs and cults. Matthew also reviews the 1996 essay, “The Californian Ideology,” the famous 1995 study of the bizarre Silicon Valley-fueled fusion of cultural bohemianism and free-market utopia rhetoric.

In the Ticker, Julian reconsiders the definition of free speech in an age of digital misinformation through the lens of anti-vax champion RFK, Jr, Vandana Shiva, and returning Conspirituality champion, Russell Brand.

Show Notes

The Lesson of Bitconnect: Promoters Can Be Liable

China’s Anti-Crypto Crackdown Is Different This Time

Of Course China Is Anti-Bitcoin: Look What Happened to Jack Ma

Biden’s New FTC Chair Could Be a Big Web 3.0 Ally

23-year old who kept QAnon online

Italy’s Five Star Techno-Utopians

RFK’s Children’s Health Defense article on Brand and Shiva

Seeds of Doubt New Yorker article about Vandana Shiva

Stanford U. Letter on Shiva’s Anti-Science Rhetoric

“Bill Gates Agenda” viral article

Gates New Agriculture Non-Profit

Barbrooke and Cameron, 1995: THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY

Richard Brautigan, 1967: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

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Derek investigates a recent NY Times essay by Michael Pollan as an entry point to discuss big questions in psychedelics and conspirituality: How do we honor indigenous traditions as psychedelics are legalized (and monetized)? What dangers lie ahead as pharmaceutical companies and charismatic influencers exploit psychedelics for profit and power? How can we create psychedelic rituals that suit our current time and societal temperament?

Show Notes

How Should We Do Drugs Now?

Is This Peter Thiel–Backed Startup Trying to Monopolize the Astral Plane?

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What should a global network of popular and private schools do when faced with evidence that the foundation of their pedagogy was laid by a racist, proto-fascist pseudoscientist? What should they do when it becomes clear that they are evangelizing while pretending to teach secular humanism? These are the sticky questions raised by Dr. Jennifer Sapio in today’s interview with Matthew. Sapio taught for three years at the Austin Waldorf School. She was hired from her secular training, but gradually found herself drawn into what she calls an “inherently racist cult.” Her mentors pushed her towards accepting the 19th-century babblings of Rudolf Steiner, who, among other exploits, read the “Akashic Records” to learn why the spirit world disapproved of vaccines. They discuss the long shadows of racist and metaphysical nonsense that hang over the otherwise wholesome project of Waldorf education. 

In the Ticker, Derek and Julian review a recent episode of Ben Shapiro’s podcast, in which he mutually masturbates with Russell Brand to consummate their brands, but they don’t quite come together.

Show Notes

The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 116

The gun control debate is complex, but there are things we can do

Movement against critical race theory is deeply necessary

Dr. Thomas Cowan: Viral video claiming 5G caused pandemic easily debunked

Dr. Sapio’s Waldorf memoir: Waldorf Schools Are Inherently Racist Cults

Austin Waldorf School, Tuitions & Fees

Prof. Staudenmeier: “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism”

Protesting too much: Myths about Waldorf education

Matthew on: The “Akashic Records” to “Do Your Research” Pipeline

APTN: Residential Schools Archives

NYT: Unmarked Graves at Residential Schools in Canada: What to Know

Anishnabek.ca: An Overview of the Indian Residential School System

Woops.

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Julian reflects on unchosen racial complicity and how moments of moral courage in the face of oppressive power can reveal one’s true colors. He traces the history of Apartheid as it intersects with the stories of his youth in South Africa.

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How do we avoid being the subject of—and feeding the market for—trauma porn? If anyone knows, it’s India Oxenberg, who in less than two years (while under the unforgiving glare of a media firestorm) went from cult victim to survivor to anti-cult activist. Matthew sits down with her to discuss her recovery journey: learning to box, learning to love food, learning about “the strong yes” from her therapist. They also discuss the behind-the-scenes expertise that went into the documentary series India starred in and co-produced: Seduced. 

In the Ticker, Derek wonders why wellness influencers are falling back on bad habits as the world reopens while Julian tracks how Bret Weinstein’s cries of censorship exponentially boost the exposure of his anti-vax, pro-Ivermectin science hipsterism.

Show Notes

How Dangerous Is the Delta Variant, and Will It Cause a COVID Surge in the U.S.?

Sah D’Simone: Transmission Hotline

6 facts about economic inequality in the U.S.

The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down

With almost 50 million Americans traveling on July 4 weekend, you may need to pack your patience

June 28 Ivermectin Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis

Slavoj Zizek — Is Jordan Peterson the real Postmodernist?

SEDUCED: INSIDE THE NXIVM CULT

A Timeline of the Nxivm Sex Cult Case

Judge Says Allison Mack ‘Willingly Enslaved, Destabilized and Manipulated’ Women

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Matthew debriefs after the Mike Rothschild interview, looking at QAnon’s “Conspiracy Theory of Everything” as a hyperobject and spiritual dilemma.

Show Notes

‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene

Conversations with Cornel West | Glenn Loury, Cornel West & Teodros Kiros | The Glenn Show

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It’s only been eight months since Q stopped posting, but Mike Rothschild has been able to corral the firehose of data into the first major journalistic study of the fever dream that has tortured millions since 2018. He joins us as co-host this week just as his new book, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Cult, Movement and a Conspiracy Theory of Everything, drops. We’ll ask him about researching a “conspiracy of everything, what a leaderless cult means, how an online religion worships, and how, amidst catastrophic disconfirmation and deplatforming, we’re seeing new delta QAnon variants emerge.

Show Notes

The Storm Is Upon Us: How Qanon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything

QAnon Is Not Dead, It’s Evolving Into Something Far Worse

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Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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