Conspirituality

Percolating alongside racism and classism, one of the most pernicious subtexts of conspirituality propaganda is ableism. Proponents spout accusatory mantras like: “You have an immune system!,” “You’d have nothing to worry about if you were vegan!,” and, of course, “Living in fear is the real cause of disease.”

Not only do these ideas have nothing to do with virology, they also condemn everyone who is immuno-compromised, living in a food desert, or managing trauma to the margins. COVID-19 has exposed the ugliest secret of wellness culture: the glorification of the self over concern about the community.

None of this is news for disability activists. In this episode, Matthew interviews Jivana Heyman, founder of Accessible Yoga and longtime AIDS activist, about walking the anti-conspirituality line between yoga and public health. Heyman also reveals how the past and present intersect in Tony Fauci, a leading figure in AIDS research during Reagan’s tenure who is now being muzzled by Trump.

In This Week in Conspirituality, Julian looks at the fear of death through the lens of Ernest Becker and Joseph Campbell, Derek discusses free speech after Twitter removes 7,000 QAnon accounts, and Matthew tries to empathize with the “awakened” aspect of conspirituality, i.e., What have they woken up to?

Show Notes

A Force In The Universe: Brad Ramsey

Advanced Asthanga practice video with Pattabhi Jois

The Prophecies of Q

Twitter Removes Thousands Of QAnon Accounts, Promises Sweeping Ban On The Conspiracy

What Does Free Speech Mean?

As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn’t Like

Statistics & Information on Childhood Sexual Abuse

Matthew’s tribute to Jivana Heyman

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Christiane Northrup’s social media feed descends even further into the delusional zone — this week she retweeted explicitly identified QAnon content — we ask Professor Jacqueline Antonovich of Nursing Clio about the history of charisma, magic, and entrepreneurship in women’s wellness. When asked if she was surprised by Northrup’s conspirituality spiral, Antonovich was clear: “Not at all.” She carefully unpacks why.

We also look at the role of media in conspiritual thinking and discuss Northup’s enthusiastic endorsement of the movement to “make Americans free again” by becoming single-issue voters—the issue being vaccines.

Show Notes

Marshall McLuhan | The medium is the message

How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society?

In 1947, the press reported on the Hutchins Commission report

Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news. This map shows if there’s one near you.

Make Americans Free Again | The New Normal: Citizens In Charge

Jacqueline Antonovich | Nursing Clio

Northrup’s retweet of a QAnon account boosting the red shoe conspiracy

Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper“

Ricki Lake’s “Business of Being Born“

On Lydia Pinkham

On Mary Putnam Jacoby

Sarah Swedburg on Louise Hay

How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OB/GYN Dr. Christiane Northrup has been a giant in women’s healthcare advocacy for decades. She has persuasively argued for lower-intervention childbirth, an end to circumcision, and policies that place family unity at the heart of health care. She’s known and loved for challenging her medical training with faith-based values and an intuition framed as feminine (if not feminist) and “sovereign.”

Northrup draws on astrology, feng shui, chakra theory, and “vibrational” healing as modes of resistance to what she sees as medical patriarchy. This resistance began seamlessly intersecting with COVID trutherism in April, when she started posting daily Facebook sermons to her half-million followers. The series is called “The Great Awakening” — a phrase first used to describe 18th-century American spiritual revival movements, but was recently co-opted by QAnon conspiracists to describe the inevitable triumph of Trump over the Deep State.

Northrup’s sermons, combined with her posts of Plandemic, Tony Robbins interviewing anti-vaxxers, and a podcast with “Andy” Wakefield in which she called COVID a “flu” and expressed concern about Bill Gates taking over public education, give a rich glimpse into the seduction of conspirituality in the hands of a wellness matriarch.

Most recently, Northrup has strengthened her alignment with QAnon by posting a trailer for a follow-up to a key recruiting video. With up to a dozen QAnon supporters running for office in November, Northrup is positioned to nudge middle-class white wellness women with money into a cult that believes Trump is a messianic figure.

This week’s interview is with Britt Hermes, who earned her doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University in 2011. After three years of practice, Hermes left the profession to became its most vocal public critic. We asked her to weigh in on women’s wellness in the pandemic and the appeal of Dr. Northrup.

Show Notes

Pharmaceutical Ethics and Grassroots Activism in the United States: A Social History Perspective

Just 50% of Americans plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s how to win over the rest

To celebrate the Fourth, Michael Flynn posts a pledge to conspiracy group QAnon

How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men

How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It can be as hard to talk with your well-meaning yoga-world friend about their COVID-conspiracy beliefs as it is to talk with a family member about their devotion to Donald Trump. This isn’t an accident — but it’s not exactly by design, either. Both figures can seem trapped in filter bubbles of jargon that hypnotizes and cancels critical thinking.

In this episode, we talk with pre-eminent cult researcher Steve Hassan about his new book, The Cult of Trump, and explore the overlaps between the cults of personality that destroy political, wellness, and spiritual cultures. We discuss changes in cultic technique in the age of lockdown, and how best to maintain contact with a person transformed by manipulation. The interview with Steven begins at the 37-minute mark.

Show Notes

Troy Casey video

UFO Conspiracy Theorists Offer ‘Ascension’ From Our Hell World for $333

The Prophecies of Q

How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online

Anatomy of Delusion: How Otherwise Conscious People Descended into the Darkness — Stephen Dinan

Shift Network courses

Matthew on the Shift Network

The Cult of Trump Media Page

Steven Hassan’s BITE Model

Influence Continuum

“I Am Not Your Guru” — Tony Robbins documentary

“Hacking the Consumer’s Brain” — Moran Cerf

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conspiritualists are compelling for numerous reasons: they’re charismatic; they claim to transcend polarized politics; they claim to speak the unspeakable in a quest for hidden truths. It makes sense that a key rhetorical instrument in their toolbox is poetry.

“The real virus is fear” is a unifying metaphor for conspiritualists, but there are others. In conspiritual-ese, the immune system is like the Christian soul: eternal, perfect, and solitary. Masks are signs of submission that symbolize the suppression of free speech and even slavery. Public health departments are bureaucracies of death. Vaccines are poisons designed to demand compliance. Vaccinators are Satanic agents compelled to enter the sacred space of the body — especially the child’s body — in order to possess it.

In this episode, Derek (cancer survivor), Matthew (pulmonary embolism survivor), and Julian (Lyme disease in remission) discuss the function of the beautiful and delusional metaphors of illness and transcendence in conspiritual-ese, applying the discoveries of Susan Sontag and Eula Biss. Maggie Levantovskaya, an Adjunct Lecturer at Santa Clara University, discusses her essay, “My Disease is Not a Metaphor.”

Show Notes

“My Disease is Not a Metaphor” — Maggie Levantovskaya

“Don’t Thank Me for My Sacrifice” — Maggie Levantovskaya

Resilience and Possibility Conversation with Zach Bush MD

Mary Baker Eddy: American Religious Leader

The Science of Mind — Ernest Holmes

“The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors” — Dhruv Khullar

Travis View on adrenochrome

Internalised Ableism: The Tyranny Within

Ableism and internalized ableism

“Will you Go with a War-Cry or a Whimper?” — Ben Ralston

On Immunity: An Inoculation — Eula Biss

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On one hand, we have the CEO of Crossfit tweeting that “Floyd-19” is the real problem. (He got canceled.) On the other, COVID-truther psychiatrist Kelly Brogan is using Hopi mythology to support the fantasy of a Corona consciousness-awakening — while the Hopi themselves live within the Navajo Nation, which has the highest infection rate in the country.

WTF is going on with white wellness people?

For this episode, we’re joined by New School historian of American fitness, Dr. Natalia Petrzela, who sheds light on the historical links between physical culture and racism, and Dax-Devlon Ross, an anti-racism and civil rights educator, on what white wellness ideology does to Black people.

Show Notes

Dr. Petrzela on Ahmaud Abery

A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age — Dax-Devlon Ross

Glassman’s FLOYD-19 tweet

Buzzfeed covering Glassman’s Zoom

Dr. Petrzela tweeting on McFadden and Sandow

One City’s Struggle to Police the Police — Dax in The Washington Post

Kelly Brogan using “sovereignty”

Kelly Brogan appropriating a Hopi text

Something we didn’t cover: A Wisconsin “I Can’t Breathe” workout

A BUNCH of white spiritual dudes claiming that the “I can’t breathe” protest chant is a spell to program people for slavery to the Deep State. They advise taking strong action with deep breathing exercises and antidote mantras.

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right-wing conspiracy theories are being marketed in wellness communities as a form of spiritual freedom. While pattern recognition is an essential survival instinct, it’s being exploited during a time of a global pandemic, governmental collapse, and social paranoia. Tragically, so-called spiritual leaders are trafficking in propaganda while advocating for individual sovereignty.

We also discuss the history of and science behind 5G and vaccines.

Show Notes

Ivanka Trump’s graduation speech to Class of 2020

Can a Vaccine for Covid-19 Be Developed in Record Time?

Louis Pasteur, from crystals of life to vaccination

The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To the layperson, Dr. Zach Bush’s vision of a resurrected microbiome as being the answer to modern illnesses sounds appealing. His basic argument: we’ve been weeding ourselves to death, externally and internally, depleting the biodiversity of our soils and bodies. He seems to have done typical clinical work (in mostly private settings) in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. But with no publications or experience with epidemiology, why is he being tapped by anti-vax activists to speak on COVID-19.

Perhaps because when he runs up against the limit of his knowledge, he offers spiritual sermons. J.P. Sears does something similar, though from a different direction, without being signal-boosted by anti-vaxxers. Sears’s deeper colors show when he reaches the limits of his satire: he’s a life coach medical libertarian who’s willing to cherry-pick data and mock concerns about the immunocompromised in support of…we’re not quite sure.

Show Notes

Zach Bush interview with Del Bigtree

Zach Bush monologue with Rich Roll

JP Sears videos: Media | Response to Media | Blue Pill People

JP Sears’s podcasts: Tim Kennedy | Viral Video

Summary of Santa Clara study cited by Bush and Sears

Sayer Ji’s Instagram meme

Tim Kennedy and waterboarding

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barely two weeks into various stages of lockdown around the world, New Age philosopher Charles Eisenstein published a 9,000-word essay on the meaning of the pandemic. He summed up his core theme with deft wordplay at about the 7,000-word mark. After suggesting that the global crisis afforded a kind of transformative opportunity, he writes

“Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation? The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. ‘Novel coronavirus pandemic’ means ‘a new coronation for all.’

What was so captivating about this essay that Jack Dorsey tweeted it to the 4.5M followers on his platform? What are Eisenstein’s premises, credentials, rhetorical techniques? What are his connections to medical libertarianism, and how does he manage to endorse conspirituality while seeming to deconstruct it?

Show Notes

The Coronation — Charles Eisenstein

CORONATION UNVEILED: A Critique and Cure for Charles Eisenstein’s Fairy Tale Pandemic Essay — Jack Adam Weber

Daniel Pinchbeck’s response to The Coronation

The Conspiracy Myth — Charles Eisenstein

Covid-19 Is A Rehab Intervention: Charles Eisenstein | Rich Roll Podcast

Charles Eisenstein / Sayer Ji discussion

During COVID-19, Charles Eisenstein Invites You to Think Deeply About His Awesome Writing — Matthew Remski

Transformational Weight Loss — Charles Eisenstein

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins of this project.

In episode 0.2, we discuss suspect medical claims made by Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji. We also talk about Julian’s new essay, “The Red Pill Overlap.”

Show Notes

The Red Pill Overlap

Why We Stay Asleep When COVID-19 Is Trying To Wake Us Up

What Mandatory Vaccination and the 5G Rollout Have In Common

-- -- --

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices