Conspirituality, revisited
Here we go again.
One minute you’re doing the downward dog, the next you’re listening to conspiracy theories about Covid or the new world order. How did the desire to look after yourself become so toxic?
The commingling of spiritually-oriented wellness advocates and the far right has caught the attention of journalists. It’s news when odd bedfellows like yoga moms and Holocaust deniers socialize online. This unsettling development has been featured recently in The Guardian’s Lifestyle section:
Jane’s friend [from her meditation group] conceded that Jane was ill, but insisted it must be something other than Covid-19, because Covid wasn’t real. . . . By the time Jane was sufficiently recovered and rejoin[ed] her meditation group, things were very different.
‘They have been moving generally to far-right views, bordering on racism, and really pro-Russian views, with the Ukraine war,’ she says. It started very much with health, with ‘Covid doesn’t exist’, anti-lockdown, anti-masks, and it became anti-everything: the BBC lie, don’t listen to them; follow what you see on the internet.’
. . . Things came to a head when one day, before a meditation session – an activity designed to . . . push away all worldly concerns – the group played a conspiratorial video arguing that 15-minute cities and low-traffic zones were part of a global plot. Jane finally gave up.
The phenomenon of hippie types and gun fanatics hanging out together in conspiratorial internet dens needs explaining. Professor Paul Campos points out that both subcultures embrace a contradictory mindset: they attribute superior rationality to global actors but reject basic rationality for themselves.
The key link here is the belief in some sort of hyper-rational conspiracy of elites that controls a world that in fact is vastly more chaotic than all these flavors of conspiracism can ever acknowledge. The irony is that something like the Covid pandemic should reveal how insane the view that “Big Pharma” or “Bill Gates” or “International Banking Elites” control everything . . . really is, since the pandemic turned the world upside down in so many ways.
In other words, some spirituality/wellness types and neo-fascists believe that a calculating and powerful global elite surreptitiously engages in complicated and fantastic crimes (e.g., the Comet Ping Pong “Pizzagate conspiracy”); they simultaneously reject empirical evidence that disproves the existence of a purported crime. The rationality of the elites is assumed, but the believer disables her own capacity to evaluate facts and draw logical conclusions.
Despite recent chatter about these extremely odd bedfellows, this development is not new. The trouble has been brewing and . . .
We were warned:
The merger between crunchy-granola types and neo-fascists, which scholars labeled “conspirituality,” is the result of a decades-long process. I wrote a four-part series on this phenomenon about two years ago. The time is ripe for a revisit.
In Who Put the ‘Con’ in Conspirituality? I wrote about inside-the-tent reactions from the lefty counterculture:
The adoption of QAnon views and vaccine skepticism by influential alternative medicine practitioners and spirituality influencers is viewed with alarm by many in the wellness and spirituality communities. Last spring, Lorie Ladd posted a surprising revelation from her ascended guides: that Donald Trump is a massive and powerful lightworker here to assist humans in an evolution of consciousness. Yes, that Donald J. Trump.
When asked if she thought Trump was a lightworker, Marianne Williamson said, “I think it’s insane.”
When Marianne Williamson thinks something is insane, you know it’s waaaaaay out there.
Conspirituality’s origin story first appeared in a 2011 academic journal. In A Bridge Over Roiling Waters, I discussed the affinity between conspiracists and spiritualists.
You wouldn’t think that spiritual folk who support animal rights and anti-racism could have much in common with Second Amendment enthusiasts. But aspects of each group’s worldview overlap. British researchers Charlotte Ward and David Voas found a bridge between the two. From the radical right end of the bridge travels a conviction that the unseen forces of a global cabal . . . covertly control the mechanisms of power in government and society. From the New Spirituality side meanders a conviction that a momentous shift in consciousness is underway which will inevitably transform social life and politics. Once the two ends of the bridge connect, we have a new hybrid structure.
Conspirituality.
The attraction between left-leaning spirituality and right-wing conspiracism actually started offline in the 1990s. In The Search for Signs . . . of Intelligent Life? I summarized the first two developmental phases that Ward and Voas identified.
Phase One initiated offline during the early 1990s and then migrated to the internet in the latter part of the decade. . . .
One of the early influencers in this space was David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, and self-published author. Icke developed a huge following . . . . He promoted the idea that a shadow government controls the world and the powerful persons behind this all-encompassing system derive from the bloodlines of an ancient race of reptilian extraterrestrials. Icke’s conspiracy theory has become famous as “the reptoid hypothesis.”
It sounds weird but turns out actually to be significant and worthy of academic study.
Cultural studies professors Tyson E. Lewis and Richard Kahn write:
While those unfamiliar with Icke and reptoid discourses may wonder if this is a discussion worthy of the non-lunatic, we want to caution against relegating Icke's work to merely fringe status. Rather, Icke is representative of a major counter-cultural trend that is indeed global in proportions.
When normal inhabitants of the reality-based community dismiss this as nonsense, they are correct. However, to the conspiracists, mainstream disregard for their irrational fantasies is taken as proof of their accuracy. We definitely are in an upside-down world.
Research on conspirituality by Ward and Voas was published years before QAnon and Covid-19. Their work only described the first two stages of consolidation. In Down the Rabbit Hole You Go! I updated their analysis by considering the influence of QAnon and pandemic restrictions.
The transition between phase two and now, phase three, of conspirituality’s development was initiated through three interinteracting contingencies: 1) the pervasive social isolation beginning with the Covid lockdowns in March of 2020; 2) the spreading of the Q conspiracy theory propelled by social media algorithms; and 3) the monetization of online communities by social media “influencers.” These three trends accelerated the growth of conspirituality as a movement. The consociation of individuals drawn from both the conspiracist circles and the spirituality/wellness communities finally caught the attention of the mainstream media. . . .
Take the case of “QAnon Karen” . . . . Before she trashed the mask section of her local Target in a fit of screaming rage, Rein Lively (dubbed “Karen” by the media) was a basically normal person. Rein owned a small marketing company that was just starting to make it. Her work dried up during the lockdown and she started spending hours “doomscrolling,” finding her way to ever-more-extreme groups. . . .
At first, Rein was interacting with folks who were discussing human potential, earth energy, and spiritual frequencies. It didn’t take long before Facebook directed her towards others who claimed that Donald Trump was a lightworker sent to effect a profound energy shift on earth. This line of crazy talk had been circulating in the deeper waters of Q. And now the streams were merging . . . .
Rein fell down the rabbit hole because a deadly pandemic tipped her in. But the accelerating fall was aided by two factors pulling strongly: the algorithmic targeting of the social media companies, and the increasing power of social media influencers. They were part of the same force.
Conspirituality has reached its maturity. (Support for RFK Jr’s “candidacy” among the lefty “Whole Earth” folks and anti-government extremists is an example of this movement’s growth.) The conspiratualists are united in their anti-vaccine irrationalism and willingness to dwell in a fantasy world. This world is nurtured by the internet and cossetted by the rightwing media ecosphere.
The wellness and spirituality communities have fragmented. Some activities, like meditation, have moved online. Many yoga studios and wellness centers closed during the pandemic. Since progressives tolerate a greater diversity of views in their circles, there hasn’t been much push-back against people who have gone off the deep end.
The reality-based community* has its work cut out.
Afterword: A reader asks if there is hope of reversing the conspirituality vortex. Yes! Science says you reverse a vortex “by disrupting the attachment point.” When otherwise normal people get sucked into the conspirituality vortex, the points of attachment are virtual; the obsessively online are linked by ersatz social ties. A sociological solution would require steps to be taken in the real world. First step: get away from the computer. Second step: renew and expand social ties (friendship, family, neighborhood). I would add: help someone. Do something good every day.
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Notes:
James Ball, Everything you’ve been told is a lie! Inside the wellness to fascism Pipeline.
Paul Campos, Wellness culture and fascism.
Tyson E. Lewis and Richard Kahn. The Reptoid Hypothesis: Utopian and Dystopian Representational Motifs in David Icke’s Alien Conspiracy Theory.
*Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. Unlocked NYT Magazine article. Note: this article was the source for a famous snarky comment (probably by Karl Rove) about the “reality-based community.” Here’s a snip:
[A senior Bush advisor] said that guys like me [the reporter, Ron Suskind] were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.’
And then they invaded Iraq.
Charlotte Ward and David Voas, “The Emergence of Conspirituality.”