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Post by Admin on Jul 11, 2020 23:31:49 GMT
Trump praises Catholic archbishop who urges him to fight ‘deep state’ protests churchandstate.org.uk/2020/06/trump-praises-catholic-archbishop-who-urges-him-to-fight-deep-state-protests/President Trump has praised what he called an “incredible” letter to the president from an Italian archbishop that said Black Lives Matter protests and the coronavirus quarantine are part of an orchestrated campaign by “the children of darkness” against “the children of light”. The Washington Post reports: “On the one hand there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven,” read the June 7 letter to Trump from Archbishop Carlo Viganò, a former Vatican diplomat to Washington. “On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family.” “In society, Mr. President, these two opposing realities co-exist as eternal enemies, just as God and Satan are eternal enemies,” he wrote. Later in the letter, he wrote that “it is quite clear that the use of street protests is instrumental to the purposes of those who would like to see someone elected in the upcoming presidential elections who embodies the goals of the deep state.” “Deep state” is a conspiracy theory alleging the existence of a hidden cabal in countries and within government offices that are attempting to undermine or usurp the authority of the legitimately elected government. In his letter, Viganò praised the president for “wisely” opposing the “children of darkness whom we may easily identify with the deep state” and claimed that restrictions to stem the pandemic were a “colossal operation of social engineering.” He also dismissed recent protests against racism and police brutality across the U.S. and around the world, claiming they were an instrument used to influence the upcoming presidential elections and “build a world without freedom.” Trump tweeted a link to the letter saying, “So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it!” So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it! t.co/fVhkCz89g5— Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) June 10, 2020
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Post by Admin on Jul 12, 2020 20:16:38 GMT
When conspiracy theories incite violence.... Although this is a story from last year, it is about how the FBI now considers the QAnon movement to be a domestic terrorism threat. A number of violent and potentially violent incidents have been committed by those who say they were prompted to commit them by QAnon. The most recent being the attempt on the life of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. Exclusive: FBI document warns conspiracy theories are a new domestic terrorism threat news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.htmlThe FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.) The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs. The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement). “The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.
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Post by Admin on Jul 14, 2020 19:32:21 GMT
Anti-vax disinformation spreads unchecked on Facebook Despite fact check campaigns, anti-vaccination influence is growing. DEREK BERES 13 July, 2020 bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/anti-vax-facebookDespite announcing plans to combat disinformation, anti-vax groups continue to gain influence on Facebook. An analysis of over 1,300 Facebook pages with 100 million followers shows that anti-vaccination agendas are having a profound impact. Only 50 percent of Americans are certain they'll receive an approved COVID-19 vaccine.
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Post by Admin on Jul 15, 2020 22:27:56 GMT
Fighting flat-Earth theory 14 Jul 2020 Taken from the July 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Physicists will find it shocking, but there are plenty of people around the world who genuinely believe the Earth is flat. Rachel Brazil explores why such views are increasingly taking hold and how the physics community should best respond physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/In 2017 the US rapper B.o.B (real name Bobby Ray Simmons Jr) started a crowd-funding campaign to launch a satellite. The rapper, a vocal proponent of “flat-Earth theory”, wanted to seek evidence that our planet is a disc, not a globe. His aim was to raise $200,000 (later upped to $1m) on the GoFundMe website, with the aim of sending one or more craft into space to help him “find the curve” – the term that “flat-Earthers” use to describe the edge of our supposed disc-shaped planet. The rapper’s quest may seem like a joke or publicity stunt. Indeed, there’s currently no evidence that B.o.B raised much money or got anywhere near his goal. However, in the last few years there has been an alarming rise in the number of people who, like B.o.B, believe in flat-Earth theories. There’s now an annual flat-Earth conference in the US – the most recent of which was attended by more than 600 people – while YouTube is full of videos purporting to provide evidence that the Earth is flat. Physicists may mock the notion of a flat Earth, but the idea is gaining traction, particularly among people susceptible to other conspiracy theories. “They actually really do believe it,” says Lee McIntyre, a philosopher from Boston University and an expert in the phenomenon of science denial, whose books include Respecting Truth: Wilful Ignorance in the Internet Age (Routledge, 2015). McIntyre knows first-hand how sincerely flat-Earthers hold their views: he attended the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Denver, Colorado. Asheley Landrum, a psychologist from Texas Tech University who was also at the Denver meeting, agrees that flat-Earthers are genuine, and not goofing around. “If they were [trolling], they are very good actors,” she says. “We talked to more than 90 members of the flat-Earth community and they’re all very sincere in their beliefs”. Lectures at the Denver event included “Talking to your family and friends about flat Earth”, “NASA and other space lies” and “14+ ways the Bible says flat Earth”. Flat-Earth ideas are based on basic scientific misunderstandings that can be easily refuted. For most people, even those who have no physics background, the evidence for a spherical Earth is obvious. So we need to ask ourselves why these ideas still persist in the 21st century and, perhaps more importantly for the physics community: how exactly should we respond?
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Post by Admin on Jul 18, 2020 17:23:32 GMT
From Salon today on how Trump stokes conspiracy theories: “Gartner explained that historian Richard Hofstadter deconstructed the American tendency to believe in conspiracy theories in his classic 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." "There has always been a strain of that," Gartner observed, "but we've never had it in a president. . . . And this president has a very powerful model this to propagate it and push it through social media thousand times a day, until finally it's become more of a mainstream view for half the country. It is very frightening. It's a real regression," he continued. "We've gone from being a more information-based society to a more fantasy-based society, from pro-science to anti-science, from reality to fantasy. He's using his bully pulpit to brainwash people." We asked experts to respond to the most common COVID-19 conspiracy theories Researchers and professors comment on the origin of pandemic misinformation, and how to debunk such claims www.salon.com/2020/07/18/we-asked-experts-to-respond-to-the-most-common-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/
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Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2020 22:31:11 GMT
Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia? The story is the same, from the day-care panics to QAnon: It’s not really about the kids. It’s about fears of a changing social order. www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/why-are-right-wing-conspiracies-so-obsessed-with-pedophilia/Zohar Lazar The children were being sodomized in secret underground tunnels. Their captors drank blood in front of them and staged satanic ritual sacrifices. Sometimes the kids were filmed for pornographic purposes. In total, some several hundred children were subjected to this treatment. And it all happened in the middle of a safe neighborhood where crimes were not supposed to happen, let alone such unspeakable and horrific ones. Not that anyone else witnessed the abuse. Nor was there any clear evidence that it was actually happening. But people were sure it was real. It made too much sense, they all agreed. “Everything fell into place,” one of them said. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of otherwise normal, relatively well-adjusted Americans truly believed that a massive ring of occultist pedophiles was operating right under everyone’s noses.
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Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2020 22:48:21 GMT
Satanism and sex rings: How the QAnon conspiracy theory has taken political root www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-07-15/qanon-conspiracy-theory-congressional-candidatesBy ARIT JOHNSTAFF WRITER JULY 15, 202010:46 AM A fringe theory that President Trump is at war with a global cabal of powerful, Satan-worshiping elites who control the world and run a child sex ring has shifted over the last three years from anonymous message boards to Trump rallies to the 2020 ballot. More than 60 current and former congressional candidates have promoted or embraced the unfounded QAnon theory, according to a count by Media Matters, a left-leaning research site that tracks conservative media. Though some of the candidates have gone viral over unproven claims — including the false theory that Beyoncé is pretending to be Black and weaves Satanic references into her music — few of them have any chance of being elected. The fraction of candidates linked to QAnon who have done well in competitive seats have distanced themselves from the theory. “There is something about this political moment that emboldens these candidates to run,” said Joanne Miller, a University of Delaware associate professor who studies political psychology and conspiracy theories.
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Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2020 22:56:19 GMT
The Conspiracy Singularity Has Arrived With the pandemic and a global uprising against racial injustice to be explained away, conspiracy communities are bleeding into each other, merging into one gigantic mass of suspicion. www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gz53/the-conspiracy-singularity-has-arrivedA few months ago, at a time when it was still safe to have strange experiences in unusual places, I was handed a mysterious document. “ALLIANCES AND TRAITORS WITHIN THE TRUTH & UFO COMMUNITIES,” it read. The document was a single, bright red sheet of paper, crowded with close-set black type. Different kinds of lines and arrows connected in wild formulations, linking George Soros with the Illuminati, various stars of the UFO community with their alleged handlers, the CIA with Alex Jones. The Pleidians—a race of tall, blue-eyed Nordic alien beings—connected with both Tesla and the president in ways I couldn’t quite parse. This paper was created and handed to me by Dylan Louis Monroe, a player in the QAnon world and the creator of the Deep State Mapping Project, a one-man operation where Monroe creates dense visual maps of the supposed alliances he sees between various major players and world events. Monroe was at the New Age expo Conscious Life selling Q-branded t-shirts and promoting a YouTube show, I was there reporting, and both of us were thinking about the strange alliances and friendships that had begun to surface in various conspiracy communities. “BE CAREFUL WHO YOU FOLLOW,” the document warned, in bold, at the bottom, just above a large black Q. In the months that followed our chance meeting, the world buckled under the weight of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the alliances got stranger still. Conspiracy communities that have previously only brushed past each other like schools of fish borne along on different currents are suddenly, abruptly, swimming in the same direction. Take Larry Cook, whose evolving belief system has been playing out in a remarkable way on Facebook. Cook is the man behind the largest anti-vaccine group on the platform, Stop Mandatory Vaccination, which, along with his personal Facebook page, serves as a central clearinghouse for anti-vaccine misinformation. In the months since the pandemic began, Cook has begun to claim that it’s a pretext for the mandatory testing, tracking, and vaccination that he’s feared all along. (There is no evidence that the U.S. government will impose mandatory vaccination for the coronavirus, even though it should.) He’s also started to turn towards people who can provide some explanation for what’s really going on, and some measure of hope: Cook is promoting QAnon ideas, sometimes dozens of times a day. (QAnon is an ur-conspiracy theory which, broadly, holds that Donald Trump and his allies are bravely fighting back on a number of fronts against a shadowy, Satanic Deep State.) “I AM A DIGITAL SOLDIER,” Cook posted recently, along with two Q-related hashtags, part of an “oath” that the mysterious Q had recently requested that his followers post. (Disgraced former Trump advisor General Michael Flynn was among those who posted the oath.) Linking to a webpage that shares Q’s missives, Cook added, in another post, “Discover why we have a lockdown and mask requirements for the healthy.” (Cook didn’t respond to an email from VICE News.) Cook isn’t an outlier. As Mother Jones recently noted, coronavirus and the general uncertainty of the times we’re living in have aided the spread of QAnon specifically.
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Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2020 16:35:20 GMT
JULY 21, 2020 The Pro-Trump CIA Man: QAnon Madness and Upward Failure by JEFFERSON MORLEY www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/21/the-pro-trump-cia-man-qanon-madness-and-upward-failure/Michael Scheur is a pure product of the CIA. A career operations officer, he ran the first agency task force that hunted Osama bin Laden. Scheur authored the agency’s rendition program, which kidnapped suspected terrorists (and sometimes innocent people) and tortured them. He combined a deep knowledge of Islamic jihadist movements with a willingness to use illegal methods to fight them. In that regard, he was in the mainstream of the CIA. Since retiring in 2004, Scheur has undergone self-radicalization. In 2014, he advocated the assassination of Barack Obama and British conservative leader David Cameron. Last year he announced he is a follower–a believer– in QAnon, the anonymous conspiratorial Twitter account. Last week, he described the removal of Confederate war memorials as “a savage and tyrannical attack on the citizenry’s ability to understand and use the lessons of the history.” As blogger Yashar Ali noted recently, Scheur’s wife, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, still works at the agency. She has risen through the ranks of the agency despite at least two serious lapses in judgment. He is not responsible for her failures nor she for his madness. But, as a CIA power couple, the arc of their careers speaks to the future of the agency if Trump is re-elected.
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Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2020 17:07:59 GMT
With only 50 percent of Americans willing to get a vaccination, conspiracy theories are fueling a public health crisis. bigthink.com/coronavirus/coronavirus-conspiracy-theoriesNew research finds that YouTube is the worst disseminator of coronavirus misinformation. People that rely on social media for their news are more likely to believe coronavirus conspiracy beliefs. With only 50 percent of Americans willing to get a vaccination, conspiracy theories are fueling a public health crisis. As Florida becomes the global epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic with over 15,000 cases reported in one day and 3.3 million cases overall, a Windermere restaurant celebrated by offering free grilled cheese sandwiches to any customer showing up without a mask.
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Post by Admin on Jul 22, 2020 16:49:08 GMT
QAnon: Twitter bans thousands of accounts linked to spread of dangerous pro-Trump conspiracy theory Social media platform has lately been under pressure to crack down on extremism and disinformation, including from Donald Trump himself www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-qanon-accounts-banned-trump-conspiracy-theory-a9632016.htmlTwitter has shut down thousands of accounts affiliated with the extremist QAnon movement, saying that it has the potential to inspire or motivate acts of violence. In a statement tweeted from its @twittersafety account, Twitter announced on Tuesday night that “we’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm”, and that QAnon activity met that definition. “We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension – something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.”
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2020 17:33:49 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2020 18:16:01 GMT
Why we should not treat all conspiracy theories the same June 11, 2020 2.21pm BST theconversation.com/why-we-should-not-treat-all-conspiracy-theories-the-same-140022Ever since the coronavirus spread across the world, suspicions have proliferated about what is really going on. Questions arose about the origins of the virus, the way it makes people sick, the mitigation measures taken, the suspended civil rights, the connection with 5G, possible cures and medications, and about the role of Bill Gates in it all. These ideas are commonly framed as conspiracy theories. Yes, they may all distrust the mainstream narrative and share certain characteristics, but they are not one of a kind. They take so many different forms and have such varying degrees of plausibility that I question how useful it is to bracket them all under the same banner. To understand and effectively respond to the various coronavirus conspiracy theories, we need to dig deeper. The dominant explanation for the popularity of coronavirus conspiracy theories is remarkably similar: these dark and unsettling ideas help people make sense of a complex and uncertain world. They provide sufficiently large explanations for tragic events, and give back feelings of agency and control. Since these ideas sometimes have real-world consequences, from 5G masts set on fire to ignoring coronavirus mitigation measures, various commentators condemn these conspiracy theories. Officials now need not only fight a health pandemic, so their story goes, but an infodemic too. Recognising diversity and context The problem with the generalising approach is threefold. It does not account for the motivations of conspiracy theorists themselves; nor for the different forms and plausibility of the various conspiracy theories; nor for their relations with various political and societal issues. Providing uniform explanations for conspiracy theories fails to seriously consider their contents or underlying concerns. Similarly, it leaves untouched how certain conspiracy theories are weaponised in various propaganda wars.
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2020 22:38:54 GMT
A serious issue - Why are conspiracy theories rampant in the 'wellness' industry? Welcome to conspirituality Some purveyors of "wellness" sure are sounding like right-wing conspiracy theorists. DEREK BERES 28 April, 2020 bigthink.com/culture-religion/conspiritualityThe term conspirituality was coined in 2011 to represent a growing disillusionment that leads to belief in conspiracy theories. This particular affliction affects spiritually-minded people suspicious of anything deemed institutional. Conspiritual thinking is the juncture where far-left "wellness" purveyors meet right-wing conspiracy theorists. Coronavirus got you down? No worries. A bit of oregano oil will protect you from this virus that was definitely created in a Chinese laboratory. We can attribute that information to Gabriel Cousens, a homeopathic doctor who used to run an East Village storefront selling gall bladder cleanses that required drinking a ton of olive oil. On his Facebook page, you'll also find plenty of information about the dangers of 5G and the fact that vaccinated children often get the diseases they're supposedly protected against while unvaccinated children remain healthy and free. There are also ads for his Shaktipat workshops, a practice that usually requires that the guru touch the devotee in order to transfer psychic energy. But hey, a man has to make a living. It turns out Zoom has a feature that transmits sacred energy! Social media leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that guides you down a trail of conspiracies. "The End Of The Vaccine Era Is Today!" claims one holistic vegan, who also states that the "Microsoft Couple" and "Facebook guy" are not that smart—posted on Facebook. Forget vaccines, a steady diet of enzymes, water fasting, higher consciousness, and rebounding (pretty sure that's not basketball) is guaranteed to cure you of this "scamdemic." I've hung out on the edge of the "wellness community" for over 20 years. My undergraduate studies focused on Eastern religions. I started practicing yoga in 1998 and began teaching in 2004. Having been active on social media platforms for decades, I've communicated with a range of people in the so-called wellness space. While I've long been wary of many ideas circulated within this group, COVID-19 has inspired a pandemic of conspiracy I could not have foreseen. In 2011, Charlotte Ward coined the term "conspirituality," which she defines as "a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews." In the article, published in Journal of Contemporary Religion, Ward names three first-generation charlatans that represent this toxic fusion of New Age ideology and right-wing conspiracies. One is former soccer player, David Icke, of whom she writes, "He is notorious for alleging that a shadow government harbours the bloodlines of an ancient race of reptilian extraterrestrials."
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Post by Admin on Jul 24, 2020 9:53:45 GMT
'Evil forces': how Covid-19 paranoia united the wellness industry and rightwing conspiracy theorists Brigid Delaney www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/wellness-advocates-used-to-talk-about-bali-trips-and-coconut-oilnow-its-bill-gates-and-5gAbout a month ago some of the wellness podcasts and Instagram accounts I follow started to go decidedly off-piste. Instead of recommending a retreat in Bali or new ways to cook with coconut oil, they were posting links about 5G, Bill Gates or more coded but no less strange messages. “We” shouldn’t trust “them”. The “them” being a shadowy, authoritarian cabal that controls the media, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government and the World Health Organization. In March one usually reasonable podcaster I listen to for health tips started talking about “evil forces” at work. His guest also knew about the “evil forces”. They spoke around it, carefully. Then in April my life coach, a man who mostly advises me about time management and creative projects, told me if a Covid-19 vaccine came along he wouldn’t be taking it “because, as you know I am very careful about what I put in my body”. Memes turning up on Maga pages were being reposted by yoga teachers who once quoted Maya Angelou but were now quoting David Icke, while health and wellness mega-influencer Pete Evans was posting about Obamagate, inflated Covid-19 death counts and, most bizarrely, that US race riots were “instigated by organisations affiliated with the elite” – alongside recipes for ham hock soup. What was going on? How and why did the largely progressive and left-leaning proponents of wellness merge with rightwing conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump supporters? Such unlikely allegiances were termed “fusion paranoia” in a 1995 New Yorker article by the journalist Michael Kelly, who saw leftwing and rightwing activists coalesce around the anti-war and pro-civil liberties movements that shared common traits of anti-government views and belief in conspiracy theories. Such a tight alliance (or fusion paranoia) between the wellness industry and the far-right would have been unthinkable to me a year ago. But the connection between the alt-right, conspiracy theorists and sections of the wellness community have strengthened and bonded during global lockdowns. The messages of the different groups are remarkably the same: the virus is a cover for a plot of totalitarian proportions, designed to stifle freedom of movement, assembly, speech and – to the horror of some in the wellness industry – enforce a program of mass vaccinations. A popular, multitrillion-dollar sector, the wellness industry’s huge reach and influence has the power to bring people into the conspiracy that previously would not have had any contact with the alt-right. Superstars in the wellness world appear on multiple platforms and have mature, established audiences who may have first followed a wellness influencer for recipes or fitness tips, but are now scrolling through a mixture of quotes by Rumi, Trump and a nurse from Birmingham who has “proof” Covid-19 death certificates are fake. The ongoing and now-accelerated collapse of mainstream media has provided a perfect environment for the Covid conspiracies to reach millions of people unchecked and unchallenged. Disagreement with a conspiracy on an influencer’s page could have you blocked, in dispute with other followers or, as the logic of conspiracies dictate, mocked and pitied for not getting it and having your mind controlled by the “evil forces” that you are too dumb to see. Like many conspiracies – or even religions – the beliefs are part of a closed system that is engineered to provide answers to our most maddening mysteries but also designed to allow no room for questioning and dissent. And there are a lot of maddening mysteries about the coronavirus. The gaps in our knowledge about the virus, combined with the speed and urgency of new social control measures that started seemingly overnight in March (essentially global home detention), panic buying and intense levels of collective fear in the community, have meant that previously fringe theories have found a broad, sticky surface. A poll has found one in five young Australians believe that Bill Gates played a role in the creation and spread of Covid-19, and the same proportion think 5G technology is being used to spread the virus. In some ways the wellness community’s response to the virus is not a shock. Although the global wellness industry was worth an estimated $4.5tn in 2018, and pre-pandemic many practices were becoming mainstream, elements of the sector have always been under siege from the mainstream. This includes those who refuse vaccinations, those who encourage fasting for long periods of time, those who eschew chemotherapy for a raw food diet, and those who believe wifi causes tumours. Now in this current state of emergency – where almost total social control is paramount for controlling the virus – purveyors of these views feel they are having their paranoia confirmed. While herbalists, acupuncturists, yoga studios and alternative medicine practitioners were forced to close in the lockdown in some countries, conventional doctors and pharmacies remained open. Speech was also monitored, as the more fringe elements of the wellness scene migrated from platform to platform. Like a belligerent orator at Speakers’ Corner, they kept getting moved on until they either wound up in the darkest corners of the web, or mumbling on podcasts in code about the “dark forces” they could not name. While some in the wellness world appear to have had a terrible time of it, the restrictions actually feed into their ur-narrative. That is: evil forces, including big tech (like YouTube and Facebook which have been removing content), big media and big government are intent on silencing them. This shutting down, or censorship as they call it, further fuses their experiences with figures in the alt-right (including Alex Jones and Steve Bannon), veterans of no-platforming and first amendment wars. These “trauma bonds”, which strengthen and unite disparate movements, is a maturation of the trend of Conspirituality, a term coined by Charlotte Ward in 2011 in an article published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. She noted the overlap between wellness and new age groups and the alt-right as being a “broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.” Spending time in this Conspiritual world, it’s easy to see the ecosystem. The same arguments or phrases start appearing, whether you are listening to a podcaster broadcasting from his basement in Byron Bay, or reading the Medium post of a philosopher and yoga teacher based in upstate New York. Down the rabbit hole, listening to dozens of wellness podcasts and YouTube broadcasts, the same themes keep arising: fear as a means of social control, fear as a hormone response that weakens the immune system, how social distancing and intensified hygiene practices ruin the body’s natural immune response, the unhealthy body (the body with pre-existing conditions) being a body that is more reliant on and easily controlled by the state and Big Pharma. Deeply embedded and perhaps central in the connection between the wellness industry and conspiracy is the notion of sovereignty over our bodies. For believers, the sovereign body is the body in a “pure” state, not reliant on chemicals to heal, and trusted to fire up its own immune response when confronted with a virus – even a novel one like Covid-19. Believers aren’t dissuaded by the facts: all the pure bodies that died because there wasn’t a smallpox or polio or chickenpox vaccine. For many in the wellness industry, a pure body is their life’s work. Don’t underestimate their fight. • Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist and the author of Wellmania (Black Inc) • This article was amended on 8 June 2020 to clarify that acupuncturists, yoga studios and alternative medicine practitioners were only forced to close in some countries.
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