How to favor New Age beliefs the right -wing conspiracy thinking. Explanations of a phenomenon with global spread

New Age influences that perpetuate the right -wing ideologies crowd the internet. But how did Wellness become an access gate to conspiracy thinking? The Independent asks.

Conspiracy theories and secret knowledge photo shutterstock

It is a change that many have been able to follow in the online environment during the pandemic. For example, a person suddenly gives up alcohol, no longer consumes sugar and posts about extreme detoxification juices and rituals for expressing gratitude. She is suspicious of modern medicine and social conventions; And rumors are circulating that he never vaccinated against Covid. Later you find out that he has recently moved to Bali to become a yoga instructor. That she began to remove from the list friends who are not “aligned” with her “energy”. That he discovered a higher goal. A call.

It is not an unusual evolution. From pandemic, a lot has been written about increasing the emphasis on well-being and spirituality, which favored an ascent of right-wing ideologies; It is a trajectory that also cultivates conspiracy thinking. Misinformation traders who are given as a guru.

In the US, Kelly Brogan is known, a so-called “holistic psychologist” who promotes the slogan: “Master your body. Release your mind.” The anti-vaccine author of New York Times has promoted several large-scale conspiracy theories. It went viral in 2020 after bent on the existence of the coronavirus and claimed that the deaths were caused by fear.

Jz Knight is another notorious anti-vaccine who claims to have contacted the spirit of a 35,000-year-old Lemurian Warrior and spread hatred against Jews and Mexicans. The case of Amy Carlson, a co-founder of the religious group Love Has Win, has also been known, who claimed to cure the victims of cancer “with the power of love” and which has promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11 and UFOs. Carlson died in 2021 due to alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion.

These topics discussed by the extremely popular podcast of Conspirituality, dedicated to the exploration of the improbable cross between the wellness industry and the theorists of the conspiracy that are inclined towards the right ideologies. Inspired by the anti-vaccine documentary films that have become viral, plandemic, the series analyzes everything, from new age to scientology and climate negotiations.

What conspiring means

Although the trend was observed especially in the US, the term “conspiracy” first appeared in a work published in the UK, in the Journal of Contemporary Religion (2011) and signed by Charlotte Ward and David. The online movement “rapid growth” was described as a synthesis between a “New Age dominated by women (with its positive emphasis) and a space dominated by men of conspiracy theory (with its negative accent on global policy)”. According to the research, supporters believe that “the best strategy to deal with the threat of a” world order “is to act according to a vision of a” new paradigm “on the world.”

“The phenomenon boiled in the background in the previous decade, but it was largely invisible to most people,” says you, currently a professor of social sciences at University College London. Much of this kind of misinformation was spreading on the periphery of YouTube or in niche communities from which people with chronic or terminal diseases, dominated by the feeling that modern science did nothing for them. “The Covid Pandemia was undoubtedly a turning point. The social and medical crisis has put more population in contact with these ideas.”

Regarding how the right -wing thinking was united with these ideas, the researcher's hypothesis is that it is related to a fundamental superiority that would be the essence of conspirinity. “Conspirituality is fueled by distrust in the old sources of authority, including science, religion, media and political leadership,” he explains. “Ironically, however, it is also characterized by the desire to believe almost anything, if they are ideas in accordance with our desires or suspicions. Conspirituality is a kind of Crowd-Source knowledge, in which the spread of a faith is considered as support for its content.”

The appetite for these ideas persists that we cross an era of distrust. “People are looking for answers and, more importantly, alternatives,” says Christopher T Conner, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri. “The austerity measures of the 1990s and the failure of the leadership to adopt policies to help working classes, rather than to make them suffer disproportionately, have been born to an atmosphere of apathy, despair and despair.

“I can trust my priest for heart and spirit problems, but I trust my doctor when it comes to problems about my cardiovascular system,” says Dr. Conner. “The real problem, however, is that we have reached a point in society where someone would prefer to believe someone with a YouTube channel than an expert who communicates through a traditional social institution; this shows the wider structural problems that we must approach.”

A global trend

Experts say the trend is global. “I have noticed the growth of the wellness industry in the last five years, especially post-Covid ”, says Polly Shute, the founder of the LGBT+ wellness festival in Devon, Out & Wild. “There are a lot of positive parts in it. But growth is done by an attractive market and from a commercial and political point of view. And the target is women. Even something simple like focusing on the image of the perfect body, for example, does not support those who come from marginalized communities. ”

“With so many changes on our polycry planet, I would suggest that our tolerance for” not knowing “is tested beyond our limits”suggests Hamira Riaz, an associate member of the British psychology society. “Conspirituality can be seen as an adaptation response; it is a way of understanding complex problems that have difficulty. Research suggests that people attracted to political extremes have a greater predisposition to black and white thinking, because of lower ambiguity tolerance. Conspiracy theories, which are comfortable,