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Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

  1. hace 37 min

    Brief: Tulsi Gabbard & the Cult Leaders in the News

    Has former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s career been scripted and controlled by the strange leader of a breakaway Hare Krishna group? Chris Butler formed the Science of Identity organization in the seventies. Gabbard’s parents joined when she was two years old. Gabbard claims Butler has no influence on her political life, yet bombshell reporting by the Washington Post piece unearths 25,000 leaked documents to reveal that her guru may have been pulling the strings all along. The kicker? Gabbard resigned two days after journalist Jon Swaine let her team know the article would be published. Meanwhile, another cult-leader story concerns American-born Abdullah Hashem. Claiming to be the “true and only legitimate pope” (as well as successor of Jesus, Saint Peter, and Mohammed), Hashem and 150 followers took over a former orphanage in England—and have been building a significant online following ever since. On April 29, hundreds of police raided Hashem’s headquarters, charging the holy man and eight others with human trafficking, sex crimes, and forced marriage. This is the story of how these two cult operators are influencing minds across the pond. Show Notes British Police Raid Abdullah Hashem’s Compound Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders Granted in AROPL Case Religious Sect Immigration Visas Investigated Patreon Bonus: The New Age Muslim Apocalyptic Prophet WaPo Piece on Tulsi Gabbard’s Mysterious Guru’s Influence on her Political Career Hare Krishna Guru Sought Political Power Starting in the 1970s New Yorker: What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    34 min
  2. hace 1 día

    REWIND: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)

    Recent reporting in the Washington Post found that Tulsi Gabbard has been taking policy guidance from her guru. We revisit our episode from May 2023, where we lay out Gabbard's lifelong involvement in this cult: What does it mean for a prominent American politician to come into power as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu-American cult? Does she act independently, or has her God-man got her on speed-dial? Can she bridge the divide between left and right with the radiant glow of Krishna consciousness? Joining us today to help answer these questions is Nitai Joseph. He shares some heritage with Gabbard, because he also grew up in a Hare Krishna sect. He holds an MSc. in the Psychology of Coercive Control and has worked across a range of issues connected to ideology and manipulation, including cultic awareness, child sexual abuse prevention, adverse meditation experiences, and organizational ethics and accountability.  Show Notes Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career Gopala Govinda Rama Chant by Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Chris Butler QAnon Anonymous Episode 211: Tulsi Gabbard P1 (The Cult) feat Mike Prysner QAnon Anonymous Episode 212: Tulsi Gabbard P2 (The Fascist Turn) feat Mike Prysner  Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe? | The New Yorker Chris Butler Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa: on “freedom” An Insiders Perspective on Tulsi Gabbard and her Guru | by Lalita | Medium  Tulsi Gabbard 2016 Janmashtami Message  ISKCON Abuse Timeline Definition of Betrayal Trauma Theory Archived ex-Hare Krishna message board Nitai can be reached via LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 h 35 min
  3. hace 2 días

    314: JD Vance Rebrands as Church Dad for Prez

    As the gases slowly leak from Trump’s orifices and IV holes, the bright flame of his inspiration to MAGA Christians is fading. Did he drain the swamp? Prosecute the pedophiles? Save the Holy Land? Lower gas prices? Give all the grill dads better health care? What was all the speaking in tongues for? JD Vance has an answer for the MAGA faithful: another memoir, another rebrand that turns to the device that made Hillbilly Elegy a smash hit, and the worst book ever: the gall to turn his personal and familial despair into the diagnosis of an entire culture, in Appalachia.  With Communion: Finding my Way back to Faith, Vance plays the same narcissistic trick: turning his lifelong journey through rightwing American Chrisitianity—with a short and shameful detour into New Atheism—to land in the Catholic faith of Leonard Leo, sketching out a redemption plan for every bro seeking their way home.  Show Notes Rerum Novarum (1891) — Pope Leo XIII Elizabeth Catte, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia Appalachian Reckoning — Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, eds. Battle of Blair Mountain — West Virginia Encyclopedia Hurricane Helene federal aid gap — Associated Press PolitiFact — Springfield "Lie of the Year" 2024 Institut Montaigne — JD Vance analysis Randall Balmer, "The Real Origins of the Religious Right" — Politico Know Your Enemy podcast — episode on René Girard with John Ganz Laudato Si' — Pope Francis Magnifica Humanitas — Pope Leo XIV Mike Fox, "JD Vance's Memoir Communion Performs Catholicism for Evangelicals" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 h 24 min
  4. 20 jun

    Brief: Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism

    Matthew applies three interlocking frameworks to the conspirituality phenomenon—and to the podcast itself. Drawing on Jodi Dean's theory of neofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism, and McKenzie Wark's vectoralism, he argues that conspirituality is an epistemic crisis—a problem of bad information spreading through inadequately critical communities—but also a structural product of platform capitalism's feudal logic. Dean's four elements (parcellated sovereignty, new lords and serfs, hinterlandization, and catastrophic anxiety) explain why certain populations are rendered susceptible before they encounter any specific piece of misinformation. Varoufakis names the extraction mechanism as  cloud rent. Wark shows what this means for the producer: a hacker class worker who owns every tool except the vector that makes the work valuable.  Matthew then turns the analysis on himself, exploring what it means to have spent six years building critical content inside the infrastructure he is criticising. Show Notes Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?' Los Angeles Review of Books, May 2020. Dean, Jodi. 'From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism.' Emancipations, Vol. 3, Iss. 3, 2024. Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The Messy Political Economy of Transitioning to Something Worse.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 3, 2025. Dean, Jodi. Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. Verso, 2025. Dean, Jodi. 'Communism or Neo-Feudalism?' New Political Science, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2020. Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Bodley Head, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? Verso, 2019. McIntyre, Lee. How to Talk to a Science Denier. MIT Press, 2021. Heron, Kai. 'Are We Witness to the Disintegration of Capital's Laws of Motion? A Review of Jodi Dean's Capital's Grave.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 2, 2025. Gane, Nicholas. 'Capitalism is Capitalism, Not Technofeudalism.' Journal of Classical Sociology, 2024. James W. 'Worse than Dead: A Critical Response to McKenzie Wark.' Cosmonaut Magazine, October 2020. Freedom Socialist Party. 'Book Review: Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism.' Socialism.com, 2024. Beres, Derek, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker. Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat. PublicAffairs, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, 2004. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    35 min
  5. 15 jun

    Bonus Sample: Candace Owens and MAGA’s Russia Kink

    Listen to the full episode Influential right-wing pundit turned celebrity conspiracy-peddler, Candace Owens, just visited Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. While at “Russia’s Davos” she marvelled at the cleanliness and beauty of Moscow, explained that Americans were never given any real reason why Putin invading Ukraine was bad, and deflected questions about her potential presidential run. She’s not alone. MAGA has increasingly found a warm place in its heart for Vladimir Putin and other strongman dictator-types (like Viktor Orban). Owens rubbed shoulders with accused sex traffickers, the Tate Brothers, fake martial artist and aging film star, Steven Segall, Trump’s head of the Commission of Fine Arts, and representatives of the Taliban, North Korea, Iran, and China. In this reimagining of Russia—the same “evil empire” of GOP patron saint, Ronald Reagan—the post-Soviet dictatorship is poo-pooed as a danger to European democracies by a growing cadre on the right. Figures like Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Tim Pool, Nick Fuentes, and Marjorie Taylor Green all oppose US support for Ukraine and involvement in the war in Iran. In another interesting turn, they now also all oppose US support for Israel—which makes for some strange diagonalist bedfellows with certain figures on the left, like Hasan Piker.  Julian unpacks this story. Stay tuned for claims that Carlson and Green have been less harmful to Gaza than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as for erstwhile left-wing pundit Ana Kasparian’s come-to-Jesus moment on Owens’ show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    6 min

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Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

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