Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. ...
First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?
Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.
Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon.
Huge list of references for each!
Show Notes
Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker
What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review
Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions
Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation
Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?
$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News
Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca
Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone
Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality
Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine
rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky
198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp
She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times
Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood
The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation
Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online
Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity
Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)
Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay
The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine
Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule
Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review
Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI
676 | United States Sentencing Commission
Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters
Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News
Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News
Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs
Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers
Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times
Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic
Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach
BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]
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43:02
248: What Side Are You On?
Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons.
The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play?
Show Notes
165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell)
16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive
Konrad Heiden
Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis?
Fritz Gerlich
Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Press - Arolsen Archives
The illegal press – Verzetsmuseum
The Liberal Media Always Fails Against Fascism — Robert Evans
Can a news media that doesn’t really oppose fascism ever cover it well?
Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” | Los Angeles Review of Books
The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media
Media's Failure in Times of Crisis: Election Coverage in the Interwar Period
How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | Smithsonian
How Britain's Nazi-loving press baron made the case for Hitler | The Times of Israel
Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2016). Is there a “postmodern turn” in journalism? In C. Peters and M. Broersma (Eds), Rethinking Journalism (pp. 97-111). London: Routledge.
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1:20:24
Bonus Sample: Sex, Lies, & Communist Spies
Subscribe for full episode
The MAGA attack on government jobs, takeover of government agencies, and purge of supposed “DEI” and “woke” professionals has a long history in the US. Julian uses old-timey newsreels, biographies, and events in the public record to trace the lines from 1919 to today, making stops at the so-called Red Summer’s “race riots,” Red Scare communist panics, Hollywood Blacklist, and Lavender Scare that fired thousands for being presumed gay.
Unrelated to any of this completely useless and repressive paranoid bigotry, actual Soviet spies were being apprehended and prosecuted—even then everything was not on the level. The prosecutors had their own hidden skeletons and shady bedfellows, even as they claimed the patriotic moral high ground.
At the heart of this history is a lineage of men who never let truth get in the way of gaining, and wielding, power and cruelty. Julian uncovers a surprisingly direct lineage of dirty-tricks demagogue succession, from Woodrow Wilson to A. Mitchell Palmer, to J. Edgar Hoover, to Joe McCarthy, to Roy Cohn, to Roger Stone, to our current president.
Editorial Note: The Paul Robeson clip that starts the episode is a re-enactment by James Earl Jones for the Zinn Education Project. It uses the transcript of Robeson’s 1956 appearance before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
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6:03
MAHA's Soft Eugenics
MAHA's response to the measles outbreak has been horrific, though expectable. Yet RFK Jr's op-ed, in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine, ripped apart his coalition—briefly.
Derek looks at the responses to Bobby's moment of clarity, then contemplates what MAHA really wants now that their champion is the bureaucracy.
Show Notes
Dr Jessica Knurick’s video
Vitamin A For Measles: Kevin Klatt
Measles is not a harmless illness — complications include brain damage, immune amnesia, and death
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29:32
247: The Deeper State
This week we’re looking at how folks who associated themselves with the magical and morbid QAnon memes about the “coming storm” that would destroy the Deep State have become that storm, mainly by talking about it, and are now in the position to congeal an even Deeper State characterized by more repression and control. They’re doing it both as conspiracists and as conspiracy theorists would predict: as rich guys pretending to be oppressed.
This opens up the question of “Have we been here before in the US, and what happened?” The parallels are uncanny. In the late 1920s, Henry Ford had his car dealers stick copies of The Dearborn Independent newspaper in the glove compartments of new cars. That was the rag in which he published excerpts of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Today another auto baron, Elon Musk, busts out seigheils and posts Nazi memes whenever he likes. But only one of them got a White House office.
Show Notes
CDC Statement on Measles Outbreak
US Health Secretary Kennedy calls for end to deadly Texas measles outbreak
Copy of STORM is HERE Data
LIVE: Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing for FBI director
Kash Patel Wants to Work From Home for FBI. But Who Does He Live With? | The New Republic
Kash Patel privately agreed to hire an experienced deputy FBI director. Then Trump picked a loyalist | The Independent
How Dan Bongino Went From Infowars to FBI Deputy Director | WIRED
How Trump’s Justice Department has gutted the government’s ability to chase public corruption | CNN Politics
123: The Red-Pilled "Academic" Who Named Our Podcast — Conspirituality
Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy — The Public Domain Review
Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics | Smithsonian
Wealthy bankers and businessmen plotted to overthrow FDR. A retired general foiled it.
Medical Mystery: What killed ‘Red Scare’ Sen. Joseph McCarthy?
FBI director considering having UFC train agents in martial arts, say people familiar with plan | Reuters
What We Know About the CIA's Midcentury Mind-Control Project | Smithsonian
FBI Records: The Vault — COINTELPRO
On campaign trail, RFK Jr. pushes 'bonkers' theory about CIA's 'takeover of the American press' - ABC News
Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style” Can’t Help Us Now
Rehabilitating McCarthyism
JFK, Richard Hofstadter, and the ‘Paranoid Style in American Politics’
Ford's Anti-Semitism | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
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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.