04/24/2023

The Covid-19 pandemic brought together New Age influencers, alt-health practitioners, and far-right conspiracy theorists in a campaign of fearmongering and antivaccine misinformation, according to this anguished and hard-hitting inquiry. Expanding on their podcast of the same name, the authors characterize “conspirituality” as a synthesis of the female-dominated New Age movement and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory, and draw provocative links between conspirituality and fascism, contending, for example, that conspiritualists draw “heavily on old fascist anxieties about sexual potency and deviancy.” Elsewhere, the authors document modern yoga’s “spiritual and shameful obsession with eugenics,” noting the influence of 19th-century eugenicist and bodybuilder Eugen Sandow on the “upper-caste proto-nationalists of India,” who sought to “sculpt a new national body, purged of foreign influences and colonial shame.” Some of the book’s most shocking revelations can be found in profiles of conspirituality influencers like Christiane Northrup, the “grandmother of alt-health gynecology,” who advised her followers to withhold sex from partners who were considering getting the Covid-19 vaccine, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose antivax nonprofit, the Children’s Health Defense Fund, released a film falsely suggesting that “Black people are naturally immune” to Covid-19. Packed with surprising insights and no-holds-barred takedowns, this is a forceful exposé. (June)

Packed with surprising insights and no-holds-barred takedowns, this is a forceful exposé.”—Publishers Weekly

“No one knows the explosive intersection of spirituality and extremism better than the authors of Conspirituality, who have been inside these groups and lived to tell about it. In their strongly argued new book, the authors look at the charlatans, conspiracy theorists, and con men of the wellness world—and what we can do to stop them.”—Will Sommer, author of Trust the Plan

“Conspirituality brilliantly exposes the fusion between conspiracy theories and wellness while emphasizing the ‘con’ aspect at the heart of both. Truly, there are grifters and scammers everywhere in this world, and the authors have their number, revealing their psychological tricks and how they exploit the pain and trauma of their marks. And far from seeing themselves as too smart to fall for this nonsense, the authors mine their own experiences in cults and coercive movements having seen them from the inside.”—Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm is Upon Us and Jewish Space Lasers

“Intelligent and compassionate, Conspirituality is full of insight rooted in direct experience and rigorous analysis. The authors are deeply familiar with and curious about their subject. An essential and unique book that captures both the yearning for and devastating effects of conspirituality as a phenomenon and way of life.”—Julian Feeld, cohost of the QAnon Anonymous podcast

“A thoughtful, deeply empathetic exploration of an often-disturbing convergence. As fear, paranoia, and suspicion continue to seep into the New Age health and wellness worlds, Remski, Beres and Walker are uniquely well-positioned to be our guides into the ‘sparkling but flimsy’ answers that conspirituality represents.”—Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies

“A fascinating, straightforward, well-researched, and sobering unpacking of the complex history, and present-day phenomena, of distorted beliefs within New Age yoga and wellness spaces.”—Seane Corn, yoga teacher and author of Revolution of the Soul

“A wild and impassioned ride through the recent history of the wellness-based conspiracy movement, some of its most unsavory characters, and many of its victims and survivors. Full of heart, honesty, and immediacy.”—Dr. Theodora Wildcroft, author of Post-Lineage Yoga

“This is a book for right now! So timely. So needed. Conspirituality takes us on a fascinating, engaging, and empathetic journey through the many ways in which harmful pseudoscience and misinformation has seeped into our world—including into a host of unexpected places like alternative schools and, yep, yoga studios. The authors provide a compelling argument as to why the toleration of conspiratorial rhetoric closes minds and erodes critical thinking. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious—and we all should be!—about the history and the social and cultural forces behind our current pseudoscience-filled mess.”—Timothy Caulfield, author of Relax

“This rigorously researched book will help future generations, or alien overlords, make sense of this bizarre and confusing moment in human civilization. Beres, Remski, and Walker have established themselves as authoritative chroniclers of conspirituality and its key figures. They are consummate tour guides, revealing all the threads of eugenics, fascism, cultism, moral panic, and magical thinking that came together to form a strange tapestry that now influences mainstream policies and institutions and fuels our culture wars.”—Jennings Brown, journalist and host of The Gateway and Revelations podcasts

“An urgently needed, compelling, and accessible analysis of the deeply troubling proliferation and promotion of conspiracy theories within contemporary spirituality and wellness culture. Combining cutting-edge critique with empathetic context, the authors identify the real threats of conspirituality to societal bonds, public health, and participatory democracy.”—Ann Gleig, associate professor of religion and cultural studies, University of Central Florida

“This is a groundbreaking and beautifully written roadmap into a topic that is so multifaceted, internally diverse, and consequential I would not have trusted anyone to write it except these authors. The book benefits from their years of immersive experience and deep research on conspirtitualist milieus. A masterful job.”—Amarnath Amarasingam, School of Religion, Queen’s University, Ontario

“An eye-opening dissection of the historical roots that gave life to this modern hybrid of grand conspiracism and spirituality, accompanied by lyrical portraits of this mad, mongrel philosophy’s biggest influencers, Conspirituality makes sense of humanity’s latest brain fart with compassion and exhaustive scholarship. Beres, Remski, and Walker have earned the mantle of torchbearers against conspirituality, illuminating the disturbing crevices of this befuddling movement and helping the rest of us understand, through impeccable prose, what is fueling the world’s strangest fever dream.”—Jonathan Jarry, MSc, science communicator, Office for Science and Society, McGill University

“Over the last several years as we doom-scrolled social media, watching the weird unraveling of the wellness community into a conspiratorial freak-out, the Conspirituality podcast’s deep-dive analysis was a salve. In their book, they go a step further, providing important context and histories, positing maybe the great awakening was realizing these beliefs were lurking beneath the surface all along.”—Stacie Stukin, journalist

“The space of conspirituality in recent years has become an intricate and confusing web that stretches from crystal healers and vegan yoga practitioners to QAnon influencers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. With this book, the authors combine their years of experience and research to provide a detailed analytical map of this influential contemporary phenomenon. It is rigorously researched, deeply empathetic, and at times intensely personal.”—Chris Kavanagh, associate professor of psychology, Rikkyo University

“Conspirituality is full of personal stories, deep dives into the history of naturalist conspiracism, and an analysis of how conspirituality is shaping our modern world. It balances the need for understanding and compassion toward victims of these cult mentalities with concern for the harms of conspirituality and the need to stem its growth.”—Aaron Rabinowitz, PhD candidate, Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and host of the Embrace the Void podcast

“Beres, Remski, and Walker manage something remarkable: with erudition and a wealth of experience, they expose treachery and danger hiding in places few expect it. And yet Conspirituality is as noteworthy for its captivating storytelling and whit. The result is a book that feels like both a responsibility and a pleasure to read.”—Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, author of War for Eternity

“[Conspirituality] provides a deeper understanding to why some of your friends from the CrossFit box took an early January field trip to the Capitol, or why your yoga studio may have suddenly became fixated on Dr. Fauci. It's also a sympathetic attempt to explain why conspiratorial thinking about health and wellness is so appealing to so many people. It also provides some needed historical context of the underlying movements that gave us some of the influencers who rose to prominence during the pandemic.”—GQ

2023-03-28
A sprawling critique of the dangerous promise and politics of the modern wellness industry.

Beres, Remski, and Walker—three veterans of New Age wellness and co-hosts of the eponymous podcast—attempt to untangle a web of histories connecting yoga, pseudoscience, toxic individualism, and fascism. The titular term, a portmanteau of conspiracy and spirituality, describes the ideological pathway that ushers many wellness-seekers from innocuous self-improvement to political extremism. Conspiritualists generally come to wellness depoliticized and ideologically vulnerable, and they are often desperate for answers to physical or spiritual problems that traditional religion and medicine have failed to provide. Conspiritualists generally assign more agency to individual impurity than systemic injustice. Their faith in charismatic gurus, who unveil the arbitrary forces (karma, “energy”) supposedly governing bodily health, primes them to accept similar myths (Pizzagate, QAnon) about the wider world. This trajectory is bolstered by a lucrative online wellness-influencer industry in which algorithms encourage extremist political content, resulting in “an online religion that strings mysteries together on a compelling narrative arc.” The authors couple their firsthand experiences with well-researched accounts of clairvoyants and cult leaders to criticize the cultural appropriation, disaster profiteering, and moral panic scaffolding the conspirituality economy. Their study locates pieces of this formula across time and space, from present-day Hindu nationalism to Nazi racial ideology and the American eugenics movement. “The timeline is chaotic,” write the authors, “but cryptic hashtags keep it strung together: #savethechildren, #trusttheplan, #enjoytheshow, #WWG1WGA. It’s chilling, because you’ve heard these terms in a news report about QAnon.” If this seems like a lot of threads to weave into a single narrative, it is. The book verges on conspiratorial thinking in trying to neatly connect them all through disparate accounts of sexual, racial, and bodily anxiety. However, the core argument about the contemporary conspirituality pipeline is compelling.

Useful, timely revelations about the political underbelly of New Age spiritualism.