Conspirituality: Coming to a Hippie Near You

I’m going to list several things. See if you can spot the outlier:

Tarot cards, yerba maté, yoga, crystals, a satanic cabal of child rapists steering the planet to a new world order, light weavers, and astrology.

See it?

Well, guess again, because that was a trick question! There is no outlier—in today’s world, these are now all beliefs and practices that can be contained within the same spectrum of human expression.

Enter conspirituality:

The tendency for conspiracy-prone thinking in the broader New Age and wellness communities, defined by researchers as “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldview.”

I’m witnessing this rise firsthand in several different communities I straddle, hearing fringe theories from intelligent, educated people—the last people you’d expect. And it’s not just my more spiritually inclined friends—it’s yoga influencers, channelers, holistic doctors, and power-hungry shamans who have massive online audiences. In conspirituality, QAnon has become the new secular American religion, merging the New Age with the Alt Right.

The threat here is real: when you look closely, QAnon looks a lot like Nazism.

When the hippies start looking like Nazis, when we can’t tell Left from Right, when we can’t agree on anything, and when our planet is hurling towards an extinction-level in the next century, we’ve gotta start talking about it…

Before we begin, let me say this about this big, complex topic:

I’m not arguing against any specific conspiracy theories. Like myths, conspiracy theories often have merit, even truth to them, especially when it comes to corruption in powerful institutions and cover ups—e.g., sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Enron, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The mainstream narrative, indeed, needs to be challenged.

But the internet has changed everything. As one of my favorite philosophers Charles Eisenstein explains, conspiracy theories are no longer just about specific stories of corruption—for many in our pandemic reality, conspiracy has become the core explanatory principle for how the world works.

Conspiracy thinking has recently seen a meteoric rise in numerous different New Age and wellness communities, exposing the susceptibility of the holistically-minded and “open-hearted,” yet politically naïve.

In a broader wellness community that is mostly white, college educated, and middle-class, lending voice to conspiracy theories on social media has become a new, twisted type of “civic engagement”—the ultimate hallmark of a privileged, individualistic-oriented culture.

To help me sort through this complicated topic, I interviewed Derek Beres, the co-founder of Conspirituality.net and host of the Conspirituality Podcast.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

Spiritual Awakening and Conspiracy

To understand why spirituality and conspiracy theories are aligned, we must first understand the core concept of a spiritual awakening.

In a spiritual awakening, one realizes that the world they are born into and conditioned by is not, in fact, reality. They recognize that there is no physical location for the Self to exist within the body or brain—Self is an illusion.

Going through a genuine spiritual awakening can be extremely destabilizing. As a person emerges, they often come to realize all the ways in which our society is destructive: from capitalist materialism to disconnection from nature, source, and/or God. On the other side of awakening, everything in the modern world can feel like… bullshit.

In a world that is increasingly confusing, irrational, and fucked up, the conspiracy narrative provides an explanation for why things are so broken. It offers an alternative worldview that is aligned with holistic living. Much like a spiritual awakening, it represents breaking free from the norm. Taking the “red pill.”

Spiritual awakenings—and breaking from societal conditioning—are good, even great personal developments. But the tragedy here lies in the conspirituality role reversal: rather than sitting in the great Unknown of being alive in the modern world, a conspiracist often collapses onto the other side of the spectrum, buying entirely into the “mainstream” conspiracy narrative.

Enter QAnon.

Donald Trump, the Light Worker

As Beres explains:

“Throughout history, conspiracy thinking rises in times of collective hardship and tragedy. World War II, the Vietnam War, and now this pandemic are the three most glaring cases of uptick in conspiracy we’ve experienced.”

At the core of today’s conspiracy mayhem lies QAnon, which is growing at an unprecedented pace around the world.

And QAnon is just as popular with hippies as it is with the Alt Right. I’ll summarize “Q” for you:

A secret faction of global elites is running a ring of child trafficking around the world geared towards serving rich pedophiles. Donald Trump is a savior from God sent as a Light Worker to take down this deep state conspiracy. And the deep state will stop at nothing from hurting Donald Trump.

If this sounds crazy, first we must understand that, unfortunately, there’s a sliver of truth to it. Without fully going there, the Jeffrey Epstein thing is objectively strange, and seems like evidence that at least some rich people were doing inappropriate things with young girls.

QAnon capitalized on this.

But from here, people who believe in “Q” will rationalize anything Donald Trump does—no matter how misaligned it is with spiritual values of equality, unity, and compassion—as “we have no idea what he’s up against. He’s fighting the deep state.”

And Trump cleverly plays into this “I’m the hero combating child trafficking” narrative, offering subtle and not-so-subtle nods to the QAnon community. (FYI: Trump was also connected to Epstein) Make no mistake about the timing of this White House initiative from this Monday, with an election around the corner, either:

Happening today—Attorney General Bill Barr and @IvankaTrump are visiting Atlanta, Georgia, to highlight the Trump Administration’s efforts to protect survivors of human trafficking. https://t.co/IRjPXg5u2U
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 21, 2020

But it goes further than this. Channelers (spiritual mediums) call Trump a Light Worker. Yoga instructors, wellness influencers, and famous authors are praising Trump’s actions against child trafficking as angelic (see this list of examples).

When we zoom out, QAnon’s love for Trump starts to appear eerily similar to the guru complex seen in Hitler’s Third Reich. And as history has proven on many fronts, spiritual seekers and gurus can be a dangerous combination.

If you care about child trafficking, do something about it

One of the challenges of conspirituality—and yes, even QAnon—is that it encompasses good people who genuinely don’t want children to be trafficked. These are not just Gamer Gate bros hacking in a basement—QAnon is especially popular with women and mothers.

As Beres explains, “pedophilia and sexual abuse have been part of human culture for millennia, from the time of pederasty in ancient Greece, until today, but we are at a historically new point where we are just beginning the talk about our sexual fascination with minors. It’s healthy that we are having a conversation about pedophilia, sexual abuse, and child trafficking. But it’s still a new conversation—and we are having the wrong conversation about it.”

There are numerous nonprofit organizations that have been doing real work to combat child trafficking for years that need our support. Problem is, suggesting them to anyone who believes in Q is met with: these are deep state organizations that are part of the problem—only Donald Trump can combat them.

This is how far apart we’ve grown from each other—in our own communities.

Virus hoax, a position of privilege

Conspirituality is not just about QAnon. It’s about “the virus is a hoax,” masks are fake, and vaccines are an authoritarian power grab.

Here’s something that’s a fact: I am not an expert on any of these matters, and I have no idea whether any of that stuff might be true.

But here’s a much BIGGER fact:

Covid-19 is devastating immigrants, minority groups, and low-income communities. Black and brown people are feeling this virus more than any other group.

As Beres and I discussed, we live in a culture that worships the Self and individualism—especially compared to Eastern countries that view handling this pandemic as a shared collective responsibility. Yet, in America, we see a mask ordinance and flip the fuck out. Lost in our privilege, we forget almost entirely about the people who might actually be struggling.

When New Age hippies only lend their voice to conspiracy, when they just share Q hashtags and memes, and when they don’t mention any of the other existential problems we face from racism to the prison industrial complex, they are part of the problem—not the solution.

Spirituality is supposed to be about compassion.

How do we talk about this?

Beres believes that shame plays a role in how we communicate about conspirituality.

For instance, if someone reads an article or social post with strong language explaining the parallels between Nazism and QAnon, or the tremendous privilege required to even be pre-occupied by conspiracy theories, it might make conspiracists—or those becoming “Q curious”—think twice.

I personally tend to air on the side of understanding and bridge-building, but his comments made me question the effectiveness of that approach—especially considering that my readers encompass both spiritual and non-spiritual communities.

But as Beres reminded me, we don’t really know how to talk about this right now. There might not be a “best way” at the moment.

We just need to start having the conversation.

There’s so much more to say on this topic. I plan on recording a podcast with Beres in the coming weeks and will continue to address this. In the meantime, I’d love to know your thoughts.

Thanks for reading.

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