Racism & Fraud in New Age Publishing
It's been a very busy week for Hero's Dose
Author and publisher Rebekah Borucki joined the Conspirituality team yesterday as our first co-host. She had quite a story to tell: the culture of her publisher, Hay House, was so resistant to taking a position on the racist attitudes of some of their leading cash-cow authors that she ditched her contract and her job with the company as a diversity mentor.
We talked about the money and politics of New Age media, as well as editorial standards, ghostwriting, cult apologetics, and the responsibility of publishers to deplatform authors that are hurtling toward QAnon. New Age media isn’t all love and light—it’s a pathway into consumers’ vulnerability, and sometimes a recruitment gateway for cults.
Also this week, I interviewed Dr. Jay Mohan on his grueling COVID front-line work as an interventional cardiologist in a Detroit suburb.
Lots happening around my new book, Hero’s Dose: The Case for Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy. The first review was published on Psychedelic Spotlight earlier this week. I also had an opportunity to talk about themes in Conspirituality and psychedelics on three diverse podcasts over the last week—one focused on the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community, another on psychiatry, and a third on music and culture.
You can also read the introduction to the book here.
This week, I was featured in this feature on Pastel QAnon on Yahoo News.
Derek Beres is a longtime fitness instructor and writer who now co-hosts “Conspirituality,” a podcast that analyzes the cult-like dynamics of QAnon and its convergence with New Age thought. Beres told Yahoo News that he’s long been frustrated by what he described as a “lack of political engagement” within the privileged and predominantly white worlds of yoga and wellness, and suggested that this apathy may have ultimately left many in these communities ill-equipped to navigate the overwhelming deluge of information surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
“For the first time in their lives, they’re confronted with a political reality where they’re told they can’t do something. ... All of a sudden you have to wear a mask and you can't go outside and you can't commune with your friends,” Beres said. In response, people turned to social media, and the wellness influencers they follow, for information.
He said that many of the people in his own social and professional circles who have latched onto QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories about the coronavirus had also already “bought into homeopathy,” and other questionable alternative healing protocols, “so they were primed for a long time to believe that a big conspiracy is happening.”
“Conspirituality” was launched to raise awareness about the potential dangers of QAnon-based misinformation. Its website has a list of key words and phrases used by QAnon and its affiliated groups. Recently, Beres noted that he and his “Conspirituality” co-hosts have also been tracking the emergence of another troubling trend: calls for violence from wellness influencers and use of increasingly militant rhetoric.
Anecdotally, Corn and Beres said that while many in the yoga and wellness worlds who’ve embraced QAnon narratives go to great lengths to deny its connection to Trump, they’ve also observed many of the same people express support for Trump as the “only hope” for dismantling the supposed cabal of child kidnappers and abusers.