Why Are So Many Popular Wellness Influencers Red-Pilled?
Conspirituality is out today!
I’m excited to announce that Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat is out today! I can’t believe it’s been over three years since I began this journey with Matthew and Julian. We put everything we’ve learned into this book. I hope you enjoy it.
Below is an excerpt of an interview I recently did with Rolling Stone about the book release. Shout out to EJ Dickson for the discussion. You can read the full Q&A here.
A few years ago, around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a perplexing shift in the wellness space. Yoga teachers, holistic healers, crystal sellers -- people who had never posted anything remotely political, seemed, all of a sudden, to start posting about the dangers of 5G radiation, surgical masks, blood-drinking pedophiles, and "gender ideology." And while a few major influencers in the space spoke out against this trend, it seemed as if more and more wellness figures were getting red-pilled by the day.
This was the seed for the creation of Conspirituality, a podcast by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker about the intersection of the wellness space and (largely, right-wing) conspiracy theories. All three had a vested interest in investigating this topic: both Beres and Walker were involved in the yoga community for decades, while Remski was involved in several self-help groups that he later referred to as "cults." And with the rise of the pandemic, with everyone and their mother seemingly posting baseless claims about Wayfair sex trafficking children and Covid vaccines killing young people, it was an opportune time for them to launch a podcast calling them out. (Editor's note: the author of this article appeared on an episode of the Conspirituality podcast to discuss natural childbirth influencers.)
Now, Beres, Remski, and Walker have coauthored a book: Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, which documents the modern-day rise of wellness gurus and misinformation peddlers like Kelly Brogan and JP Sears while probing the age-old racist roots of practices like contemporary yoga. Rolling Stone caught up with Beres to discuss celebrity influencers (and who he finds the scariest), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s run for office, and Oprah's surprising role in the misinfo space.
Your book is coming from a place where all three of you had some sort of personal involvement in the wellness world. Can you talk about your own ties there and how you came to observe the radicalization of the community?
I began practicing yoga in the 1990s, so I was part of the nascent wellness industry as it exists today. It has existed for generations before me, but it was a slow build in the 1990s. You really just had Yoga Journal and Yoga International starting to form, you started to have more mainstream conversations around yoga and wellness in general, but it was not nearly monetized to the degree that it is today. And [I've been] watching the mainstreaming of Eastern philosophies and the yoga practice and organic food.
The wellness industry is such a vague term, right? But it generally has to do with people who are into self care and some sort of holistic healing. I've watched as a lot of people started to buy into the idea that you can live this natural life divorced from many of the technologies that we use today and don't think about. [And] as more people enter the space and want to monetize it, you're going to find more and more conspiracy theories entering. And that is basically what happened.
Of course, this was really kick-started because of the pandemic. I've been critical of a lot of what is said in yoga studios for a long time, but by the time we reached the pandemic, and everyone's life is just thrown in every direction and people don't know how to make a living, because they've invested so much in these in these in-person spaces, that just allowed so much misinformation to spread through the networks that people were using, usually to post pretty photos of themselves doing yoga postures. Now all of a sudden, you had space for people to just start to think of the wildest conspiracies, and unfortunately, that hasn't stopped.
The first chunk of the book talks a lot about the right-wing influences in the yoga world, which I think a lot of readers would be unaware of. Can you talk about that a little bit?
There's a romanticization of yoga that has persisted in the American yoga community for a long time. On a basic foundational level, it's this 5,000-year old practice that has come down from the ethers that is about self transformation. But it has gone through so many forms over the generations. What we call modern yoga began in the late Nineteenth century, early Twentieth century. It is a combination of British wrestling, gymnastics, strength training, and traditional yoga postures. Now, it does not mean that everyone who practices yoga today is interested in the ideologies that were around at that time. But at that time, there was a figure named Eugen Sandow. Eugen is not his first name. He created "Eugen" as shorthand for eugenics. He was a strongman who would go to India to do the strength techniques, but he thought they were lesser than people. He writes about this in his book, how he thinks that the white race is the master race. [So] the modern yoga form is in some way based off the idea of white nationalism and eugenics. Again, it's not a direct influence, but it's seeped through the characters who are leading figures in the development of the practice. And that's what we try to draw out in the book, just to say that when you romanticize a practice, you should actually look where it comes from, because they usually are not the same story.
You guys started the podcast in the early days of the pandemic, and the book focuses largely on events that took place during and after the pandemic. What were sort of the events prior to the pandemic that you also see as laying the groundwork here, in terms of the red pilling of the wellness community?
RFK Jr. is the perfect example.I was writing about the anti-vax movement 10 years ago, based on Andrew Wakefield's falsified studies [claiming that autism is linked to vaccines], which was involved in the measles outbreaks in both Samoa as well as the Somalian community in Michigan, as well as the moms' community in Brentwood, Los Angeles between 2015 and 2017. So you already had this idea that vaccinations were a problem, and then you had the resurgence of things like measles in these communities and deaths when it comes to Samoa. Some of the figures [like RFK Jr. and Wakefield] who are still key figures in this community were doing this work. So I really think that the anti-vax movement is the groundwork for everything we've seen.
The podcast originated because of [the viral anti-vaccine documentary] Plandemic. The week it was released is when I reached out to Matthew and Julian to discuss this pseudo documentary, but it didn't just come out of nowhere. The groundwork had been laid for decades before that. It was just an opportune time. And of course, there's the intersection with QAnon that occurred at that time too, which is what basically gave it steroids.
> Why Are So Many Popular Wellness Influencers Red-Pilled?
Because a healthy body and healthy mind leads to healthy politics.
I actually have to somewhat echo Stephanie's concerns about this Substack post. Namely, the origin story of Eugen Sandow's name as an intended connection to the word "eugenics" seems speculative; and even the linking of Sandow to modern yoga's origins seems like a big stretch. It would be really, really nice to have specific citations to non speculative sources for this.
Honestly, given the time when he lived it would even be weird if he wasn't eventually held up (by himself or by others) as some aspirational model for eugenics; but what I am questioning is this very concrete link made here of his stage name as being prompted by an intended connection to the word eugenics. I could even see the link made ex post facto; but that wouldn't be the same as «He created "Eugen" as shorthand for eugenics» (if anything, it *is* a Germanic male name and it is not so weird that it would be taken up by a Germanic man). It's a bad sign when searching Google for «"Eugen Sandow" "eugenics"» gives top links that are connected to this very Substack post.
To begin with, it looks like the very term was only coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883; whereas timelines I have seen suggest the Eugen Sandow stage name for Friedrich Wilhelm Müller appears to have been created only 4 years later in 1887 (see https://starkcenter.org/igh/igh-v2/igh-v2-n4/igh0204f.pdf ). Would the term even have been sufficiently popularized in 1887 for Sandow to think it clever to try to associate himself with it?
Maybe my Google-fu is simply failing me, but I have found very few references to this alleged connection and the references I have found seem speculative and poorly cited. For instance, I have found it in an online explanation of a plaque found in London (at https://www.londonremembers.com/subjects/eugen-sandow —though the earlier versions of this did not have it) but it's speculative and has no reference to justify the speculation. For instance, I have found the claim with *Eugen Sandow: Performing New Masculinities* (at https://eidos.uw.edu.pl/files/pdf/eidos/2021-04/eidos_18_wood.pdf ) and it in turn cites a biography (giving the wrong page number for the relevant passages but poorly accessible at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sandow_the_Magnificent/79QappH54EYC?gbpv=1 ) which does not seem to have anything justifying the claim.
I can also see that the author, Derek Beres, has another piece in Rolling Stone (see https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ball-testicle-tanning-far-right-tucker-carlson-1339809/ ) where he makes the connection and seems to be trying to reference Sandow's own work, *Strength and how to Obtain It*, seemingly to support how Sandow "believed that his impressive muscularity reflected his strong, white roots". Not only does this book seem to not indicate a reason for Sandow's choice of "Eugen" as a part of his stage name, it also doesn't seem to have any references at all to "white roots" (or "white race" or "breeding" or anything like that). The closest it comes to this, is basically the opposite of attribution to strong roots and even seems to be almost the opposite of eugenics as we normally think of it (though this interpretation is also is considered "environmental eugenics") where he writes:
«But that is not the aim of physical culture. Its ultimate object is to raise the average standard of the race as a whole. That is, no doubt, a stupendous task, and one which it may take many lifetimes to accomplish. But everything must have its beginning, and unless we set about improving the physique of the present generation, we cannot hope to benefit those who come after us. Healthier and more perfect men and women will beget children with better constitutions and more free from hereditary taint. They in their turn, if the principles and the duty of physical culture are early instilled into them, will grow up more perfect types of men and women than were their mothers and fathers. So the happy progression will go on, until, who knows, if in the days to come there will not be a race of mortals walking this earth of ours even surpassing those who, according to the old myth, were the offspring of the union of the sons of the gods with the daughters of men! That is, perhaps, an almost impossible ideal, but it is well to set one’s ideals high. Surely what has been done for the horse and the dog cannot be impossible of accomplishment in the case of man. At all events, it is worth trying.”»
So this refers to an improvement of the "race" by effort and training which is, as indicated by the last sentence, heritable as per a Lamarkian model of inheritance (and it isn't even clear that with "race" here he's not referring to humanity rather than to a specific, elite subgroup). Indeed, where he introduces the story of his life on the first chapter of the second part of this book on page 86, he claims to have been born and to have been, as a child, weak and "exceedingly delicate" and to have developed his strength via the application of training:
«It is not necessary, as some may think, to be born strong in order to become strong. Unlike the poet, who, we are told, has to be born a poet, the strong man can make himself. As a child, I was myself exceedingly delicate. More than once, indeed, my life was despaired of. Until I was in my tenth year I scarcely knew what strength was. Then it happened that I saw it in bronze and stone. My father took me with him to Italy, and in the art galleries of Rome and Florence I was struck with admiration for the finely developed forms of the sculptured figures of the athletes of old. I remember asking my father if people were as well developed in these modern times. He pointed out that they were not, and explained that these were the figures of men who lived when might was right, when men’s own arms were their weapons, and often their lives depended upon their physical strength. Moreover, they knew nothing of the modern luxuries of civilization, and, besides their training and exercise, their muscles, in the ordinary course of daily life, were always being brought prominently into play.
The memory of these muscular figures were ever present, and when we returned home to Konigsberg I wanted to become strong like them. But though I used to try my strength and attend the gymnasium, nothing came of my desire for some years.
So until I was eighteen I remained delicate. At that age I began to study anatomy. It was thus I ascertained the best means of developing the body, and invented the system of giving each individual muscle a movement, and of so arranging the form of the exercises that when some muscles are brought into play others are relaxed and left without strain.
About fifteen minutes every day was the average time devoted to special exercise at this period. It may be useful to remark here that no particular form of diet was adopted. I ate and drank in the ordinary way. It may be said at once that I have no belief in special diet; I have always eaten and drunk that which my fancy dictated, but I have always taken care to avoid anything in the nature of excess. There is no better guide to good living than moderation. That is a fact I am always anxious to impress upon my pupils. Let them be moderate in all things, and they need fear no interruption in gaining strength by my system of training.»