Healthy Living and QAnon

Mixing healthy exercise, Eastern religious spirituality, meditation, and a pure and toxin free diet would seem to be a smart choice, a life-extender if you will, for so many Americans. After all, we have an obesity epidemic with an astounding growth rate. The Centers for Disease Control tell us: “From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.” Life expectancy for obese individuals drops like stone because of diseases like diabetes, strokes and heart attacks. The pandemic, where many stayed home and avoided gyms or other forms of exercise, did not improve the situation at all.

Liberal, sometimes pejoratively described “woo-woo,” California seems to be the state we think of first when it comes to these spiritual-exercise-dietary rigors. Particularly sunny, health-conscious southern California. No place to find right wing politics, Trumpist nationalism or off-the-wall conspiracy theories, right? Think again. Among the most bizarre but widely-held conspiracy theories is the “there is an underground cabal of pederast leaders/devil worshipers running the Democratic Party” – AKA QAnon, which is perhaps the easiest conspiracy theory to disprove imaginable. Yet that weird body of disinformation has millions of American believers, most tied in support of Donald Trump. More interestingly is the number of passionate QAnon believers among this aggregation of California spiritual-exercise-dietary followers, especially concentrated in Southern California. Those reporting this trend, call it “Woo-Anon.”

Laura Nelson, writing for the June 25th Los Angeles Times, provides a sample of a pattern that reflects the birth and exponential growth of Woo-Anon among the Southern California wellness community: “It seemed like the end of a typical reiki attunement: A group of women wearing yoga pants and flowing floral skirts, gathered in a healer’s home after a course in the alternative therapy of balancing chakras, clearing auras and transferring energy.

“But it was the early days of the pandemic and COVID-19 was spreading fast. The women in the room stood so close that their bodies touched. No one wore masks… Kathleen Abraham, 61, saw that the Facebook photo of the group had been taken in the Orange County home of one of her dearest friends, a woman she had known for 15 years who had helped her recover from breast cancer and introduced her to the world of New Age spiritualism.

“Weeks later came another jolt. Her friend announced on Instagram that she had been red-pilled, a term used by QAnon adherents to describe their conversion to belief in the conspiracy. Another old friend, Abraham’s first reiki master, was also growing more extreme, writing that the COVID-19 pandemic was a conspiracy and face masks were toxic… QAnon’s conspiratorial belief system has now pulled in at least a dozen people in Abraham’s spiritual social circle, including two of her closest friends and two friendly psychics who always claimed the booth next to hers at New Age trade shows…

“More commonly associated with right-wing groups, the conspiracy theory is spreading through yoga, meditation and other wellness circles. Friends and colleagues have watched with alarm as Instagram influencers and their New Age peers — yogis, energy healers, sound bathers, crystal practitioners, psychics, quantum magicians — embraced QAnon’s conspiratorial worldview and sprayed it across social media.

“The health, wellness and spirituality world has always been primed for that worldview, followers say. Though largely filled with well-meaning people seeking spiritual or physical comfort, the $1.5-trillion industry can also be a hotbed for conspiracies, magical thinking, dietary supplements with dubious scientific claims and distrust of institutional healthcare, including vaccines.

“‘It’s always been the water we were swimming in,’ said Julian Walker, 50, a Mar Vista yogi, ecstatic dance teacher and co-host of the ‘Conspirituality’ podcast, which tracks the marriage of conspiracy theories and spiritualism. ‘Now we’re seeing what happens when the water rises.’

“Once a fringe movement, QAnon exploded in popularity during the Trump administration, gaining more believers in the U.S. than several major religions. Two recent polls have found that about 1 in 6 American adults believes its key tenet: that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are trying to control the country’s government, mass media and financial systems.

“Just how deeply QAnon has penetrated the wellness world is difficult to quantify, but its effects are tangible: broken friendships and business partnerships, lingering sadness and frustration, and a growing number of spiritualists who are speaking out against the spread of the false conspiracy theory.

“Several New Age spiritualists in Southern California interviewed by The Times said they knew a total of more than a dozen former friends and colleagues at the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with ties to yoga, meditation, energy healing and dietary supplements hawked by multilevel marketing companies.” This phenomenon becomes easier to understand when you focus on anti-vaxers, unwilling to inject what they believe to be toxins or even micro-governmental tracking devices “masquerading” as vaccines. Indeed, a surfeit of “wellness” instructors and self-proclaimed gurus discovered that controversy and extreme positions, revealing the ancient secrets to a healthy life, were the key to generating customers for their classes, books and advisor services. Money.

“That proved true for many spiritual influencers and platforms: A Venice kundalini yoga teacher who has worked with pop star Alicia Keys interviewed a conspiracy theorist for an hour on YouTube. A Sacramento yoga teacher who posted, then deleted, an abbreviation for the popular QAnon slogan, ‘Where we go one, we go all.’ And on Gaia, a kind of Netflix for spiritualism, subscribers can watch a 13-episode series by British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who popularized the claim that the world is run by shape-shifting, blood-drinking lizard people.

“Holding influencers accountable for spreading those beliefs has proved difficult, as the vast majority of the industry is unlicensed and unregulated… ‘It has fostered an enormous amount of mistrust,’ said Seane Corn, a L.A.-based yoga instructor and co-founder of ‘Off The Mat, Into the World,’ a nonprofit organization that bridges yoga and social activism. ‘It has ended friendships.’” LA Times. More importantly, it has helped spread COVID infections and bolster other broad-based patterns of disinformation and conspiracy theories, making scientific and truthful solutions that much more difficult to implement, as well as further polarizing a very divided America. If these rather significant pockets of disinformation and conspiracy theories cannot be contained and reversed, the threat to the very fabric of the American experiment in democracy may simply cause its collapse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for logical and fact-based American voters, especially in what may be perceived to be a liberal and reality-accepting part of the nation, it may be particularly shocking to learn the degree of dysfunctional belief in their immediate communities.