Wellness to wrongness

As a surge of New Age influencers perpetuating right-wing ideologies swarms the internet, Olivia Petter questions how wellness became a gateway to harmful conspiracy theories

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We've all followed that friend of a friend online. The one who suddenly went sober during lockdown, cut out sugar, and started posting about her hardcore juice cleanse and daily gratitude ritual. She's dubious of modern medicine and societal convention; there's a rumour going around that she never got vaccinated against Covid. You heard she recently moved to Bali to become a yoga instructor. That she had started cutting off friends who weren’t “aligned” with her “energy”. That she’d found a higher purpose. A calling. Then you hear that the mutual friend you have in common is in a WhatsApp group of people who are concerned she’s losing touch with reality.

This is not an unusual trajectory. Since the pandemic, much has been written about the rise of wellness and spirituality fostering a subsequent spike in right-wing ideologies; a pathway that is also cultivating conspiratorial thinking. Misinformation merchants posing as wellness gurus. In the US, there are many, including Kelly Brogan, a “holistic psychologist” whose website carries the slogan: “Own your body. Free your mind.” The antivaxxer and New York Times bestselling author has promoted several widely disproven conspiracy theories. She went viral in 2020 for claiming that Coronavirus may not exist and that deaths from the virus were caused by fear.

Elsewhere, there’s JZ Knight, another notorious anti-vaxxer who claims to have channelled a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior and has spewed hate for Jews and Mexicans. There’s also Amy Carlson, co-founder of the Love Has Won religious group, who claimed to heal cancer victims “with the power of love” and promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11 and UFOs. Carlson died in 2021 of alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion.

All this and more is what prompted the launch of the hugely popular