Bonus Sample: Marianne Williamson for Prez. New Age Jesus for VP.
Can Marianne Williamson maintain street cred as a progressive while promoting New Age Jesus? Can she hammer out functional policy while preaching out of A Course in Miracles—the most anti-political pseudospiritual text on the planet? Can she advocate for public health despite a history of waffling on vaccine science? Can she make a strong argument for health care reform while giving sermons from a book that says people get sick because they are not spiritual enough? Can she really help fat people with her book that says that fatness is a "repository of twisted thoughts and feelings?" Matthew doubts it, but hey—miracles happen! Show NotesWilliam Thetford's CV (MKUltra reference)Marianne Williamson's Democratic debate performance raised eyebrows. But she's no friend of the left. Marianne Williamson is a controversial AIDS-crisis figure for gay men.Kevin Sessums on MW, FB post: "I am an HIV+ man who lost lots of friends to AIDS and I know the harm she did conning many into believing they deserved their biological condition - and even their deaths- because they weren't spiritually fit enough to visualize the AIDS virus away." Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Let’s not forget that masks aren’t our only protection against Covid. Strengthening the immune system is also very important: recommendations like vitamins C and D, healthy food and exercise, positive/spiritual consciousness." / Twitter A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight ForeverMarianne Williamson promoted anti-vaxxer theories on her radio show in 2012 episode | CNN Politics
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you'd like to support our research, recording, and production time, you can support us for $5 a month on Patreon, or choose a higher tier to access our live streams and bonus videos.
All of this is available at patreon.com slash conspirituality.
You can also access our Monday bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts for $5 a month as well.
Thank you for your support.
Hello everybody, Matthew here with a bonus episode called Marianne Williamson for Prez, New Age Jesus for VP.
It's a little primer on the paradox posed by a devotee of A Course in Miracles, arguably the most anti-political pseudo-spiritual text on the planet, entering her second presidential race.
Just one piece of housekeeping before I begin here.
You can pre-order our book through the link at the bottom of the show notes for this episode, and I really think you should do it because we're starting to get some nice endorsements.
Quote, This rigorously researched book will help future generations or alien overlords make sense of this bizarre and confusing moment in human civilization.
Derek Barris, Matthew Remsky, Julian Walker have established themselves as authoritative chroniclers of conspirituality and its key figures.
They are consummate tour guides, revealing all the threads of eugenics, fascism, cultism, moral panics, and magical thinking that came together to form a strange tapestry that now influences mainstream policies and institutions and fuels our culture wars."
Thank you!
That's from Jennings Brown, friend of the podcast.
He's the journalist and the host of podcasts like The Gateway, Teal Swan, and Revelations.
So, Marianne Williamson formally announced her candidacy two days ago.
And I'm covering this, and I'll follow this story as it unfolds, because I think it's as important to understand what A Course in Miracles means in relation to Williamson's political positions as it is to understand what Christian dominionism means to sectors of the hard right.
But don't get me wrong, this is not because A Course in Miracles will encourage anyone to take up arms against the government or propose trans genocide bills in state legislatures.
It's subtler than that.
My argument is that in the American context, a moral and intellectual investment in the
New Age Jesus of the Course in Miracles means further white divestment from the activism-rooted
spirituality of ML King and Black Liberation.
It follows a decades-long pathway in the defanging of progressive politics by obsessing over
the internal turn, the self-project.
It represents an investment in a very white feminist, extremely boring spirituality of
neoliberal narcissism, of psychological consolation through magical thinking, of the erasure of
class and privilege analysis, and the refusal to get your hands dirty.
The End.
Then there's the matter of aesthetics and political appeal.
The Course in Miracles is buttoned down and emotionally repressive.
Its soundtrack comes to you courtesy of New Age synthesizers.
Oh, Hello.
At Course Study Groups, there will be no gospel music, Tom Waits, or punk.
If you have the misfortune of visiting Course in Miracles websites, you'll get whiplash from the 1980s health store pamphlet graphic design.
Williamson presents herself as a friend to queer people, but there is nothing queer about A Course in Miracles.
In fact, early drafts of this channeled book were virulently homophobic.
That all may have been laundered out, but still, anybody on the left who thinks that Marianne Williamson presents an appealing package is really telling on themselves.
They're saying that they've just given up on the suffering and passions and milieus of millennials and zoomers.
They're saying, I don't really know what all those kids want with their switches and twitches, their discords and tumblers, but whatever they want, a little new age synth can't hurt.
But here's my main point.
Williamson might hit some earnest, progressive notes about racial justice and inclusivity.
But her message of love and light, I think, is a lot more about making middle-class liberals feel spiritually cozy than it is about facing down existential threats.
As Bo Brink laid it out in our latest main feed episode, 2024 is shaping up to be a bloodbath for queer people.
However it shakes out, we're seeing the advancement of Christofascism.
Pundits on the Daily Wire who reach millions are openly calling for the banning of transgenderism.
Greg Abbott is set to challenge Lawrence v. Texas, and where the right wing isn't winning at the culture wars, they're attacking democratic processes in city council meetings and school board meetings.
And the basic position of Marianne Williamson's New Age Jesus, as expressed in A Course in Miracles, is that all conflict and evil in the world comes not from history, not from class differences, not from predatory capitalism, not from the intergenerational trauma of the colonizer-colonized struggle, No.
Every trouble comes from one's own internal perceptions.
And that means that your highest goal is to forgive the aggressor out there in the world because he is merely a reflection of your own inner confusion.
The Course in Miracles teaches that the conflict fomented by Ron DeSantis, Matt Walsh, and J.K.
Rowling is only a temporary illusion which will be wiped away when everyone happily realizes and relaxes into their communion with God Now, this may not be an entirely unique religious belief, but there are plenty of Christians, Muslims, and certainly Jews, whose spiritualities give them the analytical and impassioned tools to fight like hell, shoulder to shoulder, against the perennial fascisms of the world.
Not only does A Course in Miracles not provide any of those tools, it preaches against defending yourself.
New Age Jesus wants you to know that everything is always already perfect.
But, let's start at the beginning, because that's where Marianne Williamson starts every New Year's Day.
Part 1, Lesson 1.
Nothing I see in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place, means anything.
So there she is on Facebook, January 1st, 2022.
So that was the first day of that year's annual 365-day tour through the lessons of A Course in Miracles.
Again, the book at the center of her public and private life.
I'm clipping from 2022 but want to flag that she's started another round this January.
She's been doing this for many, many years.
But the sound quality this year isn't great.
I'm using last year.
But that's cool because according to A Course in Miracles, time and space are illusions.
But let's just note that she's running this program, teaching the lessons online every morning while running for the White House.
Now, the lesson for March 4th, the day of her announcement is, the light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness, which is kind of perfect because any Course in Miracles-based run for office would have to be framed through the miraculous inner achievements of the candidate.
Okay, so full disclosure, I know this book pretty well from the years that I spent at Endeavor Academy, which is a now mostly defunct cult in Wisconsin, Dells, Wisconsin.
The charismatic leader's name was Charles Anderson.
He died in 2008.
He was a recovering alcoholic, World War II vet, and real estate salesman who used A Course in Miracles for his sermon material.
Now, while in this group, I memorized large portions of the text and I made audio recordings of whole chapters of it for the efforts of the communications or evangelization or propaganda department.
And to be fair, I should say that as I've contextualized this analysis through my personal experience through the years, there are always Course students who will dismiss me by saying, well, a cult based on A Course in Miracles cannot be teaching the Course.
And they'll point out that it's just a book, it deconstructs human hierarchies, it says that the only churches are internal.
It says that the message is completely democratic and accessible to anybody, there's no priestly caste that's keeping everybody in line, and these seem like supportable points if it weren't for the fact that the text itself is obscenely authoritarian and it gives its devotees permission to be overbearing, emotionally cruel, and victim-blaming.
I think you can take the course out of the cult, but I don't think you can take the culty vibes out of the course.
Here's more of the drip feed of Marianne's rendition of Lesson 1.
Now look slowly around you and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see.
This table does not mean anything.
This chair does not mean anything.
This hand does not mean anything.
This foot does not mean anything. This pen does not mean anything.
What the hell is she talking about? Well, the opening lessons of A Course in Miracles are all
about New Age Jesus telling the reader that they are absolutely ignorant, that they are living in
the matrix, that they've generated a cursed world around themselves through the power of their
hatred and confusion.
So, the lessons open with this kind of smug, cognitive scrambling by which the devotee comes to believe that nothing is as it seems.
Now, does that sound familiar?
Because it's one of the axioms of the conspiratorial mindset.
Now I'm not a fan of how the word gaslighting has suffered a kind of concept creep lately to encompass things like basic disagreements or how it's been co-opted by the right wing and applied to things like Tony Fauci is gaslighting the American public when people are responding to just a pivot in public health communications.
The original term refers pretty tightly to the conscious manipulation of a woman's mental health.
Which is why I think it's a perfect term for this whole book, which actively seeks to undermine your understanding of reality from Jump.
That's the whole point.
And it's not uncommon throughout the New Age.
Everything being an illusion that you must erase to begin to see through is a precondition for what Lori Lodd and Byron Katie are presenting to the public.
The idea that basic human perception, including political positions, are delusional.
So, if nothing you see means anything, then what are you seeing?
By the time we get to Lesson 7, New Age Jesus starts to let you in on it.
Lesson 7 says, 8.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
9.
I see nothing as it is now.
10.
My thoughts do not mean anything.
11.
My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
12.
I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
13.
A meaningless world engenders fear. 14.
God did not create a meaningless world.
So, lesson one kicks that whole arc off.
Here's Williamson again.
Then look farther away from your immediate area and apply the idea to a wider range.
That door does not mean anything.
That body does not mean anything.
That lamp does not mean anything.
That sign does not mean anything.
That shadow does not mean anything.
And make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied.
That is the purpose of this exercise.
The statement should merely be applied to anyone you see.
So do you get the sense of just how systematic and totalizing this is?
The first lesson of the book is telling you that your basic way of moving through the world is enshrouded with ignorance.
And as the lessons progress, this view will be applied to feelings, to injustice, to war.
But hold the phone, because Williamson actually made a mistake in her reading here.
The statement should merely be applied to anyone you see.
So the idea is that nothing I see means anything should apply to anyone as in people.
But that's not what the text actually says.
The text says, quote, the statement should merely be applied to anything you see.
So, it's not so crude and objectifying yet.
And a mistake is a mistake.
You know, she's read this probably a thousand times, but Williamson is actually giving some of the game away here, because the course does go on to assert that other people are indeed projections that you have invested with meaning.
