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RKF Jr., who has campaigned as the peace candidate who will draw down the US military empire, has recently called Israel America’s “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. When challenged to call for a ceasefire as the casualties rise in Gaza, the self-proclaimed protector of children said, “nobody likes children dying,” but then compared Israel’s efforts against Hamas to Alliance efforts against the Nazis.
On Gaza and Israel, RFK Jr is sounding unlike the end-the-forever wars, bring-our-troops-home candidate that many of his followers in the alternative health, anti-vax, and New Age spiritual communities thought they were supporting.
Now he’s paying the price.
Lifelong pacifist Dennis Kucinich quit the Kennedy24 campaign nine days after Israel began its retaliation for the Hamas attacks. RFK Jr.’s Director of Messaging, Charles Eisenstein, is speaking out against his boss’s one-sided stance. And alternative health and anti-vax mogul Sayer Ji has withdrawn his endorsement in a newsletter sent out to 300K subscribers.
Matthew reports on the developments and poses the questions: What is it about Gaza that suddenly makes the mainstream media reports credible to conspiritualists—as opposed to the news from Ukraine, or about COVID? And if RFK Jr. loses the support of the natural health pacifist who first backed him, who is he left to stand with?
UPDATE: Since recording, Bernie Sanders has in fact followed the lead of Williamson and others in issuing a call for an end to the bombardment of Gaza.
Show Notes
Dennis Kucinich Leaves Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Presidential Campaign - The New York Times.
Dennis Kucinich ceasefire petition
Kennedy Condemns Terrorist Attacks Against Israel | Kennedy24
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Declares Independent Candidacy | C-SPAN.org
RFK Jr Confronted by Pro-Palestine Heckler Calling for Ceasefire at Portland Event [VIDEO] - The Maine Wire
The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality
"In my name, I want no vengeance." - Charles Eisenstein
Why I Withdraw My Endorsement of RFK Jr. and Affirm the Urgent Cause for Peace In Palestine & Israel Sayer Ji
Disinformation Dozen Star Sayer Ji Now Exploiting Black Lives Matter | by Matthew Remski
Harvard Should Suspend Students Over Antisemitic Content: Bill Ackman - Bloomberg
Columbia University suspends student groups Students for Justice in Palestine & Jewish Voice for Peace for allegedly violating school policies - CBS New York
Poll: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes eye-popping 22 percent against Biden, Trump, - POLITICO
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Welcome to Conspiratuality Podcast, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
And I'll add to that tagline today how New Age and alternative health voters may only support their conspiracy theorist presidential candidate up to the point that he refuses to call for a ceasefire during a bloodbath.
This is a brief called RFK Jr.
Loses New Age Support Over Israel.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
We're on Instagram at ConspiratualityPod, and you can access all our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes through Patreon or Apple subscriptions.
We've got a book out, it's called Conspiratuality, How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, and it's in print, ebook, and audiobook format.
And Israel is critical, and the reason it's critical is because it's a bulwark for us in the Mideast.
It's almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Mideast.
It's our oldest ally, and it's been our ally for 75 years.
That is RFK Jr.
talking to right-wing pundit Dave Rubin on November 5th.
He'd been talking, paradoxically, about the need to draw down the U.S.
empire while maintaining strike capacity to protect interests in the region.
He went on to say that Israel is a key U.S.
military technology partner and a key security and intelligence ally against the designs of Iran and China on the region's oil.
Throughout the discussion, he sounded very much unlike the pro-peace, end the forever wars, bring our troops home candidate that many of his followers in the alternative health, anti-vax, and new age spiritual communities thought they were supporting.
The Palestinian death toll from Israel's retaliation for the Hamas October the 7th attack is surging past 11,000, with over 4,000 children killed.
The IDF has blockaded food, water and fuel, and hospitals in the territory are collapsing.
As the news from Gaza has become more bleak, many of RFK Jr.' 's followers have been calling on their candidate to join with the UN, the WHO, Doctors Without Borders and even centrist European leaders like Emmanuel Macron in calling for an immediate ceasefire.
But RFK Jr.
is digging in to his support-Israel-at-all-costs position, leading some of his most prominent supporters to jump ship and push back.
Dennis Kucinich, a lifelong pacifist, quit his position as RFK Jr.' 's campaign manager on October 16th and is running an online ceasefire now initiative.
New Age author Charles Eisenstein is still working as RFK Jr.' 's director of messaging, but has been writing passionately against his boss's position on Substack.
And on November the 13th, Sayerji, one of America's top anti-vax activists, withdrew his endorsement of RFK Jr.
in a scathing newsletter that went out to his list of 300,000.
I'll quote from those documents in a moment, but now a little more context.
RFK Jr.' 's pro-Israel advocacy is not new.
And he set the tone for the current standoff with key elements of his base on October the 7th by
stating quote, we must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself now and America must
stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to
self-defense. Two days after the Hamas attack shocked the world, he had Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
help introduce his break from the Democratic Party with a prayer for Israel.
Boteach is America's most prominent pro-Israel religious cleric.
And after he spoke, RFK Jr.' 's campaign had Louis Grassrope of the Lower Brule Sioux give an indigenous land acknowledgement.
For RFK Jr., there is no contradiction between taking a pro-Israel stance in the Middle East on the one hand, and on the other, taking a stand for reconciliation with indigenous people in the U.S.
He actually told Dave Rubin that it was insane for college students and a growing global protest movement to say that Palestinians are battling an apartheid regime and engaging in an anti-colonial struggle for indigenous rights.
When it comes to the rising casualties in Gaza, RFK Jr.
says as little as he can get away with.
With Rubin, he even flipped the script, worrying out loud about how escalations in the region might lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of Israeli kids.
But on November 9th in Portland, Maine, RFK Jr.
was challenged by a man who interrupted his campaign speech to call for a ceasefire.
I'll quote reporting from The Main Wire here.
The man referenced the deaths of thousands of Gaza civilians at the hands of Israel, saying most of them were women and children, and that the Israeli military's efforts are being financed by the United States.
If you're for protecting the people of this country, you would want a ceasefire right now, the man said.
Because I'll tell you what, us financing Israelis, genociding the Gazan people, is making everybody unsafe, including Americans who are financing it, sir.
Now if you've followed our coverage of RFK Jr.
so far, you'll know that any direct, challenging question about things like his anti-vax history will trigger a windy lecture about the last century of healthcare politics that, like a conspiracy theory, will get the broad strokes right but will fall apart under fact-checking.
In Portland, RFK Jr.
ignored the direct ceasefire question and launched into a similarly broad recitation of his view of Middle East history.
But when pressed further by the Portland Heckler, specifically on the issue of a ceasefire, and I'm quoting from the main wire again, the presidential candidate told the man, look, listen, nobody likes children dying.
When we went into Germany after the war, and then into Japan, a lot of civilians died because we had to get to Hitler.
These views, and the characteristic moral absolutism with which RFK Jr.
presents them, have clearly stunned some of his key supporters, the first wave of whom came from the ranks of the alternative health and anti-vax movements that he has spearheaded for two decades.
This is a demographic that views itself as non-violent, as passionately concerned for the health and well-being of all children, and they have spoken about him and his candidacy in messianic terms.
They believed that RFK Jr.
would transcend political deadlock with his enlightened view and spiritual wisdom.
That he would speak truth to power, that he would approach every complicated issue, especially issues that polarize and harden people into irreconcilable differences, in the spirit of humility and surrender.
They believed that, like a good king, he would come to the wisest strategies for protecting the vulnerable and innocent through listening, careful consideration, and prayer.
And he would never, ever place restrictions on free speech.
These beliefs fired up this otherwise depoliticized group, making them feel that they were finally able to add political action to their spiritual journeys.
However, they didn't come to the game with any real background or skills.
In a July episode called The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr.' 's Campaign, we examined a discussion between Austin-based life coach tycoon Aubrey Marcus and Charles Eisenstein.
Marcus described coming to endorse RFK Jr.
after an ayahuasca trip, and he admitted that he didn't even know what his candidate's positions were.
Eisenstein explained that policy positions were less important than their candidates' quantum qualities.
And he suggested that regardless of policy specifics, RFK Jr.
was being steered by a divine influence bolstered by his followers' enlightened will.
I think you actually hit on a key point when you mentioned the paradox.
He's going to be president and that doesn't mean that we can sit back and let it happen.
Yeah.
Because the impact and the change that his presidency represents co-resonates with an evolution of society and of our consciousness.
It means It's not going to happen outside of ourselves.
And I don't want to make him into some heroic figure.
It's actually a bit of the opposite.
It's that the field from which someone like him could even be elected has to change.
The existing political atmosphere of this country is not conducive to somebody with actual integrity who's actually authentic.
Now, it's a real gamble to see a candidate as a projection of one's spiritual openness.
It can lead to a lot of cognitive dissonance when the candidate has to take a stand and that stand happens to violate your values.
And I think that Eisenstein was aware of this.
You know, everything that I'm saying here, I'm describing the highest possibility of a Kennedy presidency.
It may be fulfilled 100%.
He may get elected and fulfill it 50%.
You know?
I mean, he's a sovereign being.
He might make choices that are profoundly disappointing.
And he fulfills it zero percent.
On October 18th, Eisenstein published an essay that pointed directly at that disappointment.
It was titled, In My Name, I Want No Vengeance, and it quoted an Israeli woman whose 20-year-old son was killed by Hamas on October 7th.
Here, Eisenstein invokes a peace discourse that goes right back to the giants of the nonviolence movement.
And Eisenstein has continued in this vein with several more essays in which he rocks right up to the political edge of calling for a ceasefire with the moral argument that the cycle of violence must end.
And he is facing fire from his readership.
They ask him if he's pressuring RFK Jr.
on the subject, and some are going farther to allege that Kennedy is a pro-war Zionist beholden to AIPAC.
And many express rage that Eisenstein is still standing by him.
We've criticized Eisenstein on this podcast and in a whole book chapter for some truly heinous New Age takes on health policy during COVID, for fantasizing about exacting vengeance on the elite cabal, and for recently supporting the idea that Russell Brand was being attacked by a Me Too discourse weaponized against truth-tellers.
We've criticized him as a pseudo-intellectual galaxy brain who pretends to be an independent thinker while he's blowing around like a leaf in the queue adjacent winds.
But in this instance, I empathize with him because his naive devotion for Kennedy is now running up against his conscience, and his conscience seems to be winning.
I think he really wants to influence his idol in a positive direction and he's learning that his idol has feet of clay.
Sayer G has taken a stronger stand against his once-favored candidate.
G is the founder of the alt-health pseudoscience website GreenMedInfo, and during the pandemic he was deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter for his anti-vax materials.
Alongside RFK Jr., he was dubbed a member of the Disinformation Dozen by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
G's platform has generated over $200,000 yearly from this content, according to the Center.
And up until recently, G has been central to RFK Jr.' 's health policy plans and was a featured presenter in a widely broadcast health summit.
But G's last newsletter is titled, Why I Withdraw My Endorsement of RFK Jr.
and Affirm the Urgent Cause for Peace in Palestine and Israel.
And he doesn't hold back.
He writes, After the unfolding of the horrifying events of October 7, Bobby and I met on several occasions and discussed our differing views on the history, facts, and moral implications of what has transpired between Israel and Palestine.
It is now clear to me that our differing views on the conflict and what must be done about it are irreconcilable.
I cannot in good conscience continue to endorse a political candidate who does not see that his silence on these issues have grave consequences.
Further down, the newsletter gets surprising.
I hope you will come to explore the plight of Palestinians in the same sympathetic light that he does the Israelis, and to re-examine the history of Zionism in the region as a fundamentally racist and anti-democratic ideology, as exhibited by its unlawful military occupation of Palestinian territories, and its historical behavior of apartheid and ethnically cleansing the native inhabitants of the region.
I say surprising because this marks the first time that we're aware of a conspirituality influencer turning back from adopting a right-wing response to any world event.
He's also one of the first to express any interest in the politics of decolonization or of supporting the marginalized outside of appropriating that discourse.
In August of 2021, for instance, G circulated a meme imprinted with a Black Lives Matter logo and featuring a quote from Ibram X. Kendi under images of black people and slogans claiming that COVID mitigation measures exemplified state-backed racism.
This tracks with RFK Jr.' 's long engagement with anti-vax pockets of the Black community, where he has helped spread the false and alarming view that vaccinations are an instrument of what he calls medical apartheid.
Gee's seeming progressive turn on this issue faces another credibility hurdle.
Like many alt-health influencers who spent the COVID era boosting Q-adjacent conspiracy theories, G has never seemed bothered by the anti-Semitic undertones of his content.
This means that he'll have to work hard to show that his criticisms of Israel are squarely focused on policy and won't contribute to the alarming rise of anti-Semitic incidents around the world.
On Twitter, G stays faithful to his free speech values when drawing a clear distinction between criticizing Israeli policy and antisemitism.
For instance, he's posted comments from therapist and Holocaust survivor, Gabor Matei, describing the conflation of criticizing Israel with antisemitism as, quote, simply an egregious attempt to intimidate non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.
But RFK Jr., the erstwhile free speech hero to so many like Sayer G, has come out in support of sanctioning U.S.
colleges for allowing students to protest Israel's overwhelming response to the Hamas attacks.
Via retweet, Kennedy endorsed an open letter by Harvard alum and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, criticizing what he described as a wave of anti-Semitic hatred on campus.
Reposting the letter, JFK Jr.
wrote, quote, it's time to hold college administrations responsible for the epidemic of campus anti-Semitism
by insisting on zero tolerance policies, unquote.
Now Ackman is right that anti-Semitic rhetoric has had a disturbing resurgence in some protest
incidents, but so has Islamophobic rhetoric.
Ackman makes no mention of that or of what the protests are actually about.
Ackman warned about Democrats losing big donor support and suggested that protesting students be suspended.
Similar tone policing has led to the administration of Columbia University suspending the association rights of two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Both organizations have staged protests to call for a ceasefire and an end to Israel's occupation of Gaza, but university officials have called the rhetoric at these events threatening and intimidating.
The bleeding of New Age and wellness support for RFK Jr.
is coming at a critical juncture in his campaign.
His independent candidacy is now facing the daunting challenge of gaining ballot access in every state without the help of the Democratic Party.
But he's also getting good polling news, with a November 1st Quinnipiac University poll giving him 22% of a hypothetical vote in a direct matchup against Biden and Trump.
More importantly, he leads both of those men in the 18-34 year age category.
Will this apparent surge survive the loss of his pacifist base?
It's not clear.
Also unclear are these issues, which will force many of us to re-examine some of our expectations around the conspirituality movement.
We've documented how easy it seemed to be for Eisenstein, G and dozens of other influencers with tens of millions of followers between them to completely ignore the reality of COVID and to add fuel to the fire of every culture war they took an interest in.
We watched some of them monetize conspiracy theories and some of them attain the status of spiritual leadership on the wings of paranoid prophecy.
And all of that has contributed to that feeling that Naomi Klein describes in Doppelganger of living in completely different worlds.
Is it possible that the endless stream of blood and destruction flowing out of Gaza is now a reality principle that they can share with a growing majority in the world?
Did it take the deaths of 1,400 Israelis and 11,000 Palestinians?
And why do they suddenly believe mainstream media reports about something so consequential after spending years claiming that every mainstream media platform was lying about everything?
Eisenstein, Xi, and many of their colleagues were not entirely wrong that neoliberal governments were profoundly neglectful of their citizens during COVID.
Is it possible now that their clarity around how these same governments are failing to pressure Israel to end their retaliation is a sign that their instincts are lining up with reality?
We'll keep following this.
And just a note, in our Monday Patreon bonus episode, I'll be looking at how Marianne Williamson's staunch pro-ceasefire stance sharply distinguishes her from most of her Democratic peers, and how it suggests she really is the peace candidate she's always claimed to be.
