Do people radicalized into conspiracism or cults ever admit their errors? When the prophecy fails and evidence shows they were wrong, do they come clean or double-down?
Julian checks in on some of the legacy conspiritualists profiled in our book—Russell Brand, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, and Lorie Ladd—to see what their online messaging around Christmas and the New Year tells us.
These figures drove the anti-vax, Covid denial, QAnon virality, and rightward political trend in conspirituality during 2020-21. We’ll find out if they’ve seen the error of their ways in the aftermath of the 5th dimensional Great Awakening that never happened.
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The question I'm thinking about today that's underneath what I'm about to share with you is what happens to people over time as they get enough distance on having been radicalized into conspiracy theories, on having bought into some kind of set of prophetic religious ideas about what the current events really mean and what's about to happen, right?
What happens to people when they get enough distance on having been indoctrinated into a cult?
Or having become political extremists, do they soften?
Do they slide into adjacent irrational belief systems that serve some similar psychological function?
Do they become victims of audience capture where now they've developed a career, an income stream, a following, a group of people who expect them to keep perpetuating the same kinds of ideas or maybe becoming even more intense in their radicalization and in the outlandish nature Of what they're talking about.
Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Julian Walker, and here we are, approaching February.
I had this idea at the start of the year that I wanted to check in on the holiday season activities of some old friends.
Well, online friends, really.
You know how that goes.
I wanted to see what they were posting during the Christmas season and how they've started the new year.
Okay, alright, you got me.
Let's be honest.
They're not really my friends or your friends, but we definitely have a kind of parasocial relationship.
Although it's fair to characterize that as quite negative.
Here's a recap and then we'll see how these folks are doing and what they've been saying lately.
It all goes back to 2020.
You know, at the center of the conspirituality book we published last year, there is this rogues gallery of influencers we've been tracking since the start of the pandemic.
So back then, former New Age spiritual filmmaker Mickey Willis released Plandemic.
Remember that?
A 24-minute conspiracy-laden interview with a disgraced former research scientist.
To call it a documentary film is really An exaggeration.
And then, former OB-GYN and best-selling women's health advocate, the Oprah-endorsed anti-vaxxer, Dr. Christiane Northrup, would play a huge role in expanding the reach of Plandemic on Facebook.
Now, Plandemic alleged that the pandemic was planned to boost vaccine profits.
It claimed that masks make you more sick, and that the flu shot increased COVID risk, presumably because the shots contain coronaviruses?
They don't.
Oh, and hydroxychloroquine is an effective cure for COVID.
Which it wasn't.
So all of this was false.
But it was circulating faster than a Holy Ghost new variant speaking in tongues at a quarantine-defying Pentecostal church.
If you've been with us all along, you may remember that Christiane Northrup would then go on to do her own roughly year-long weekly series of Facebook Live videos called The Great Awakening, which she assured everyone when she was called out on it had nothing to do with QAnon.
The term actually refers back to 18th and 19th century fervent Christian revivals in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus being close at hand.
In those videos, nestled between the essential oils tips, the folksy spiritual advice, and supernaturally tinged vaccine paranoia, animal-human hybrids, satanic invisible ink, ominous microchips, Northrop recycled QAnon memes.
These were sometimes blended with New Age concepts.
Other times, she just straight up called on the Army of Light to get schooled on the Constitution, militias, and gun rights.
And eventually, Dr. Christiane Northrop would talk publicly about putting a bullet in the head of any doctor who tried to vaccinate any of the kids that she loved.
She's a long way from Oprah.
In addition to Willis, Northrop would also glowingly recommend a so-called channeler named Lori Ladd.
Remember her?
She recommended Lori Ladd to her half a million followers on Facebook through those Facebook Live videos.
Like several other high-profile charlatans at the time, Ladd claimed to be receiving transmissions from the Galactic Federation.
And wouldn't you know it, in an incredible synchronicity, what the Galactics were supposedly telling Lori dovetailed quite well with the emerging New Age iteration of QAnon concepts that were flooding social feeds in yoga and wellness communities.
By the time January 2021 came along, Love and Light Laurie Ladd had issued probably the most disturbing call to holy war against the Cabal.
She told Lightworkers in the run-up to the Capitol riots that her alien spirit guides said they would have to get their hands dirty on the battlefield of good versus evil.
But not to worry, because it's all an illusion.
And of course anyone who has done conventional yoga teacher training in the last few decades would know that there are serious shades of Bhagavad Gita going on in that call to arms.
Then there was J.P.
Sears, the muscular, long red-haired, former emotional healing coach.
In the years before the pandemic, he made very popular comedic videos as a playful, insider, pretty wicked satirist of the pretentious hypocrisies of New Age spirituality.
I have shared his videos from that time with friends and family.
But in 2020, he turned his aim on weak and fear-filled blue pill people who were staying plugged into the matrix by listening to the news and accepting quarantine measures.
As our coverage of him continued, Sears became increasingly reactionary and increasingly unfunny, punching down hard at trans people and becoming a mouthpiece for every reactionary talking point on guns, communism, and eventually, the big lie of Trump's election fraud.
In the first years of this project, we watched in fascination and horror as these prominent influencers with huge audiences dragged their followers ever deeper into right-wing conspiracism, all while reaping significant financial rewards.
They utilized already well-established digital marketing networks and social media profiles to profit from toxic misinformation.
Their followings exploded because it turned out that the anxious market was hungry for contrarian spiritual influencers that mirrored back their metaphysical beliefs, their grandiose psychology, their mistrust of science and medicine.
Now, of course, I've just chosen a few of my favorite conspirituality rogues to check in on.
There are many, many more that we covered in the book and that we've looked at over the course of the last four years on the podcast.
Late to that particular party that we've been discussing so far was comedian, actor, and proudly sober kundalini yogi Russell Brand.
But since he got up and running in February of 2021, it has been all political conspiracies all the time and it's only escalated.
He's always been very spiritual in his thinking.
But now, in addition to rubbing shoulders with Tucker Carlson and fresh from his recent devastating sex abuse scandal, Brand may be becoming more and more Christian curious.
The point, I suppose, of Christmas, the original point, whether it's a pagan point, a pantheonistic point, or heaven-forfeit, a Christian point, is that change is possible.
Isn't that the message of Christ?
That we can let go of who we are and find comfort in Him.
I love that bit.
From Galatians.
I love that verse from Galatians that says that when Christ died on the cross, we die with him and we are reborn.
Now that's an Easter message, I suppose, rather than a Christmas one.
But the idea that we can be born anew, the idea that whoever you are, whatever you've been through, you can be reborn.
You can remould yourself.
That the construct of yourself within yourself is something that can be overcome.
That the external stimuli and its impact on you and your freedom is something that when united we will be able to overcome together.
That the message that we can reform the world in an image of greatness is a message that we need now perhaps more than ever.
But the Christian message or the Christmas message, if anything, is one of rebirth, reawakening, sacredness, divinity, the coming of the Son, the coming of the Father, the awakening of the divine in all of us.
And surely now more than ever, we need to explore these opportunities together.
Merry Christmas.
Amen, brother.
All right.
That's a preview of where Russell ends up.
And the whole point here is that as 2023 drew to a close, I got the itch.
To check back in on some of these main characters from our book.
So, dear listener, this is New Year, same old conspiritualists.
Of the group I've chosen to review, Plandemic director Mickey Willis was the least active
over the holiday season and into the new year.
He's not really posting to social media or YouTube and old tech platforms like Rumble are also pretty quiet.
I do get his newsletters though.
And, well, he's got product.
And he's turned Plandemic into a series.
A franchise.
A world of its own.
There are now three movies.
There's a book.
And of course there are supplements.
In 2021 Willis partnered with discredited doctor Vladimir Zelenko to sell a product called Z-Stack which falsely claimed to be a virus prevention protocol that could kill COVID and prevent hospitalization.
Watch what they say and then watch what they sell.
In November of 2023 Willis started promoting his new supplement called Fierce Immunity and the
brand name is the brand name behind it is Rebellion with a lion logo so rebel it has two l's lion
rebel lion and wouldn't you know it JP Sears is front and center as an affiliate endorser he's in
the video he's holding the supplement he's saying how amazing it is once again this is new but it's
very similar to z stack The formulation claims to unlock mechanisms that restore the body's natural immunity.
And when I say it's very similar, it makes similar claims and it has mostly the same ingredients.
So I'm imagining it's something of a rebrand where Willis is probably taking a bigger cut, but that's just speculation.
If only medical science had a way to, quote, unlock mechanisms that restore the body's natural immunity that had successfully undergone phase three trials on a combined 200,000 people if you take all the different vaccines together.
But you know, it's tough to compete with a natural product designed to supposedly make you free to be fierce as a lion.
So that's Mickey.
Kind of a short update on him.
I mentioned that JP is partnering with him on the new supplement promotion.
J.P.
Sears is always active on social media.
Let's see what his messaging was all about around Christmas and the New Year.
When you're gathering with relatives that you see no more than once a year, how do you know that they haven't fallen into a terrorist sleeper cell and are here to eliminate you because you are so important to America?
Insert!
Just assume that they have.
This is where tip number two comes into play.
It's what I like to call the old gun in a tree trick.
It's where you put a gun in your tree so you can use it to root out the undercover terrorists who are in your very own living room.
Get on the floor, Grandma!
Are you working with ISIS?
Prove to me that you're not with ISIS!
Now get on the floor!
Oh, you can't because of your arthritis?
Well, arthritis kind of rhymes with ISIS!
Now get on the floor!
Okay, so at least JP is consistent.
It's not really funny, but he's committing to the shtick.
And he is, to be fair, parodying the community he now inhabits, to some extent.
Christmas time is no time to relax your prepping mindset.
If anything, it's the time of year where you should amp up your paranoia so you can protect yourself against things that are probably never going to happen to you.
Hi, I'm Don Doomsday.
I'm here to give you expert Christmas prepping strategies so you can protect yourself against your family members that you should probably assume are all terrorists out to do you harm.
Christmas is the day that either Jesus was born or died for your sins.
I can never remember which.
But nonetheless, how do you respond when, at a family gathering, a relative of yours spits in the face of the Christmas spirit by saying, Happy Holidays?
Well, there's no solution to this quite as effective as what I like to call a rifled-up Santa.
Here's what it looks like.
Happy Holidays!
Get on the floor!
I will not let you tread on me with your Constitution eroding, communist subverting language!
I want you to take that back, Uncle Brett!
Having poked fun at the preppers and the gun nuts, JP returns to his more familiar approach in recent years, which is making liberals sound like effete, hysterical weirdos.
Why do you people find it even necessary to celebrate Christmas?
Well, a lot of people find it beneficial to have a lord to worship and obey for their betterment.
I have that.
You have Jesus?
Ew, gross.
No.
Fauci.
Ew, gross.
My lord is science.
My lord is divinity.
Now look, though we have disagreements around what you call the holidays and what I call Christmas, I bet we have some common ground somewhere.
Yeah, like the magic of the holiday season.
How someone is always watching you, judging you, whether you're being naughty or nice, and then rewarding you or punishing you accordingly to help keep you in line.
Okay, yeah, I guess we can agree on Santa Claus.
Santa Claus?
No!
I'm talking about mass surveillance and a social credit score system.
Would you at least agree that this time of year is nice because it gives you a good reason to get together with your family?
What are you talking about?
It's still not safe to gather indoors.
Are you trying to kill everyone?
But then, there's always commerce.
It's the holiday season, which means it's time for family stress, pain, and suffering.
So how can you handle those crazy relatives of yours that still think we're in the first 15 days to slow the spread?
Like when you get together and they try to inflict their hand of tyranny on you with their controlling safety protocols that are very scientific.
What can you do to eliminate that stress?
Well, here at Awaken CBD, we recommend compassionately looking them in the eyes, holding their mask down, coughing, and then giving them a big smile to spread the holiday joy.
And though that'll be fun and well worth it, when that doesn't work, try relaxing with our Awaken CBD Day to Night Bundle.
It's complete with CBD Energy Soft Gels for the day to help you put your crazy relatives in their place.
And CBD Sleep Soft Gels to help you sleep like a baby, no matter how much you offended everyone.
And with this special offer, the Day to Night Bundle offers you a 20% holiday savings.
Click here to get yours.
Enjoy!
Let's shift gears now.
We'll stay with the commerce, but put on a feminine face.
This ad is posted as a video at the very top of Dr. Christiane Northrup's Facebook page.
I'm in my 60s and have had night sweats and hot flashes since my early 40s.
I've been reluctant to take hormones as I'm typically not a person who takes anything.
I've had wonderful results from this product.
I'm sleeping well at night.
My energy is back.
My hair has stopped falling out in the shower.
My skin is much more soft and less dry.
And my moods are much more chill.
The first week, my sleep was restored.
And my hot flashes and night sweats were gone.
Over time, I've continued to feel more like my young self again.
I'm so happy to feel well and normal again.
Thank you for a wonderful product.
I feel like I have my life back again.
Wow, so basically this is fierce immunity but female coded, right?
Same grift, different sex, different demographic.
This is an ad for the Amata Life menopause supplement and Northrop is part of their brand identity, like her name is on the product.
What really strikes me about the commercial, did you notice this?
The language is generic!
It's a first-person testimonial, but it never mentions the name of the product.
It just calls it this product.
It almost seems like the kind of ad spot you buy that's sort of prefabricated and then just insert your brand name and, you know, your product image.
It's not very convincing.
Now, on a more serious note, it turns out Christiane's brother was on a ventilator toward the end of the year.
She doesn't say why.
And here's how she reported on it.
So tonight my brother came off the ventilator.
Last time I checked, he had a fever of 102.
I'm not so worried about fevers.
We should let fevers burn themselves out a lot more.
They're part of the way that the body destroys fungi and bacteria and other things, bioweapons and so on.
So we will see.
I do know that he is fighting and I believe that he got the message that we can do this.
Let's have a new mission.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to completely rehabilitate your body.
Start over, clouds of glory.
That's what it is.
And apparently everyone up there goes, you've been to Earth?
Whoa.
Wow.
You did Earth?
Especially now, right?
There'll be statues of every single one of us, it seems to me.
Anyway, I'd love you to still pray.
Okay, so family illness, check.
Metaphysical grandiosity, check.
Referring to COVID as a bioweapon, check.
And the body's natural response, i.e.
fever, as the best defense against that bioweapon.
And by the way, it also kills fungus.
I should mention here that Christiane Northrup has stopped doing as much social media.
She now has all of the clips that I'm sharing here behind a substack paywall.
I should say, I've extracted the clips from pieces of content she has behind that paywall on substack.
Here, she encourages her subscribers to not be afraid of saying things that mainstream allies will say make them lose credibility.
And turns out, she's been told again and again throughout her life that she's losing credibility when she references, say, Meridians and Qi, or speaks against vaccines, or talks about past lives.
Well, here's her response.
And I want to invite you to see if you can keep score, like count on your fingers if you can, how many different conspiracy theories she mentions here.
Call it conspiracy theory bingo.
I was talking with some friends and one of them said to me, why do you, why do you persist in, you know, I read an article by you and then at the end you wrecked all of it.
You totally wrecked your credibility by mentioning extraterrestrials.
Like, you know, you could probably win some hearts and minds, but then you always blow it.
I remember a a good friend of mine, a man whose work I have loved.
And I had mentioned acupuncture meridians and the flow of qi, or qi, in the acupuncture meridians that run through the fascia of the body.
And he said to me, why do you do that?
When you do that, you lose all credibility.
Obviously, I'm not going to talk past lives to people that don't believe in them.
Just like I don't come out with, you know, all childhood, not a single childhood vaccine has ever been tested in a placebo controlled trial, not one.
And also, I'm not even sure that we've ever actually isolated the polio virus, nor am I even certain that there are viruses.
Most people have so much trouble believing that it is the blue-blooded, copper-based bloodlines of Lucifer and the 12 bloodline families that have been running the frickin planet.
Yeah, Pfizer makes a lot of money.
But it isn't.
It goes way beyond that.
It goes way higher up the food chain than that.
It is actually a parasitic extraterrestrial species, and the Elohim are that.
The Elohim in the Bible.
And so, when you know these kinds of things that 30 years ago would get you locked up, This is the time to talk about them because the pendulum is going to start coming back.
It's going to start swinging back in a big way.
And it's us.
It's us, this small group of warriors of the radical right.
It's just something when she really gets going, isn't it?
Okay, so here's Christiane's New Year's inspirational.
You ready?
We speak our reality into existence through our words.
Some of you, I know, are not surrounded by other people who've been following this nefarious agenda.
For three years, and at least in the medical field, it's been my whole career for decades.
So our job starting now, but especially tomorrow in the new year, is to be the light.
Be the light and know that all this work you've done to expose your own fear, your own anger, your own sadness, your own disappointment, all of that has not been for naught.
You've been doing that work and now you are burning with the light of truth.
And because we have really built up an army of truth and light over the last three years, 2024 opens the door so we see each other far more clearly than we ever have before.
Well, if it rhymes, it must be true.
We're going to bid our old friend, Dr. Christiane Northrup, farewell.
But not before I share this gem with you from her Substack feed.
I'm going to set the scene.
Picture a video with a scene of medieval or Game of Thrones style battle.
It's a battlefield.
It's real right-wing wet dream stuff.
It's dark and misty.
We see the outlines of various warriors in armor with swords and battle axes.
They've kind of gathered around a clearing and there's a low fire, a kind of pressure natural fire in the middle with an angelic warrior hovering above it.
Enormous wings slowly moving.
A massive white light over his head, a long sword in his hand.
So that image with the rhythmically moving angel wings, everything else is still, plays unchanging for the whole video with the music that you're about to hear and the words I will now read for you moving above the image printed there.
Warriors' Creed.
I am a soldier, author unknown.
I'm a soldier in the army of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is my commanding officer.
The Holy Bible is my code of conduct.
Faith, prayer, and the Word are my weapons of warfare.
I've been taught by the Holy Spirit, trained by experience, tried by adversity, and tested by fire.
I'm a volunteer in this army, and I'm enlisted for eternity.
I will either retire in this army or die in this army, but I will not get out, sell out, be talked out, or pushed out.
I am faithful, reliable, capable, and dependable.
If my God needs me, I am there.
I am a soldier.
I am not a baby.
I do not need to be pampered, petted, primed up, pumped up, picked up, or pepped up.
I am a soldier.
No one has to call me, remind me, write me, visit me, entice me, or lure me.
I am a soldier.
I am not a wimp.
I am in place, saluting my king, obeying his orders, praising his name, and building his kingdom.
No one has to send me flowers, gifts, food, candy, cards, or give me handouts.
I do not need to be cuddled, cradled, cared for, or catered to.
I am committed.
I cannot have my feelings hurt bad enough to turn me around.
I cannot be discouraged enough to turn me aside.
I cannot lose enough to cause me to quit.
Jesus called me into this army.
I had nothing.
If I end up with nothing, I will still come out even.
I will win.
My God will supply all my needs.
I am more than a conqueror.
I will always triumph.
I can do all things through Christ.
Devils cannot defeat me.
People cannot disillusion me.
Weather cannot weary me.
Sickness cannot stop me.
Battles cannot beat me.
Money cannot buy me.
Governments cannot silence me.
And hell cannot handle me.
I'm a soldier in the army.
I'm marching, claiming victory.
God wins.
I will not give up.
I will not turn around.
I am a soldier, marching, heaven-bound.
Speaking of holy war, Laurie Ladd, like Mickey Willis, owed a fair bit of her rise to pandemic fame in 2020 to Christiane Northrup.
Let's see what she has to say.
This is the year that you finally step into what it is that you've been desiring.
Stay determined like the lion.
Stay focused and determined on what your heart is desiring, what you're creating, what you are moving towards.
Don't let any distraction, a person, an experience, an event, pull you.
From that focus of where you are going, just like the lion, you're heading straight towards it this year.
Nothing is going to pull you out of what it is that you desire, that you've been heading for.
Whether it's been a year, two years, three years, or six weeks, you're moving towards it and this is the year that it happens for you.
Stay determined.
Stay focused.
Do not give up.
Okay, so just generic life coach inspiration at the start of the year then?
Okay so just generic life coach inspiration at the start of the year then?
If only.
We dubbed the style of Instagram video that Lori does and many others, the selfie sermon.
It's equal parts cold reading that could apply to anyone in her audience, and radicalizing grievance mongering, and the inevitable argument from cosmic authority that is always present anytime someone claims to be channeling.
It's a new year, but she's still at it.
We've been chained. We've been imprisoned.
And there is some sort of energy right now that's just boiling up.
And unfortunately or fortunately, we're taking it out on each other.
You know, we're screaming at each other.
There's anger and hate and rage for each other.
And it's like, hold on a second.
This is about you learning how to regulate what's happening inside of you.
That you have been literally suffocated your entire life.
You have been told what to think.
You have been told what to feel.
You have been told how to be.
Your whole life.
I don't care where you grew up.
If you are on this planet, you have been programmed to be anything other than who you fucking are.
Period.
You have been told everything.
This is good, this is bad.
This is right, this is wrong.
This is should, this is shouldn't.
And what's happening right now on this planet is there is an uprising of sovereignty, there's an uprising of individuality, there's an uprising of just being who the fuck you are.
And this explosion, it can feel very war-like, it can feel like angst and anger, and like, you know, it's just an explosion.
And it's how we come back to who we are.
Who are you?
Are you what your parents told you?
Are you what your wife tells you?
Are you what your husband tells you?
Are you what your job tells you?
Are you what your religion tells you?
Who are you?
What do you actually believe?
What do you actually feel?
What do you actually want in your life?
Now, here's Lori's version of the artsy video that for Christiane Northrup was a holy war prayer.
This one is a new age sci-fi received history of... well, I'll just let her tell you herself.
Reptilians entered the human's energetic field in such a way that has caused many humans in their current lifetime to have a hard time opening their seventh energy center and trusting they are safe and sovereign in their body.
They have cellular memories of lifetimes where these reptilians had infiltrated their field and body to pull their life
force out of them.
The reptilians' technique was simple.
They did not have to shift the humans or their own energy field.
They merely energetically entered the humans' energetic field,
accessed the human channel through the 7th energy center, and then gently pulled the light from the human body out
through the channel.
Once the reptilians understood this technique, they began pulling the light from thousands of human bodies.
They watched as their own power and energy within their forms increased.
The human was unaware of the energy being drawn out of them, but they did experience many physical symptoms.
The act of pulling light out of the human body caused the brain to slow down, which caused disorientation, nausea, headaches, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, vertigo, or zombie-like behaviors.
So far, both J.P.
Sears and Christiane Northrup leaned into Christian imagery and reference points during this time of the year.
Mickey's work is really just focused on commerce, and Lori is not really getting as much into the Christian thing.
She's still engaged in the battle between Galactic Federation attuned lightworkers and evil reptilian aliens.
But what about Russell Brand?
Well, Russell was definitely feeling the Christmas spirit.
But this oddly traditionalist pastiche you're about to hear with the familiar conspiritualist fetish for sovereignty is very interesting.
Alright, Merry Christmas.
Every year in our country we have a thing called the King's Speech.
Well, it's the King's Speech this year because the Queen, God rest her soul, died.
The King is the anointed one, chosen by God to be the voice to the people, the figurehead of a nation.
And I want to talk to you about sovereignty.
What is a sovereign, or a king, or a queen, or a monarch?
Well, sovereignty, I believe, is something that we all have to find personally.
What I'd like to offer you this Christmas, and it's been a weird, weird year for all of us, is the idea that your personal sovereignty, your personal monarch, your personal king or queen within you is the king or queen that is worth saluting, treasuring and being subject to.
It's been a beautiful, crazy year, intense, full of opportunities for growth, full
of light and darkness. Let's get into the year. Some of its highs, some of its lows, and
some of the opportunities for growth we've all felt in the lead up to this magnificent Christmas.
Now here's a thinly veiled reference to how his scandal was really a political hit job from a
mainstream media protecting materialist In our country we lost the queen and gained a king and then there were one or two things that impacted me quite heavily personally towards the end of the year but even those things can be used to mobilize inward change and help me to recognize how the world really functions.
What is the role of the institutional media to amplify the message of the
powerful, to shut down and crush dissent, to ensure that there is one narrative or potentially two
narratives that keep people in a state of perpetual fear and that dissenting voices
will always be opposed, challenged and shut down when necessary. And none of us can
afford to live entirely in the material world. Particularly what I mean by that is
the constructed material world of the self. You know me, I talk about spirituality all the time.
And the reason I talk about it.
I think we have a winner in conspiritualist bingo.
That was impressive.
Here, Russell weighs in on the coming election year and see if you can notice the little detail he leaves out.
He could be auditioning for Fox News.
Tyranny and dictatorship are definitely on the rise, but is it this new corporate, globalist, neoliberalist nightmare that is technologically controlling us, or is it adorable populists like Donald Trump with his new set of weird baseball cards?
living in some kind of dictatorship where you can't rely on the deep state
agencies such as the FBI and CIA when it comes to legal matters, when you can't trust
Big Pharma when it comes to medical issues, you can't trust the legacy media,
you can't trust the state. Is it any wonder that demagogues and populists
rise up, people that are charismatic rise up and capture the imagination of a
population and rightly or wrongly garner incredible support?
The most obvious global example being Donald Trump who the legacy media are
spending a lot of of time telling you will be a massive dictator if he ever
gets into power again.
Exiling, executing, imprisoning, even though Donald Trump's already been in power before, and I don't think it was all that different, except there were perhaps a few less wars.
Let's have a look at the legacy media's hysteria when it comes to a 2024 term, and note how they never mention, Oh yeah, Donald Trump basically just like Barack Obama and Joe Biden, right?
Also, Russell, it's Trump and the Heritage Foundation that are openly describing the path to dictatorship, not just a supposedly hysterical corporate media.
Nothing could be more sumptuous than wannabe mystic philosopher Russell Brand having a Christmas chat with Jordan Peterson's favorite reactionary mythopoetic Christian, Jonathan Pageau.
What is there to galvanize in those kind of folklore and fairy tales that is extraneous to Christianity or is it within the Per view of Christianity, I'm guessing within, given that it's you that's done this, and if so, how so?
Yeah, well, in terms of post-modernity, it's interesting.
I do take some aspects of post-modernity quite seriously.
I think that post-modernity is useful because, you know, let's say the really modern or the Puritan approach to fairy tales, for example, was horrible, right?
It's like, let's take these stories that have a kind of grit to them, that have a kind of a darkness or a messiness to them.
Let's make them into simple morality tales.
And so we take out all the All the kind of grungy bit out of the fairy tales, we present them as these very clean stories.
But that's not what the fairy tales were.
And the postmoderns realized that.
And so they just said, let's expose all the grit.
Let's expose all the cynicism, all the dark power dynamics, all the sexual stuff in the fairy tales.
And let's ignore these Puritan versions.
And I think it's both.
I think the stories are powerful, beautiful, shining examples of how to be and not to be.
Cool.
When you do that with something like Snow White, I'm guessing that there are sort of functional, no folklore would succeed if it did not have a functionality, I suppose.
So, I suppose there are social codes and ethics and things to do with chastity baked into Snow White, the inability of Snow White to evade her own female darkness if she's not willing to voyage into the forest.
I'd like to know what them underground miners go down into the unconscious and they mine for jewels.
Why seven?
I'd like to know that.
Yes, we'd all like to know indeed.
We can hear all the alchemical ingredients of conspiritualist apophenia floating free to have wild idea sex here.
You know, apophenia where you perceive meanings and connections and layers of causal relationships that are not actually there.
I'll just remind you that Peugeot has interpreted totally unhinged Alex Jones and QAnon ideas about child sacrifice as actually being true because abortion.
But, you know, Russell is up for it all.
Friends, if you made it this far, thank you.
I'm sorry to put you through having to listen to all that.
You can chalk it up to my perverse curiosity or a masochistic fascination if you must pathologize it.
I call it checking in on some old friends, just to see how they're doing.
I'll leave you with Lori Ladd.
Now here, she's on Instagram.
She's just rolled over.
She's still in bed.
Her bare brown shoulders are visible against the white comforter.
Messy hair.
No makeup.
It's nice enough advice.
And I have to admit, it actually disarmed me for a moment.
Because it seems so much like she's telling her 224,000 followers what she really most needs to hear.
4,000 followers, what she really most needs to hear.
Yeah, it is coming through strongly, Lori.
Good morning.
I'm literally just waking up, but here's what's coming through.
You're moving through everything.
You are not stuck.
You're only stuck in whatever you're in because you don't want to be in it.
And you're arguing against reality.
Switch the lens.
Don't try to figure out a solution.
First, just switch the lens and say to yourself, I am moving through this.
That's it.
I'm moving through this.
I'm moving through this.
I'm not stuck.
Say it until it is ingrained in your beingness and then start to make some changes.
But you are not stuck.
You're just resisting against what is right now and it creates the illusion of being stuck.
