Bonus Sample: Imaginary Children # 3: Mole Children vs. Gazan Children
What does it mean to spill ink on dispelling conspiracy theories about non-existent children being murdered, while actual children are being murdered? At what point does the labour of debunking right wing wackjobs also do the shadow-work of supporting the liberal-center orthodoxy?
Matthew looks at how with QAnon, the liberal-center press criticized irrational responses to imaginary traumas, with a great sense of urgency. But on Gaza, they criticize rational responses to actual traumas, and imply that protesters are asking for too much, too fast.
What happens downstream of denials, minimizations, and contradictions? What are the social and mental health implications of moral injury? Are these not some of the same social conditions that generate conspiracism?
Content warning: discussion of children, genocide
Show Notes
Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza? New Report from BU School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic Lays Out Case
Rights expert finds ‘reasonable grounds’ genocide is being committed in Gaza | UN News
Dems Gave the 'Uncommitted Movement' Space to Talk About Gaza — Just Not on TV
First-Ever DNC Panel on Palestinian Rights: We Need to “Restore the Soul of the Democratic Party”
“Stop Arming Israel”: Meet the DNC Delegates Who Unfurled Banner During Biden Speech
201: Librarians Are Not Groomers (w/Heath Umbreit) — Conspirituality
What I Saw Was “Unfathomable”: Doctor Who Worked in Gaza Speaks Out Against U.S. Arming of Israel
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential - The Lancet
Clearing Gaza of almost 40m tonnes of war rubble will take years, says UN
Israel Has Killed 2,100 Babies Under 2 Years Old in Gaza, Rights Group Says | Truthout
NYU barricades benches
College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests
The Black Mark on the Democrats’ Big Party | The New Republic
Amnesty International Warns of U.S. Complicity in War Crimes in Gaza
Christian Wiman | Yale Divinity School
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Hello everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
We are on Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
This is the third episode in a bonus series called Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children.
At the end of March, I released an introduction to this series, so you can scroll back through your Patreon feed and look for that before jumping in here.
But to recap that intro, this occasional series will be looking at how children as symbols, but not persons with their own internal lives, are at the center of conspirituality, anxiety, and discourse.
I'll be looking at two types of imaginary child in this landscape.
One is an object of dread, and the other is an idol of aspiration.
Now, the first episode began in that dread category with the title being Fetal Remains.
It was all about how two men, both leaders in the anti-abortion movement, invested real remains with passionate but imaginary desires that obscured from them how much harm they were causing to real children and families.
Now, Rob Schenck, one of those men, woke up from that fever, but Frank Pavone is still burning with it.
The second episode was God's Word on Spanking, after the title of a pamphlet published by Ralph Drollinger, a former professional basketball player from San Diego who founded a 501c3 called Capital Ministries in 1996 to facilitate prayer meetings and study guides for congresspeople in Washington Today's installment takes a little bit of a different tack.
It's called Mole Children vs. Gazan Children, and the question it tries to address is, what does it mean to spend effort on dispelling conspiracy theories about non-existent children being murdered While actual children are being murdered.
At what point does the labor of debunking right-wing whack jobs also do the work of supporting the liberal center orthodoxy?
Now, I should say up front that there's a content warning today.
I'll be referencing young victims of genocide in Gaza.
And for those of you who are not comfortable with my use of the word genocide, I'll link to the Boston University UNHR study in the notes as well as the UN's report for March.
And if that's still an obstacle, you can just imagine me saying collective punishment or military response that is now at least 4,000 times more deadly than the Hamas attack of October the 7th.
As well as burying the tiny strip of land under 40 million tons of rubble that the UN says will take 15 years to clear away.
So, I've got a paradox to unpack, but I need to set the scene first.
Back on the first day of the Democratic Convention, that's August 19th, The Nation magazine hosted the first ever DNC panel on Palestinian rights.
Now this was a real political advancement, as we'll see, but the party kept it at arm's length.
It was untelevised and it was staged at McCormick Place, the overflow space for the convention about four miles away from the main events at the United Center.
Despite the low visibility, the panel was hailed as a breakthrough moment by James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, who opened the discussion by noting that Palestinians have been seeking a platform like this unsuccessfully within the DNC for over four decades.
And he recounted how the earliest breakthroughs were catalyzed by the support of the Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, but that now the organizational energy was really coming from the Arab-American grassroots, from people like panelist Leila Elabad, the sister of Risha Tlaib, and the co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement.
Now for many, including me, the emotional high point of the panel came in listening to Dr. Tania Haj Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who has been working in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders.
She opened her remarks by noting that her time in Gaza bore witness to civilian massacre after civilian massacre.
She said that she wanted to humanize the enormity of the situation through stories.
And so she started with this one.
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