Conspirituality

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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.

In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970, which led to 25 bombings inside America.

Meanwhile, in West Germany, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group) terrorized their country in the name of revolutionary anti-imperialism. They enacted bombing sprees and were also arsonists, kidnappers, assassins, and bank robbers. Palestinian friends even hijacked a plane on their behalf.

Both groups exploded onto the scene in the early days of mass media. Riding rebellious pop culture, these global rock stars drove a generational wedge between Boomer parents and kids hungry for radical change.

Leaders were charismatic, stylish, and eloquent. Striving for the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Yasser Arafat, they were white, mostly from well-educated and well-fed backgrounds. Yet they saw themselves as part of the vanguard that would lead a worldwide revolution of the proletariat against capitalist domination.

Julian weaves together a very seventies of how the Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, Provisional IRA, and Palestinian groups like the PFLP and Black September intersected.
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How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.

Show Notes

How the Internet Disrupted Science
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Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is, how wellness influencers weaponize it, and what it represents in the context of Ayurveda.

Show Notes

The Great Inflammation Panic

Chronic Inflammation and Cancer

NIH Autoimmune Diseases

Celiac Disease

Cambridge press release — "Chronic diseases misdiagnosed as psychosomatic can lead to long term damage"

Sloan et al., "I still can't forget those words" — Rheumatology (2025), DOI 10.1093/rheumatology/keaf115

Vasculitis diagnostic-delay data — PubMed

Miranda Fricker interview — Philosophy Bites

Bleuler 1911 coinage — NCBI Bookshelf, The Metamorphosis of Autism

Bleuler's original 1911 text excerpt — Autism History Project

Sontag, "Illness as Metaphor" — full text, NYRB

Louise Hay — Natural Ways to Treat Autoimmune Disease

Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No — critical review, Globe and Mail
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Matthew applies Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics—a theory of extreme politicization without institutional consequence—to conspirituality and to his own political biography.

Continuing a mini-series begun with "Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism," Matthew traces Jäger's periodization (mass politics, postpolitics, antipolitics, hyperpolitics) through his own life: his grandparents' union halls and church auxiliaries, the "collective amnesia" of the 1990s, his years in cults and the reformist Toronto yoga world, and the pivot from brick-and-mortar ashram cults to digital influencer cults during COVID.

Drawing on Jäger's proposal that renewal must be sought in sites of social reproduction, Matthew wonders about a hypothetical "Care Labour Compact," or organizing unpaid caregiving labor into durable political power.

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Last week, around 72,000 migrants flooded from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. What really happened? Was a local girl abducted, never to be seen again? Did the Moroccan border guards step aside (or even collaborate) in an organized operation?

Right-wing politicians and pundits were quick to crank up the moral panic machine. This is what open borders look like! They’re heading for our country next. Donald Trump said it was nothing compared to what would happen in the US if Democrats win the mid-terms.

Then came the conspiracy theories. Was Morocco retaliating against Spain for a recent deal with their enemy, Algeria? Were America and Israel behind it as punishment for Spain’s socialist prime minister being staunchly pro-Palestine and refusing to support the war in Iran?

For a few magical days, right- and left-wing conspiracy theorists spread overlapping versions of the Great Replacement Theory.

Julian dives into the diplomatic complexities, ideological contradictions, and historical twists to make sense of relations between Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Israel to ask: are there any good guys or is it colonizers all the way down?

Show Notes

AP Fact Checks Unsubstantiated Ceuta Claims

The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta

The Real Story Behind Ceuta

How X Turned Ceuta Crisis into A Global Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory in 72 Hours
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