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Tangent: Granola Fascism (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-02 20:13:39
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hi friends,

This is one of those Tangents where at every stage I had to fight the urge to upgrade the project to a main channel video essay. Maybe I still will! I read several books for this, and justified the amount of research time to myself on the grounds that it will likely all be relevant to future videos. Conspiracy theories, New Age spirituality/wellness—all of this is subject matter I've been wanting to cover for a long time and intend to cover further.

I came pretty close to reshooting this one because I had basically filmed 4.5 hours of rambling from an outline. But the end of the month was approaching, and fortunately I feel like I was able to sculpt it into something coherent in editing. There remain several little factual inaccuracies that I've tried to correct with text on the screen.

If I were to expand this into a main channel video I would probably want to avoid the word "fascism," which is a bit hyperbolic for some of what I'm covering. It totally applies of course to QAnon, or to what I'm calling "wellness eugenics." But I've tried to take a more balanced and sympathetic view to, for example, alternative medicine, where nuance is required and we shouldn't be recklessly throwing around accusations. I hope I made that clear in the video.

Anyway, enjoy, and let me know what you think!

-Natalie

P.S. Here's the video link, in case embedding doesn't work: https://youtu.be/HSzXeUkosBM?si=n2klqv-v7HBVxiyD

Files

Tangent: Granola Fascism

Thanks so much for your support! ▬ Contents▬ Part 1: The QAnon Shaman 00:07 Part 2: All Fascism is Granola Fascism 04:05 Part 3: New Age as Fascism's Doppelgänger 18:29 Part 4: Conspirituality 37:22 Part 5: Wellness Culture and the Denial of Death 46:49

Comments

kitty

Ohhh my god… there is no one here… hello mother..

kitty

Thank you for your thoughts and the work that you do

kitty

You have revealed so much to me and I am always thrilled to see what you have to say

jupiterr_x

mother 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️

Ivee Baker

Yes this is becoming so ubiquitous!! what a timely tangent from our mother

Fiore

MOTHER!

Skylar

I’m sat

Seed Oil Sommelier

I want you to know I stopped studying for a law school final to watch this.

highclass_lady

About to leave for an 8 hour flight! ✈️ Excited to download this for the plane! Perfect timing! 🎉🎉

Cat Cannon

So excited for this topic!

N

yippeee hooray yipee!

Ariadne Marinoy

MOTHER ! * i yell into the early comment field covered in ominous mist*

Connor Gibson

ur devious for dropping this during my finals week 💀

Theo Stratford

Your ability to read dense books in a matter of weeks puts my lazy ass to shame…..but I’m still gonna watch this entire thing before picking one up hehe

John Giacobello

Haven't watched yet but the "Granola Fascism" alert on my phone made me laugh really hard

Jack Burgess

Going into this tangent with absolutely no idea what Granola Fascism is, has me both excited and scared.

Matt Raebel

Aw hell yeah! I love that you covered this topic. I'm excited to watch it.

Yousuf Kazmi

This is what Tangents is for, it's a free hit to explore subjects that could be refined into a main channel vid :)

Pierre Brown

Yesssssss something to watch as I eat my chicken quesadilla

Jake

So excited! Made my day thanks mother

Nikee Star

I would like to add: the overwhelming majority of Norse Pagans aren't fascists or even close. It's unfortunate that fascists love hijacking others spirituality for their own ends.

Joel Keene

I'm surprised and a little alarmed by how many of the spirituality terms I recognize from playing "genshin impact"

Felix

Thank you!!

brnabez

was here literally two minutes ago checking if I had missed an upload lol. Thanks for the video. <3

Dinah Sanders

On first glance at the image for this one I thought you had the most gorgeously ornate mic stand ever, then realized it was just a nice dress. 😆 Looking forward to this one...

luna

how did you know i was watching your last tangent where you mentioned the concept of a granola fascism tangent mere hours ago

Adam Finch

My family always referred to a group of hippies as a Waldorf Salad. (I went to a Waldorf school for a while). The term Granola Fascism feels like it fits in that tradition.

Mars2Venus

As someone in your top paying tier, PLEASE feel free to put these tangents out publicly at some point. They’re entirely up to snuff with the quality of your main channel videos (sans heavy editing) and I go back to them all the time. I pay what I do to support what I think is valuable, entertaining, and highly informative work and I think it’s more than okay if these tangents are upgraded into mc essays or are even uploaded as is. It would be so cool if more eyes could eventually be on the work you do with these

Benedict Marko

First time we heard of The Golden One here in ages :)

Tonya Woodmancy

I was so happy ths one won! Excellent ❤

g.c0r7

Contrapoints became basically a better news source for me than the actual news

Isla View

omg mother is mothering in this screencap

Lynn Short

Nothing gets me more excited then a Tangent

ROSE MAYER

Amen. This is really well said. Christian deconstruction has become a thing, and now we can start on spirituality deconstruction with these lenses. Bless. (as a spirituality person, this video was a relief, btw.)

trev

a tangent, lemonade, and chicken salad is just what i needed rn ty mother 🙏

Filip Åsberg Montgomery

Aaah man, I have the same tat as the QAnon shaman?!? 😩😩😩 I grew up in Sweden and I got a Valknut tattoo when I was 18 and now the white supremacists have taken it

Dee

I've been reading Doppelganger and wondered about if you read it/ your thoughts, so this is a treat!

Gentle Cactus

Can we get a livestream where you just go over books you've found particularly helpful/interesting? Besides twilight, which is obviously the book to end all books and needs no further explanation

Many Lesions

So good. Thanks natalie. Ive been reading a lot of philosophy of disability of late and while it is revealing about a lot of our worlds attitudes toward contemporary life there is a tension within some of it that rubs me the wrong way in that it can be overly concerned with the kind of binary thinking you talk about here. ie Modern medicine is obviously dehumanizing and traumatizing… therefore homeopathy is valid! Thanks again for helping draw these through lines or patterns of thought together in ways that make sense of our insane world. Awesome tangent.

Liam Gregory

Really enjoyed this one! Interesting references and I appreciated how far you went to identify patterns in both historical and modern movements of wellness and the contradictions therein. Nice work!

Elaine Murphy

Honestly, these tangents are absolutely good enough to be main channel videos. I appreciate all the work you put into production value and visuals, but that's the icing, not the cake. Thanks for all the work you do!

Garga Lenoir

I liked the video, but I don't love it when you say we need alternative medicines that have a better human touch. Alternative medicine is just treatment that can't prove its efficiency in a controlled environment. If something is proven to work, it's regular medicine. And the positive impacts of a better human touch have been proven. Now it's the practices and the administration that has to follow, not alternative medicine.

Norbur

Not sure I don't want to hear the rambling bits too

Jon Berg

You really are the Oscar Wilde of our time 🥹❤️

lloyd1807

It has been like five years since the golden one has been mentioned. We need a retrospect

Alecxy

I wonder why do you see fat bodies in those caricatures as body fascism but not the result of fast food industry imposed on people bc they cannot afford better? does the artist blame people for being fat or blame fast food industry? Similarly everyone with a phone look incredibly depressed. Do you think the artist blame people for being depressed or blame phones?

Laura Bea

Big agree with your assessment of Wordsworth and Emerson … Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal is where it’s actually at if you want that Romanticism vibe with an edgy emo twinge

Kyle

Boom. another banger.

Jessica Cheeri

Oh my goodness thank you for doing this one. I'd been noticing this trend and its "you'd be surprised" qualities. That it tempts with a rollback to the last time the world seemed to make sense goes even deeper than I'd have figured I'm also loving that you've been noticing power exchange dynamics just around, this time with doctor visits

Simply Kumquat Secret Whatnot

For real. THANK YOU for this. This articulates some weird things I noticed as I became immuno-compromised / newly disabled in 2021 and watched hitherto lovely friends just...get. Very Weird(tm) about it all.

SuperMaria

Terrified and soothed by you is exactly what I feel describes my experience as a Contrapoints subscriber. Is this a cult? Thank you Natalie, paying $2 for something this high quality feels like something I shouldn’t be allowed to do.

Hanna Lisowska

Do you have a list of books you referance in your videos?

Aleksandar Petrović

How does she manage to read so many books? Like I try so hard to read books and I can only read about 1book per month.

Cassidy Brinn

Treatments don't prove themselves, it takes money and power to study a medical intervention, and so of course there is classism, sexism, and racism in that process. Who is going to fund the rct for thyme tea helping a sore throat?

Pavle

just wanted to say one of the coolest things about being a patron was seeing fragments of past tangents kind of recur and intertwine in the Twilight video. thank you for these!

Devin

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, CONTRAPOINTS MENTIONED RUDOLF STEINER AND ANTHROPOSOPHY!!!! I'm a Waldorf School survivor...... I've hated Anthroposophy since before Nirvana's "Nevermind" existed!!!

no

tbh i disagree with your characterization of the use of the word fascism as hyperbolic, i kinda think we are already there🤷. (check out 'the jewish century' and 'the house of government' by yuri slezkine, there's some interesting stuff re individualism/collectivism, freud, marx, cultishness, a different sad and weird country etc. dont mind what ppl think of it online though cause a lot of reactionaries and basic anti-communists think it's for them on account of their being both clueless and erudite - i dont think the books are crankery but they are very enjoyable to a point that the pleasure of reading them doesnt require comprehension)

Laura Bea

Also Umberto Eco’s essay (is it an essay or an article? I don’t even know) is still one of the best pieces I have ever read on fascism…

Cassidy Brinn

I see her disillusionment with all religion here - some of the broader points would hold for any religion or spiritual practice. Stories in which our lives have divine purpose. I take from this that there's a connection of all spiritual traditions to fascism, not just new age. If it boils down to meaning vs facts, we nearly all go for meaning. Fascism depends on these spiritual motivations, that sounds right. Fascism needs those stories for its appeal. But to imply that spirituality depends on fascism seems reductive. There are so many more nonviolent and nonracist forms spiritual practices take

Chrombus

“One of those…” you mean like every tangent? 😜❤️

Wissa

I was sad that the topic I wanted, UFOs, which I thought would be the rabbit whole into New Age Aryan Alien Atlantis Conspiracy, got the lowest amount of votes….but…lo and behold. Haha I’m embarrassed that I know this, but I do: Considering your last point about the contradiction flex, if you dig deep enough into the New Age sphere, you’ll find a figure named Bashar, who is a guy named Daryl who channels at Alien from the Essassani Collective (don’t ask), but one of his main points is that the truest way to TRUTH is through paradox, the union of contradictory ideas into one, the transcendence of both logic and irrationality, which might as well be the same thing in that realm of thinking. In my defense of knowing this, you tend to know these things when you’re schizo. Awesome tangent, Natalie.

Jenny Rodriguez

I used to watch Steve Cutts' videos back in 2015 or 16, but I stopped because way everything is framed in a very off-putting way, until you went ahead and used the worlds I needed to describe the uneasiness I felt even though I agreed with the overall themes of the videos, thank you for this analysis, it's very much needed.

Philip Carter

Thank you thank you big agreement and I cringe

Beth Jerky

damnit this got me good. now i know why i've always felt a bit icky looking at modernist art, fertility paintings, and even helma af klint.

Lydia Roesler

Thank you so much for this! As someone deeply in religious studies and theology, I am relieved people are recognizing the spirituality of fascism and I think you did a wonderful breakdown of the spiritual undertones of fascism. I understand the disillusionment that researching this must have caused. I am a huge fan of the liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle (who coined the term Christofascism) and her analysis of revolutionary anti capitalist mysticism vs fascist mysticism. I always recommend her book "The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance" to anyone interested in mysticism so they can understand the warning signs of falling into fascist rabbit-holes.

Albbbert

It’s true. As much as people shouldn’t trust alternative medicine, regular medicine can’t be always be there (access or affordability) for every person. So alternative medicine is the only alternative.

Warble42069

I think this is definitely one that should become a main feed video at some point! I need to show this to my mom, who is very much into new age spirituality, but is not a total loonatic. Very informative, can't wait to read Conspirituality and Natural Causes.

Jason Fischer

This topic definitely feels like a main channel video.

Forgiveness333

Quantum Kansas sounds super fucking liminal…

Jeanne H-B

“Waldorf Salad.” Excellent.

Claire B

You always raise such excellent points! Your several points about medicine were very thought provoking. As a doctor, it's funny how the physical exam in general is both really essential to what we do (I have heard some really difficult stories about people who came in with really advanced issues after months of phone visits in 2020-21 that missed something visually obvious) and also, inherently performative. I have also had patients who I genuinely didn't need to examine, who ask me to examine them, like they don't feel a doctors visit is complete without one. I feel obligated to do exams even when I don't learn anything new for the sake of record completeness. It's weird. The inherent hierarchies of medicine are many, and while some are extremely obvious as I train (the very strong medical chain of command from attending doctor -> resident -> med student, the "prioritized" vs "deprioritized" areas), many things engender hierarchy unconsciously. Cadaver lab, which is held up as "the best way to learn anatomy" despite the fact that things do look different when preserved in formaldehyde, probably does train us to see patients as objects. It's a shame that many start their medical career out not thinking much about hierarchy and then absorb the importance of it throughout training, so we continue to perpetuate hierarchies with our patients and future trainees. Anyway blah blah amazing job made me question my whole life best philosopher of our time

Mina Y.

Shannon Blake’s music sounds like the “Get Connected for Free! With Education Connection” commercials

TMoney2007

This feels like some Baader-Meinhof stuff, but I literally just listened to the Behind the Bastards episodes on Savitri Devi... Maybe I consume too much media about fascists...

Claire B

Garga I would add on in support of your point: often times, alternative medicines are perceived as having better human touch than western medicine! Plenty of news stories about how people go to naturopaths and other alternative practitioners because they're given a 60 minute appointment when doctor's visits are often super short. We in Western medicine need to do better at the human touch and actually listening thing. Also, at least where I am, alternative medicines may be more expensive than western medicine, but because people feel that the treatments are being tailored to them and they are listened to, they'll pay. Or because the treatments don't make them feel like shit, because they're often not doing anything.

Paul McGee

How are the sodomites managing to get so pregnant all over the place? 😅

Emily Broth

I'm begging you to make this a main channel topic!

Ale Kenward

One of the things that frustrate me the most about my mother is how much she indulges in magical thinking, despite being an engineer and coming from a very academic background. She's not a full-on anti-vaxxer, but she needed some bullying to get her shots. I don't know how certain people get infected with these New Age brain worms and I find it worrying.

Chrombus

I have made a list on Goodreads of the books and media mentioned in this video and a few other Contrapoints videos as well. I have ADHD and I'm usually high so.... you get what you get. Natalie, please let me know if you would rather the information like this contained in the tangent videos should be kept for subscribers only. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/201164.Contrapoints_Tangent_Granola_Fascism

D Muthulingam

Oooooooh hell yes, nazis, white supremacists generally, the hindu nationalists, libertarian back to the land farmers that michael pollan elevated for a while...v. common themes. I am working on an essay collection about infectious disease and colonialism--the monstrous other, concerns of bodily purity and discipline, infestation...its all tangled up. Anyhow theres plenty of very open authorotarian fascists in news cycle now

D Muthulingam

The linkage btw hinduism and contemporary racialization is persistent, eg isabel wilkinson's caste. Projecting onto primitivism or "noble savage" anxieties of industrialization positively or negatively is also on that spectrum (the external political version of Jung's shadow self)

Jack Lewis

Thanks for always putting to words what we’ve all been sensing but haven’t known how to describe. The ending was a bit abrupt…did anyone else notice this? Choice or just me wanting more??

michaela

really enjoyed this one!

abi

NATALIE! The psychedelics video does not work! And I want to watch it on my phone! Please!!!

Jeffrey Haught

This should def be expanded into a main channel video.

Tom Stoddard

Excellent video, could absolutely be expanded and transformed into main-channel format if the desire is still there

Tao Beloney

I am delighted to learn that the qanon shaman is a fucking dweeb

Emerson Whittaker

Not a woman but afab, and while I've been lucky to have pretty decent doctors my whole life, I get frustrated when I try to look up medical/body questions on my own because the research on the bodies of afab people is almost non-existent. It feels like no one knows how any part of female anatomy that's not directly related to reproducing or analogous to male anatomy works, every form of birth control kind of sucks, and you get the feeling that they could easily answer these questions and improve things but it's just that the medical researchers don't care. When you feel like the medical establishment doesn't have the answers and won't look for them, you turn to community knowledge like reddit forums to give you the answers, which obviously makes people vulnerable to this type of facist granola thinking.

Brad Vinall

To Natalie's point above that she "filmed 4.5 hours of rambling from an outline," I took her "we need to make a few concessions to alternative medicine" comment to mean she thinks we need an alternative to the current profit-driven state of healthcare in the US; one that better addresses patients' psychological needs during treatment. I don't think she was arguing for the efficacy of alternative medicine. See her comment "I completely disagree with Northrup. Uphold germ theory. Fuck Atlantis."

evistre

Great tangent, thank you! I'd love to see this as a main channel video essay, too :)

Mac

Wonderful tangent. One of your best. Thank you!

Zach Moroney

One of the few (many) tangents I wished was a full-mega video. Would have loved a further delve into the exploitation of conspiritiuality for capitalist gain. I've been personally obsessed with "andara crystals" which are, in reality, cast off glass slag selling for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

Katherine Jannakos

At least granola fascists and the medical establishment can be united in their shared hatred of Fat People (I am a fat woman, can confirm).

Paola Nicoll Alzuru Castillo

Life is indeed a cycle: the golden one has came back from the ashes of the older Contra videos TwT The gurl's just asking questions!! Let her pass!!!

Maria

Great Tangent. Really like the topic and try research it went to it. I sympathy with what you said about doctors. And I think a lot of the system is a mess that leaves the patient in a very fragile situation. However, doctors do have to have some sort of emotional distance from the patients. They are focus of the disease and try to not let the emotional part to be involved in the process. When there is that emotional link it is easier to commit mistakes or misjudgements, or avoid the necessary treatments because you start feeling pity, or sympathy and feel bad for causing the pain that the necessary treatment will bring. There is a reason why doctors can not treat people emotional close to them. They make more mistakes . I think that is why people tend to get more attached to nurses, they are the bridge between the medical situation and the emotional need of the patient. They are more focus on the care, the well-being and emotional state. It is complicated, but I do agree that patients feel very lost and alone in the current health systems and there is definitely the urgency to do better

Jess

Have you thought much about the connection and convergence with far right Christian nationalism and conspritualist fascism? Because this is totally what’s happening with Trump’s base, even with all the major contradictions between fundamental new age ideas and Christianity, they are not only on the same team but they are the same people in many cases.

Millie

Really, really liked this one. I'm a woman and have had such horrible experiences with doctors and I just don't really trust a lot of them anymore. I trust and value science, but whenever I do go to the doctor I usually maintain a heavy dose of skepticism and low expectations. I have read a lot of stuff about women's poor experiences with doctors, but have never heard it expressed in the way you talked about it here, Natalie--it really is the feeling of being dehumanized and reduced to a collection of organs. The personal connection and the experience of *feeling* cared for is missing, and is a key component to the act of healing. Humans aren't computers or robots that, when "broken," just need a part replaced or fixed, we're social creatures and a certain level of trust and empathy is necessary for real care of health. Also--I grew up Mormon and left the church about 6 years ago, and haven't replaced that spiritual void in my life since. I have lately been missing spirituality in my life. I feel like it allows me to somewhat understand the emotional process of a person being influenced by some of these new age personalities to believe in things that are Quite Bad. It's hard for me to find a kind of spirituality that works for me after having a traumatic and abusive experience with spirituality in Mormonism. I hope I can figure it out soon because yeah, facing the reality of death head-on SUCKS! Lol. Your closing thoughts about how spirituality should be used to benefit us really resonated with me. Makes me think of the saying, "Relax, everything is out of control." I do think that a spirituality that can help to embrace uncertainty and chaos is the way to go. Can't fight the ocean waves, just need to ride them. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for another great video Natalie!

pjkc

I wonder if the same kind of analysis applies to self-help literature in addition to New Age stuff -- the first place my mind went with the whole section on manifesting / individualizing politics was Jordan Peterson's advice to "clean your room before you set about changing the world". In general, believing that your life, and more broadly political life, can be sorted out with a mindset change or productivity hack feels like a socially palatable version of crystals and shamanic stuff. And on the flipside, the worst thing about this mindset is that you have to suffer not only whatever the non-Self inflicts on you, but it *also has to be your fault*. I've struggled a lot with the shame that comes from this outlook, where I blamed myself for feelings for years that essentially came from situations outside of my control (in my case, lack of motivation in the years after losing a very close loved one). In this way, I'd say that the New Age mentality isn't really even a sweeter pill to swallow! The gambit is a false one! It's far more bitter than the truth, once you start trying to assign blame for what happens in the world based on how well you practice your ritual. Anyways, W as usual, and we stan a Muesli Moderate

emflomo

I love that The Golden One has resurfaced in this season of ContraPoints

Gabby

I can't believe we talked about mixing religion and science fiction without mentioning scientology. Thanks for making this! I always feel like I gain new perspective and insight from watching these videos.

Cheri Attix

I just finished reading Doppelgänger and I’m happy to see some of its themes covered and expanded here. I’d love to see this one posted on the public channel. I’ve been really distressed seeing my doctor-hating anorexic sister adopt a very rigid body fascist mindset since the pandemic. It would be great if this discussion went mainstream. Wake up sheeple!!

triggthediscovery

You cover a lot of good ground in this one, definitely worth considering incorporating these ideas into a main video (or just releasing this one for the masses). I've noticed the refusal of death in my family. Personally the scariest thing is the knowledge that despite how rational I feel, time will likely rob me of that rationality. Some day and I will, like my parents and their parents before them, succumb to my fear of death. I think on some level everyone hopes they'll meet death face to face, on their own terms, but most of us will keep the fight going deep into the night long after the last lights went out. It is in our nature, at least it unfortunately is in mine.

purpleforest

ur patreon videos are just the best ever seriously! omg I can’t WAIT to watch

Commendable Freeloader

Maby some people want homogeneity and if some don't fit that mould they should be expelled out of sight. Their homogeneity as a ancient aliens think or "we are one", 'if you don't like and subscribe then you must be ... ... ...' etc. Otherwise, this is a fascinating and a great video to mull over! Would it be fair to also contrast the crunchy to misanthropy?

Commendable Freeloader

Oh yeah you reminded me of the appropriation of minorities beliefs into (not just) western cultures. Maby the word appropriation needed to be explored a lill in this vid?

Garga Lenoir

>Who is going to fund the rct for thyme tea helping a sore throat? Well, these guys for example! https://academic.oup.com/fampra/article/40/4/564/7241820 A quick google shows that thyme tea is recognized as useful against sore throat by the medical community. It's not alternative medicine, it's just medicine. Public universities run studies to try out the effects of alternative medicines all the time. There have been dozens of thousands of studies trying to prove homoepathy.

Commendable Freeloader

Huh?! I'm interested to hear more of why you feel this way, if that's ok

Faye Saville

Just finished reading 'Conspirituality', which is exactly this topic so would recommend to anyone interested!

Roisin Isner

I was thinking about the techno fascists -- people like Elon Musk and Garry Tan and Balaji Srinivasen, who literally wants to create a sci fi dystopia in San Francisco. They don't reject modernity, but they do have an apparently spiritual way they talk about things like AI and Crypto and "accelerationism." They're "woowoo" purple fascists too, but it's like techie esoteric.

Mattias Skagerholm

This was fantastic. So many interesting ideas and adjacent ways of thinking! RELEASE THE FULL CONTRACUT!!!

Douglas Jett

Natalie, I really think you should turn this into a full channel video. The end conclusion enough is worth sharing even as a reminder for everyone to stay on guard. Great tangent, regardless. Thank you.

Olivier

This could be a main channel video. No edits required. 10/10

RmhWork.

best tangent ever. I’ve been obsessed with eugenics and eco-fascism since covid and this video is :chef-kiss:

Sondra R

As someone who fell into a conspiracy rabbit hole after 9/11 (god help me I read every last David Icke book) and generally gravitates toward culty things that make me feel like I’m in on a secret, I really appreciated this tangent.

conancat

Lactose Leftist Mother does a video on Granola Fascism 😌

Rotdotdot

Amazing!! 🤩 i love it when you put the righteousness that i didnt know I had in check! Thank you! Have you read Alex Ebert’s essay about the Law of Attraction and Trump’s family history? I think it has enough references to help build the “contradiction is a flex” section in to its own chapter.

Shani

Theorem one: I saw the title, and I was thinking, "naomi klein slipped into someone's book pile?" thank you for this fab tangent. Factoid two: the origin of our species came to earth on the battlestar galactica, don't you know. We are all descended from toasters.

Runa Siong

Wonderful video. Thank you ♡

Marilou

A truely huge topic you've chosen.. i believe 4h are not even enough to cover it all. Somehow i have an urge to ask you to look at Walter Benjamin and Alan Moore's Promethea for a kind of leftist spiritualism that might be valid as such. I am sure you know more than enough about Benjamin, but do have a look at Promethea if you haven't..

Damon Harris

Wow. This was so good. We need the main channel, full drag version of this, but even if that never happens, I will be eternally thankful for this tangent and the thought that you are articulating here. This hit hard for reasons both deeply personal and profoundly political. Thank you. ❤️

Moss

I would love to see the list of books you read for this one!

Angie B

Hate to agree with you but this should've been one for the main channel. I would listen to the uncut version 😌

Amanda Fisher

Great video Natalie! (Tangent)-ily related, someday I would love to see your take on thr history and impact of the "Spiritual Warfare" craze of the late 80's - This Present Darkness and other Frank Peretti books, Satanic Panic, basically DnD larps for Christians - and how it has influenced the modern right conspiracy movements like QAnon. I just saw a giant popular board game was just released ("Deliverance") that's basically "This Present Darkness: The Board Game" and I'm worried the cycle is coming back around to this stuff once again.

Carolyn Davis

i subscribed here literally to see these tangents and have been loving every single one of them. also loving how they build on each other, from the new atheist movement trickling into gamergate, trickling into qanon, and now into granola fascism

Ingeborg Olderø

This was probably my favorite tangent yet. I love and appreciate that you talk about the anti-fatness within granola and fitness culture.

Ozzie Oncel

This is only slightly related but I‘ve been trying to find books on creativity and find it odd how difficult it is to find one that doesn’t dive head first into spirituality. As if being creative and having a rational approach to creative processes is not an option.

Audrey M

thank you for this!

CrystalJade

Great tangent. I do feel a bit guilty about eating granola for breakfast now! I think it’s right to say that both the disavowal of death and the search for efficient cause have a lot to answer for. It’s like a misrecognition of the most fundamental kind. Great work, I think you’ll def be able to weave these themes into main channel content!

For Autumn

...so this is why conservative Christians loooove boho home decor, huh

Katie

I can't speak for Natalie, but for me, the issue is that these artists deal with a really nuanced issue by using a grotesque caricature of the person, which is a very un-nuanced and intentionally humiliating portrayal. I agree that people should have access to healthier food and that food deserts are bad and that getting together in person shouldn't be so expensive we have to resort to phones so often for social connection....but I don't think that perspective is depicted by a gaping grey flesh man adhered to his seat or angry fat Jessica Rabbit emptying a bag of cheetos between her legs, you know? Like, it is clear in the visual language that these subjects are intended to be gross, and what is depicted is their state of being, not the act of their being deprived by corporations. Even the segment of the cartoon that shows animal testing is showing the act of abuse itself, not just a gnarly mutated animal existing as an abomination on its own. It obscures the reality that real fat people in the real world live lives full of dignity and humanity and fun and movement, outside of a weird offputting grey color scheme, despite the abusive acts enacted upon them by corporations and the healthcare system and so on. These people aren't gross, and the fact that they're fat isn't the issue, the issue is that their health is being threatened...largely by the people who have already decided they aren't deserving of dignity because of these fitness eugenics ideals. Does that make sense?

mado

My question is, if leftist critique causes pessimism and isn't necessarily convincing/meeting the same emotional or psychological needs as granola fascism, what kind of left movement can meet those needs? Or is that just hippies again?

HappyJa

One of ur best ones yet<333 I honestly agree with the comments that u should absolutely do a main channel video on this!!! (If u like ofc)

Jessie Lees

I love this topic. Basically how fascism bleeds their oppressive ideals into what can be wholesome spirituality, making sure to emphasize small kernals of fairly truthful/factual ideas and conspiracizing (not sure if it's a word) the hell out of it. This stuff doesn't make me feel disillusioned anymore. But, I'm fairly resistant to it. I practice my spiritual stuff on my own without discussing almost any of it with others. I also have invisible disabilities, so I am that "horrible spiritually dirty" person that "deserves" all of my suffering despite wishing the best for literally everyone. I do wish the facists would leave these things alone, but it's better than just being anti science. Because spirituality is inherently about feelings and thoughts, which are individualized but bring others together when they think/feel similarly. This allows oppression to grow when left unchecked. Spirituality is a great tool for personal or group control, which makes it easy to abuse. The wellness stuff really sucks when abused as well. Trauma informed practices like yoga can help with people who are disenfranchised. Placebo effect can help people consider that maybe they can go beyond the circumstances they've been given enough to see a lucky opportunity (for those with good luck). But those concepts are also used to abuse.

Jessie Lees

Oh, if you can find books on the mathematical patterns of things, I know there must be some at least in music for sure. Because there are patterns to how we draw and paint and do photographs and everything that are more aesthetically pleasing.

Noah Murphy

This put together so many things that I wasn’t able to synthesize in my own head. I hope you turn this one into a full length video someday!!! 🙏🙏🙏

Jessie Lees

I think there's a major lack of empathy for people within the leftist "community" because it's hardly a community. There are a ton of virtue signalling people who are quick to critique, and then ride off on their high horse. That solves exactly zero problems. I wonder sometimes if a portion of leftist politics isn't just people with leftist ideals (but no cohesive action) with conservative actions, in so far as picking on leftist people and thoughts. Cohesion, actual empathy, and focused actions would make a difference imo.

CrystalJade

Hello. If you can get past paywalls there is a lot accessible via Google scholar. J Kaufman, R Sternberg and an array of other psychologists try to define creativity and its features as a cognitive construct. V useful when I did my thesis. Quite tough to distinguish from intelligence, but it is distinct - even though the education system is mostly primed to focus on intelligence alone. I’d definitely recommend this subject as a great rabbit hole to spend time in! Good luck!

Faye Saville

Commented before watching😂

madgesmic

Howwww are these videos so fucking informative and enlightening and you're serving them up basically once a month???!! Literally too good to be true. I usually rewind multiple times just to write down various sources of yours and research topics I want to explore. Totally goddamn revelatory, as always

Chantal Sorrentino

I do wish we didn't demonize the word "conspiracy" and assume theorists are all right wing lunatics. There are real life conspiracies that happen all the time and are proven to be true. Take for instance Bush lying to the American people that Iraq has WMDs in order to start a new war that was wildly unpopular. Or MK Ultra where unknowing victims were literally mind experimented on in hospitals and universities all over America and some of Canada. Or the Tuskigee syphilis experiments. All of these things had people who were suspicious of something not right going on, and surely those people who tried to piece together the theory were called crazy. My point is, never trust your government that much. Never assume conspiracies NEVER happen because they absolutely do.

bins

!!! :)

Martijn Busink

Like a friend of mine said a long time ago when we all were reading into Guenon, Evola, Schuon etc: Traditionalism/perennialism inevitably leads to fascism. You might enjoy Upton's System of Antichrist

Ozzie Oncel

That sounds great, thanks for the recommendation!

Aaron Thiel

This was so good. I love giving you money.

Ruth Sturm

Every American conspiracy theory comes back to the desire to give the world, and our lives, "meaning". It's too bad so many of us don't believe in psychoanalysis bc it could be really helpful in dealing with that impossible dream

Emily Barton

This is only tangentially related (unintentional!) but I have been thinking about about eugenics/ableism have resulted in the normalization of mass infection (like the ongoing covid pandemic -- which i also find really bizarre because we have seen this neglect/negligence from our media and states in other health crises, too?) and how many of the right wing protests (like anti-mask/anti-vax) demands have been accepted (implicitly by leftists who are not thinking/understanding collective access/disability justice / don't care anymore) because so many of those protests are really extreme political expressions of the status quo -- anyways, thank you, natalie, this video is teaching me a lot

Adrian Balij

Your browsing history must be wild.

Conor Mcvarnock

Yes, I think the more you know about IRL conspiracies the real histories of government cover ups, the more sordid and mundane it seems the more the measure you get of what the state is capable of. that should be a tonic against the really wild stuff. The postmasters scandal thing thats going on right now is a good example.

Sara

I hope Natalie realizes that the fans here are not going to cancel her. We are here because she tackles these complicated, multi-side topics and explains them to us in a clear and entertaining way.

CrystalJade

Hi. Definitely interesting subjects! The easier questions def focus on linguistics and numerical skills. Pattern recognition and ability to see equivalence in meaning, then applying an existing concept to a new domain in these fields is fairly measurable. When we talk about the emotional meaning of images or sounds it feels like there are extra dimensions. Like an abstraction of abstraction that expresses meaning to the viewer/listener in a direct visceral way. It’s so expressive, like the purest form of communication. Maybe it’s meta-metaphor, and also why it offers a range of meaning. All depending on ability to suspend inhibition to open up the space for processing this. I love this subject! Sorry for the long ramblings!

Maxim Foster

Thank you for the work you do on all your videos and tangents

Rene Sagardia

Ms. Points, this is main channel material and the fact that I can't share it with my homies this very second is... well... not a big deal but it feels like one. Don't deny them your dharma.

Ixchel Melinger

The ending made me think my browser glitched, it feels a bit mid sentence. But I loved the video and how many examples you included in this really expansive category. It’s a topic close to home that I’ve been highly motivated by. Taking it back to accepting notions of non self is poignant.

Going America All Over Everybody's Ass

Hahahaha the endiiiiing! Fake archeology and mystical nonsense influencers are so oddly satisfying to watch though. Jokes on them though, pyramids arent real.

Couch Table

OK I'm a few minutes in and imma let you finish but as a practicing hermeticist you're making me feel like a moderate Muslim on Fox News. If the right gets spirituality (crying, screaming, throwing up) and we get the NFL they're gonna win. Pressing play again.

RB

Thank you. Incredible work as usual. Main channel it for sure

RB

Yes! Exactly

Christy Maeder

It's giving classic Contrapoints content! So happy to see Golden One and Shanin Blake refernces and scared that I knew both. xoxoxo to you Natalie!

L

This was such a good video! I became a Patreon today so I could watch it and it did not disappoint. I practiced Ashtanga Yoga for a decade (which was borderline cult level) and was not fully "in" wellness culture but damn close. I also live in Arizona (tracks). I quit yoga/meditation and completely rejected everything wellness in 2020 with a growing unease with the anti-vax, cover for eating disorders (I myself developed pretty disordered eating habits while in Ashtanga and practicing Ayurveda), and spiritual bypassing. My "spiritual path" led me to political action for the collective, while everyone else I knew through yoga found it "divisive" and so on. Anyways, I've never been more proud of myself to have left that all behind. I work in public health, specifically a niche of public health of food access, and it's so tainted with obsession with "clean food" and many slippery slope concepts to eugenics. Facinating tangent, thank you!

flwrsevrywhr

dear lord, love you and your beautiful mind so much. ty, mother 🙏🏽

Lauren Greenspan

Natalie, what you said at the end about spirituality helping one cope with death and ego demise instead of transcend it is putting to words something I've been thinking about for ages but couldn't quite put my finger on. Thank you! Have you read Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets? Her discourse around frenzy and spectacle would be fascinating to add to this conversation. Also, if you'd ever want to talk about Ehrenreich while queer platonically snuggling... a girl can dream, right?

Drew Dutton

Anyone who wants to know anything about the right (particularly the non-christian right) should know about Julius Evola and Rene Guenon

Bob Bobbertson

As I move more into the Fitness world I see this in a very different perspective, the best way I can describe it is the same and Christian ideology of "saving" people from eternal damnation. Fitness gurus and not only those at the top but those that have made fitness their life, push this slim fit fast life-style onto other people even though the extent to which they achieve this body/ this temple is just as destructive as their fears of "unfit" people with the use of starving, drugs and fringe supplements.

Arlie

Natalie I love you so much. I'm truly a fan and have been for years. This is the first one of your videos that feels like a miss to me. You make quite a few good points, but overall I think you're throwing a bunch of babies out with the proverbial bathwater. Yes, all these forces in society are interconnected. But they are not all one and the same. I gotta hard disagree with the idea that Esotericism, Mysticism & Spiritual/Health practices like Qigong, Ayurveda, and breath work are all about nostalgia for a Golden Age, as well as the idea that they inherently imply a sense of superiority/inferiority. Many of these traditions we now associate under this "New Age" umbrella were never meant for the masses/mainstream. They were intentionally hidden traditions so the few spiritual seekers that realized on their own they wanted to live a radically different way had to seek out teachers who were hard to find, because of the fact that they were so easily misunderstood and misappropriated. And you had to prove you were worthy, be initiated, etc to learn the secrets. It is the stripping these practices and beliefs of their context, and spreading them to the masses for money that is the problem--the problem is not the spiritual path/practices/beliefs themselves! My take is that fusing Spirituality with Capitalism and Dominator Culture is where it turns into Fascism! Let's go after that, not New Age Spirituality itself. I wish you would have made that distinction.

Arlie

Maybe these traditions need to go back to being hidden again? and maybe you're inadvertently helping that to happen by calling them Fascist and Anti-Leftist? But still, I see the "woo-woo" stigma prevents many people I know and care about from finding the health solutions they desperately need, and can't find anywhere within our healthcare system. And for that reason primarily, I think a video like this could possibly, indirectly, cause harm.

✨Lux✨

Yikes, I reupped my subscription and immediately felt personally attacked and falsely maligned. Like look, I'm not going to deny there are some bigots and fascists among the spiritualist communities as there are among most non-monolithic groups in society. But in my experience I would say they are a much smaller minority than they are in almost any other group. In my 28 years among the occult communities it has been my experience that the vast majority of the spiritual community are queer and queer allied polyamorist leaning, kink loving, hardcore leftist activists.

Ying Xiang Tan

I don't know why but this video is the first time I became aware that you have more videos available apart from those made public in YouTube. Best money spent.

Ash Gabrielle

I also dig a lot of occultic stuff (I wouldn't say I'm remotely "granola" but my spouse and I are very into the occult). But I don't think we're being attacked in this :) I think Natalie is aware that she's talking about a pretty small minority. At least that's the vibe I get from watching the video.

Oliwier

I think this was a really good note to end this topic on. Living is the journey to the end. I think we conceptualise life in a way where a persons life is never considered to be able to be completed. A lot of people have the idea that the longer we live the more meaningful our lives are. I think this is what kinda drives exactly those kind of spiritualists to try to deny their own mortality. Idk maybe it’s just me but I can’t imagine how this kind of mentality around death can be fulfilling and not lead to regret later down the line. I also really liked when you mentioned the dehumanisation of doctors and medical staff. It’s something I never really thought about in that way but was kinda eye opening for me about why some ppl unconsciously don’t see doctors as ppl that can help them even tho they never had bad experiences with anyone before. Anyway that was the first upload since I subscribed and I can absolutely say it is worth every penny.

Paula GV aka Yukimi87

Thanks for analysing this content so I don't have to suffer those kind of fascist manifesto.

Teodor Dysthe Lyngstad

It’s interesting to compare the treatment of rationality in this tangent to the tangent on new atheism. In the latter, you (somewhat) embraced freudian irrationality as an alternative to the rationality-as-cologne worn by new atheist antler clashers. I remember that I found this strange (I even left a comment saying so), since what you were actually doing was discarding reason only in name, not in practice. This is because it’s very reasonable to be aware of one’s irrationality, so as to be able to overcome it wherever possible. The new atheists were so blinded by their imagined inherent rationality that they stumbled over the edge of reason, but this does not mean that rationality is not worth striving for. On the contrary, being aware of that edge allows for better reasoning. Moreover, what you were doing in that video was to present a rational argument for embracing irrationality, which is paradoxical and self-defeating. My view is that you can strive for rationality while at the same time acknowledging that irrationality will likely always be present. Rationality doesn’t have to be a moustache. With that in mind, it’s nice to see in this tangent that you’re not totally lost in the sauce.

gustav kawasaki

these are so much better than main channel videos though I appreciate how main channel videos are steering in this direction as well

✨Lux✨

If that's the case, she definitely didn't do the best job of making that clear at all.

Benjamin

I think looking at fascist parallels in art is totally fair! People have been examining eugenicist and racist legacies in science more explicitly, and it make sense to be mindful of those in artistic movements as well.

Sole Núñez Vettorello

Hello, Natalie! Here is a neophyte student from your group of esoteric teachings :) As a tarot practitioner (I went alone into the mouth of the fascist lion) I couldn't agree more with your presentation: I don't think it's necessary to say "not all occultists" because Obviously the video documents a cultural phenomenon of great relevance and tradition in modern history, which has also been discussed by many thinkers, philosophers and cultural critics. The new forms of fascism are so sadistic that sometimes they make me miss the old, most flagrant ones. Thank you, a resident of the Argentine underdevelopment greets you and admires you.

Wren Stryker

!! Thank you for pulling on this thread. A case study for this, in my life, was a regular at my old job at a hardware store in 2020. She was an all-organic, vegetarian homesteader in the mountains, who read tarot and practiced yoga, and was the most virulent anti-vax, anti-“globalist”, racist, trump-supporting, QAnon, rude customer. I was often trapped at the very end of my shift, with no one else to ring up, as she’d proselytize her conspiracies and it was just paralyzing for me. She felt like a walking paradox. It seems she was the epitome of granola fascism

Stephanie Kauff

I'm Buddhist and one of the teachers from Tibet told his students about the first time he saw an airplane and he described it as a "large flying house" but this was during WWII and I was wondering why there would be planes in Tibet at that time.

Stephanie Kauff

I want to add that I'm offended the Q-anon Shaman refers to himself a a Bodhisattva 😂

Erk

Jeez this is practically a main channel video already. What did we do to deserve this? I did want to say, a lot of your source about medicine is talking about medicine from twenty or thirty years ago and more. For example, we don't really do "annual physicals" anymore, at least here in Canada. Even paps are going the way of the dodo. Decision making is taught differently in general. It's a slow culture change but it's happening

Matthew Mendenhall

You know what I’ve been thinking about… why hasn’t Natalie been invited to be a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race? 🥹

Dana Migdal

The more I hear from others about searching for meaning, the more I gravitate back to existentialist philosophy and how surprisingly comforting it can be. Meaninglessness doesn't have to just be terrifying chaos, it can also be freedom, lack of anxiety, appreciation of any good moment or connection, knowing that it'll all end eventually and there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well enjoy things wherever possible. And meaninglessness as a concept is a lot harder to exploit than other concepts and theories about the human condition, I think - fanaticism usually seems so linked with higher meaning and purpose. I find it pretty freeing to see the world as a big meaningless blob where everything is contradictory and nothing makes sense, because that seems to be the only answer to a world where you can find contradictions to pretty much any idea or assertion about reality.

Prosinco

“There is a pathetic story that Julius Evola tells in his biography. He recalls an extremely desperate time in his life in which he lost the will to live. […] Only an encounter with the quietism of Buddhist extinctionism saved Evola from madness and suicide. Only a newly acquired fascist spirituality, with its humanist and supremacist dream of material acquiescence and subjective indestructibility, could put a stop to the madness of the metaphysical masochism that he had been facing. This is how Miroslav Grishko recounts Evola’s torment and his recovery: Recounting in his memoirs an intent to commit s*icide and thus follow the pattern of his influences […] the seemingly haphazard discovery of a fragment from the Majjhima Nikaya spares Evola’s terrestrial life: ‘He who takes extinction to be extinction and, having taken extinction to be extinction, thinks of extinction, thinks of extinction, thinks of extinction, thinks “Mine is extinction”, and rejoices in extinction, such a person, I say, does not know extinction.’ Extinction must always be deferred, continually pushed towards the most extreme exterior point. S*icide and non-s*icide form the same gesture from the perspective of the remoteness of the higher form of extinction. In this conception of extinction’s remoteness, the unmappable model of inner war nevertheless yields the minimal form of a praxis, which infers in its performance the prosecution of a mission” -Gruppo di Nun, Revolutionary Demonology I think you hit the nail on the head in suggesting the danger of spirituality is actually the danger of a spirituality that opposes death rather than one that embraces it. I think part of why this video will alienate many is because it doesn’t offer much hope for a leftist spirituality beyond the final remark. I would recommend the book I cited if you are interested in a leftist take on esotericism and the occult rooted in this acceptance of annihilation, it is beautifully dark and hauntingly hopeful. On a personal note, my mom used to be a hippie, and still is into New Age stuff, homeopathy, alternative medicine, etc. She has been struggling with gastrointestinal issues for decades and a friend of hers recommended a couple of alternative medicine books. I did some basic research into the authors, and of course both turned out to be quacks. I have tried to warn my mom but she said many of the things you mentioned: the treatments aren’t working, the doctors won’t listen, I just want to live longer, etc. It is really painful to see someone you know fall out of desperation for people taking advantage of others and not be able to do anything about it, because what alternative can I even offer her?

Sev

She does say almost everyone has something under the New Age umbrella that they like. And she offers a solution that spiritual practices should reduce the ego by acknowledging the inevitability of death and incomprehensibility of the universe (to any one person's intuitive sense-making.) I feel like making spiritual traditions more exclusive would only make them more ego-flattering.

Teufel Corp

Xavier Renegade Angel would fit perfectly into this

Bryce

This was wonderful and put into words a lot of things I have thought concerning the New Age beliefs many of my peers have started expressing. I have always struggled with how I could reason with them when they seemingly easily believe these ideas that are based so much more in a desire for meaning rather than actual reason. It seems like a lot of people do not have trouble believing in things simply because they want them to be true and would prefer a world where those beliefs were real.

Theodora

“Even cowboys need a daddy”! Love it!

Ozzie Oncel

I love this, it’s right up my alley! Deffo a rabbit hole I‘ll be checking out.

Lsomethingsomething

A fascinating, deep-diving and thought-provoking tangent as always, thank you. In defense of Charles Eisenstein, it was his book Sacred Economics that turned me into an anti-capitalist, with his convincing deconstruction of the mechanics of capitalism and why it's inherently destructive (and all without any potentially polarizing Marxist language or framing). :d I've read the book that his short story "A gathering of the tribe" comes from, and I think it's a bit unfair to use it as an example of a "descended from aliens" trope, as it's clearly presented as a fictional parable or metaphor for a certain frame of mind, not a cosmological origin story, and the people in the story are not really "aliens" any more than, say, biblical angels are. :p

Lsomethingsomething

Anyway, as someone for whom Charles Eisenstein's books (can't vouch for where he's gone since the pandemic, I haven't followed him through that portal) were formative in shaping my budding leftism and giving me ways to critique capitalism (Sacred Economics) and imagine a better future beyond it (The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible), I'd strongly encourage you to give his books a second look. :3

ouijacorn

As someone with a hereditary disease/ chronic illness, I'm very wary of "wellness" culture for this exact reason. It's always "well, you must have done something wrong in order to be sick, or you're currently doing something wrong because if you were doing what you should, either in practice or in spirit, you wouldn't be sick". And from what I've observed, there aren't that many steps between that line of thinking and the Canadian hippie who thinks disabled people should die.

ScarJust

I have tried to grapple for years with why my father, who practiced kundalini yoga under an Indian guru, who talked endlessly of universal love and God realization, and the karmic mission to liberate mankind, who became enamored in western ritual magic and Rudolf Steiner, who claimed high mystical experiences, in the end has become a gun-totting virulent racist, flat-earther, Trump supporter and whole-sale conspiracy theorist. I think this tangent helps uncover how belief systems, even those that espouse forms of love and service to others, can by the nature of their hierarchical and essentialist structures lead to forms of fascism. Having traveled along some of these spiritual paths myself, I can say that while there is plenty of talk of love and oneness, most of the practices are insular, founded on ideas of purity and perfection that are used to justify the suffering of others and the specialness of those who "know," as well as to control the behavior of the people in the community. That is not to say, as some people seem to think, that there aren't amazing and wonderful people in these communities who really do wish to live up to high ideals of love and service. Those people exist - too few and far between. Or that fascism is the inevitable outcome of participating in these beliefs. Rather, I think what this tangent shows (and my own experience as well) is that there is plenty of material in these systems that readily lends itself to building deeply exclusionary, racist, ableist and authoritarian structures while seeming to be radical critiques and alternatives to the same. Thanks Natalie for helping me think about these things and for seeing and discussing so well some of the very weird stuff of our times!!

roxyamused

What was said at the end is how I feel, but I'm a buddhist. When the qanon "shaman" said he was a bodhisattva, I died so hard inside. I find it frustrating that that man might be the first time someone hears the word, but hopeful that it could spark curiosity of its origin.

C. P.

I think the point is, that most alternative forms of spirituality have also been used in a fascist way. Occultism has been used by the Nazis, even if it isn't used that way now! Neopaganism has also been used to justify racism (and unfortunately, in Europe it is still heavily associated with white supremacists). Her point is, that this New Age-Spiritualism, which has always been perceived as only positive, open-minded, and healing, can and is also being used for fascistic purposes. As in all of her videos, she is pointing out the extremists, and the real dangers they pose, since they have managed to skew public perception considerably in the last decade. Natalie is nothing if not nuanced, and she knows that the average practitioner is not an extremist.

C. P.

I agree. I think this video could do a lot of good to raise awareness. Judging by these comments, a lot of us have already experienced this kind of New Age Extremism, or can at least stamp off some of the buzzwords on the New Age Free Association Bingo Board (Merch Idea? ;) with people in their family.

Øyvind Rønningstad

I'm lowkey obsessed with the idea presented here about how conspiracy theories calm anxiety because they make things understandable. I feel this goes so much further than just conspiracy theories, deep into all sort of extremist political and social thought. People are drawn to authoritarian leaders who make things seem simple (this is "the authoritarian personality" by Adorno). I also see it in people who just say "fuck it, we need a revolution", and also people who want to tear down the state because the markets will magically sort everything out. I feel the appeal myself as well. The world seems chronically intractable, and we feel stuck with all these problems with no clear solutions. I think we have to actively fight the impulse, and also empathize with it, because the world is actually intractable and impossibly complex. Hopefully we eventually find better ways to cope with that.

Lsomethingsomething

Oh, more thoughts about Charles Eisenstein's work! He also has a podcast, and I've listened to exactly one episode of it, an interview with Daniel Schmachtenberger, who lays out a convincing case for why capitalism, and all its variations, will eventually - inevitably, inexorably - lead to the destruction of all life in the biosphere and why it's so hard to break out of that pattern as a society. All without using scary words like "communism" or "socialism" or even "capitalism" for the most part. It's worth a listen - might even pull you a little further toward the left yourself. ;) As far as Eisenstein's short story "A gathering of the tribe" that you referenced, it occurs to me that using it as an example of the "descended from aliens" trope is akin to using Plato's allegory of the cave as an example of the "descended from cavemen" trope in ancient Greek thought. Which would be pretty silly. I think the video as a whole would be stronger if that bit were simply cut - I don't think it demonstrates what you're intending to demonstrate there. The way I received that story - and the short animation that was made from it - was as an inspirational allegory about what anarchist organizing could (and perhaps should?) feel like. That feeling still guides my approach to leftism to this day. If anything, I think it's better as an example of the kind of spirituality that could lend itself to leftism as opposed to conservatism or fascism. Maybe a more optimistic note to end on? Worth a second look, anyway, I'd like to think. :)

Lsomethingsomething

Remember, it's possible to be leftist without tracing an intellectual lineage through Marx. I find a lot of inspiration in thinkers and authors like Charles Eisenstein, Douglas Rushkoff, or Daniel Schmachtenberger, who eloquently espouse largely leftist ideas and critiques of society (often to audiences who are more center-right) without overtly branding themselves as leftists. Come to think of it, that sounds like the sort of thing that you are often known for. :] Maybe there's something there worth exploring.

Nando Rossi

Oh that was a 🔥🔥🔥 one, amazing work!!!

Miro Šimek

Thank you so much Natalie for this video! I'm in some very deep shitty phase of my life right now, it's pretty hard to get up from bed most of the time as everything feels so meaningless in the end. This amazing video helped me so much to figure out at least some parts of why it is so and to hopefully slowly help me move out of it in a healthy non-radical way. "The hunger for meaning" sentence hit so hard, because I feel it so much and I was in some deep shitty phase of life during Covid years as well especially in 2019-2020. However back then the source of meaning in my life was exactly this New Age spiritual stuff which as you said contains many really good things in it and I'm trying to carefully distinguish and keep those, but has also big vey dark shadow side as you wonderfully explained in the video. In the period around 2021-2022 I felt like I finally figured at least some basic things out for a while, but now everything is coming back to ruins again as I'm once again revealing in the ways of looking at life I was leaning on all the layers of illusions, rationalizations, biases, selfishness and most of all that deep and strong thirst and hunger for any meaning to put on all those chaotic, bad or just mundane things to make any sense and to be able to navigate through them and keep my sanity. I'm glad that I'm getting out of it, but it's also hard and painful process. This hunger for meaning is also blinding me so much if I'm feeding it unconsciously and I guess that that is the best I can try to do. To slowly allow it to form from myself somehow with small baby steps and feed it consciously. To be aware that it (the meaning) is an illusion, but very important illusion as it seems human beings are not able to exist without it and it will create itself anyway unconsciously, but in possibly very destructive and ugly ways if I will try to avoid it somehow and keep myself "pure" from all illusions and biases. It doesn't even seem possible to me and I guess I have to truly emotionally accept this in myself and in people around me as well and make peace with it. We will see, but definitely this video was a crucial stepping stone in my current life situation, once again thank you.

Ellis Holly

Thank you. Great summary of the belief systems that cause difficulty working in a public health and health care space.

Jessica Hauger

I'm finishing my PhD in history of medicine/public health and you never, never miss

History is not for the Faint of Heart

This video desperately needed to be made. I’ve been seeing the connection between wellness culture and fascism for some time, without knowing exactly what it was. I just knew it bothered me. Which is why, though I was at first grateful for the chance to participate and explore wellness with others who had experienced cancer with twice weekly meetings and exercises, it became weird and uncomfortable. I’m talking about Livestrong - and nearly six months after those classes ended I’m still having to dodge the tentacle-like grasp of constant invitations to participate. I’ve never been a joiner - and this is a perfect example as to why. I can just never agree to allow a group mechanism to steal my thoughts and try to control me. Euw. And thank you for helping me to see why it always bothered me so much. I feel so damned vindicated. But I still have cancer, dammit, and it would be nice to be able to have an occasional experience of wellness without weirdness.

History is not for the Faint of Heart

Also there is overlap with at least two of Caitlin Doughty’s videos (The Doctor, the Mortician, and the Murder; Is It Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader?) and that made me realize you two would get on like a house afire <3

John Giacobello

When I was having substance abuse issues there was always something about the notion of “getting clean” that I hated… like I was “dirty” before. It made me think of “cleanliness is next to godliness”, clean eating, clean living, purity. Naomi Wolf waxing nostalgic about pre-5g pure air… Trump talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country… anti vaxxers calling themselves “pure bloods”… all of this felt vaguely fascist. Still trying to join the dots.

Jelly Bean

I feel like a mention of Hindu nationalism was a bit of an elephant in the room here but I understand not wanting to prod that beast. American fascists are one thing...

Renfield

this is so relevant you have no idea how many people I feel like need to see this direly. but like you said, i guess it is too much of downer to come to terms with death and powerlessness. more people need to know all fascism is crunchy.

Matt Raebel

That dunk on Henry David Thoreau tho

Ash Gabrielle

Hmm, truly? She states explicitly more than once that she's not saying all new age/occult/whatever people are fascists, but that she's talking about the ones who ARE. If you watch the video again, it's pretty hard to miss.

ContraPoints

I recorded some thoughts on Hindutva but they did not make the edit lol

Michaella DeVetter

the last diss track released this week. whew. I got so excited you dropped a new video I cancelled my entire day lol. Appreciate you and your mind always. As someone walking into the healthcare space as a new career, I especially needed this video. <3

Nerine

Have you ever come across Aristasia? I've seen them described as "new-age right-wing lesbian separatist otherkin" and they're a fascinating case study in a lot of what you discussed here; a prelapsarian golden age, an esoteric religion, a claim that politics was beneath them while flirting with fascist organizations, and eventually a claim to be aliens.

Jelly Bean

Haha oh I had a feeling that it might have been in the four hour version ❤️

Barry

Ah this was great !! This is a subject that I always try to understand - but I lack your work ethic of actually putting the reading in - so thanks 🙏

flyx

*Fallen angels* vs *risen beasts* reminded me lot of Terry Pratchett's Death saying > HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

Count Crackula

I would say that, and I'm sure you've accounted for this, but a lot these concepts *do* have merits on their own. The idea of "mind over body" isn't inherently toxic--it can be a good thing to just get over yourself and do what you need to do. Actualizations can also be a net positive--a matter of changing your attitude to achieve what it is you think you need to achieve. It can be as simple as setting a goal and sticking to it. Of course, taken to an absurd extreme like thinking you could just think your way out of depression or poverty is where it gets silly. And there's no amount of deep-thinky time that's going to create world peace out of changing your own station in life or on thoughts alone. I'm guessing this is actually what makes magical thinking so alluring, because it's fundamental beliefs aren't -entirely- wrong. Anyways, interesting video! Always love your Tangents.

nefefeli

That was an amazing video essay! And by chance it was perfectly combined to the book I’m reading right now, called “the circle- science and democracy in restless times ” by Greek author and quantum physicist professor Stefanos Trachanas. Excellent work as always 🖤

natalie b.

All I want to do is connect every inch of this gorgeous essay to dune

Paparazzi

Awesome video! I loved it, and such a good tangent. Just in case you make a main video stream video about that (RE medical system): I'm sure you didn't mean that, but contrasting midwifes with modern medicine is really gonna anger all the midwifes. They get the brunt of the victims of the medical system and try to heal not only the psychological, but oftentimes the physical wounds of it. Most of them do, indeed, believe in science ;)

Paparazzi

In general I think the medical section is not as strong as the rest - there surely are parts of the medical system that lack care and those realms are filled with alternative medicine - but that whole thing is a conceptual mess in itself. There is 'alternative medicine' that is just medicine (think acupuncture) and even ritualized medicine has a purpose besides the ritual

Andrew May

Oh man. As a Waldorf teacher and someone who actually went to grad school to study the applications of Anthroposophy in education, medicine, and therapy—this hit real close to home. I yawp’d when you mentioned Anthroposophy and Steiner. He’s fucking invaded every corner of my life (even my Tolkien scholarship! Fuck!)! The granola is real in these quarters. Some fucking frightening people I’ve come into contact with.

Sappho's Friend (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-14 12:00 contra, I agree moby and the pacific choir have their excesses (i agree with some of these critiques, depictions of women that come off as sexist, or their questionable depictions of public transport that don't speak class consciousness to me), but i disagree they are up in the antimodernist fascism alley. Antimodernist, luddite and spiritualist yes, fascist not (though im an antispiritualist and antitheist so it's not as if i like that at all, but obviously the venn diagram isnt a circle). I saw their video "in this cold place" as a teenager still, and i remember how everyone in the comment section back then (2017 cca) was losing their sh over trump having been depicted as a dollar sign robot that transformed into a Swastika. This video also contained a direct protest against american anti-immigration policy and war. It's got anticapitalist tones, but just their work occasionally has some contradictions or is depicted in a sloppy way. if you havent seen that video, i suggest you watch it, because it just doesnt come off as a fascist
2024-05-06 18:04 contra, I agree moby and the pacific choir have their excesses (i agree with some of these critiques, depictions of women that come off as sexist, or their questionable depictions of public transport that don't speak class consciousness to me), but i disagree they are up in the antimodernist fascism alley. Antimodernist, luddite and spiritualist yes, fascist not (though im an antispiritualist and antitheist so it's not as if i like that at all, but obviously the venn diagram isnt a circle). I saw their video "in this cold place" as a teenager still, and i remember how everyone in the comment section back then (2017 cca) was losing their sh over trump having been depicted as a dollar sign robot that transformed into a Swastika. This video also contained a direct protest against american anti-immigration policy and war. It's got anticapitalist tones, but just their work occasionally has some contradictions or is depicted in a sloppy way. if you havent seen that video, i suggest you watch it, because it just doesnt come off as a fascist EDIT: oh, you were using the term fascist in a broader sense, to mean sort of supremacism that can then be coopted by fascism, gotca

contra, I agree moby and the pacific choir have their excesses (i agree with some of these critiques, depictions of women that come off as sexist, or their questionable depictions of public transport that don't speak class consciousness to me), but i disagree they are up in the antimodernist fascism alley. Antimodernist, luddite and spiritualist yes, fascist not (though im an antispiritualist and antitheist so it's not as if i like that at all, but obviously the venn diagram isnt a circle). I saw their video "in this cold place" as a teenager still, and i remember how everyone in the comment section back then (2017 cca) was losing their sh over trump having been depicted as a dollar sign robot that transformed into a Swastika. This video also contained a direct protest against american anti-immigration policy and war. It's got anticapitalist tones, but just their work occasionally has some contradictions or is depicted in a sloppy way. if you havent seen that video, i suggest you watch it, because it just doesnt come off as a fascist EDIT: oh, you were using the term fascist in a broader sense, to mean sort of supremacism that can then be coopted by fascism, gotca

Ali Flanagan

I think this might be a location thing - there are places in the US where midwives aren't regulated properly so they're more in the alternative provider than healthcare professional category. Sort of like the difference between a chiropractor and a physiotherapist

Sappho's Friend

i love that censoring pic with the kids and parents you put, it cracks me up every time hahahahahhahah

Sappho's Friend

I legit started sweating and crying when "energy vampires" were mentioned in the video because this nonsense has caused me so much trauma, a whole cPTSD My mother pre covid used to be the new age yoga (as meditation i.e. spiritual practice and exercise), homeopathy, moderately antivaxx beliefs, david icke etc type and was naturally immediately engulfed by conspiritualist QAnon (we are in ex yugoslavia, its global), covid antivaxx nonsense as soon as the pandemic kicked off. When i was a child my then undiagnosed epilepsy was labelled as a conspiracy i made up to steal my mothers energy (i. e. i was claimed to be an "energy vampire"), and my then undiagnosed AuDHD was reframed as "crystal and indigo child". Just two examples of this nonsense i survived (?) as a child Now my disability is framed as a spiritual failing, and positive thinking can rid you of illness I have an intense visceral reaction to conspirituality and it's various entry points for this reason, i cannot stand it, it has destroyed me and turned my family members into narcissistic zombies.

Julia Espindola

I decided to join your patron right after my yoga class and am watching this video now completely high questioning my life decisions. Absolutely the best 2 dollars I've ever spent!

Brad Vinall

I thought the same thing. Hogfather is a must read.

Sappho's Friend

theres some useful docus on the wellness/yoga communities and their links to QAnon on youtube, by some news networks. But beyond that, i recommend you just read that book on Conspirituality: https://www.conspirituality.net/ yoga is fine to help you with locomotor system/pelvic floor (whatever demonstrates actuačl scientific efficacy) health issues, but beware of the anti-change antiempirical ideology behind many of these communities

demolitionwoman

Annual physicals and regular paps are still very much a thing here in the US, which is where Natalie is based, afaik. Our system is very different and insurance companies basically rule all (vast generalization cuz this is just a little comment). It’s an absolute garbage fire and every doctor/nurse/therapist/healthcare provider I know hates it but is mostly powerless to effect change.

Jeanette-o-saur

The constant contradictions have been driving me nuts. Knowing that it's "part" of the fasco-lingo makes a lot of sense. It seems unconscious though — they aren't openly embracing the contradiction, they don't SEE a contradiction . It breaks my brain. Having lost a lot of people to conspirituality over the course of the pandemic, this helps me make sense of my own world, so thanks for that. I guess we all need a little of that 🙃

Katie Broshek

This is my favorite tangent to date. Absolutely love your coverage of body fascism/wellness culture, and would love to see more in the future!

Thaumatomane

This is absolutely fascinating! I am a historian of magic (I focus on premodern magic though, with a comparatively vague notion of the world after 1700. I will be teaching a second year class on the history of magic from antiquity to post-modernity next Fall. I will DEFINITELY be looking into some of the sources you mention - I do not think my class will be complete unless I address this deeply concerning direction that my subject took in the modern world. I'm always glad I chose to study pre-modern magic. I just like pouring over my fifteenth century manuscripts and their demon summoning rituals. Far nicer than the terrifyingly dark direction of the modern nazi stuff.

Telly

Please let's make a reading club.

Danielle Corsetto

I had to pause to read the 9/11 conspiracy theory slide, because I'd never indulged before. The fact that they made one of the towers male because it has a dick is, wow. (This video was great, to state the obvious, thank you!)

GracethofMoon

watching this made me think of the cult that the documentary "love mother god" is about... like very new age alien psychedelic nonsense and trump is like... a shaman to them? like he speaks to their mother god directly? all very strange haha

Darren DM

Glad you had a pop at Jamie Oliver. He's been annoying me for over 20 years. Celebrity chefs in the UK - though I think this has changed for the better over time - did seem to have a tendency to denigrate working class food habits for using the cheapest cuts, offal, etc., whilst also hailing 'ethnic traditions' that refuse to waste any part of the animal, nobly using the cheapest cuts, offal, etc. To be fair to Oliver, his argument over school meals (the source of the chicken nugget segment) was that quality was sacrificed in favour of profit when school meals provision was privatised under the Thatcher government. He wasn't wrong, though his delivery was confusing.

Paparazzi

Okay, Interesting, I'm from Germany, and here midwifes is a proper profession - Germany regulates a lot of professions, to the point that even your explanation example doesn't really make sense in my conception of it, both chiropracters and physical therapists are proper regulated medical professions in Germany, but I get your point obviously ;)

Lolashere

Very interesting but can we please stop glamorizing Freud... He was a fraud, a liar, a misogynist. He stole most of his ideas. He created a cult around himself. Most importantly, psychoanalysis applied to REAL people is very harmful. I would know because I live in France, one of the last countries (with Argentina) where it is widely taught in psychology colleges. and guess what? it has been a disaster, especially for autistic, and LGBT+ people. you still have mothers, to this day, who are told their kid is autistic because they are "cold mothers" (!). Queer people told they have an Oedipus problem. Also psychoanalyst themselves have the typical pseudo science approach, where they will alternate between "of course our method works!!" and "actually it was never meant to be evaluated" when meta analysis finds out it's not very good. I know that in the US, Freudian ideas are not taken too seriously, or at least not literally. but applied to the real world, they do a lot of harm. I just think it's too bad to criticize pseudo sciences and then promote one. If you speak any french, check this out : https://metadechoc.fr/podcast/que-vaut-la-psychanalyse/ and https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jacques-van-rillaer-0

Andrew May

Steiner’s work takes this so much further forward and backward. Into Hyperborea, Old Moon, Old Sun, and Old Saturn; and forward into the future evolution of Earth into New Jupiter and (New?) Vulcan. Fucking bonkers stuff. And that hardly touches on his Spiritual Hierarchies theories. His book Outline of Esoteric Science and I guess too How to Know Higher Worlds touch on all this stuff. It’s been really fun to watch all the anthroposophic Kool-aiders lose their shit with DEI ideas arguments.

demolitionwoman

Are you a professor at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy

Lily B

Natalie, I’m curious what you think of Jason Reza Jorjani. He talks a lot about many of the points you mentioned like Atlantis, esoteric teachings, parapsychology. I’m curious because his research on these topics is very anti-traditional and not necessarily fascist in the sense of the German fascism based on race. I’d love it if you did a rant on Jason Reza Jorjani and his philosophy of Prometheism. In fact I feel like an entire video on Prometheism would be awesome.

Anne Berry

Absolutely fascinated how New Age became so deeply Fascist (or always was). It’s my Greek Empire bc fuck the Romans. 🏺Also Conspirtuality is an amazing book and they have a super good podcast as well!

The Big TheyThem of the MidSouth

Came here to say this, Freud's theories have been largely debunked, he wasn't ahead of his time, he was just an asshole who managed to secure enough clout to make it into the history books.

The Big TheyThem of the MidSouth

Extremely well done. The last bit definitely poked me in the medical trauma/anxiety soft spot, but that's MY baggage. Currently steeling myself to submit to the ritual transgression this Friday 😓

Thaumatomane

Haha, I had to look that up! I should read those books :) I’m afraid I’m not. But I will be teaching Magic, Science, and the Occult at the University of King’s College next year, which counts toward their Minor in Esoteric and Occult Traditions. And I got my PhD in history from the University of Exeter which houses the Centre for Magic and Esotericism where you can take an interdisciplinary masters degree in Magic and Esotericism. So not quite the school you mentioned, but I’m happy to study and work among colleagues of my sub-discipline. 😊

Ben Shapiro

John Berger would be so impressed with you

Sappho's Friend

woah. thats also a fascinating degree of unawareness one one's own social position

Sappho's Friend

yes i agree, i think contra feels an emotional attachment to freudianism over any kind of rationalism because the disillusionment with new atheism for her was a very emotionally charged experience. But the reality is, we could say the same or (imo) worse about freudian psychoanalysis, as it is incredibly sexist and a very good vehicle for sexism. Psychoanalysis was also pretty much the last overt hurdle for the depathologisation of homosexuality. Theres a difference between realising that humans are not rational (as rationality is commonly defined) rather driven by libido and anxiety, i.e. agreeing with some ideas that may or may not have first been formulated by psychoanalysts, and unironically worshipping psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. I really think we can take the good parts while leaving out the bad.

Sappho's Friend

i dont think he presented that argument well at all. Mechanically separating small pieces of meat to maximise use of the bird isnt "a drop in quality", a nugget made from that vs taking a fillet and grinding it up is of similar quality, just even more wasteful

Sappho's Friend

I'm gonna post another comment, asI want to (semi) briefly comment on psychoanalysis. Spurred by another user's comment i think you feel an emotional attachment to freudianism because the disillusionment with new atheism/rationalism for you was a very emotionally charged experience. But the reality is, we could say the same or worse about freudian psychoanalysis, as it's an incredibly effective and much more clandestine and hard to challenge vehicle for sexism (because there is no scientific rigour, not even partial attempts, any kind of nonsense can go de facto unchallenged). Psychoanalysis was also pretty much the last overt hurdle for the depathologisation of homosexuality. Theres a difference between realising that humans are not rational (as rationality is commonly defined) rather driven by libido and anxiety, i.e. agreeing with some ideas that may or may not have first been formulated by psychoanalysts, and unironically worshipping psychoanalysis, as a pseudoscience, or it's prophets. I really think we can take the good parts while leaving out the bad, and while not losing sight of what psychoanalysis actually amounts to, just another set of thougths within philosophy (and philosophy is often on to something voila). I myself will employ elements of psychoanalysis exclusively as a rhetorical strategy, but that's all it is, rhetoric, an emotionally convincing way of making your sentiments contagious. i feel very ill at ease with worshipping psychoanalysis as a field, or it's prophets. Plus theres the tangent on Jungian psychoanalysis and how that contributed to new age nonsense (syncronicity yadayada), but thats not relevant to freud so it's not particularly relevant ig. I am aware you dont claim psychoanalysis is appropriate for use in science, i.e. you yourself employ it as a subset of philosophy and a rhetorical strategy (pardon the inaccuracy of my wording), but i feel you should make that clearer sometimes, and i feel like the new atheism video, for example, as much as i enjoyed it, seemed to present all rationalism regardless of subtype as being uniquely prone to sexism, as if psychoanalysis isnt plagued by sexism, often containing it's own version of laughable tension, functionally analogous to what you pointed out with new atheist rationalist skeptic men. fin

Lolashere

@thebigtheythem yup. His main achievement was PR ! He would fall asleep pr respond to his mail during sessions... and ended up agreeing that his method only worked on people who only have very minor mental health issues. @Sappho's friend : I agree. we don't need some asshole who became a therapist for clout. I feel like all humans are a little bit religious. As in, we want meaning that's digestible, clear rules on what's ok or not, rich symbolism etc. I say this as someone who wishes she was an atheist but cannot get over the yearning for meaning that was given to me as a child. Maybe this is pure projection on my part but I wonder if Contra has not replaced Christianity by New atheism by Psychoanalysis. After all, Freud did the typical cult-leader thing of, well, making shit up (but it sounds cool). Oh, and creating rules that he did not himself follow (he said psychoanalyzing your own kids was akin to incest and then... he did just that. Wow)

Barbara M. P. B. de Araújo

Natalie, have you come across the "Anastasianism" in your research? I came across it just today before watching your tangent and my soul just barely clung to my body.

Emily

Love! ... but I do think the claim that Freud was a 22nd century thinker requires a lot of defence, dude was burying his research on adult victims of SA and inc/st because it wasn't making him famous and successful. The wealthy fathers of the aristocracy weren't going to fund or back publishing that exposed them as a bunch of skeevy abusers. He pivoted to the whole 'attention-seeking children are just fantasizing about/seducing their parents' pretty quick. His main goal was to be considered the father of modern psychology but he remains the foundational Victorian error from which so much of modern victim-blaming stems.

Milena D.K.

Contrapoints watches Fundie Fridays confirmed??

iced.tati

yea the freud bit was a little ??? he's only taken seriously for literary analysis, if that

DatePitLeftovers

“Wordsworth can rub one out to a daffodil for all I care.” Walt Whitman, too.

Andrew McManus

Having spent way too much time in academia, when Natalie said "neoliberalism of the body" I nearly died 🤣

Liv molho

Would definitely love for you to include this stuff in a main channel video- its soooo good and fascinating and relevant. I need more ppl to see it 🫶🏼💘

Cade Fire

Mine too, damn lol

Cade Fire

Natalie. This is one of my favorite videos you've made, yet. This nuance IS important and it made me think of a few things: - Employers/organizations as cults - The shadow work side eye to spiritual bypass love and light - Martyrism - a very weird book called "Sadly, Porn" by a psychoanalyst, pen name Edward Teach which discusses the original meaning of id, ego and superego (very different from modern english lingo and contemporary understanding). In his take, id = the "it," the beast, the hungry collection of impulses, the lizard brain; ego = the "me," and superego = the collective "we." The words were obfuscated over time and fundamentally came to uphold the individualist, Christan and moralistic anti-body/anti-humanist idea that we all must mind-over-matter our bad, dirty and "egotistical" selves into submission. But "ego" never meant "selfish" - it just meant "self." Ego out of balance meant "selfish," but it wasn't true automatically. The obfuscation of this distinction was really useful for leveraging pop psychology for consumerism and yada yada. I'm looking at you, Edward Bernays. You are still my time machine one-free-punch. Anyway tl;Dr - NATALIE, if you read "Sadly, Porn," I think it will be a very interesting challenge and I would love to hear your thoughts 🤣

Diego Quintana

This was amazing and needs to be a main channel video purely for historical purposes so everyone can see it!

Kalyna Horocholyn

So happy to see Contrapoints return to debunking fascist ideology, as that was my introduction to Contrapoints alllllllll those years ago

Jacob Vance

As someone who has been around since the golden boy days, so cool to see you make a video like this. It was super thought provoking. I was wondering if you would talk about Andrew Huberman and his role in the current longevity and wellness movement. Really interesting to see how body fascism has moved/is moving back in the direction of appearing scientific through figures like him and Peter Attia. I spent some time listening to his podcasts for a while, and it appealed to me as a more “rational” person who was just concerned with my own health, but after a bit it started to feel unnerving… almost like I had joined a new age wellness cult. This video helped to crystallize a lot of why it started to feel uncomfortable I think. There is some genuinely good health advice there, but endless optimization of your own wellness is 100% a manifestation of denial of death. I joined a new nice gym in coastal California that has saunas, cold plunges, and a lot of other amenities that seem to cater to these somewhat scientific, somewhat esoteric wellness ideas that Huberman et al promote. It’s a nice gym but fascinating how everyone in there talks about themselves and their own health. I hear people specifically mentioning Huberman in the sauna all the time. Anyway, I guess I’m one of them too.

Lolashere

I never heard about this person but OMG thanks for mentioning them, I'm so about to research them.

Aderyn Albarelli

Evola did all that thinking and got nothing but nostalgia perverts and whole foods. . you mentioned that spirituality is to prepare people for death. I'd been wondering if it was a process but, I'm struggling to tell what I feel is important apart from what's spiritual. Is Contact hypothesis spiritual? Raising bridges/overpasses high enough for busses to travel under prolly won't ring as spiritual but, people being more able engage with the world sounds like everything. . Oh right, death. I gotta find a way to store my dildo, so my family won't have to touch it to throw it away. . Thanks for the Barbara Ehrenreich Natural causes recommendation!

Aderyn Albarelli

Natural causes sounds like a great follow up to The Yellow Wallpaper, I should prioritize that one

Sappho's Friend

this is one of my disagreements with Contra, i think she worships Freud and psychoanalysis too much. Im not even sure his ideas that humans arent rational and that we are driven by emotion were original to him, as opposed to only the nonsense being uniquely his Sure i think he was on to something, but so were the rationalists, and both also had bad and incorrect ideas

Sappho's Friend

Are all forms of atheism really devoid of meaning however? there are ritualistic forms of atheism, some that integrate these mythical narratives of personified nature For me christianity never gave me meaning, mostly just further fuelled my OCD, and it felt like the meaning was for me to be a slave to a divine tyrant. The only attractive part for me was the confortable delusion that I wont truly lose people i love, death is the really diffocult thing for me, not the lack of a predefined meaning

Sappho's Friend

this sort of ideology is also a dangeous for those with psychosis spectrum conditions (q shaman has schizotypal PD), it tells them their delusions are correct. what you are describing is called Thought Action Fusion.

Sappho's Friend

they believe we are sick because we've sinned in a past life (most rotten ideas from hinduism) and that we should die to "cleanse ourselves" and continue our soul reincarnation journey. In practice these ideas are indistinguishable from social darwinist genocidal advocacy

Michael Hoeweler

"Wordsworth can rub one out to a daffodil for all I care" is a phrase I will mutter to myself in hushed tones for years to come, thankyousomuch.

Eleni

I would LOVE if you made a tangent or full video on your full thoughts on psychoanalysis. It would be so interesting, and you seem to have a lot to say on the topic

Jess

As someone with OCD, I fell into a hole of "manifest your best life" type new agey belief systems in my teen years. Now that I've received treatment as an adult and understand these things only reinforce my OCD, I avoid content related to "manifesting" or "creating your reality" like the plague.

Angie

Tangent suggestions: antinatalism or diversity hires

Savannah

Natalie, this was great! Although a small missing point for me was that I kept expecting the Deep Green Resistance fascist pipeline to appear in the discussion. I think this would be a great topic to expand to a main channel video, and would especially be interested if you could work the DGR stuff into the discussion.

anderson

i love that you mentioned doppelgänger — i really enjoyed the text, and it put a lot of amorphous thoughts about the current political moment into concrete terms. literally put it down a day before the tangent was released, opened my phone, watched the tangent, and went oh shit lol

Cassidy Brinn

The link is not to an RCT, but a survey that relies on self-report. (The conclusion is not, thyme tea is effective, but people think it's effective). It is much cheaper than an RCT and does not meet the standard of evidence based medicine. I'm not arguing that homeopathy is effective - that is profitable, and so yes people want to test it. I'm arguing that many skills and treatments which are widely accessible and/or do not require specialized medical knowledge or prescriptions tend not to get studied, because there's not sufficient incentive for that in our medical system. And of course the incentives for academics, including at public universities, to study one thing as opposed to another are also deeply compromised and political

Cassidy Brinn

To take a much more controversial example of bias in medicine, I'd argue that the reason midwives and births outside of hospitals are not respected or well-regulated in the US is because they challenge the authority of the medical establishment, despite evidence suggesting that these paths may be safer for some women (though that's difficult to study or prove). Basically, I think there's a sexist bias, unrelated to evidence, that women without medical degrees cannot be as effective as doctors and it's dangerous to let them try

Cassidy Brinn

The broader point, I think, is that grouping people into "pro-science" or "anti-science", in medicine or elsewhere, is too simple. Good scientists should be critical, including of the way science manifests in different societies. To get perhaps even more controversial, I think this also holds for being critical about vaccines. There were indeed profit motivations to the vaccines and boosters required during the pandemic and there were indeed poorly understood side effects for people, such as the effect on women's menstrual cycles. Pretending otherwise will only promote wacko conspiracies. I am not saying we should be "anti-vax". I am just wary of the suggestion in some circles that if you have concerns about a vaccine you're an anti-science eugenicist

Cassidy Brinn

Anyway, I definitely agree with your original point that human touch is important to good medicine 😊

Andres

Hitler wasn’t a vegetarian. In the “Hitler table talks” it’s documented how he ate meat. Anyway it was propaganda the nazis spread about him, so it is underlining the points you made. Only wanted to state that it’s actually a myth. Not that anybody think he was a good guy /s. Great tangent!

Juliana Ferreira

I dreamt I saw in a tweet that Contrapoints had released a Tangent called "why people are obsessed with the 90s" and I came here thinking it was real :(

Agnes

You know ... I would absolutely love to listen to just 4.5 hours of your unedited rambling!!! next time why don't you spare yourself that hassle and i just get that much more time to cultivate my parasocial attachment? ;)

Brant Watson

Quantum Kansan here; while I don't buy that Genghis Khan was Aryan in the way that Nazis meant (which was essentially some kind of vague Scandinavian Germanic nonsense), he *might* have been Aryan in the original sense of the term. Aryan originally was yet another vaguely defined racial concept that referred to a sort of early Indo-Iranian group (the phonetic similarity between Aryan and Iranian is easy to catch). Genghis Khan was thought to have green eyes and red hair. This is of course impossible to really verify; primary sources are fairly scant and contradict some. Sometimes people referred to him as having "cat eyes", whatever that means. Still, it's not far fetched. The steppe was a vast cultural estuary mixing folk from as far east as China and as far west as Eastern Europe.

Ve Spe

This is superrelevant in today's wake of new spirituality. I read an essay about the underlying ideology of New Age Esotericism the other day and I was shocked to realise how well it applies.

Velvet Condoms

This reminds me of the cringe episode, in that it primarily consists of reminders of how horrible such a significant if not a majority percentage of the human population truly is. They feel like they were designed to convince autistic people against the idea of the universal value of human life. I'm not saying that they were designed that way. It's just how it feels.

Mackenzie L

Someone I know from PSN uses tarot and spirituality to justify homophobic and transphobic viewpoints. This video reminded me of that mentality. I had no idea it was so widespread though until watching this

Sappho's Friend

many siberian peoples still today have a mixture of east eurasian and west eurasian features and genetics, like lighter hair/eyes and east eurasian facial morphology. Today one can find examples of that mixture gradient in the Nenets people, Udmurt people , or even the Uyghur in china. This spectrum sort ot of starts in Finland/estonia/Turkey on the west eurasian side and ends in east Mongolia and east siberia cat eyes sounds like asian eye shape but probs with green eye colour idk

Sappho's Friend

"They feel like they were designed to convince autistic people against the idea of the universal value of human life." can you elaborate? Im mildly autistic and i dont understand what you are referring to at all, especially since autistic people generally tend to be pretty hostile to spiritualism/new age in favour of rigid atheism

Sappho's Friend

i didnt know about this particular group till now, though i knew of their seemingly primitivist ideology and how it translates into social darwinism Theres a large number of similar groups that dont necessarily need to be named, though maybe a mention of the various primitivist anti modern medicine groups is defo a fit. Still maybe it wasnt mentioned because people often stereotype all environmentalists as being primitivist like that. As an environmentalist, this strawman is pretty common pretty interesting, thank you

Velvet Condoms

I'm also autistic. My reaction to the cringe episode is basically "what the hell. Humans are really like this? Why are people so awful?!" For about 70% of the human actions described in that episode. This tangent is similar because it primarily consists of showcasing people being shitty human beings. These episodes basically confirm explicitly what I suspected about the majority of humans for a long time, and I suspect other autistic people might have a similar reaction.

Oscar Q.

I'm catching up with a lot of these tangents, and It's dawned on me that Contra doesn't really talk about Horror, Fear and Terror (I mean of Fear and Horror in it of itself). I hope one day she gets to talk about Fear and Horror.

Vitória Xavier

I would like to comment about conspiracy theories in tragic events. Here in the south of brazil we are going through horrible and devastating floods that have already displaced over half million people from their homes. I'm talking about whole cities being under water, it's despairing. It is the result of a really strong climatic event called El Niño reforced by climate changes/global warming. It was pretty well antecipated (even though the government did absolutely nothing about) and in simple metereology terms it can be understood. What I really wanna talk about is that many people, notedly extreme-right supporters, and coming up with other imaginary explications that make no sense, like acclaming that que HAARPI american laboratory is experimenting on us, or that other forces are inducing everything in our region. In other tragic events, I could see people believing in this kind of stuff because they needed to see a reason for all of that, a root to the problem. Although, thats not the case, the explanation is pretty visible and SIMPLE!!!! So I guess that this theories are showing up because the climate change and the warm waters of pacific ocean is not emocional engaging enough, idk. Another perspective to this situation is that climatic change is something that most people avoid or silence, especially right-wing that dont wanna mess with industries and transportation and fossil fues. To blame global warming is to agree that the system needs to change.

Cota

There’s another book by Barbara Ehrenreich that’s super interesting for this matter: Bright-sided.

Ibraheem

Sorry, is that short for play station network?

Ibraheem

Anti natalism all the way

D Henty

Great video! It seems that that relationship between disavowal of the body/mind over matter you see in wellness culture tied to fascism, is also there in what you’ve described in the past about inceldom, which is essentially a kind of fascist eating disorder cult. Both of these ideas root angry backlash at reality in a rejection of the physical fact of the body, ultimately expressed through hatred of others. Would love to see this video expanded into a main channel one!

Philip Carter

Just dropping by to express a swell of gratitude I feel abt your work. I came from a super conservative religious background (still reeling) and I am a classical violinist. This ‘wellness eugenics’ idea folds so neatly into Christian notions of purity and also into something I’ve noticed dominant in the classical music world, where music is often regarded as a garment we’re supposed to keep squeaky clean, as opposed to, say, a vehicle for the expression of the emotional self. Similarly in the pop culture of wellness, particularly where I’m focused (which is the area of healing and reprogramming after trauma) there seems to be a real anxiety about like, ‘clearing the trauma.’ The goal isn’t framed as effective adaptation, but instead as an impossible double negative. ‘Un marked, perfect, original.’ The cognition that the garment is soiled is like a prime metaphor that reaches really deeply into the self. Your work has helped me notice the connection between these lines of thought which have always had a powerful life of their own within my individual self and the way these attitudes take hold in larger governmental structures. I am just starting to read Slouch by Beth Linker and my tail is beating the floor. Thanks as always, Natalie!

Mackenzie L

Yes. The guy uses spirituality like tarot and karma to justify some bigoted beliefs.

Theo Stratford

The nostalgia section of the Liminal Spaces tangent is basically that if you haven’t already watched it. It’s good (big shock, I know)

Kevin Hengehold

But what if my viking ancestors watching me jack off IS my fetish? What then, Mr. One?

Brant Watson

I guess then everybody wins!

Amber

Aww, a happy ending all around! Lol

Amber

Imma buy myself that Natural Causes book, what a great tangent! I remember being a kid and being confused that Hitler could be a monster murdering fascist, but also a painter & vegetarian - cause you know, people aren't complex - but to learn that Crunchy is sort of a tool that's used for really any form of thinking, or rationality, or way of life, actually provides so much more understanding of people's motivations and belief systems. I didn't really give it enough thought before, but it's interesting. I think humans may be doomed to forever romanticize a time or way of life they've never experienced and never can, or if they have, were so long ago that their faulty memories distort into rose-colored, Fallout-esque dreamscapes of falsehoods. People are silly.

Leigh Bartel

I have a coworker who I strongly suspect falls into this category of New Age fascism. Even back in 2019, he said he was a part of a witch coven that seemed to focus on "neo-pagan values". He's also a Trump supporter and a bit of a conspiracy theorist. I do know pagans and witches who fall into the more progressive, LGBTQ supportive side of witchcraft. My coworker falls more into the creepily romanticized, "return to the rituals of our Anglo-Saxon/Viking ancestors" category of pagan. He seems to have so much in common with the Q Anon shaman.

Pauline Drillet

That was fascinating thank you ! The bit on the Qanon shaman reminded me of the essay Portrait du colonialiste by Jeremie Piolat where he describes the ways Jake Angeli dresses by saying he is trying to use symbols of a pure and dignified northern culture because the occidental modern culture is actually quite impoverished, has lost its traditions.

Sappho's Friend

im already used to people being shits so my reactions were "ah, yes" and "oh people being people again". i have to say i dont think this is really about autistic vs autistic people, come people are just more idealistic in a way, reagardless of autism and have their dreams sort of shattered after watching that video

Eliza

I'm having a very difficult time with this video. Not because I think its bad, but its sort of coalesced a lot of things I've been thinking about quite intensely for the last few years. I listened to this episode while I was working my job at a New Age store. I studied for four years to get a bachelors in nutrition and herbal medicine. I work on the side as a tarot reader! I was born into the New Age and have always considered it a positive life path to take, but after the corona virus its like the values and morals i thought the people around me held just melted away, people who i considered long time friends suddenly expressing conspiratorial or fashy ideas. I always like the way Natalie lays out a discussion and this video put also of that into words, specifically how the New Age is the perfect faith for Neo liberalism. I'm not really sure why I'm leaving this comment, but i had such a deep reaction to this, it felt like a gut punch. I feel so lost.

Sam

This deserves to be a video essay

Emily

I was hoping that when Natalie began discussing energy vampires, a clip of Colin Robinson from What We Do in The Shadows would be inserted into the vid

B

wowowowowow such a good video!!! o_o

Jesse Oswald

it's currently June 4th, and I pray to our dark mother that the reason why the next *tangent* isn't posted yet is because she is putting all her talent into it, but i fear we may be in another pause for the month

Adam Kauffman

I loved this. I've been seeing more folks refer to the "Hippie to Fascist Pipeline," and I think this really does a great job in explaining all of that.

Adam Kauffman

Also, Ernest Becker is the shit! In college, I got to delve into Terror Managent Theory, a branch of Social Psychology that was inspired by that work. I even ran a TMT study for my senior thesis. Check it out sometime.

Michael Mwangi

Incredibly, incredibly eye-opening. I'll defo revisit this tangent in the future it supplements a lot of my fiction writing. Also absolutely gonna add these to my reading list! Thank you for this robust talk and introducing me to this topic (at least, at this length and angle) wonderful!

Sweety

She might be onto something with 25% of people having vampire characteristics

Lotopauanka

Have you ever thought of making a video about satanism?

Autumn Cooper

Wordsworth can rub one out to a daffodil for all I care LMAO Ilysm

Rachel Jasper

Hey I can relate. I have been using Ayahuasca for years now and consider myself devoted to a spiritual path. I thought I had finally found a community of spiritual people where I live... but when covid hit and the New Age movement moved into a more fascist space in reaction to that I saw a lot of people who I thought I would know for the rest of my life totally change into people who genuinely scared me and who showed a lot of darkness... I feel really lost to. Sending hugs.

alternate title: "Natalie RETVRNS to Her Youtube Roots"

Rachel Jasper

Thank you for sharing this. I know for myself I had a really, really hard smack in the face in that I was using spiritual practices and beliefs as a way to desperately try and have meaning and connection in my own life. I came to the confronting realization that I had been trying to disconnect from humanity due to trauma and trying to fill my need for human connection with spirituality. I then had to confront that I need human connection and that humanity is part of spirit also. I know for myself I realized that the times I felt meaning in my life was when I was sharing my life with others I cared about. I am trying to reconcile that now. It's a journey now for me for sure. Not sure if you can relate but I could really relate to what you shared here so I thought I would share my own process!

John Daniel

UGH! New age granola people. I love this label.

Eliza

Thanks for your kind words Rachel, that means a lot to know other people have gone through the same things.

Rachel Jasper

Thank you for this. It is so healing and validating to see that I was not the only one who struggled with this in these kinds of wellness/spiritual spaces.

Daniel A. Gallagher

I just caught up with this, having voted today in the European Elections. So much of what you said is so mappable to modern Italian politics as well (although the Catholicism interferes with quite a bit of the spirituality).

Marco

I really like this idea of esoteric movements as a "third way" distinct from science and orthodox religion. Does anyone know where I can read more about?

Vítor Medeiros

I really recommend the YouTube channel ESOTERICA for an academic perspective on Western Esotericism. This specific point about it being a 'third way' is often talked about when discussing Esotericism, but I don't have anything specific on this aspect

Hanna Lemon

So good! But wait did you just say that freudian psychoanalysis is scientifically rational? It's really equivalent to q shamanism.

Miro Šimek

Yes, I can definitely relate to that. Thanks you very much for sharing :)

Sappho's Friend

apparently this shanin blake character had a kidney infection and decided to let god handle it and not go to the doctor. aghh

Sappho's Friend

Nazism has been described as "Reactioary Modernism" and different tendencies varied in how esoteric/rural minded they were You have always had and still have the ecofascists and rural/woowoo pagan fascists (modern example Varg Vikernes, etc) and the fasc who are modern technology enthusiasts, who are atheist, who are genetic engineering eugenics and scientific racism enthusiasts (modern examples in the techbro ancap fascist pipeline, various eugenics institutes, and what not) fasc has always had both of these two incarnations, plus it's strasserite german labour oriented conomic antisemite faction whom I believe were distinct from the other two.

jesse sa

Great tangent, as someone who passed through the cycle of being an atheist skeptic, to getting interested in esotericism, to rapidly becoming disillusioned with unmitigated magical thinking and returning to a (mostly) non-spiritual worldview, I would LOVE to see a full main channel video tackling this topic.

Mark keogh

Middle aged white irish catholic male here and I love your videos. :)

Mark keogh

Kali Yuga (and the other Yugas ) is from the Hindu tradition and the cycles are tens of thousands of years long. They do consider this to be the Kali yuga. It is supposed to be followed by the lighty brighty one.

Cynthia Sonier

I know there are limits to what you can learn from an epoch by looking at its leaders, but somehow this reminded me of one of my favourite movie princesses...who also happened to be ruling Austria when Hitler was born: Elizabeth "Sissi" von Habsburg, née Wittelsbach...or to be more precise, the distorted, sugar-coated image of her that was born right after WW2. In the 1940s Magda Schneider was Adolf Hitler's favorite actress. After the war, she tried to backdoor herself back into fame bu pushing her 16-year-old daughter Romy into the role of Sissi while she would play her mother Ludovica in three romantic movies that were just a Nazi's dream of the 18th century with an adorable and loving imperial power couple frolicking in a dainty german countryside untouched by modernity. Not a train, not a sweatshop in sight. Nothing about the disintegration of the Habsburg empire that was already well under way during Sissi's reign, just vague mentions of "wars". The only contemporaneous invention that's part of the plot is a telegraph and the only sucky part of her life they kept was how her and her mother-in-law hated each other. The real-life Empress Elizabeth of Austria? She had a son who shot himself. The Emperor's love for her was not mutual and she was not ready for sexuality when she was married (at 15!). She often behaved like a spoiled brat...and was anorexic, she kept exercise equipment in her room (unusual at the time), and was into necromancy. You can always count on nazis to dunk on the present and idealize a past they know fuck all about.

CassieWasRight

Also adding in here that "Kali" in "Kali Yuga" is actually a different word than "Kali" as in the goddess. The former is pronounced with a short "uh" sound and the latter a long "ah" sound. It's an artifact of ambiguous transliteration (and the same transliteration error that made my parents spell my name with a u - you know, like the ☀️) rather than the more typical "Sanjay" spelling.

Sappho's Friend

"Q Shaman" has since switched to the libertarian party (famously very pro environmental protection) and is running for congress in Arizona's 8th congressional district

Saoirse

It's funny, I've been reading the 2023 Naomi Klein book Doppelganger, and it is uncannily similar to watching my favorite video essays of the past five years. It focuses a lot on conspiracy theories of this "diagonal" political alliance between right wingers and new age fitness gurus. Your discussion of granola fascism here very neatly matches her analysis; in fact I would say your insights here are deeper. I wonder what you would think of the book.

Jerzey Banks

This is a brilliant video i just subbed and I knew it would be worth it, this video got me thinking it's such a fascinating topic I can't wait for you to expand further if you do this is probably gonna be my go to vid to watch for a while

Taylor Seamount

Being a spiritually inclined person that has an invisible but disabling chronic illness I have interacted with new age body fascism a few times. Early on in the illness my aunt introduced me to her "normwegian witch friend" who told me all about how illness was created by the mind. She had done workshops with encarcerated people and people going thru kemo. I swear that woman had the most sinister and self absorbed energy, but her perspective did fuck with me for a little while. Her mind was so rigid yet full of contradictions. I still resent my aunt a bit for introducing us. Anyway thank you for this video. It's really validating.

Christine Hurd

Hey, I'm very late to this, but I really really recommend you look into psychoanalysis in France. Here it is the dominant model of psychological thought and is taken quite seriously. The issues of this for disabled people, the gays, the transgenders, etc. are numerous. As late as 2014 there were psychoanalysts wrapping autistic children in cold wet towels and attaching them to beds for hours to allow them to feel their skin ? Anywhom. Adore your work as usual <3

Bates

My fav kinda fascism

Anna Drew

I wonder if the show on the television located in any apartment you character owns in the GTA5 video game, about the man having sex with the ape "What are you doing soldier!!!!???" and bringing on the apocalypse is some kind of parody based on that Aryan spiritualty stuff?

Allison Reneé

Are you dressed like a member of the harga intentionally because that’s a crazy reference queen

Sappho's Friend

Yeah ive overwhelmingly seen reddit Fascists recommend Evola's book. Maybe a few times Sorel as well, but incomparably less often. I've also seen Kaczynski promoted a lot by national-"anarchists" (nazi entryist strategy formed via synthesising nazism with anarcho primitivnism, by a british nazi called Troy Southgate) and anarcho primitivists alike "anarcho-primitivism" is already fascist, inherently genocidal toward the disabled etc, so it makes sense fasc proper would be attracted to it. The fact that they call themselves anarchist at all is ridiculous.

Sappho's Friend

yeah well classical music is pretty inundated by rich snobbish conservative individuals, where classical music is all about supremacy and posturing. The classical music snob is a notorious stereotype I mean it's old european music from the era of colonialism, from before all the mixing with african and other influences occurred to create blues, jazz, early rock music and then punk, makes sense it would attract people who put other genres down, often for racist/cuktural supremacist reasons. Thats not to say that all classical music fans are like this (obv Contra isnt just as an obvious example), but it has this tendency

Teageen

This video perfectly explains my whole nuclear family (hi, I'm the black sheep) and it makes me so sad. I want so badly for them to stop being delusional assholes, but here we are. You cant approach someone that believes (consciously or not) that being contradictory and nonsensical is the goal

Bean

What an absolutely marvellous, important, clarifying and timely tangent! So thankful I finally subscribed to your Patreon.

Annamária Molnár

I would so love it if zou made a main channel video about ableism and eugenics. It needs to be talked about more!

jean

ur so spot on with the critique of the artists you did i wish you didnt have to be afraid of criticizing artists esp politically, i think people are so used to moralizing the art they like that the second someone criticizes an artist people start being like “omg!1!1! cancel culture is so bad!!?1!1!” art is meant to be critiqued its been a part of the culture of the art world for centuries upon centuries and as an artist, its one of the most important parts of making art!

Karrie D

As a woman with an autoimmune disease I can absolute confirm the dehumanizing medical process I went through to get a diagnosis and help for that disease. Some of the worst, most abusive interactions I have had with other people have been with doctors in the course of trying to understand what was happening to me. I can understand why someone would run from that and seek real empathy in any form. Also, I never understood why the argument “wear a mask or I might die” didn’t carry any weight with some people and the idea that they don’t value my life at all and see me as a failure is frightening, but very enlightening.

Eric Phillips

Any baseline or overly simplified critique of “modernity” is highly suspect to me because it often falls into the trap of an immensely privileged perspective. Steve Cutts, former illustrator on projects for Google, Coca-Cola, etc; digital designer; user of digital tools, can critique many of his targets from a place of immense wealth (generated through art, corporate conglomerate contracts, and digital media), food security (he can shop *exclusively* at Whole Foods, or in his case Harrods, should he so choose), and ready availability of information and access to its dissemination. Access to the internet provided this Alabama boy with some of the first truly safe spaces to express myself from within an overtly oppressive community. Fast food is often a necessity in the food deserts of Povertyville, USA, and the ease of access to healthier choices is inherently facilitated by massive globalized systems of commerce (

Eric Phillips

Tl;dr—for whatever it’s worth—I felt your critiques were spot-on. Problematic discourse, even if unintentional, surrounding a nostalgic return to “healthier” and “more pure times” often ignores the problems of the past, and the problems generated in the present by such a return…like indigenous people unable to eat their long-term staple foods, like quinoa, because the very people who grow it, have been outpriced by crunchy capitalism.

BaFi

Thank you, I just subscribed and must say I enjoy these esoteric teachings of yours just as much as the exoteric ones! This made me wonder about how a lot of the practices that you would probably describe as new age, once secularized have a lot of evidence based health benefits. It is sad, that modern medicine as practiced today is more often than not so dehumanizing, when it is clear that human connection, attention, acceptance and respect all improve our overall well being on all levels including biological. But I do not think that learning anatomy on dead people is at fault here. I think that not learning enough about the importance of connecting with the living ones is.

Isla

The part about epidemiology being incompatible with American individualism really lit something up in my brain. As well the idea that contradictions and denials of reality are actually the ultimate flex that reinforce people’s own veracity is wiiiiiild. I’ve dabbled in the concept of phantasm as it relates to alt-right conspiracy thinking, but her analysis makes so much upsetting sense!

Natalia Villar

I love this tangent so much but I'm afraid of viewing it again and accidentally hearing that TikTok Singer again sing about cashing her checks cause she tapped into collective consciousness

kaje

Gorgeous analysis! From 18-21 years old I was in an extremely abusive relationship with a granola fascist & narcissist. This analytical lens helps me further articulate the insanity I experience, which was essentially a 2 person cult. Thank you!

KatyCon

Thank you for calling out the fatphobia in critiques of modernity !!!

Simona Dobreva

This would be an amazing main channel video. I wish we could get the 4 hours of rambling as well — there are so many topics and ideas for which it seemed you only scratched the surface. What an interesting, interesting tangent! Still trying to assess how I feel about everything communicated here. Thank you :)

Imme

Oooh ooh am i late for suggestions for the long form video essay?? No really it's more of a tangent to the tangent (that isn't a thing!! it would be the same line oh shut up, me), re: Fascists despising the majority of white people and idealizing distorted versions of non white persons/ cultures: Bret Devereaux has probably dozens episodes on the subject of what he calls the Fremen Mirage: "The Fremen Mirage is a literary trope, unconnected to historical reality, which presents societies as a contrast between unsophisticated, but morally pure, hyper-masculine and militarily effective ‘strong men’ societies honed by ‘hard times’ (that is, the Fremen of the term) and a sophisticated but effeminate and decadent ‘weak men’ societies weakened by ‘good times,’ frequently with an implicit assertion of the superior worth of the former." I haven't even read them all, but beside the titular series I highly recommend (for those who like historical deep(ish) dives) the series on the Dothraki and the one on Sparta. (all kinds of TW for the latter)

Samuel Webb

Oh man, "Quantum Kansas" is a great phrase.

Ish The Dark Lotus

Great video; just wanted to add - The whole Granola movement - aka - being one with nature and returning back to the old ways of living - is fundamentally a conservative movement across the world. It distrusts what is new, what is "unnatural", or educational expertise. It is a form of folkism and traditionalism. It is just that in the United States, the 1970s Hippie / anti-war / counterculture movement co-opted Eastern spiritual beliefs and lifestyles, so for a time-window, crunchiness was associated with being left-wing. However, this was a temporary anomaly in the US. And now that the window has closed, with left-wingers leaving the hippie ideals behind, it shouldn't come as a surprise that crunchiness has returned home to its natural ally, conservatism.

Hefefloeckchen

Modi does this with Hinduism, in india right now

Hefefloeckchen

also "darvinism" is the perversion of Darvis findings, it's the "people i find to be stupid should die because they harm our culture"

Hefefloeckchen

it's everything that's wrong with the movie "idiocracy"

Jacob Freedman

I am genuinely afraid to share this with my family, who need to hear it most :')

Noel S

Best analysis of the election results I've heard so far

eggzellent

am rewatching this again after a minute and finally made a connection to something crazy my radicalized dad talks about all the time. think that the von Liebenstahl whatever that guys name is, syncretized with elements of christianity at some point. my father continuously claims that adam and eve, and gods "good" children are descendants of space aliens and what not, and ive always been confused as to where this came from, and why it sounded especially off to me. Furthermore, one of the big claims of his particular sect of insanity is that during the times of Noah, humans would have relations with fallen angels and giants, and create perverse creatures that tried to pass off as human. yes, Thanksgiving is super duper fun at my house.

So Mwan

I love that you say it sounds "especially off". I mean, what else is he saying that sounds just normally off? ^^

depress.io

one of my favorite tangents!

Zach Goff

Not saying it isn't insane, but the idea of humans having relations with fallen angels and giving birth to creatures called the Nephilim actually does originate from the Bible. (Genesis 6:4) Nothing about space aliens though, as far as I can tell.

Skillz McToots

"Joining the conversation" to say that I loved this video! And I would like to share my perspective as someone who recently left the "cult" of the Life Coach School (LCS) and still firmly believes the LCS teaching that "thoughts create reality". I do not think that this belief is inherently in opposition to a leftist agenda. For example, fellow LCS alum Kara Loewentheil teaches thought work as a feminist mindset revolution that is also helpful for understanding/dismantling internalized fatphobia, racism, scarcity mindset, insecurity, etc. Reality is perceived at the individual level via unconscious and conscious thoughts as well as neuroception, sensation, etc. But the usefulness of the concept of reality is a shared one. And in order for people to share their perceptions of what is/isnt there, we must communicate with each other, which requires thought. We can't *change* reality as the collective concept of what is/isn't with our thoughts. So yes, I'm all for the critic that Natalie offers here. But there is a lot more nuance (and validity!) to the idea that thoughts create reality. p.s.- Cultish is an excellent book and helped me make sense of my LCS experience, which I wrote about here if anyone wants to read about that: https://tinyurl.com/4annxp6y

Rose Dombegh

From what I've read, the idea (and fear) of humans 'degenerating' or 'de-evolving' was alive and well in the U.S. as well as Europe and had a huge influence on eugenics. Lulu Millers book "Why Fish Don't Exist" dives into this in a really interesting way

Murguly Mátyás

OMG. This was an emotional rollercoaster for me.

Andrew May

Holy shit, you guys. The lighting! The red is on the left and the blue is on the right! Natalie, girl, you are a clever little minx of theatricality.

DaniloDaSelva

Only 10 minutes in, but I have a feeling there that you're relying to a great extent on Wouter J. Hanegraaff. ^_^ I think it's safe to say he was my favourite scholar of esotericism when I was studying religious studies. I'm curious to see if my assumption was right.

Asocksual

Have any of you guys ever played the game Disco Elysium? There's a character in that game that embodies that bizarrely complex spiritual racism thing beautifully. Also, dear Odin, I hate how much white supremacists have dug their claws into Old Norse/Germanic mythology and folklore, it's already insanely hard to learn about and research because we only have two surviving literary works, one of which is very unreliable, accounts from Tacitus, and some cool rock carvings. Thanks a lot for personally shaving years off of archeologists and folklorists' lives, guys. Also I totally agree that those European guys never should've been allowed to learn about Hinduism. It's so damn icky seeing the worst kinds of people projecting their racist ideas onto an extremely old and complicated religious tradition they know jack shit about. Totally feel you on the romatic-vague-critiques-of-modernity-tech-bad-pills-bad stuff that's out there, I too feel strongly about the environment and especially animal welfare/rights (been vegetarian since I was 8) but I HATE the fatphobia and the rejection of like, all scary-sounding tech (so many CHEMICALS, oh no, so scary, not like literally everything in the world is made of chemicals). Also on a personal level I like video games and computers, so, yeah. Damn, I didn't mean to ramble so much in this comment but I think this kind of Crunchy Facism gets under my skin so deep because it's such a deep and nasty twisting of stuff I value highly. The environment, caring about animals, self-care and self-understanding, even spirituality (esoteric or otherwise), though in that case it's just that I think religion is cool and interesting to learn about, as I myself am an atheist. Like I don't agree with Catholicism ideologically but the churches and lore go pretty hard. Also I find it fascinating that those spiritual fashy dudes seem really, really threatened by the idea that humans are just a type of animal. The whole insistence that the "good" "pure" race are descended angels and all the "lesser" ones are relatives of primates, when the truth is that humans ARE a type of primate. If I recall correctly, Charles Darwin was an abolitionist. ALSO ALSO THANK YOU for also agreeing that modern medicine is important even though it has this ugly history, I have never once heard from anyone critical of it who also gets that mainstream medicine is really fucking important and didn't give me weird crystal-healer vibes. Like, those critiques are spot-on, but also, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna not get vaccinated because it has a patriarchal history. Also also also, denial of death thing? Right on the money too. Makes way more sense than Freud, I can tell you firsthand that sex drives nothing I do but the fear of death and annihilation, of the inevitability that I just won't exist and my mind cannot fathom it it all, has haunted me for as long as I can remember. Even just typing it right here is sending a wave of visceral fear all over my body.

Kyra Smart

d x xx ed dxe g r🙏🏻🙏🏼🌞🤩🤩👯‍♂️w k ill lkoNN lo lmmmm mmmm lN

Leïla

you're so smart it hurts

rk

Hi Natalie 😀 I’m new to your Patreon and want to leave a (prob not too brief) note of thanks. I discovered your channel last year & it had an enormous positive effect on my life. I had been in a pretty bad place after 5 years of pregnancy/marriage/home ownership/having to settle & downgrade my career, all happening in a kind of snowballing intense rush. You have been such an inspiration to me; I have since found my way back to my own intellectual center/community & sense of personhood. I’m GenX & you give me hope for the future. What you do is so important in our public square & for the common good & democracy. Please know that what you do matters. You seem like a genuinely good person - thoughtful, kind, careful, considerate, rigorous in your work, etc. Sometimes, we are startled by, or taken with, another because it enlivens an essential part of ourselves. Thank you so much, Rachel ps - this tangent is a particularly important look at the world. If I may recommend a text that helped me to better understand Maga, the fascist movement, etc, it is Presidents, Populism, and the crisis of Democracy by Howell & Moe (I was cynical about the UC press, too). My background is in East Asian Studies and theory (Dartmouth & Paris IV, I studied under Rancière; my focus was semiotics in Peking opera). 🥂

Seiya

I have my own relationship to left wing new agey religion shit. My mom considered herself a sort of pan pagan spiritualist and that was my influence growing up. I relate to fatigue with modernity and a romanticisation for an idealized past but like, I don't think humans are fallen from angels or risen above animals. I think that we're still animals and that a lot of human suffering could be mitigated by not taking ourselves so seriously and understanding ourselves not as heirs to some legacy of superiority over the natural world and instead see ourselves as part of it. Basically I think humans are still in the dirt but that is where we belong and we'd feel a lot better if we accepted that and stopped tryna scapegoat various "out groups" as the reason why we haven't lived up to some superiority complex. I remember seeing that new age animated alien creation myth and crying. Not because I actually believed we're all reincarnated aliens, but because I think it taps into a very common modern human feeling of being separated from something vital to our wholeness. i just think that feeling is not from the humans separated from their higher alien origins, but animals separated from their natural habitat they evolved to thrive in. And in my mind that habitat that we human animals feel bereft of is each other and the earth. Humans are social creatures. Literally evolved to have collaboration and community effort as the survival strategy that gives us "fitness" for our environment in the darwinist sense. But modern humans are isolated from each other in crappy disillusioned jobs where we're expected to compete with each other for resources, instead of work together to compete with other animals to make sure the community has the resources it needs. I also think in our natural habitat, the day to day activities of humans are allowed to shift nd change with the seasons, just like every other animal on earth. Why I am I working the same amount of hours doing the same bullshit job in January as I am in July? When my animal cousins and ancestors spend the winter concerving energy and the summer gathering it in various ways? I'm watching these tangents out of order so I'll relate this to what you said in your spiritualism tangent about Doaism and the oneness of all things. Basically I believe every living thing on earth, including humans, are inextricable and indistinguishable from the earth itself. If the bacteria in my gut are not technically my cells, but are still a vital and functionally indistinguishable part of the "whole" that is me, then therefor I see humans and every other animal on earth as the same as the bacteria in my gut. And just like when the bacteria in my gut don't perform their function for the whole (say my gut bacteria decided they were superior to the other cells in my body and stopped digesting my food so they could instead do office jobs selling each other stupid shit) then I would get a stomach ache and get sick. The earth is sick (climate change) because humans aren't performing our role in the ecosystem. So I do think we humans have to ask ourselves, as animals, what is our role in the ecologocal whole that is the earth? And how do we modern humans start performing it again?

Pamela Boudreau

I had a therapist and I really liked her. But she insisted I had to watch "The Secret." I made it clear that in my opinion, this was nothing but magical thinking and elitist. I watched it to make her happy. It was torturous. We had to break it off!

Pamela Boudreau

By the way, I adore your channel. I love deep dives and yours are the best! I appreciate the work and passion. I'm beside myself each time you release a new video. Thank you!

Whitters

Describing Joe Rogan as a “blank slate of a man” is so audaciously correct.

Rose Dombegh

A full year later, I feel like this is genuinely one of your best videos.

Medieval Cat

Watching in June 2025 and this is keeping me sane. Maybe the only thing.

Rose Dombegh

The contrast between Darwinian beliefs that humans "crawled out of the mud" & fascist/spiritualist beliefs that we "fell out of the sky" (14:00) is especially interesting given Paglia's claims about Sky Father Gods v. Earth Mother Goddesses. I wonder what she'd have to say about it.

April Tuesday

i'm watching this and i have some thoughts, i will get back later my dad was a white supremacist who had a health thing sort of; born 1949, raised not too far from nyc; moved to middle of nowhere wyoming in the 1980s; fan of carlos castaneda; also, john harvey kellogg is another branch of this story

April Tuesday

this is what I came up with; it's sort of free association: Puritanism, covenant theology, Ordo salutis, god helps those who help themselves Puritan obsession with "pure" behavior, clergy writing spiritual guides The "great awakenings" seem a particularly "American" curse enslaved people were seen as spiritually "deserving" of their condition in life, "ordained" by god; meanwhile, whites viewed themselves as spiritually chosen and superior; this attitude later transferred into biological "race" based superiority as spirituality continued to be undermined by new discoveries in science; thus birthing eugenics, a spiritual quest at "racial purification", and essentially an extension of the logic of livestock breeding applied to the bodies of enslaved people now to the bodies of their enslavers as well—as the "white race" *must* be "purified"; because purification will bring "us" (white humanity?) closer to god i don't know how common *mortification of the flesh* type procedures were in the early history of the United states, but I can imagine a country as Christian as this most likely used them to a degree progressive movement, suffragettes, white supremacy, teddy roosevelt, john harvey kellogg on the origin of species 1859 eugenics 1880s this is when kellogg comes on stage "muscular christianity", connection to teddy roosevelt so the "white" people are literally "under assault", because they are the "pure" saviors of humanity on their way to reuniting with God and fulfilling ancient prophecy, and you want them to "stain" their "souls"??? (lol; that's what I think they sound like) enter 1960s enter willis carto and the liberty lobby enter the 1970s enter new age (including carlos castaneda) enter "attack!" periodical enter "northwest territorial imperiative" (nazi coded) 1978 "the turner diaries" by william luther pierce of the "national alliance" enter 1980s enter "cascadia bioregional movement" (hippy coded) another thread, I think, is new religious movements like wicca; I know of a blogger who was in the canadian neopagan community and she spoke out about the sexual abuse and was run out and harassed; there's a patriarchal urge (obviously, there must be to attract neonazis to norse neopaganism or the "cosmotheism" of the "national alliance") david lane and the order (alan berg) national alliance releases racist computer game "ethnic cleansing" in 2002

April Tuesday

and fertility; an obsession with fertility, for misogynist (i.e. patriarchal/fascist) reasons

April Tuesday

and like granola came out of the health movement of the 1800s which included things like mesmerism and hydrotherapy sanitariums iirc there was a belief that physical health and spiritual health were intimately linked (which i think is how you condemn someone with a sexually transmitted or associated disease; such as sex workers)

April Tuesday

i think another thing that might be interesting is the topic of "american apocalyptic literature"; apparently there are a number of scholars but i had a university professor whose doctoral thesis was in that topic and she started a class on it; the materials covered were at least: * Book of revelations * christopher columbus's diary * looking backward, by edward bellamy * day of the locust, by nathanael west * palm latitudes, by kate braverman * the road, cormac mccarthy iirc she made a point that googie architecture in los angeles is emblematic of that somehow, such as visible in the big lebowski one might even say the whole california project is one aiming for a fabled promised land of gold the culture was founded on an obsession with the "city on a hill" image from the bible oh my prof was dr. shaunanne tangney her dissertation was titled, "children of the word from image to method in american apocalyptic literature" a syllabus from the class: https://westernlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Tangney-Apocalyptic-Lit.pdf

April Tuesday

and just the eugenics movement in general (kellogg) and maybe look into this sally fallon, nourishing traditions, weston a price foundation if any of this interests you

April Tuesday

so, I guess my thesis here is that granola was invented as a bland food for tempering the body's natural passions because that will bring us closer to spiritual purity and thus closer to god and perfection (a puritan ideal); the racialized slavery of early america was proof to them of this "truth"; this belief continued into the bodily purifications of the late 1800s (and continuing to this day), some of which have tried to secularize to stay relevant yet still retain a distinctively spiritual component; the implementation of prisons in the united states was done with a spiritual purpose (as sick as that is); [side note: the wikipedia page for "history of united states prison systems" lists former punishments that prisons supposedly "replaced" such as "fines, forced labor, public restraint, flogging, maiming, and death" that i would argue were shifted to the responsibility of one's fellow inmates rather the a dedicated on the books torturer, and high prices and slave wages for fines, in addition to court fees, public restraint, they still do perp walks and what is a prison but a restraint?] the "progressive movement" was the new spin on white supremacy that said 'i am not good because i am white, and you are not bad because you are black, but i am good because i am me, and you are bad because you are you', criminalizing non-normative behavior and leading us into eugenics (theodore roosevelt, john harvey kellogg; muscular christianity [which reminds me of the exorcist character from "my best friend's exorcism" by grady hendrix]), and the spiritual "salvation" of native peoples (including stateside) there were racial theories in social anthropology then the nazis (who greatly admired the united states and their policies toward the indigenous and enslaved peoples) with ariosophy then the new age movement (which began with new religions a century before; wicca began with aradia and probably the golden bough; and of course before that there were a lot of new christian movements and then mormonism, which set out to colonize the territory of "deseret"; there was a (centuries-old) belief in california as an earthly paradise, and it attracted all sorts of spiritual and health trends; hollywood was founded as a christian "temperance" utopia, and it's only one example in a history of the founding of utopian communities on this continent, echoing the puritans original colonization [and the fact that nobody wanted them around]) so, the northwest territorial imperative; this is a territory with a possibly proudly genocidal history (john steinbeck, 'the leader of the people', short story, 1930-40s; though this is central california probably, but the oregon trail nonetheless) in 1958 willis carto founded the liberty lobby; in 1968 he founded the national youth alliance which would go on to become the national alliance in 1974 under the chairmanship of william luther pierce, the author of "the turner diaries", which would go on to inspire the oklahoma city bombing and the murder of alan berg by david lane and his organization "the order" david lane, believed in gematria and other esotericisms, wrote the "fourteen words" and the "88 precepts", co-founded 'the order' which believed in the northwest territorial imperative; there is an anti-christian strain in some white supremacist circles, preferring neopagan religions they want to believe their mythic ancestors practiced, lane basically falls in this category;[note: besides white supremacist neopagan circles, some bigots prefer "christian identity" which grew out of "british israelism"; i.e. the "aryan nations" of idaho origin, which had been founded in the 1970s by richard butler, who had been a member of the "silver shirts" when he was younger; the "silver legion of america", an esoteric fascist organization, was founded in 1933 by william dudley pelley, a journalist and occultist who ran for president in 1936 as the candidate for his political party, the "christian party", a fascist, occultist political party] carto himself had grown up listening to the radio sermons of charles coughlin, which were highly antisemitic, praised hitler, supported the nazi conspiracy theory of judeo-bolshevism, and were listened to by an audience of 30 million in a country of 120 million (¼ of the whole population, one in every four people you meet); so, again, the spiritual connection, the hitler connection (which is itself just a reference back to american drives and practices); hitler is more american than mcdonald's the other founder of the order was robert jay mathews, formerly a member of both the "national alliance" and the "aryan nations"; mathews had joined the john birch society at age 11 to the dismay of his parents (the little freak); the jbs was founded by conspiracist and candy mogul robert w welch jr—and it's antisemitism about rothschilds yada yada blah blah (maybe it all goes back to 'pilgrim's progress'? it was widely read by the puritans, and globally, in fact returning to popularity in the 1800s) (in 1999, the weston a price foundation was founded, they have a sketchy alternative "health" angle that is even more visible now with articles about covid-19 denialism; and it's kinda messianic ngl in 2002, the national alliance released the computer game "ethnic cleansing") anyway, the idea is, i think, that spirituality and racial ideology are deeply interwoven in a very utopian progressive framework where the end goal is white union with god and of course, this is all just patriarchy, which is why this festering sore keeps popping up even in these hippy back to the land movements and why neopagans circles have recreated the same patriarchal issues as christianity; it's all because some people didn't get hugged enough by daddy, and so they need to hug the ultimate daddy (god) who always loved them when their real daddies never did (lol)

April Tuesday

then there's also white/plastic shamanism, illustrating another connection between spirituality and white supremacy

April Tuesday

and that's where Carlos castaneda fits in; funny enough, i came across castaneda again as an adult wwoofing in the pnw; the "farmer" held some fascist (and counterculture) views, so i suspect white supremacy is part and parcel with new age and wellness culture like, I swear you covered "teal swan" in another video

Thomas Kerr

has this been taken down? edit: no

Crystal Charee

Long time subscriber on YT, new subscriber on Patreon, and working my way through your tangents. I've always been pleasantly surprised by you pointing out fatphobia as a bad thing when you see it. I had "existing, in water" as my TikTok bio for a while, which is a quote from your "Cringe" video. I hear a lot about intersectionality but fatness is often excluded. I don't think I've ever heard it listed in relation to ableism or transphobia like in this video. I'm kind of always braced to overlook a random cruel remark by creators that I like, but this kind of unexpected championing is just an example of the empathy that you exhibit that makes me like you so much. Anyway, appreciate it. Even aside from that, great video. :)