'Everything you've been told is a lie!' Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline

One minute you’re doing the downward dog, the next you’re listening to conspiracy theories about Covid or the new world order. How did the desire to look after yourself become so toxic?

James Ball
The Guardian
August 2, 2023



Jane – not her real name – is nervous about speaking to me. She has asked that I don’t identify her or the small, south-coast Devon town in which she lives. “I’m feeling disloyal, because I’m talking about people I’ve known for 30 to 40 years,” she says.

Jane isn’t trying to blow the whistle on government corruption or organised crime: she wants to tell me about her old meditation group. The group had met happily for decades, she says, aligned around a shared interest in topics including “environmental issues, spiritual issues and alternative health”. It included several people whom Jane considered close friends, and she thought they were all on the same page. Then Covid came.

Jane spent most of the first Covid lockdowns in London. During that time, she caught Covid and was hospitalised, and it was then that she realised something significant had changed: a friend from the group got in touch while she was on the ward. “I had somebody I considered a real best friend of mine on the phone telling me, no, I ‘didn’t have Covid’,” she says. “She was absolutely adamant. And I said: ‘Well, why do you think I went into hospital?’”

The friend conceded that Jane was ill, but insisted it must be something other than Covid-19, because Covid wasn’t real. Jane’s hospital stay was thankfully short, but by the time she was sufficiently recovered and restrictions had lifted enough to allow her to rejoin her meditation group, things were very different.

“They have been moving generally to far-right views, bordering on racism, and really pro-Russian views, with the Ukraine war,” she says. “It started very much with health, with ‘Covid doesn’t exist’, anti-lockdown, anti-masks, and it became anti-everything: the BBC lie, don’t listen to them; follow what you see on the internet.”

Things came to a head when one day, before a meditation session – an activity designed to relax the mind and spirit, pushing away all worldly concerns – the group played a conspiratorial video arguing that 15-minute cities and low-traffic zones were part of a global plot. Jane finally gave up.

This apparent radicalisation of a nice, middle-class, hippy-ish group feels as if it should be a one-off, but the reality is very different. The “wellness-to-woo pipeline” – or even “wellness-to-fascism pipeline” – has become a cause of concern to people who study conspiracy theories.

It doesn’t stop with a few videos shared among friends, either. One of the leaders of the German branch of the QAnon movement – a conspiracy founded on the belief that Donald Trump was doing battle with a cabal of Satanic paedophiles led by Hillary Clinton and George Soros, among others – was at first best known as the author of vegan cookbooks. In 2021, Attila Hildmann helped lead a protest that turned violent, with protesters storming the steps of Germany’s parliament. Such was his radicalism in QAnon and online far-right circles that he was under investigation in connection with multiple alleged offences, but he fled Germany for Turkey before he could be arrested.



Similarly, Jacob Chansley, AKA the “QAnon shaman” – one of the most visible faces of the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, thanks to his face paint and horned headgear – is a practitioner of “shamanic arts” who eats natural and organic food, and has more than once been described as an “ecofascist”.



Thanks to wellness, QAnon is the conspiracy that can draw in the mum who shops at Holland & Barrett and her Andrew Tate-watching teenage son. The QAnon conspiracy is one of the most dangerous in the world, directly linked to attempted insurrections in the US and Germany, and mass shootings in multiple countries – and wellness is helping to fuel it. Something about the strange mixture of mistrust of the mainstream, the intimate nature of the relationship between a therapist, spiritual adviser, or even personal trainer, and their client, combined with the conspiratorial world in which we now live, is giving rise to a new kind of radicalisation. How did we end up here?

There are many people interested in spiritualism, alternative medicine, meditation, or personal training, whose views fall well within the mainstream – and more who, if they have niche views, choose not to share them with their clients. But even a cursory online request about this issue led to me being deluged with responses. Despite most experiences being far less intense than Jane’s, no one wanted to put their name to their story – something about the closeness of wellness interactions makes people loth to commit a “betrayal”, it seems.

One person recounted how her pole-dancing instructor would – while up the pole, hanging on with her legs – explain how the CIA was covering up evidence of aliens, and offer tips on avoiding alien abduction.

“A physiotherapist would tell me, while working on my back with me lying face down, about her weekly ‘meetings’ in London about ‘current affairs’,” another said. “There was a whiff about it, but it was ignorable. Then, the last time I saw her, she muttered darkly about the Rothschilds [a common target of antisemitic conspiracy theories] ‘and people like that’. I didn’t go back.”

Some people’s problems escalated when their personal trainer learned about their work. “I had three successive personal trainers who were anti-vax. One Belgian, two Swiss,” I was told by a British man who has spent most of the past decade working in Europe for the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual summit at Davos for politicians and the world’s elite.

“It was hard because I used to argue with all of them and the Swiss made life very difficult for the unvaccinated, but the Swiss bloke insisted that, with the right mental attitude and exercise, you could defeat any illness. I was always asking what would happen if he got rabies.”

When the trainer found out the man worked for the World Economic Forum, he was immediately cut off.

Other respondents’ stories covered everything from yoga to reiki, weightlifters to alternative dog trainers. The theories they shared ranged from extreme versions of wellness-related conspiracies – about the risks of 5G and wifi, or Microsoft founder Bill Gates plotting with vaccines – to 15-minute cities, paedophile rings and bankers’ conspiracies.

Is there a reason why people under the wellness and fitness umbrella might be prone to being induced into conspiracy? It is not that difficult to imagine why young men hitting the gym might be susceptible to QAnon and its ilk. This group spends a lot of time online, there is a supposed crisis of masculinity manifesting in the “incel” (involuntary celibacy) movement and similar, and numerous rightwing influencers have been targeting this group. Add in a masculine gym culture and a community already keen to look for the “secrets” of getting healthy, and there is a lot for a conspiracy theory to hook itself on to.

What is more interesting, surely, is how women old enough to be these men’s mothers find themselves sucked in by the same rhetoric. These are often people with more life experience, who have completed their education and been working – often for decades – and have apparently functional adult lives. But, as Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, observes, the answer may lie in looking at why women turn to wellness and alternative medicine in the first place.

New age and conspiracy theories both see themselves as counter-knowledges challenging received wisdom

“Far too often, we blame women for turning to alternative medicine, painting them as credulous and even dangerous,” she says. “But the blame does not lie with the women – it lies with the gender data gap. Thanks to hundreds of years of treating the male body as the default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests in the female body.”

Women are overwhelmingly more likely than men to suffer from auto-immune disorders, chronic pain and chronic fatigue – and such patients often hit a point at which their doctors tell them there is nothing they can do. The conditions are under-researched and the treatments are often brutal. Is it any surprise that trust in conventional medicine and big pharma is shaken? And is it any surprise that people look for something to fill that void?

Criado Perez says: “If we want to address the trend of women seeking help outside mainstream medicine, it’s not the women we need to fix; it’s mainstream medicine.”

This sense of conspiracies filling a void is an important one. Academic researchers of conspiracy theories have speculated about whether their rise in the 20th century is related to the decline of religion. In a strange way, the idea that a malign cabal is running the world – while far more worrying than a benevolent God – is less scary than the idea that no one is in charge and everything is chaos. People who have a reason to mistrust the mainstream pillars of society – government, doctors, the media, teachers – are more likely to turn to conspiracy theories for explanations as to why the world is like it is.

Peter Knight, professor of American studies at the University of Manchester, who has studied conspiracy theories and their history, notes that the link between alternative therapies and conspiracy is at least a century old, and has been much ignored. “New age and conspiracy theories both see themselves as counter-knowledges that challenge what they see as received wisdom,” he says. “Conspiracy theories provide the missing link, turbo-charging an existing account of what’s happening by claiming that it is not just the result of chance or the unintended consequences of policy choices, but the result of a deliberate, secret plan, whether by big pharma, corrupt scientists, the military-industrial complex or big tech.”

Knight notes an extra factor, though – the wellness pipeline has become a co-dependency. Many far-right or conspiracy sites now fund themselves through supplements or fitness products, usually by hyping how the mainstream doesn’t want the audience to have them.

Alex Jones, the US conspiracist who for a decade claimed the Sandy Hook shootings – which killed 20 children and six adults – were a false-flag operation, had his financial records opened up when he was sued by the families of the victims. During the cases, it emerged he had made a huge amount of money by selling his own branded wellness products.

“Alex Jones perfected the grift of selling snake-oil supplements and prepper kit to the libertarian right wing via his conspiracy theory media channels,” Knight says. “But it was Covid that led to the most direct connections between far-right conspiracism and wellness cultures. The measures introduced to curb the pandemic were viewed as attacks on individual sovereignty, which is the core value of both the wellness and libertarian/‘alt-right’ conspiracy communities.”

The problem is, it rarely stops with libertarians. While they may not recognise it, those drawn in from the left are increasingly ending up in the same place as their rightwing counterparts.

“Although many of the traditional left-leaning alternative health and wellness advocates might reject some of the more racist forms of rightwing conspiracism, they now increasingly share the same online spaces and memes,” he says, before concluding: “They both start from the position that everything we are told is a lie, and the authorities can’t be trusted.”

Society’s discussion of QAnon, anti-vaxxers and other fringe conspiracies is heavily focused on what happens in digital spaces – perhaps too much so, to the exclusion of all else. The solution, though, is unlikely to be microphones in every gym and treatment room, monitoring what gets said to clients. The better question to ask is what has made these practitioners, and all too often their clients, so susceptible to these messages in the first place. For QAnon to be the most convincing answer, what someone has heard before must have been completely unsatisfactory.

Jane has her own theory as to why her wellness group got radicalised and she did not – and it’s one that aligns with concerns from conspiracy experts, too. “I think it’s the isolation,” she concludes, citing lockdown as the catalyst, before noting the irony that conspiracies then kick off a cycle of increasing isolation by forcing believers to reject the wider world. “It becomes very isolating because then their attitude is all: ‘Mainstream media … they lie about everything.’”

The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball is published by Bloomsbury. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply


https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline

Religion shapes vaccine views - but how exactly? Our analysis looks at ideas about God and beliefs about the Bible

The Conversation
July 17, 2023

Authors

1. Christopher P. Scheitle (Assistant Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University)

2. Bernard DiGregorio (Ph.D. Student in Sociology, West Virginia University)

3. Katie Corcoran (Associate Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University)

Disclosure statement

Christopher P. Scheitle has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. The research discussed in this article was funded by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

The research discussed in this article was funded by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

Katie E. Corcoran has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the International Research Network for the Study of Belief and Science, the West Virginia University Humanities Center, the Lake Institute, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The research discussed in this article was funded by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

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Many scientists and public health officials were surprised that large swaths of the public were hesitant or outright hostile toward COVID-19 vaccines. “I never saw that coming,” Francis Collins, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, commented in 2022. Even today, three years after the start of the pandemic, about 1 in 5 Americans have not received a single dose of any COVID-19 vaccine.

What could be the reason for such widespread vaccine hesitancy? When it comes to skepticism toward vaccines, religion is often cited as an important factor. As sociologists researching the role of religion in vaccine attitudes and behaviors, we have found that the religion-vaccine connection is significant, but much more nuanced than simple stereotypes assume.

Both religious life and vaccine views are complex. A person’s religion cannot be boiled down to just one thing. It includes an identity, a place of worship and a variety of beliefs and practices. Each of these components can have its own distinct effect on vaccine attitudes and behaviors.

Attitudes toward vaccines are complicated, as well. Someone’s feelings about vaccines in general might differ from their feelings about one specific type of vaccine, for instance.

To help make sense of this complexity, we surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 U.S. adults in May 2021 about their religious identities, beliefs, behaviors and their attitudes toward a number of scientific issues, including vaccines. This sample included individuals across many religious traditions, as well as people who do not affiliate with any religion. However, Christians represented the bulk of the sample, given their larger share of the American population, and so our research focuses heavily on on their views.

Bible beliefs

One part of religious life that social scientists are often interested in is people’s views of the Bible. For example, does someone think of the Bible as the literal word of God; inspired by God, but not literally true; or as an ancient book of legends, history and moral codes that has no divine source?

We found that respondents who see the Bible as either the “inspired” or “the actual word of God” were less likely to see vaccines in general – not the COVID-19 vaccine in particular – as safe and effective, compared with those who see the Bible as just a book of history and morality created by humans. All else being equal, those who said that the Bible is the literal word of God, for instance, scored 18% higher on our measure of general vaccine skepticism than those who see the Bible as having no divine source or inspiration.

Although such literalist views might be found at higher rates in particular religious traditions, such as evangelical Protestantism, we found that an individual’s religious tradition itself did not make much of a difference. An evangelical Protestant and a Catholic, for instance, would be predicted to have similar attitudes toward vaccines if they share the same view of the Bible.

In contrast, when we asked similar questions specifically about COVID-19 vaccines, we found that an individual’s religious tradition is what matters the most. Protestants – both those who identify as evangelical and those who do not – express more skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccines than respondents from other religious traditions and nonreligious respondents.

God and country

In additional studies, we have attempted to identify the reasons for these patterns. That is, why does one’s view of the Bible or one’s religious tradition matter when it comes to vaccine attitudes and behaviors?

One factor could be Christian nationalism, which has been increasingly visible in the public sphere since Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency. Christian nationalism is described by sociologists of religion Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry as an ideology that advocates for the fusion of Christianity with American politics and public life.

For example, Americans who hold a Christian nationalist ideology tend to agree when surveys ask them whether the federal government “should declare the United States a Christian nation.” In our own survey, we found that individuals’ responses to that statement are strongly correlated with their willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

We asked for respondents’ level of agreement or disagreement with that statement on a 5-point scale. A 1-point increase in agreement meant someone was 17% less likely to have received or plan to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Although not exclusive to Protestants, adherence to Christian nationalist ideology is more prominent among this group – especially among its more conservative or evangelical traditions.

False claims can have real consequences.

Another of our studies focused on how people view God. Our data showed that simply believing there is a God, or a higher power that supervises the world, does not make an individual less likely to have received the COVID-19 vaccine. On the other hand, believing that God can and will actively intervene in the world does make a difference. According to our analysis, with all else being equal, we would expect those with the lowest belief in an intervening higher power to be vaccinated, or intend to get vaccinated, 88% of the time. In contrast, we would expect those with the highest belief in an intervening higher power to be vaccinated, or intend to be, 73% of the time.

In addition, our data shows that belief in parareligious phenomena – including New Ageism, occultism, psychism and spiritualism – is also significantly associated with a reduced likelihood of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. We used a 5-point parareligoius belief scale, with a 1-point increase in an individual’s belief in parareligious phenomena being associated with a 40% decrease in the likelihood of having received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Once we accounted for higher rates of conspiratorial belief and distrust in science among respondents who believe in parareligious phenomena, however, this vaccine gap was reduced. This suggests that those underlying factors help explain why more people who believe in parareligious phenomena are skeptical toward vaccines.

All of these studies demonstrate that he link between religion and vaccine attitudes is neither simple nor uniform. Public health campaigns that target faith communities would do well to keep this in mind.

https://theconversation.com/religion-shapes-vaccine-views-but-how-exactly-our-analysis-looks-at-ideas-about-god-and-beliefs-about-the-bible-204178

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat

By Derek Beres (Author), Matthew Remski (Author), Julian Walker (Author) 

Conspirituality takes a deep dive into the troubling phenomenon of influencers who have curdled New Age spirituality and wellness with the politics of paranoia—peddling vaccine misinformation, tales of child trafficking, and wild conspiracy theories.

 

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disturbing social media trend emerged: a large number of yoga instructors and alt-health influencers were posting stories about a secretive global cabal bent on controlling the world’s population with a genocidal vaccine. Instagram feeds that had been serving up green smoothie recipes and Mary Oliver poems became firehoses of Fox News links, memes from 4chan, and prophecies of global transformation.

Since May 2020, Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker have used their Conspirituality podcast to expose countless facets of the intersection of alt-health practitioners with far-right conspiracy trolls. Now this expansive and revelatory book unpacks the follies, frauds, cons and cults that dominate the New Age and wellness spheres and betray the trust of people who seek genuine relief in this uncertain age.

With analytical rigor and irreverent humor, Conspirituality offers an antidote to our times, helping readers recognize wellness grifts, engage with loved ones who've fallen under the influence, and counter lies and distortions with insight and empathy.

"Matt Remski and his colleagues have been doing great work analyzing and exposing the convergence of New Age magical thinking and the sinister paranoia and underlying authoritarianism of the conspiracy theory mindset. Their book is out today!" - Guruphiliac

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3NsBLJU

ICSA Conference: Panel: Exploring the Fine Line of 'Culty' in the Online Self-Help Industry

ICSA Conference: Panel: Exploring the Fine Line of 'Culty' in the Online Self-Help Industry (Thursday, June 29th, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM)

In the time of COVID, we experienced greater isolation, time at home, time with computers, and time online. With the wide variety of new changes came challenges, and many of us began facing parts of ourselves that were undiscovered, and in need of new solutions or insights. Turning to the online self help industry in order to heal, learn, and grow, many also found community. In this panel discussion we explore the online self help industry during COVID from a few perspectives. Jean Brown, co-founder of SEEK Safely, an organization dedicated to educating the public about the $11B/yr self help industry speaks to the reality of harmful groups advertising online as self-help. Jennifer French, who specializes in cult and religious recovery work with survivors and families, speaks to tactics of coercive control and how even well intentioned self help teachers can unknowingly lead followers with tactics of manipulation and influence. Callie Sorensen, a trauma informed narcissistic abuse & cult recovery coach and founder of Red Flag Education, speaks to the little and big red flags that we can all be aware of both externally and internally, as we approach the world of self help online.

Speakers:

Jennifer French Tomasic (Speaker) Jennifer French, Owner

Jean Brown (Speaker) SEEK Safely, Content Producer

Callie Sorensen (Speaker) Red Flag Education, Nonprofit Founder

https://linktr.ee/ICSA_events

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/11/2022 (Hillsong, Child Sexual Abuse, Australia, Legal, COVID-19, Maharishi U., Transcendental Meditation, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gaslighting)

Hillsong, Child Sexual Abuse, Australia, Legal, COVID-19, Maharishi U., Transcendental Meditation, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gaslighting 

RNS: Facing trial, Brian Houston steps aside as global senior pastor of Hillsong

"Brian Houston, co-founder of the Hillsong megachurch and media empire, announced that he is stepping aside as global senior pastor, telling worshippers via a pre-recorded video played during the Sunday morning service at Hillsong's Sydney, Australia, headquarters that he would be taking a leave of absence from the church until the end of this year.

Citing a decision by the Hillsong board and external legal counsel, Houston, standing with his wife and co-founder, Bobbie, said "best practice" dictates that he absent himself completely from church leadership as he faces trial for allegedly failing to report sexual abuse. The court proceedings, he said, are "likely to be drawn out and take up most of 2022."

"It's been an unexpected season, and we are thankful for you all and for the community we share," Houston said on the video streamed toward the end of the service. "I never get tired of the praise reports and miracles, especially those committing to Jesus."

Houston's leave of absence comes after more than a year of scandals that have rocked the church both in Australia and abroad and amid Houston's own legal troubles at home. Houston stepped down from the board of Hillsong in September.

"The result is that the Hillsong Global Board feel it is in my and the church's best interest for this to happen, so I have agreed to step aside from all ministry responsibilities until the end of the year," Houston said in the January 30 video announcement.

Houston, 67, was charged in August with concealing a serious indictable offense of another person. Police say his late father, Frank Houston, also a preacher, indecently assaulted a young male in 1970. Court documents allege Houston knew of his father's abuse as early as 1999 and "without reasonable excuse," failed to disclose that information to police."

ThreadReader: Mike Doughney

"Thread on the intersection among TM institutions, lifelong TM meditators, and COVID-19 virus denial and anti-vaccination."

Daily Independent: Jehovah's Witnesses continue ministry inside AZ prisons

"COVID-19 shut down access to most U.S. prisons including the Arizona State Prison Complex in Yuma where Shannon Gunderman volunteers with a group of Jehovah's Witness ministers.

Without warning, inmates were cut off from a robust Bible education program that included weekly Bible-based discourses, audience discussions, individual Bible studies and video presentations.

Within weeks, Jehovah's Witnesses pivoted their in-person ministry and activities around the country to virtual meetings and preaching through letters, telephone calls and videoconferencing."

Psychology Today: Surprising New Findings on Power and Gaslighting

People with low power or high power experience more Gaslighting.

" ... Gaslighting is a psychological control strategy used to manipulate a person's sense of reality and make them doubt their own perceptions, memories, and judgment.

In the gaslighter's world, only one person's perspective matters. More importantly, only one individual's perspective can matter: the gaslighter's. The victim's views, as if the ramblings of a crazy person, are dismissed as not worthy of serious consideration. The gaslighter wants the victim to truly accept the gaslighter's judgment. Why?

So that, being riddled with self-doubt, the victim of gaslighting does not take himself or herself seriously enough to voice an opinion. And instead relies completely on the gaslighter's judgment.

To be clear, gaslighters do not necessarily have the long-term goal of making their romantic partner think themselves ill or crazy. However, because gaslighters cannot tolerate being challenged or thought wrong, their partner having a mind of his or her own is experienced as a major threat, one that must be destroyed.

We now turn to the study by Samp and Graves. These authors define gaslighting in terms of dependence power, or the "capacity to influence derived from relational partners' reliance on one another." Gaslighting generates dependence power because the victim of gaslighting gradually depends more and more on the gaslighter—not just forQ approval (or love, money, and so forth) but to know what is real."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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Russian coronavirus-denying monk given prison sentence

VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
AP News
November 30, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — A rebel Russian monk who castigated the Kremlin and denied that the coronavirus existed was convicted Tuesday on accusations of encouraging suicides and given a 3½-year prison sentence.

The monk, Father Sergiy, was arrested in December 2020 on charges of inciting suicidal actions through sermons in which he urged believers to “die for Russia,” breaching the freedom of conscience and making arbitrary moves. He rejected the accusations and his lawyers said they would appeal Tuesday’s ruling by Moscow’s Ismailovo District Court.

Father Sergiy reacted to the verdict with a biblical “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”

When the coronavirus pandemic began, the 66-year-old monk denied its existence and denounced government efforts to stem the pandemic as “Satan’s electronic camp.” He has spread the long-debunked conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and described the coronavirus vaccines being developed against COVID-19 as part of a purported global plot to control the masses via microchips.

The monk urged followers to disobey the government’s lockdown measures and holed up at a monastery near Yekaterinburg that he founded and had dozens of burly volunteers, including veterans of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, help enforce his rules while the prioress and several nuns left.

The monk chastised President Vladimir Putin as a “traitor to the Motherland” who was serving a Satanic “world government” and denounced the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and other top clerics as “heretics” who must be “thrown out.”

The Russian Orthodox Church stripped Father Sergiy of his abbot’s rank for breaking monastic rules and later excommunicated him, but he rejected the rulings and ignored police investigators’ summons. Facing stiff resistance by hundreds of his supporters, church officials and local authorities appeared reluctant to evict him for months.

Father Sergiy, who was born as Nikolai Romanov, served as a police officer during Soviet times. After leaving the ranks of law enforcement, he was convicted of murder, robbery and assault and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He joined a church school after his release and later became a monk.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-europe-suicides-moscow-1fb9bd30f4b1209e07bd61471f16d822

The COVID-Denying, Tsar-Loving Russian 'Cult' That's Too Extreme for Putin

A charismatic and rebellious monk built an ultra-religious commune at the very edge of Europe. Now he’s under arrest and his followers are left in limbo.


Gabriel Gavin
VIICE
September 29, 2021

“Will you die if I ask you to?” That was the question Father Sergei Romanov asked of his nuns. One by one, the women approached the head of their convent, draped in black robes, his long gray hair tied back into a ponytail. “I’ll die with joy,” came the reply. “If you bless me, I will die.”

Wearing thick winter jackets, their heads covered, the women queued to kiss his hands and receive a blessing while he raged against drunkenness and moral decay. The sermon, held last December at the convent in the forests outside Ekaterinburg in Russia’s Urals region, 900 miles east of Moscow – where Europe ends and Asia begins – would be one of the controversial Russian monk’s last. A video of the eerily-lit exchange went viral on social media last year, prompting a police inquiry.

Already excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and now facing claims he was running a secretive death cult, Romanov and his hundreds of followers prepared to make their last stand at Sredneuralsk monastery. “Let them come,” he told the congregation around him. “Let them try to fight with our spiritual power… this will be their first lesson in defeat.”

And, on the evening of the 29th of December last year, they did come. Armed riot police stormed the snowy complex. As their flashing blue lights lit up the hand-painted murals of saints which adorn the white walls of the convent buildings, officers from Russia’s national guard detained Romanov and his deputies.

By morning, he had been bundled into a plane and flown westwards to Moscow, where a court read out the charges – encouraging his followers to kill themselves, violating their basic rights and causing outrage to religious believers across the country.

Just months before, the local archbishop had accused him of vanity, lying and suffering from “schizophrenic delirium” as part of a dispute with Church officials, who he branded heretics and denied access to the monastery. The breakaway convent had also been plagued by allegations from former students that drug-addicted monks were plying teenagers who lived there with narcotics, as well as subjecting them to corporal punishment and abuse. After a 15-year-old girl died at the monastery last year detectives launched a probe.

Around the same time, three young people who had been involved with the church told popular TV journalist Ksenia Sobchak that they had been beaten with electrical cord, and locked in a shed without food. She and her camera crew were chased away by Romanov’s followers as they tried to gain entry to the complex while filming a documentary, and her director was left with a broken wrist.

The monastery and its enigmatic priest have captured the imagination of Russians, with the media uniformly portraying the church as a shadowy sect. Pictures of Romanov looking bedraggled and hauled up in front of court have made the front pages. Little has been said, though, of the people that said they would follow Romanov to the grave.

VICE World News met one of those followers, “Elena,” outside a KFC in Ekaterinburg, before driving out to one of Romanov’s former monasteries. She’d agreed to show us around one of the country’s holiest sites, speaking on the condition that her name be changed, to avoid drawing unwanted attention from the authorities or criticism from others in the church.

If alleged death cults are supposed to attract a certain type of person, Elena probably wouldn’t fit the mould. With a good job and a young family, her eyes lit up when she said how she’d started attending church because of the 66-year-old branded online as “mad Sergei” (a reference to the “mad monk” nickname given to Rasputin), and how she’d struggled since the monastery was shuttered by the authorities.

“When I first went to him, I felt love from him,” she said as we sped down the highway. “I felt he cared for people and helped them. I had some problems, and I didn’t have to tell him. He knew straight away.”

We were driving to Ganina Yama, a collection of wooden churches and shrines built around a colossal pit out in the woods. The former mineshaft is said to be the spot where communist revolutionaries dumped the bodies of the Romanovs, Russia’s last royals. In 1918, as loyalist forces closed in on Ekaterinburg, the family were taken down to the basement of the house where they had been imprisoned, and executed by their drunken guards. The bullet-ridden corpses of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and children, were pushed down the shaft, before the Bolsheviks poured in acid and blew it up.

In death, the family has taken on a mythical status for many Orthodox Christians, especially those who followed Romanov. A steady stream of coaches and minibuses ferry religious Russians to the quiet forest shrine each week, where pilgrims can kneel on a platform in front of the pit and chant prayers, their voices carrying through the trees. “We are praying not just for the Romanovs,” one worshipper told VICE World News, “but for the forgiveness of all Russians. We’ll never know who carried out the murders, so we pray for all of our ancestors.” The royals were given sainthoods by the Church not long after the fall of Communism and, for many believers, the slaughter of the head of the Orthodox faith and his innocent children marked the start of eight decades of oppressive, atheistic Soviet rule.

By a strange twist of fate, before becoming a monk and taking on a new name, Father Sergei had been born Nicholas Romanov – just like the last Tsar himself. A former Soviet police investigator who dramatically fell from grace in the uncertain times before the implosion of the USSR, Romanov confessed to an armed robbery and the murder of a man in 1985. He claims he found faith while sentenced to 13 years behind bars in a special prison colony for law enforcement officers.

A year before he was sentenced, Romanov was involved in a car collision while committing a crime, killing one person and leaving him hospitalised in a coma for three days. According to Elena, that planted the seeds for his conversion, and “he only started to believe in God after he was involved in the crash.” While technically his criminal convictions should have blocked him from the priesthood, Romanov claims that the then-head of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexey II, personally waived the rules and welcomed him as a reformed man. As religious leaders worked to regain their flocks after years of Soviet repression, the newly ordained monk was conveniently positioned as the model of a sinner who had seen the light, and quickly moved up through the ranks to preside over his own congregation.

Inspired by a near-death experience, infatuated with the murdered Romanovs and with a congregation pledging their willingness to die, the priest has struggled to shake off the morbid reputation he has gained in recent years. Elena, however, denied that the group has an unhealthy obsession with suicide, as prosecutors allege. “When Russians join the army, they pledge they are ready to die for the country. So why is it different when it’s about God?” she asked.

However, their apathy towards the mortal world seems to have made the group a threat in the eyes of officials since the start of the pandemic last year. Romanov stood almost alone among religious leaders when he defied orders to suspend his sermons and encourage mask-wearing to prevent the spread of the virus. “All the problems began in the time of Covid,” Elena sighed. “Before, everything was OK, but he said he wouldn’t listen to the government. We believe in God, so how can we be afraid of Covid?” she added. “We believe that even if you die, you will be OK… it is God’s will.” Romanov was also belligerently opposed to government efforts to convince priests to encourage their flocks to sign up for the vaccine.

While Elena insists the church’s teachings aren’t far outside the mainstream, she acknowledges that their piousness can seem strange to outsiders. “Some people don’t like him of course – for example we took our friends and they were afraid because when he prayed, some people started screaming – speaking in tongues. And they were like ‘oh God,’ they weren’t ready for this, it was too much. They thought it was a cult.” Stories of parents searching for children who had run away to sign up with the group haven’t helped its reputation locally either.

Now, former members of the church claim the authorities are monitoring them to make sure they don’t regroup in Romanov’s absence, with the most devoted of his followers put out on the street.

Although the charges their spiritual leader is facing stem from his supposed mistreatment of followers and calls for them to kill themselves, Elena says the authorities were more worried by how strongly the church’s members felt about him and the fact the breakaway group had rejected control from senior bishops. “I think they are afraid people will break the law, because Romanov says a lot of bad things about the government, and they’re worried that it is dangerous for society, like we will start some kind of revolution,” she said. “But it isn’t true – we won’t do this. We will never start an insurrection.”

One top Orthodox clergyman, Moscow Deacon Andrei Kuraev, however, warned last year that even if the monk’s teachings are peaceful, it is his personal hold over his congregation that is potentially dangerous. According to the church official, Romanov was more interested in being adored by his supporters than living a humble, godly life. “A monk is someone who says I am shit, and you can walk over me like a doormat,” he told local media as the case made headlines. Romanov, however, “has nothing like this in his face, intonations, eyes or behaviour. He feels like a Fuhrer who is ready to lead everyone.”

According to Professor Nikolai Shaburov, one of the country’s leading religion experts, describing the group as a “cult” is not helpful in understanding them. “The terms cult and sect are best avoided altogether, since they’re basically pejorative terms and have lacked all meaning,” he says. Instead, he said, Romanov’s group is better understood as a “new religious movement” within the Orthodox Church, made up of highly-motivated young people looking for inspiration. “The peculiarity in Russia is the fact that these groups are becoming more influential in society,” he said, adding that “it is common for the authorities to take a negative view towards them.”

One of the problems, he went on, is that top bishops take a dim view of individuality in local preachers. “The Russian Orthodox Church isn’t known for its tolerance”, Shaburov says. The row with leaders over his refusal to suspend sermons and encourage mask wearing in 2019, as well as his harsh criticism of top bishops, could also play a role. “I note that Father Sergei was accused of authoritarianism only after conflict with the Church leadership,” Shaburov added.

Cult or not, as the controversial monk languishes in a Moscow jail cell awaiting trial, his followers have been left trying to pick up the pieces and trying to keep their community together, while praying the court finds him not guilty later this year. In the meantime, though, like the Romanovs, Sergei has become just another holy figure, taken away from them too soon.



https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nywg/the-covid-denying-tsar-loving-russian-cult-thats-too-extreme-for-putin

Vaccine Resisters Seek Religious Exemptions. But What Counts as Religious?

Major denominations are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19, but individuals who object are citing their personal faith for support.

Ruth Graham
New York Times
September 11, 2021

When Crisann Holmes’s employer announced last month that it would require all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by Nov. 1, she knew she had to find a way out.

She signed a petition to ask the company to relax its mandate. She joined an informal protest, skipping work with other dissenting employees at the mental health care system where she has worked for two years. And she attempted a solution that many across the country are now exploring: a religious exemption.

“My freedom and my children’s freedom and children’s children’s freedom are at stake,” said Ms. Holmes, who lives in Indiana. In August, she submitted an exemption request she wrote herself, bolstered by her own Bible study and language from sources online. Some vaccines were developed using fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses, she wrote, citing a remote connection to a practice she finds abhorrent. She quoted a passage from the New Testament: “Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit.”

Major religious traditions, denominations and institutions are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19. But as more employers across the country begin requiring Covid vaccinations for workers, they are butting up against the nation’s sizable population of vaccine holdouts who nonetheless see their resistance in religious terms — or at least see an opportunity. Vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions to the requirements on religious grounds; others are submitting letters from far-flung religious authorities who have advertised their willingness to help.

The conflict was picking up steam even before President Biden announced sweeping new workplace vaccine mandates on Thursday. The new orders will require the vast majority of federal workers and those who work for large private employers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Overall, the mandates are expected to affect 100 million American workers.

U.S. businesses have spent the past 18 months dealing with a series of logistically and politically contentious challenges raised by the pandemic, including shutting down workplaces, requiring masks and reopening, combined with widespread labor shortages. The new battle over vaccine exemptions is especially fraught, pitting religious liberty concerns against the priority of maintaining a safe environment.

“How much can we ask? How far can we push? Do we have to accommodate this? Those are the questions employers are trying to figure out,” said Barbara Holland, an adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management. And: “How do I tease out who’s not telling the truth?”



Interest in religious exemptions is clearly rising. Mat Staver, the founder and chair of Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal organization, said his group had received more than 20,000 queries on religious exemptions in recent weeks.

Liberty Counsel filed suit on Friday against officials in New York over the state’s attempts to deny religious exemptions from its vaccination mandate for health care workers. “The consequences of these forced edicts are enormous,” Mr. Staver said, citing the possibility of labor shortages if health care workers quit or are fired en masse.

In New York City, where vaccines are required for public schoolteachers, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would recognize “narrow and specific grounds for religious exemption.”

In many communities, large public employers are already dealing with a surge in requests. In Tucson, Ariz., 291 workers requested religious exemptions after the city announced a vaccine mandate for its employees. The city assigned four administrators to sort through the requests. They have approved slightly more than half so far, and denied 15, with some requests for further information still pending, according to Ana Urquijo, the interim assistant city manager.

Some private employers are taking a hard line. On Wednesday, United Airlines told workers that those who receive religious exemptions will be placed on unpaid leave at least until new Covid safety and testing procedures are in place.

Exemption requests are testing the boundaries of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for employees who object to work requirements based on religious beliefs that are “sincerely held.”

To the benefit of objectors like Ms. Holmes, the provision defines “religion” broadly. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has specified that religious objections do not have to be recognized by an organized religion and can be beliefs that are new, uncommon or “seem illogical or unreasonable to others.”

They cannot, however, be based only on social or political beliefs. That means employers must try to distinguish between primarily political objections from people who may happen to be religious, and objections that are actually religious at their core.

For many skeptics, resistance tends to be based not on formal teachings from an established faith leader, but an ad hoc blend of online conspiracies and misinformation, conservative media and conversations with like-minded friends and family members.

“People who have already made up their minds are now looking for ways to continue to exempt themselves from the Covid vaccine,” said Joshua Williams, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado.

Mr. Williams’s prepandemic research into school immunization requirements suggests that most objections described as religious to vaccines are really a matter of personal — and secular — beliefs. After the state of Vermont removed its vaccine exemption for nonreligious personal beliefs in 2016, the proportion of kindergarten students with a religious exemption shot up from 0.5 percent to 3.7 percent, suggesting that most parents who took advantage of religious exemptions did so only when others were not available.

Apple, Microsoft, Tyson Foods and Disney are among the major private employers who announced this summer that they would require at least some of their workers to be vaccinated. Since the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine on Aug. 23, others are quickly following.

As mandates take effect and the Delta variant surges in many regions of the country, some former skeptics are submitting to shots. The Biden administration said that roughly 14 million people in the United States received their first shot in August, about 4 million more than in July.
Understand Vaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

• Vaccine rules. On Aug. 23, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and up, paving the way for an increase in mandates in both the public and private sectors. Private companies have been increasingly mandating vaccines for employees. Such mandates are legally allowed and have been upheld in court challenges.

• Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in indoor public places within areas experiencing outbreaks, a reversal of the guidance it offered in May. See where the C.D.C. guidance would apply, and where states have instituted their own mask policies. The battle over masks has become contentious in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.

• College and universities. More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Almost all are in states that voted for President Biden.

• Schools. Both California and New York City have introduced vaccine mandates for education staff. A survey released in August found that many American parents of school-age children are opposed to mandated vaccines for students, but were more supportive of mask mandates for students, teachers and staff members who do not have their shots.

• Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get a Covid-19 vaccine, citing rising caseloads fueled by the Delta variant and stubbornly low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their work force.

• New York City. Proof of vaccination is required of workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances and other indoor situations, although enforcement does not begin until Sept. 13. Teachers and other education workers in the city’s vast school system will need to have at least one vaccine dose by Sept. 27, without the option of weekly testing. City hospital workers must also get a vaccine or be subjected to weekly testing. Similar rules are in place for New York State employees.

• At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would seek to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops “no later” than the middle of September. President Biden announced that all civilian federal employees would have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel.

But among others, desperation to avoid the vaccines is rising. In Paducah, Ky., Drew Kirk and his wife, who he asked not to be named, were strategizing about how to use a religious exemption at the hospital she works for, which recently announced a vaccine mandate for employees.

“There are many reasons we don’t want to take it, and faith is one,” Mr. Kirk said. Their concerns include a perception that the vaccine was rushed, problems with what they have read about the vaccine’s remote connection to abortion and similarities to the biblical “mark of the beast,” a symbol associated with the Antichrist. They also are not overly worried about the virus itself.

Online, a loose web of largely independent faith leaders has volunteered to provide exemption letters to those who request them. An independent evangelist in Texas is offering letters online in exchange for a donation. In California, a megachurch pastor is offering a letter to anyone who checks a box confirming the person is a “practicing Evangelical that adheres to the religious and moral principles outlined in the Holy Bible.”

The letters aren’t necessary, experts say, but can help bolster claims that religious objections to the vaccine are sincere.

Other clergy have offered exemption letters to those in their own flocks, often emphasizing freedom of conscience rather than specific dangers of the vaccine itself.

In rural Hudson, Iowa, Sam Jones has informed his small congregation at Faith Baptist Church that he is willing to provide them with a four-paragraph letter stating that “a Christian has no responsibility to obey any government outside of the scope that has been designated by God.”

He said that he has signed about 30 letters so far and is aware of a handful of instances in which a member’s religious exemption was accepted by the employer.

In Indiana, Ms. Holmes’s wariness about the vaccine was reinforced by her own research. She tuned into a “health and freedom” conference hosted by an anti-vaccine podcast host, and downloaded materials from America’s Frontline Doctors, an organization that peddles false information about the vaccines and promotes as a treatment the livestock drug ivermectin, which the Food and Drug Administration has not approved for treating Covid and has warned can cause serious harm in large doses.

Threatened with a formal reprimand if she skipped work in protest, Ms. Holmes woke up in the middle of the night with a Bible verse from the book of 2 Timothy in her mind: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” She stayed home. (A spokeswoman for Centerstone, the mental health care system where she works, said the protest was small and that “a relatively small number” of its 4,000 employees in four states have requested religious or medical exemptions so far.)

A few weeks after she submitted her exemption request, her employer requested more information, sending her a form for a religious leader to fill out to back up her account of her beliefs. “I was livid,” she said. “Religion doesn’t require a leader.” But a pastor at her church, EUM Church in Greenville, Ohio, agreed to fill out the form.

Ms. Holmes is awaiting a final ruling from her employer. She is willing to lose her job if it comes to that. “If I don’t fight for my rights, who will?” she asked. “I know God’s got my back.”

Ruth Graham is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. @publicroad

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 12, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shot Mandates Drive Holdouts To Cite Religion

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/11/us/covid-vaccine-religion-exemption.html

TikTok Cult Leader Pivots to Preaching Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theories

Unicult founder Unicole Unicron is also offering followers religious exceptions from the Covid vaccine.


EJ DICKSON
Rolling Stone
SEPTEMBER 9, 2021


“Today’s sermon is going to be on Unitopian Anarchy and Autonomy,” Unicole Unicron says in the opening of a sermon on YouTube. Clad in an ethereal white veil, against a background of dizzying black-and-white swirls, the leader of the self-described cult Unicult proceeds to spends the next 51 minutes detailing thoughts on the Covid-19 vaccine and why the cult’s leader is not encouraging followers to get the vaccine. “Only you have autonomy over your own body,” says Unicron, who uses xe/xim pronouns. “Do what is right for you. Perform no medical rituals that are against your own strong intuitive knowledge of your personal health.” Unicron then explains why xe believes contracting the virus would not get xim sick, saying, “I have ascended to the point where I am confident that my own experience of my own internal state and my own vibration of harmony is enough to protect me.”

In the sermon, Unicron also promoted the erroneous belief that the Covid-19 vaccine does not reduce the risk of getting or transmitting Covid. “I have done every single thing I can do within my own personal reality to protect myself from my point of view and there are people doing the same with the vaccines, and yet they’re still getting Covid,” xe said in the sermon. “So can we blame them for endangering society?”

Unicole Unicron is the leader of Unicult, an online cult that describes itself as “a collaborative effort for anyone who wants to work towards the goal of creating a bright and hopeful future.” Unicron, who lives in Los Angeles-based and works full-time as a UX writer, decided to start the cult after surviving a suicide attempt, as a way to find purpose and “stay alive.” Xe claims to be a magical being who is in contact with extraterrestrial beings who use xir as a vessel to promote their ideas. Basic admission to the cult, which mostly involves access to its Discord server, costs $11, while becoming a devoted member or a magician (essentially, a Unicult clergy member) costs $22 and $33, respectively.

Over the past few years, Unicult has received bemused, vaguely positive press coverage, including a 2018 viral story when Unicron announced plans to open the world’s first sex robot brothel (the project was scrapped because of a lack of funding), and a 2019 Vice video profile titled “Finding Salvation with an Online Cult“; xe has also attracted attention for “brainwashing” videos on YouTube and for attempting to sell a “spiritual sex tape” for $444. Unicult has largely escaped much serious scrutiny, in part due to its candy-colored, hyperpop aesthetic and its tongue-in-cheek messaging; in a 2016 piece, for instance, Vice writer Leigh Alexander praised the cult, saying of Unicron, “the idea of a divine digital pop star witch from space is… charmingly reminiscent of a long-gone tech utopian dream.” Many have interpreted the fact that Unicult is open about being a cult as a performance art piece or a commentary on religion and mindless consumer culture, rather than taking its self-designation at face value.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, however, Unicron has been openly promoting anti-vaccine views on xir social platforms, including xir TikTok account, where xe has almost 100,000 followers; and YouTube, where the channel has gotten more than one million views and where xe does weekly live streams, called “Cam Church.” Most recently, Unicron posted a video on TikTok offering to provide religious exemption letters to Unicult members who do not wish to be vaccinated.

Unicron has been espousing conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and vaccines since at least May 2020, when xe wrote a post for Unicult’s blog Pop Cult about the pandemic. “The disease is dangerous, perhaps a bioweapon, but likely not nearly as dangerous as it is made out to be,” xe said of Covid-19 before discussing the possibility of a future vaccine: “Many cures for disease and viral infections exist. It’s about the immune strength, not about any particular drug. Our medical industrial complex has worked hard to conceptually remove the cure from the actual aspect of true healing so that they can make a profit by selling pills and vaccines.”

In an April 2021 video titled “Why I am NOT getting the vaccine,” Unicron referred to the Covid-19 vaccine as “experimental,” saying, “my choice to not get it is based on the fact that I am a radical and I don’t just do what other people say.” Later xe refers to the vaccine as a “brainwashing agenda to get everybody on the same page.” In a June 11th video on conspiracies in general, xe referred to vaccines specifically, saying, “Vaccines work. But at the same time they’re full of toxic metals and who knows what else?”

In an August 25th video on TikTok, where Unicult has its largest following, Unicron vowed to “protect” members who do not wish to get the vaccine. “If you are intuitively against the vaccine and you feel with every fiber of your being that it is wrong for you personally to get, we respect that decision and we honor it,” xe says in the clip. “We also protect your right to get the vaccine if you intuitively feel that it is for your best interest.” Unicron adds that Unicult is a real religion and that the church can provide documentation of religious exemptions for any Unicult members who don’t want to be vaccinated. (Unicron told Rolling Stone xe applied for 501c(3) nonprofit status for Unicult in March, which was confirmed by California state attorney general records, but the application has not yet been approved.)

“If the slimiest grossest monster comes out of the sewer and says kiss me, you’d be revolted,” Unicron says of the vaccine.

In a conversation with Rolling Stone, Unicron denied being anti-vaccine or discouraging followers from being vaccinated, saying Unicult respects individual choice and freedom above all else. Xe reasserted, however, that xe personally did not wish to receive the shot, citing previous “medical trauma.” Xe says of the vaccine, “If the slimiest grossest monster comes out of the sewer and says kiss me, you’d be revolted. That’s how it feels in my body. I do not feel like it’s right for me.” Unicron says that xe takes “many other measures to make sure I’m healthy,” such as eating vegan, exercising, and taking oil of oregano and colloidal silver. (There is, of course, no evidence that either are effective against Covid, and the FDA has said of colloidal silver supplements in particular that they “are not generally recognized as safe and effective and are misbranded.”)

When asked about the August 25th TikTok video, Unicron said that so far, xe had supplied only one religious exemption letter to a follower who had requested it. However, Unicron personally submitted a religious exemption letter to xir employer last month, after they announced they would requiring all employees, including those working remotely, to be vaccinated. “I wrote that Unicult says our intuition is holy and if we are intuitively against a medical procedure we should not subject ourselves to it,” xe says. (Xe says xe has not heard back from xir employer whether the exemption has been approved.)

Unicron has started publicly espousing anti-vaccine views around the same time that Unicult itself has seen an increase in membership — up to 200 percent, according to Unicron, who estimated that the group now has about 6,000 official members. Part of this is due to Unicron’s success on TikTok, where xe started racking up followers around 2020, shortly after a TikTok video of Unicron explaining the principles of “starseeds,” or “alien consciousnesses born into human bodies,” went viral. That video received widespread mockery, landing on the front page of Reddit’s r/cringe forum, but it also helped provide exposure for Unicron and Unicult at a time when people on social media were increasingly open to New Age ideology and conspiracy theories.

Far from being a detriment, packaging Unicult explicitly as a cult is “kind of a smart move” in terms of attracting attention and new followers, says Diane Benscoter, a former Moonie and an expert on cults. “That kind of making fun of yourself is not uncommon in cults because underneath it, they take themselves very seriously. Putting it out there to the world, it kinda takes that ‘OMG, you’re a cult’ reaction away.”

“This is not just cringey,” said one person on Twitter. “It’s absolutely dangerous.”

Some on social media have accused Unicult of preying on vulnerable young people online. “[Xe] is literally using TikTok to recruit kids struggling with identity and mental health to join [xir] ‘Unicult’,” one person tweeted after the starseed TikTok video went viral. “This is not just cringey, it’s absolutely dangerous.” In the past, Unicron has also downplayed the efficacy of medication to treat mental illness, using xir own struggles with borderline personality disorder as an example of overcoming illness without pharmaceutical intervention. “There seems to be almost an effort to recruit people with mental health issues,” says Benscoter. “[Unicron seems to be saying]: ‘This is a safe place for you if you’ve been struggling with depression and anxiety. If you’re like me, there’s a way out of that misery, and it doesn’t have to be what the doctors are saying.'” Unicron also posted a video a few years ago titled “Quit Your Antidepressants,” which xe has since removed. Unicron, who says a “high percentage” of Unicult’s member base is non-neurotypical, acknowledges that xe is personally opposed to taking medication to treat mental illness but does not discourage xir followers from doing so: “I do try to make it a point to emphasize that people should make their own decision about what’s healthiest for them,” xe tells Rolling Stone.

Unicron has been vocal about plans to expand the cult’s reach. Recently, xe attended a retreat for spiritual TikTok creators called Ascended in Sedona, Arizona, which was also attended by creators who have promoted anti-vaccine and QAnon-adjacent ideology. Xe has also announced plans to take Unicult from digital to IRL spaces by starting a commune called UniAcres, to be located on a 10-acre property in Georgia; complete with six bedrooms with bunk beds, six bathrooms, and a church on site. Xe says that so far, Unicult has raised $10,000 ($5,000 of which is from xir own money) to build the commune. Unicult is also planning to release a children’s book as part of UniKids, a child outreach program that xe envisions as being “similar to Montessori or Waldorf,” which Unicron says was part of the plan for Unicult to be recognized by the IRS as a legitimate religion.

“We’re the religion of the future,” Unicron tells Rolling Stone. “Because I’m from the future. And everything I stand for and represent is from a future time. I know that’s true because I’ve watched it unfold.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-vaccine-tiktok-cult-leader-unicult-1221294/

'We're treated like criminals': South Korean sect feels coronavirus backlash

As testing begins on thousands linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, members fear being blamed amid recriminations over the outbreak


Nemo Kim in Seoul
The Guardian
February 28, 2020

Had it been any other week, Ji-yeon Park, a 26-year-old nail artist, would have been at her twice-a-week bible study with her fellow Shincheonji worshippers. Instead, she says, her life has come to a halt as she worries about her church and if she, too, has been infected.

Jiyeon is one of 230,000 members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a doomsday sect at the heart of the Covid-19 outbreak in South Korea, and she says she is scared of being found out about her faith.

Authorities believe a large number of cases are members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus or have been in contact with someone who is. With about 80% of the 1,766 cases connected to the sect, fear and hatred towards the church is on the rise.

But Ji-yeon says blaming the church is unfair. “Our church didn’t invent the virus. This is just an excuse to shift blame. Throughout history, minority groups have always been blamed for bad things happening in society. The same is happening to us.”

Ji-yeon joined the church two years ago, when she first came to Seoul from Geochang, South Kyungsang province, an hour’s drive from Daegu, the epicentre of the South Korea outbreak. Feeling lost in the big city, she says, a colleague’s invitation to join a free acupuncture class came as a pleasant surprise.

“I didn’t know they were Shincheonji at first but they were kind and always there for me. Two of them even cried with me when my boyfriend broke up with me. So it didn’t matter too much when they told me the truth later. Why should it matter when other so-called honest people can be horrible and cruel for no apparent reason?”

Ji-yeon says she has been contacted by her local district public health office and has been advised to be on self-confinement despite not having any symptoms. She says she did not attend the Daegu services earlier this month that authorities believe sparked the spread of the virus via an infected church member, a 61-year-old woman known as “patient 31”.

“We’re being treated like criminals. We had a bad image before and now I think I’d be lynched if passers-by knew I belonged to Shincheonji.”

Those who escaped the church, however, feel differently. Speaking to Korean media, Advent Kim, a former Shincheonji member who now works as a counsellor to help families affected by the sect, says the situation cannot be resolved without drastic action.

“They teach members that it’s OK to lie about their faith just to protect the organisation. How can you call it a religion when they teach lying? Everyone is brainwashed to blindly follow orders. Authorities must somehow get the cult leaders to give the appropriate orders for all members to come out of hiding so they can all get tested before it gets even worse.”

South Korea’s vice-health minister, Kim Gang-lip, said on Thursday that officials had secured the list of 212,000 Shincheonji members and were expected to complete collecting biological samples from 1,300 members of the Daegu branch who were showing symptoms. He said the ministry was trying to obtain from the church a list of about 90,000 members-in-training.

Advent Kim says the church’s lack of cooperation lies at the core of its recruitment method. “They don’t tell newcomers they are Shincheonji at first. Only after they feel that the newcomer is ready to accept them do they come clean. By then, most choose to stay, as did I. Members-in-training most likely don’t know the group they belong to is Shincheonji, thinking they are attending a career or hobby-related group for acupuncture or pet grooming.”

Kim adds that more experienced members are ordered to infiltrate other churches to recruit members. Members are ordered not to tell family about their membership or to use the internet. “They have recruitment competitions and there are fines for members who cannot fill their quota.”

‘People are so unhappy and lonely’

As authorities rush to find the connection between the sect and Wuhan, it has been alleged that the church operated a branch there. A recording has emerged of one of the cult leaders in which he refers to their Wuhan branch. “No Shincheonji member in Wuhan has contracted the virus thanks to their faith,” he says.

After the recording was made public, the sect admitted there were about 300 active members in Wuhan, although there is scepticism about the church’s activities there.

Since the outbreak in Daegu, South Korea has spiralled into a state of national emergency. With 13 dead and 1,766 cases, authorities have advised citizens to wear a mask at all times, but supply is limited. Many companies have told employees to work from home and avoid face-to-face meetings.

The US-South Korea combined forces’ command training was cancelled for the first time due to the spread and the Korean Catholic church announced it would not hold masses until the beginning of March, a first in the country’s 236-year history of Catholicism.

More regions of Korea have stopped accepting flights from Daegu, and as the city suffers a shortage of medical staff, some 500 medical doctors around the country have volunteered to work in the virus-ridden city.

Despite this, Daegu is struggling to keep up with the infection cases, with more than half of those confirmed to be infected with the virus told to stay at home due to a lack of hospital beds.

Young-il Cho, who runs a pharmacy opposite what turned out to be a Shincheonji study centre in Yangjedong, Seoul, says he cannot believe the turn of events in the past few days. “A lot of young people used to go into that building and there was loud wailing day in, day out. I wondered if they were a cult but didn’t expect them to be connected to the virus. What is the point of me selling all these masks here if they’re spreading the virus right across the road?”

Mi-soon Jeong, a server at a nearby restaurant, is more sympathetic. “I don’t condone them but in a way I don’t blame them for joining a cult,” she says as she sprays disinfectant onto tables. “You can’t find good jobs nowadays and people are so unhappy and lonely. It is hard for people.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/were-treated-like-criminals-south-korean-sect-feels-coronavirus-backlash