Here's a recent piece from the guardian on wellness communities and Qanon, so don't take my word for it.
"Wellness" is not just alternative medicine, it is essentially a theory of the body which posits if something makes you feel better, you are better in some meaningful way. I would argue it one of the most commonly held nonreligious magical beliefs in the modern world.
Wellness as a concept has its genesis in the 1950s with "workplace wellness" programs, a sort of budget alternative to offering employee healthcare benefits. This was an era soaked in itinerant business preachers offering classes on things like "hypnosis at a management level" and "yoga to improve leadership abilities". I am exaggerating for effect, but not by much.
The capitalist medical system regularly abandons people. We've all heard stories of profit driven pharmaceudical companies holding the ill hostage for extreme markup on life-saving medicines. People have real, legitimate, reasons to mistrust medical professionals.
Let's say you have chronic pain, and everything your doctor offers you is either ineffective, expensive, or addictive. You are desperate for literally any release, so you start looking into other solutions. You will find an OCEAN of snake-oil salesmen willing to sell you "the secrets doctors don't want you to know."
What is frustrating, is that pain is actually partially psychological. Some wellness techniques may have an actual, medical, benefit on some patients. The worst thing a conspiracy theorist can have is a point. So now you actually do kinda feel better, and you have a sense of loyalty to the grifter selling you 300$ Sumerian Cock Oil Pills. These people are the core of the wellness industry. They are the examples that everyone else points to and says "Well it worked for them!"
Reactionary thought blooms in environments like this. If the medical industry can't be trusted, what else can't be trusted? At any given time, you are two clicks away from "vaccines cause autism." Three clicks away from "Cavemen were 15 feet tall because they only ate meat." And four clicks away from "The medical industry is controlled by The Jews to drain our wallets and keep us sick." Echoes of Nazi attitudes towards German-Jewish doctors are a common backbeat.
Wellness itself is relatively harmless, (compared to the things it is adjacent to) but it acts as a sort of idealogical airport that exposes the curious to a deluge of potentially radicalizing communities. The longer you spend in communities like this, the higher the chance you'll come across something that meshes perfectly with your own biases.
If y'all wanna learn more about wellness and pseudomedicine grifters, I highly recommend the podcast Maintenance Phase.
Well, if a Jew telling you you’re antisemitic won’t make you believe it, here is a guide to help you figure it out yourself.
1. Do you think Jews, en masse, are ACTIVELY REPLACING/ATTEMPTING TO REPLACE some other group — especially a somehow more deserving group? (For example, White people, Black people, African people, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, indigenous people, etc.) Do you feel there are JUST TOO MANY JEWS IN A GIVEN LOCATION?
2. Do you think Jews are PRETENDING TO BE SOMETHING THAT THEY ARE NOT? (For example, White, PoC, “Real” Jews, Indigenous/Native, an Ethnic Minority, Devoted Citizens of [YOUR COUNTRY] etc.)?
3. Do you think Jews are CONTROLLING OR ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL SOME INTEGRAL ASPECT OF SOCIETY? (For example, the government, media, banks, business, medicine, etc.)
4. Do you think Jews that you criticize are UNIQUELY BLOODTHIRSTY OR GENOCIDAL — especially when hoping for personal achievement or cultural supremacy? (For example, trying to stage a global war so they can control the world; using/consuming blood of Christians and babies to do satanic rituals; sexually seducing non-Jews in order to contaminate bloodlines and erase other pre-existing identities; immigrating to a new location with the intention of murdering those who already exist there; desiring to murder Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians in their homelands by means of genocide in order to control a region at the exclusion of other ethnicities, etc.)
5. Do you think Jews are APPROPRIATING A PRIVILEGE THAT THEY DO NOT DESERVE AND THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM? (For example, freedom, wealth, power, whiteness, G-d’s favor, a safe home in the Levant, Arab land, colonial power, representation as a minority group, etc.)
6. Do you think Jews at large or the specific Jews you disagree with and who wield power in a way you disapprove of CAN BE COLLECTIVELY LABELED? (For example, might you call them slaves, vermin, insects, dirty, scheming, communists, fascists, Nazis, satanic, Zionists, scum, etc.)
IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS YOU ARE AN ANTISEMITE. This is literally textbook antisemitism. If you answered, well yeah but only “the Jews in Israel” or “the ones who vote for Bibi” or the “ones who moved to my town/country/region” or if you saw something on one of the lists and think “well no fair! That one is actually true,” your exception isn’t exceptional. You haven’t found the one true bad thing that Jews ACTUALLY are. It’s not some conspiratorial propaganda to equate reasonable beliefs with hate. You’re just hateful. Some part of you hates Jews. And you have to confront what that part of you is and you have to destroy it if you want to engage in any conversations that impact Jewish welfare anywhere in the world.
One way to start deconstructing is to ask yourself “Why do I feel this way?” “From whom did I learn to think this way?” “Who in my life approves and supports me thinking this way?” “Am I comfortable telling a Jewish person I feel this way in person?” “How do I think a Jewish person will feel/What do I think a Jewish person will think if I tell them this?” “Do I care what they feel or think? Why or why not?” “How would I feel/what would I think if someone felt this way or thought this way about me or an identity I value deeply?”
As antisemitism is rising globally. And as a result, it is swelling online. It is a duty for not just the Jewish community, but for the people who claim to be our allies, to know this information. It is important to know who you are following, to analyze their information for credibility, and to be a defender against white supremacy. Therefore, we have provided a description and short breakdown of several tropes, terms, dog whistles, and conspiracy theories. Further research is recommended and encouraged. This is a living document and by no means complete guide to antisemitism.
This has been specifically tailored to the Internet experience, focusing on how you may see it in online spaces so as to report it and prevent yourself and others from sliding down the alt-right pipeline.
The 1970s progressive pop band Klaatu was known not just for their futuristic iconography, with songs like "Calling Occupant of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day)" but for a very, very strange rumor in the mid-70s, that Klaatu were secretly the Beatles (or at least some of the Beatles), who reunited in disguise.
Why did people think this? Well Klaatu's name is a Day the Earth Stood Still reference, a movie the Beatles themselves referenced in songs like "Goodnight Vienna." It was also on EMI, which was the Beatles' label. The sun-symbol on their albums is reminiscent of Abby Road.
And most surprisingly of all, there were, suspiciously, no existing photographs of Klaatu at all, so nobody knew what they looked like. In reality, the reason there were no photographs was actually because Klaatu were just a random bunch of guys from Toronto, and there was no reason to include their images when they wanted the music to speak for itself.
The absence of photographs of the band isn't the entire reason people thought Klaatu were secretly the Beatles, though. Klaatu also sounded like many think the Beatles would, if they had continued making music, with a sort of surreal Electric Light Orchestra acid pop vibe, synth mixed with instruments like harpsichord. If you close your eyes and listen to "Sub Rosa Highway," the vocals are shockingly similar to Paul McCartney. On several occasions during the 1970s, John Lennon was asked what the Beatles would sound like if they stayed together, and the answer was something very much like the Electric Light Orchestra...and Klaatu sounds more like ELO than any other band.
When Klaatu got a sales bump because of the rumors they were the Beatles, their solution was extremely savvy: they initially refused to deny it. Ultimately, though, the band believes the rumors did them "more harm than good," as how could they live up to those expectations of being the Beatles?
I don't understand why conspiracy weirdos always take it as given that the "bad guys" will put hints they're abusing children or killing people or whatever in innocent places. Like, why would they do that when they could just... Not do that?
Conspiracy thought can basically be summarized as "everything is connected, without exception"
Eventually, the theorist may be faced with overwhelming information that suggests they are wrong. The only response they have at that point is "You are being paid to fabricate evidence" which raises the question "by who? For what reason?"
See, for most of real history, answering that question is usually pretty easy. It's "the CIA has openly admitted to financially benefitting from spreading this form of propaganda." Or "It would be very embarrassing for the Secret Service if the public learned that an agent accidentally shot JFK."
The real world is banal and complicated and morally grey. But with conspiracy theories, there's no room for "ordinary profit motive" or "human error" because that's never a good story. Conspiracy Theories are deeply emotional things, they need to be a good story.
This is where you get this recurring motif that I call The Great Enemy. It's satanists, it's the illuminati, it's the Jews, it's the deep state, the shadow government, the CIA, the reptilian empire, it's the Ultimate Other that is responsible for everything evil in history.
When your thoughts become "all evil comes from the Great Enemy." It erodes your ability to actually discern real world human motivations. The world becomes a game between The Good Guys and The Great Enemy. Every event, every movie, every book, all become pieces in that game.
It's why so many of these deep conspiracy people talk about the world like it's a giant play, as if all politics is just a big stage show put on for them. It's because once your brain becomes steeped enough in conspiracism, you genuinely lose the ability to tell fact from fiction.