Religious and cultic propaganda certainly cannot be overlooked, insofar as both religions and specific cults like Scientology or the Moonies, have developed and always rely on extensive systems of both internal and external propaganda. The internal front refers largely to relational and ideological indoctrination within the groups or institutions, while the external PR front slanders outside discontent or dissent from former members and promotes a favorable image to bolster their reputation. Some religious cults or exile organizations/movements – such as the Moonies, the Falun Gong (who control The Epoch Times), or the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) – continued the Cold War trend of reactionary groups trying to influence US and Western politicians to back their agendas or political ambitions, via lobbying, propaganda, and playing into rightwingers and warmongers’ hair-trigger hatred of geopolitical rivals/international “enemies” like Iran or China (and historically anticommunism played a major role in that kind of dynamic).
From the USA’s goat-testicles-implanting John R. Brinkley to abusive gurus in India (and elsewhere, e.g. in parts of North American yogi culture) taking advantage of their disciples, there’s also been a long history of shady health/wellness- or spirituality-related “alternative” practices and scams (and sometimes cults) across the world. Mixing interpersonal affect (e.g. charisma) and manipulation with medical and/or spiritual quackery, they often manage to build significant followings, usually exploiting their followers in all kinds of ways (including financially), but they also regularly try influencing authorities/governments and of course seek to recruit more people (sometimes through MMM types of schemes/scams).
And obviously these snake-oil merchants and other exploitative grifters rely on a tremendous amount of propaganda and disinformation. Hence they are often some of the first people to try making the most out of the wide potential reach of new technologies and media. For instance, two of the three figures examined in Eric S. Juhnke’s book Quacks and Crusaders – the aforementioned John Brinkley and Norman Baker (who claimed to have found a cure for cancer, a classic!) – were early adopters of selling and promoting meds/pills via the radio, thereby reaching and influencing thousands or millions of people. Figures like Alex Jones and his multi-million grift selling supplements through fearmongering, and smaller ‘influencers’ across social media, are the successors of these awful and destructive scams.
A lot more could be said or examined about ‘influencers’, ‘micro-celebrity’, and ‘wellness culture,’ but let’s take a look at some recent research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report by UK-US non-profit CCDH, the bulk (>2/3) of anti-vaccine content on (we should note obviously, anglophone) Facebook (up to 73%) and Twitter (up to 17%) can be traced back to what they called the Disinformation Dozen, twelve individuals and their organizations leading this wave of disinformation (again, more specifically in North America and Western anglophone countries, though cross-linguistic transnational diffusion/pollination is certainly part of the story especially on this topic).
Stephanie Baker and Michael Walsh have also found that anti-vax influencers strategically target mothers on social media, manipulating them by referring to the idea of maternal intuition, They use this trope to legitimize their denialism and disinformation:
These portrayals of the maternal are used to encourage vaccine refusal by presenting hegemonic ideals of the ‘good mother’ as one who is natural, holistic and authentic; depicting anti-vaccination as a feminine ideal to which mothers ought to aspire. Authenticity is framed here as a form of embodied expertise, uncorrupted by culture, politics and the medical establishment. Our findings question the pejorative portrayal of suburban mothers in popular media as critical actors in the anti-vaccine movement by revealing the ways anti-vaccine influencers strategically target mothers on social media to achieve visibility, attention and to support their cause.
As Baker analyzed in another study, many wellness influencers peddling anti-vaccine propaganda/disinfo during the pandemic combined New Age discourse with conspiracism (see the concept of ‘conspirituality’) and far-right politics:
The participatory affordances of social media facilitate brand loyalty by encouraging users to invest emotionally in the issues and individuals they are exposed to online. One of the key affordances of social media is that it enables direct modes of communication between influencers and their followers. Communication may not be reciprocated, yet the appearance of accessibility creates a feeling of proximity and intimate exchange. Lifestyle and wellness influencers typically use the appearance of accessibility to call on their followers to participate in a ‘journey’ of self-discovery, self-transformation and spiritual awakening (Baker and Rojek, 2019a). This includes taking ‘the decisive act’ to ‘reset’ their lives through a conscious reversal of poor diet and lifestyle, and negative thinking (Baker and Rojek, 2019b). Embarking on the journey also involves finding a worthy guru to be their guide. The underlying promise of self-help discourse resonates with the neo-liberal ethos of personal responsibility: you can choose to awaken; you can choose to be free, if only you shift your mindset. Wellness discourse assumes an overtly moral undertone as exemplified by the symbolic idealisation of certain foods as ‘pure’ and others as ‘impure’ and defiled (Baker and Walsh, 2018, 2020; Walsh and Baker, 2020). This emphasis on corporal purification is easily weaponised by alt. health influencers to spread beliefs about spiritual and ethnic superiority. Just as many wellness devotees share their conversion stories about eschewing ‘nasty chemicals’, toxins and unhealthy diets in favour of clean eating and a healthy lifestyle, alt. health influencers speak of “waking up” and being red-pilled into a state of enlightenment. Much of the underlying messaging of wellness culture also centres around the injustices perpetuated by institutional health authorities, especially with regard to vaccines and Big Pharma.
(…) By drawing public awareness to the injustices perpetuated by evil elites, alt. health influencers give their followers a reason to believe in their cause and embark on a personal journey of spiritual awakening. Influencers may publicly reject their guru status, but despite their disavowals, their self-branding as wellness and spiritual elites presents them as having privileged access to secret knowledge and being in ‘service of raising awareness and consciousness’ (Stone, 2021b) from darkness to light, which they often monetise through podcasts, products, books, online courses and wellness retreats. By aligning themselves with what is Just and True, alt. health influencers establish their authority as guides in their followers’ journey towards spiritual ascension. This hero motif of responding to a higher calling and embarking on a spiritual journey is one of the reasons that many alt. health influencers were able to publicly endorse former US President, Donald Trump, during the 2020 US Presidential Election without undermining their brand. Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric, his irreverence for institutional authority and promise to “Make America Great Again”, resonates with their anti-establishment ethos and desire to enact a “better” body, self and society; Wolfe claiming that ‘the only thing between us and total tyranny is, strangely enough, Donald Trump’ and Stone (2020a) encouraging his followers to vote for Trump in the 2020 US Presidential Election to ‘help the eradication of human trafficking, mainstream media cult-programming, censorship, pedophilia and high-street Satanism’. While Wolfe, Stone and Evans publicly endorse Trump, Stone conveys a particularly authoritarian view of the world. In an interview entitled, Who Runs the World? (2021), Stone describes Russian President, Vladimir Putin, as ‘the greatest political hero today’, declaring that Trump ‘will help Americans to awaken from their dream’ (Stone in Lel, 2021). Invoking the spiritual language of resurrection, ascension and awakening, Stone prophesises that Trump and Putin will liberate humanity, framing his anti-globalist narrative as a battle between ‘good, light, benevolent forces’ against the globalist Satanic, Deep State Sabbatean elites.
What is overlooked in these generic wellness references to “love and light” are the darker, exclusionary practices used by alt. health influencers to promote a type of illiberal, far-right politics. Despite using micro-celebrity practices to present themselves as friends and equals, the rhetoric put forward by Stone, Evans and Wolfe highlights how easily the epistemic absolutism of wellness and spiritual culture can merge with the participatory dynamics of web culture to facilitate authoritarianism. Participants may be encouraged to “do their own research”, but the process of meaning making that underpins their journey is absolute. Coincidences are never coincidences and even incongruous information or predictions that turn out to be false are described as part of “the plan”. In addition to helping these influencers build and sustain an online following, the participatory dynamics of social media act as a call to action with the alt. health influencers examined in this study encouraging their followers to resist government coronavirus guidelines and refuse vaccines, masks, quarantine and social distancing measures; Stone signing off his Instagram posts with the phrase, ‘Arise Sapiens!’ The irony is that in critiquing institutional authority, these alt. health influencers often seek to become authorities, using performative displays of autonomy, authenticity and accessibility on social media to promote a type of authoritarianism and spiritual elitism. The exclusionary politics endorsed by these alt. health influencers reveals that the democratic potential of social media to decentralize power and facilitate online participation paradoxically has the potential to enable ‘charismatic, personality-centered modes of authoritarianism’ in which the expression of individuality online can serve authoritarian ends (Turner, 2018: 144).
[note: Baker’s paper is useful for getting to know various theoretical concepts and phenomena/patterns of internet culture, including micro-celebrity, parasocial relationships, wellness culture and New Age spirituality, conspirituality, the persecuted hero narrative, gamification and the participatory affordances of social media, etc., some of which I’m referring to below; you can also check out her discussion on the Yeah Nah Pasaran pod]