Thread by @allthecitizens

🚨EXCLUSIVE:

Entrepreneur Rachel Elnaugh, who found fame on BBC’s Dragons Den, has used her platform to spread anti-vaxx conspiracy theories and to threaten Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty, is part of a wider overlap between the wellness community and conspiracies. THREAD:

She tweeted “Whitty will hang for this” responding to a story about giving children the vaccine. After the tweet was removed, she took to YouTube and Telegram, saying “Whitty must be at the point where he knows he’s going to hang, so in for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

Her tweets and biography suggest that her anti-vaxx views align with a larger, strange marriage of wellness, alternative medicine, and the far-right movement, and Elnaugh herself is an outspoken commentator on the baseless ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory.
rachelelnaugh.com/biography-2

Within the wellness and influencer community, there is increasingly an aggressive and dangerous relationship between wellness culture, New Age spirituality, and antagonism towards public health interventions such as vaccines and mask-wearing.

Dr Christiane Northrup, described by Harper's as “something of a den mother to the New Age and anti-vaxx communities”, has shared ‘Great Awakening’ hashtags before being banned from Instagram, and claimed that vaccines would lower mankind’s “vibrations”
harpersbazaar.com/culture/featur…

Yoga Instagrammer StephyNow (Stephanie Birch) shared posts about how “more and more are waking up” to the “spiritual warfare against mastery manipulating puppets”
wired.co.uk/article/yoga-d…

This mish-mash of views has already started to receive mainstream coverage, for instance the comedian Jimmy Kimmel has also taken aim at members of the community.
thewrap.com/kimmel-wishes-…

"These ‘wellness’ influencers, some with big followings, are spreading dangerous misinformation,” he continued, before singling out Evie Kevish. The "certified juice therapist," Kimmel explained, "once wore a shirt that says ‘VACCINES ARE POISON.'”

Similarly, in a Washington Post article, Kevish is mentioned alongside herbalist Tania Khazaal, accused of posting “vaccine sceptical content. She told the post she wasn’t “anti anything. I’m pro-choice and pro-freedom”.

The anti-vaxx Instagrammer and pusher of detox water, Krystal Tini, also explores the notion that the vaccine and the Coronavirus is about controlling people through fear. She urges her followers to reject public health interventions and “live fearlessly"

Meanwhile, some yoga influencers are actively standing against what is called "conspirituality". Seane Corne, a California-based yoga practitioner, has used her platform to tackle disinformation.
theguardian.com/australia-news…

Cecile Guerin, who monitors disinformation online and is a part-time yoga teacher, wrote for Wired magazine about how she never expected to find "anti-vaxxers and QAnon believers in my yoga class."
wired.co.uk/article/yoga-d…

Elnaugh’s content appears to follow the patterns of the darker side of the wellness community meeting anti-vaxx conspiracism. Her YouTube videos promote “radical self-care” and drinking detoxing smoothies, along with statements about the “totalitarian state”.

Alongside the focus on wellness and spirituality, she shares Telegram posts from far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as 'Tommy Robinson'); the QAnon 'Nuremberg' meme about executing healthcare workers.

Rachel Elnaugh’s attacks on Chris Whitty show the troubling links between wellness ideology, far-right conspiracism and fascist thought architecture. The shared focus on corruption, purity and nature can crossover to push dangerous and sometimes violent ideologies.

Central to both movements is a belief in 'purity versus corruption'. This is exemplified by the hashtag #.PureBlood, which is used by people who are proud of their unvaccinated status.

In the far-right, that purity is manifested by race and sex. In wellness, it is partly about protecting the body from corrupting influences such as chemicals, artificial additives or refined sugars, and medical intervention.

The philosophy has been adopted by right-wing populists, such as Donald Trump who was reportedly influenced by minister Dr Norman Vincent Peale, author of the book The Power of Positive Thinking.

Secondly, the far-right has an obsession with nature and the 'natural order' which, in fascist ideology, positions men as superior to women, white people superior to black people, and believes that LGBTIQ should not exist.

Wellness shares a singular focus on nature – a preference for what is 'natural' over the 'unnatural' or artificial, and the linking of the natural to an idealised past.
bylinetimes.com/2021/01/18/fro…

According to holistic wellness practitioner Katya Weiss-Andersson: “The anti-vaxxer has gathered so much steam that when it was mirrored back in the far-right movement there became more and more crossover... Now they have become closer to one big circle than a Venn diagram.”

Catch the full story in the @BylineTimes below:
bylinetimes.com/2021/09/23/fro…