@marwilliamson may respond beyond denial and challenge this devastating reporting through a defamation suit. If she doesn't, well, hm.

Either way, a few observations are in order with regard to interpersonal behaviours in the New Age (NA) world./1

politico.com/news/2023/03/1…
Charismatic religious leaders can be hypocritical assholes regardless of their faith, and any faith can be used to rationalize or spiritualize abuse.

What makes NA charismatics different is that they operate almost entirely according to individualistic market principles. /2
There are NA economies and Oprah platforms and workshop circuits, but no functional communities with social history, experience in social justice or charitable work. Most NA philosophy piously sneers at worldly work. Their obsession is with the self-project. /3
NA offers no standard education, no peers to hold you accountable, no daily management of shared assets. I.e., all of the stuff you would need to be competent in politics.

The self-project is reflected and amplified by an entrepreneurial structure selling personal awakening. /4
So. Imagine you spend a decade or more meditating on #ACourseinMiracles, which says that your thoughts make reality, sickness = spiritual weakness, psychotherapy is misguided, all emotions but love are insane, and there are no worldly or material solutions to suffering. /5
Imagine you do all of that meditation in the above-described libertarian-consumer mode.

Then, part of you realizes that you also want to really change the world.

But: the primary tool you have for changing the world is the dogged belief that your thoughts create reality. /6
You would not be set up for success. Even moderate failure would feel unreal, humiliating, enraging.

If the reporting here stands, it would not be surprising to me. ACIM, more than any other spiritual text I know of, is a machine for magical thinking and its terrors. /7
Stories of NA megalomaniacs are standard on our beat.

They are not worse than evangelical or yoga cult leaders. The difference is that they code progressive, because the NA discourse of universal light etc can sound like mutual aid.

Is this a stable leftist politics? No. /8
References to NDAs and trauma bonding? Not good, if the reporting stands.

More generally, the amount of extreme internal tension necessitated by NA emotional repression and world-denial wrecks havoc in this demographic. /9
Devotion to ACIM does not predict shitty behaviour. But the NA is very good at masking and monetizing shitty behaviour behind claims of universal compassion, demands for forgiveness, and the messiah complex that asks devotees to repeat:

"I am the holy Son of God." /end

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More from @matthewremski

Mar 18
Anyone saying that #MarianneWilliamson's politics can be separated from her religious commitments is being naive.

Understanding where she's coming from spiritually is essential to assessing the calculus of what she says vs. what she believes vs. what she would do. /1
Bits like this made MW stand out in the summer of 2019 because they were disruptive to the typical discourse, and they grounded her brand in outsidership.

But they also revealed Williamson’s real career as a spiritual influencer. They pointed at her sources. /2
If you listen closely, you can hear echoes of #ACourseinMiracles, the New Age Bible that MW has been meditating on every day since 1977, and lecturing from since 1983.

To get specific: /3
Read 9 tweets
Mar 17
As #MarianneWilliamson implies in her damage control statement on the Politico report, politics has plenty of bullies. But people should know that being a “tough boss lady,” as she euphemizes, may also be inspired by what an asshole her Jesus is—in A Course in Miracles. /1
Pious, condescending, and emotionally avoidant, the Jesus channeled by ACIM intones three continuous insults: 1) You are deluded about reality, 2) The absolute truth of My teachings is inescapable, and 3) Any resistance you have to Me is further delusion. Sound familiar? /2
The weird part? ACIM is a channeled text that demands the reader become its channel. The daily lessons are “written” by Jesus, but meant to be recited and meditated upon by the normal person, *as if they were Jesus.* Surprise: ACIM teachers struggle to not sound like assholes./3
Read 10 tweets
Mar 3
Beau Brink (3): It kills me to think of little boys being told that they're not good enough, being bullied by other boys. It kills me to think of these children listening to Andrew Tate... /1

conspirituality.net/episodes/143-t…
...and hearing him say that if you don't make enough money, you're not a good man. Or that if a woman has had multiple sexual partners, then she's not really a woman. You know, we have told cis people that they are not good enough, or enough of a man, or enough of a woman. /2
I want cis people to feel grounded in their identities, I don't want the realization that trans people exist to threaten cis people. I want it to empower them to define themselves and to stand in their truth and to have a really strong sense of who they are. /3
Read 8 tweets
Feb 27
Recovering from a cult occurs on an arc. It’s easy to plateau or relapse. That happened to me in an embarrassing way: I was out of one high-demand group for only a month before being absorbed into a second high-demand group. But there are softer relapses as well. /1
The soft relapse is expressed by denouncing the abuses of the leader, while keeping their toxic worldviews, which are usually soft-fash or libertarian. Despising the leader might be necessary, but it’s a long step below rejecting the entire premise that captured you. /2
Maybe the soft-fash or libertarian politics of the group aligned with your values to begin with, and the problem you really have is that the leader abused people with ideas you like. You want to be free to practice them without his toxic influence. And you need friends. /3
Read 9 tweets
Feb 17
🧵 Notes on 2 male charismatics in the trauma industry. Bessel Van der Kolk’s Body Keeps the Score is a NYT bestseller. But BVDK’s basic premise is 1) not as scientifically supported as it seems, and 2) compromised by his role in the recovered memory/Satanic Panic discourse. /1
He also allegedly bullied his colleagues for years. Not very trauma! Then there’s Gabor Maté, who seems to build his entire brand around being able to murmur the word “trauma” up to 15x per minute in a very gravelly, slow, seemingly traumatized voice. He is a reductionist…/2
…par excellence. Reductionism is the architecture of conspiracism: one answer that connects everything, obviates the need for peer review, and sells a silver bullet sloshing with vague bromides that louder charismatics like Russell Brand can further commodify. /3
Read 9 tweets
Feb 16
Is Canada trying to euthanize the mentally ill?

(The MAiD conspiracy theory episode.)

/1


buzzsprout.com/1875696/122530…
Self-professed "theocratic fascist" Matt Walsh says so. So does the OG anti-woke agitator, James Lindsay. Both cravenly distort Canada's proposed expansion of its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) laws to include people suffering from mental illness. /2
But are they entirely wrong? As @JeremyAppel1025 writes in Jacobin:

"I’ve come to realize that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — /3
Read 5 tweets

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