Conspirituality

As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in his mouth. His insults and aggressions are as constant and predictable as his arms are, reaching out for handholds.

Up until this point, discourse on the mental health of this decrepit fascist leader has used the kid gloves of psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry, in which even the most informed analyses were constrained by the fact that experts were interpreting his inner states. For our part, we’ve compared his fate to that of charismatic cult leaders at the end of the line—and we’ll do more of that today.

Now a new posse of clinical commentators on IG and TikTok have made it all much more biological: we are witnessing, they say, the predictable signs of fast-progressing dementia.

Show Notes

Goldwater Rule vs Duty to Warn, American Academy of Psychiatry and Law

World Health Organization: Dementia

Signs and Symptoms of Dementia

Alzheimer's disease: a comprehensive review of epidemiology, risk factors, symptoms diagnosis, management, caregiving, advanced treatments and associated challenges

USC study finds new evidence linking dementia to problems with the brain’s waste clearance system

A new drug could stop Alzheimer’s before memory loss begins

A 2025 update on treatment strategies for the Alzheimer’s disease spectrum

Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission

Broadening dementia risk models: building on the 2024 Lancet Commission report for a more inclusive global framework

Study finds disparities in diagnosis and treatment of dementia

Decomposing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Risk and Protective Factors of Dementia in the U.S.

Mapping racial and ethnic healthcare disparities for persons living with dementia: A scoping review

Dementia Diagnosis Disparities by Race and Ethnicity

Racial disparities in dementia determined by social factors

Straight-forward Explainer: What’s Going on With NIH Cuts to Alzheimer’s Research?
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Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized and lived. 

Weil believed the French Revolution made a foundational error by grounding society in rights rather than eternal obligations, creating a contradiction that still haunts liberal democracies today. Rights, Weil argues, carry a bargaining spirit and ultimately depend on force for enforcement, while obligations arise unconditionally from the mere fact of another person’s vulnerability. You owe something to others not because they’ve asserted a claim, but because they exist.

Drawing from Weil’s posthumous The Need for Roots, Matthew unpacks their critique of liberal rights discourse: that modern societies undermine their own moral claims by prioritizing abstractions over duties.
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If conspirituality names the ways religion and spirituality are weaponized to justify power, prospirituality points to religious traditions doing the opposite: grounding resistance, ethical clarity, and solidarity in moments of crisis. 

So: is there a growing prospirituality response to fascism, genocide, climate collapse, and AI-driven labor precarity? Matthew argues that yeah, there’s some good news. 

In Israel, scripture has been mobilized by political and religious leaders to sacralize violence in Gaza. But there’s also a surge of Jewish religious resistance among U.S. rabbis and Peter Beinart’s On Being Jewish After Gaza sets a new landmark of reckoning.

Mona Haydar’s rapping and chaplaincy models a form of Muslim spirituality that is feminist, anti-genocide, and rooted in mutual aid, while resisting both Islamophobia and liberal domestication. 

Then there’s Pope Leo’s escalating critiques of U.S. immigration policy and his renewed emphasis on liberation theology.

Show Notes

Dark Mirror: A Torah View of Revenge, and its Reflection in Israeli Media During Operation Iron Swords

Peter Beinart, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State,” The New York Times

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Beinart: 9780593803899 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Even if you hate it- I still wrap my hijab — Haydar

Mona Haydar: Ask a Muslim Program Fights Prejudice

Conservative Muslims and Islamophobes Have One Thing in Common: Hating Mona Haydar 

Pope Leo replaces New York's Cardinal Dolan in shake-up of US Church | Reuters 

New archbishop ‘committed’ to immigration issues, accountability on abuse — and staying a Cubs fan 

Pope’s naming of New York archbishop signals continued challenge to Trump on immigration

Pope Leo's new US bishops are critics of Trump's migrant crackdown | Reuters  

Pope Leo calls for Venezuela to remain an independent country | Reuters 

Pope Leo says Trump administration 'extremely disrespectful' to migrants | Reuters 
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Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is the first ethnography of conspirituality, and it comes via someone who was able to really embed themselves in a volatile culture and find its emotional logic. She’s our guest today.

Cook focuses on the travails of two middle-aged women following the January 6 Capitol riot. By spending years befriending and talking with Tammy Butry and Yvonne St. Cyr, Cook is able to document the impacts of childhood trauma and systemic neglect—as well as diverse personality quirks—that can drive folks toward QAnon. 

They are starseeds. They are mama bears. They are on a divine mission to destroy the matrix and usher in the Great Awakening. For them, the algorithms were oracles, reinforcing isolation and radicalization by providing a sense of purpose to the purposeless, and visibility to the invisible. Cook has not written a book for answers, but a book filled with the next questions worth grappling with as we realize how deeply wounded some recruits to fascism are.

Show Notes

The Hottest Spot for Sunday Church Is a MAGA Dive Bar

The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging
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In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news again with the biggest protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution bringing millions to the streets. The regime unsurprisingly cracked down hard: at least 2,700 protesters have been killed and 18,000 arrested.

Though the initial impetus was economic, these are the latest in a wave of growing uprisings in Iran against the far-right theocratic authoritarian government—especially its treatment of women. How did we get here? What happened in 1953? Isn’t this all just about oil anyway? Was the 1979 revolution really about religion? Weren’t there Communists involved? Does all the turmoil in this region trace back to Western colonial imperialism?

Julian explores the tangled threads of oil, empire, and religion.

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