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podcast friday
Apr. 4th, 2025 08:05 am This week's dubious winner is Conspirituality's "Kings of Pain," which the runner-up to last week's. (IDSG won because it's more directly relevant to my interests and because their schedule has been so irregular lately that any new episode is worth noting.)
This episode is about purity, and specifically the convergence of woo-woo health purity with political purity. I first noticed this when Mike Harris's regime in Ontario back in the 90s started talking about putting the population on a "diet," "trimming," and so on. By which they meant murdering people like single mother Kimberly Rogers. It disgusted me then, as a child, and it disgusts me now, as the Mad King and his minions starve their own subjects, both at home and in countries under their imperial rule, using the language of "detox."
The idea that suffering will make you pure, that it's fine to swallow litres of snake oil but not to vaccinate your people or your chickens, that anyone who falls short of an Aryan ubermensch must be purged from the body politic, is one with deep roots that of course include every fascist movement ever. The episode draws really excellent connections and insights into what I think is still underexamined.
I'm in Canada; I don't know a lot of people who would have voted Trump if they'd had the option. I do know a lot of people who didn't vaccinate their kids, or who had doubts about it, or who have a distrust of science in general. Obsession with micromanaging health and bodies is an underexamined pipeline to fascism (Maintenance Phase covers it well but doesn't post as often) so I really appreciate this episode.
This episode is about purity, and specifically the convergence of woo-woo health purity with political purity. I first noticed this when Mike Harris's regime in Ontario back in the 90s started talking about putting the population on a "diet," "trimming," and so on. By which they meant murdering people like single mother Kimberly Rogers. It disgusted me then, as a child, and it disgusts me now, as the Mad King and his minions starve their own subjects, both at home and in countries under their imperial rule, using the language of "detox."
The idea that suffering will make you pure, that it's fine to swallow litres of snake oil but not to vaccinate your people or your chickens, that anyone who falls short of an Aryan ubermensch must be purged from the body politic, is one with deep roots that of course include every fascist movement ever. The episode draws really excellent connections and insights into what I think is still underexamined.
I'm in Canada; I don't know a lot of people who would have voted Trump if they'd had the option. I do know a lot of people who didn't vaccinate their kids, or who had doubts about it, or who have a distrust of science in general. Obsession with micromanaging health and bodies is an underexamined pipeline to fascism (Maintenance Phase covers it well but doesn't post as often) so I really appreciate this episode.
