• TheLepidopterists [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I've been listening to Qanon Anonymous and Nonsense Bazaar episodes on the I AM Activity and its consequences recently and frankly all new age shit gives me cryptofash warning signals now.

    • DragonNest_Aidit [they/them,use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think it's because both have roots in reaction against the [d-word]ate modern world by returning back into past wisdom; return to tradition. While fascist retreats back into idealized vision of past imperialism, new agers on the other hand leans toward the more spiritual side of thing.

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean because a lot of American new age religious/spiritual ideas, are, as far as I can tell, directly descended from a theosophical-christian hyper patriotic cult that absorbed the upper ranks o the same Silver (shirt) Legion that our local troll account meme is based on, which was an explicitly Nazi occultist organization.

      • throwmunist [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This may also be why a lot of New Age people have weird relations with gender, that is, the dualistic feminine-masculine view of everything in the world whilst, at the same time, not breaking out of preconceived ideas of it.

        "No, I'm not a traditionalist, I'm just tapping into my inner sacred feminine/masculine."

        "I'm not violent, it's just my archetypal masculine energy."

        "Everyone has a masculine and feminine side, but, for some reason, I only value masculinity in men and femininity in women, which, curiously, happen to be the same they've been taught to us by our society."

        Everything is coded for the same biases. They may break the standard aesthetic representations (like using patterns, florals and other visuals typically associated with New Age) but not the underlying behaviour.

        (note that this is not a generalization, i mean, only applies when it fits, i guess)

    • space_comrade [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I disagree, I think the dominant character of all this new agey stuff is inherently liberal. The focus is most of the time on the individual fixing themselves from within (with meditation and crystals and chakras and whatnot) and then magically this will reflect on the rest of society somehow. Also if you have it bad in life it's mostly your fault because uuuuh your soul decided this and thus you attract and manifest negativity magically or whatever. This is literally liberal magical thinking.

      Sure some people can go the fascist route with this stuff but then again you can do that with almost anything.

  • RNAi [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Can't watch shit without thinking "yeah this whole problem has deep roots on the fucking socio economic system"

  • Jadzia_Dax [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I like crystals and I'm a communist ama.

    something also tells me most of the guys rushing to dunk on this are the same type of guy who want a girlfriend who'd wear cat ears 🙄

    • LeninWeave [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I'm not sure what the cat ears are meant to mean here. Crystals are aesthetically pretty cool, but the new-age movement is sus at best IMO, so I get what that was supposed to indicate in the meme.

    • HornyOnMain
      ·
      2 years ago

      the same type of guy who want a girlfriend who’d wear cat ears 🙄

      I, on the other hand, am the type of guy who wants a boyfriend who'd wear cat ears

    • NomadicWarMachine [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Crystals are cool but people who believe they can like, cure arthritis or whatever, are sus

    • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Crystals are one of those things like rune circles that I wish worked, because it's just aesthetically cool.

            • LeninWeave [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              While the criticism of it is sometimes sexist in nature, a lot of new-age shit, astrology included, has some really obvious and disturbing reactionary implications/parallels. I'm not saying every person who likes the stuff is reactionary, but there's obvious reactionary currents to it and you can see it really often in the wild.

              I don't go on screeds about astrology or any shit like that, but if anyone I meet ever thinks they can categorize me based on the time of year I was born, it's honestly offensive and sus.

            • NomadicWarMachine [any]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Isn’t…

              Men=science/rationality

              Women=magic/spirituality

              …thing itself sort of a reductive binary. Women are capable of rational and scientific thinking and men can be into woo shit. I know plenty of women who roll their eyes at astrology.

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          This site spends way more time making fun of g*mers than crystals and the g*mers never complain

            • BeamBrain [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Defending false consciousness peddled by capitalists on the basis that it's marketed to women is just giving porky an easy shield against criticism.

              • LeninWeave [none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                Gmers are also viciously bigotted, whereas I’ve never seen someone who likes crystals whine about minorities using crystals or something, idk what stupid things Gmers complain about.

                Yeah, unfortunately new-age people actually often are like that, though. You can see further up this thread people discussing the history of reactionary new-age movements.

                    • LeninWeave [none/use name]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      2 years ago

                      That explanation of anything spirtiual somehow being fash is honestly grasping imo, but I’m headed out to protest and don’t have time to argue about it.

                      That's definitely not what I said. I'm saying that new-age shit can often be fash-adjacent, especially (for obvious reasons) when it's white people doing it (cultural appropriation and all). When it's traditional indigenous cultural practices, it's by definition not new-age anyways.

              • NomadicWarMachine [any]
                ·
                2 years ago

                I’ve never seen someone who likes crystals whine about minorities

                I’m pretty sure I could find some obscure YT channels that would change this…

  • mao_zedonk [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don't understand this meme. They're both basically right except for maybe the word Illuminati? Why does the woman on the right have cat ears?

    • MorelaakIsBack [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      "ascending in our collective consciousness"

      what you hear: mass communal education an outpouring of solidarity amongst the people downard redistribution of ill-gotten gain the first steps on the golden path to Kardashev Type 1 (for example)

      what was said: mind meld in the oort cloud and blast off to the astral plane, here take this princess cut amethyst it will align your root chakra to the cosmic background radiation and refocus your negative energies into the anti-Trump beam

      • mao_zedonk [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        But that part wasn't said?

        I do feel like leftists arbitrarily kick potential comrades to the curb despite having the same basic assessment of the problem because they just assume if they haven't read Lenin then they believe all these things for bad reasons.

          • mao_zedonk [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just saying there are probably better targets for dunking than people in the imperial core who have imperfectly struggled their way through billions of dollars in propaganda to realize the ownership class is the fundamental problem

            • LeninWeave [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              That's a generous assessment of new-age people who use terms like "the system" and "the elite", because a lot of the time they're actually just cryptofascists.

            • MorelaakIsBack [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              ok i get whats going on here now

              I don’t understand this meme

              i took you at your word and tried to explain what the meme was saying. turns out, you understand what the meme is saying perfectly well, and want to argue about its content.

              well i'm not here to argue. enjoy your day.

            • Jadzia_Dax [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              yes, but dae hate le women amirite? thanks for the gold kind epic bacon narwhals

      • NomadicWarMachine [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        mind meld in the oort cloud and blast off to the astral plane

        NGL that sounds kinda tight

    • mittens [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      the strawman cat lady on the right has subscribed to the fantasy that what's wrong with the world is a shadowy cabal of people that have monopolized power and once removed everything will work gangbusters while ignoring that capitalism by its nature incentivises the constant creation of new monopolies as it's the path of least resistance towards profit maximization. she has cat ears because the meme is racially motivated (racist against cat people)

      • LeninWeave [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        she has cat ears because the meme is racially motivated (racist against cat people)

        SMH, and the same day we have the RWBY megathread? For shame, people!

    • LeninWeave [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      edit: is this turning into a struggle session

      No, the vote:comment ratio is way too high for that.

        • LeninWeave [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          This happens whenever new-age stuff gets brought up, regardless of context (though I agree this meme has its own problems).

            • LeninWeave [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              It's sort of a broad category, honestly. As Wikipedia puts it:

              New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in the Western world during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure.

              It's basically woo, and sometimes it's harmless, but sometimes it's tied to fascist occultism (see @TheLepidopterists further up this thread). Unsurprisingly, in cases when it's white Americans doing it, it can tend to have some pretty serious reactionary currents.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm probably the last person that should be bringing this up, but that's never stopped me before: the "good and correct black chick vs dumb broad white chick" format strikes me as possibly racist, or at least doing a patronizing sort of "black person as political prop" kind of thing. Not trying to shit on OP if they made this, it's just a recurrent thing in politics & political memes that kinda bothers me.