Sunday, October 17, 2021

Small villages in Alberta quietly disappearing as revenues dry up, costs rise

In the last decade, 15 communities have dissolved in the province


Liam Harrap · CBC News · 
The Village of Warner, Alta., is located approximately 65 kilometres south of the Lethbridge, Alta. Next year, the community will face a vote by resident on whether to dissolve and become a hamlet. (Joel Dryden/CBC)

After 92 years, the Village of Hythe in northern Alberta is no more. 

The community of approximately 800 people became a hamlet this summer after 95 per cent of local residents voted in support of the change.

"No one thought this was the best thing that ever happened to us, but it was the best of two bad choices," said Brian Peterson, former mayor of Hythe, west of Grande Prairie. 

If Hythe remained incorporated, property taxes would have increased by 150 per cent to pay mounting infrastructure bills, Peterson told CBC Edmonton's Radio Active. 

Due to closing commercial businesses in rural Alberta communities, there is less revenue to pay for public services like plowing snow, water and sewage, said Peterson. 

Small rural communities are also hubs for the broader surrounding areas with doctor offices, hockey arenas and churches — all of which pay no tax to the municipality. 

"It becomes unsustainable," said Peterson. 

Even if Hythe remained a village and increased taxes, few could have afforded to pay, he said. 

"There was no other way out." 

6:56Hythe Alberta
The village voted to dissolve itself and become a hamlet. Brian Petersen is the former mayor of the community. 6:56

The death of local governments

This problem is not solely Hythe's. 

Since 2012, 15 communities have dissolved in Alberta, resulting in them no longer having a mayor or council. Instead they become governed by the local county. 

In Hythe's case that's the County of Grande Prairie, which manages 11 other hamlets.

"We've lost self-direction," Peterson said. 

In the last 29 years, Jasper is the only newly created municipality in Alberta.  

MunicipalityYear incorporatedYear dissolved
Village of New Norway19102012
Village of Tilley19402013
Village of Minburn19192015
Village of Galahad19182016
Village of Strome19102016
Village of Willingdon19282017
Village of Botha19112017
Town of Grande Cache19662019
Village of Ferintosh19192020
Town of Granum19042020
Village of Cereal19142020
Village of Dewberry19572020
Village of Gadsby19092020
Village of Wabamun19802021
Village of Hythe19292021


Municipal Affairs press secretary Greg Smith said in an email to CBC that the vast majority of municipalities have financial resilience and the province does not expect a surge in applications for communities to dissolve in the coming years. 

But Peterson has a different point of view on the issue. 

"I think there's a lot of other towns and villages that are in financial trouble and don't realize it," he said. 

Rising costs

To preserve village governments, the province needs to develop new tax structures and share revenues more equally, Peterson said. 

The province has significantly cut grants to help with upgrading infrastructure, said Jon Hood, chief administration officer for the Village of Warner, south of Lethbridge. 

Warner has lost grant funding by approximately 40 per cent in the last five years, he said.

Meanwhile, costs to provide services are increasing.  

Soon the community will have to pay to have an RCMP presence, a service that was previously free. 

"It's becoming extremely difficult to survive," said Hood. 

Residents of Warner will vote next year on whether to follow the same path as Hythe. 

The Town of Grande Cache was incorporated in 1966 for the development of a coal mine and was dissolved in 2019 due to a shrinking population. (CBC)

Tonya Ratushniak, former mayor of the Village of New Norway, which dissolved in 2012, said the rising cost of insurance is also hurting rural communities. 

"We used to have a lot more ham and turkey bingos and suppers," she said. 

Now, to cover liability in case someone falls, trips or chokes, it's not easy to throw events together quickly or cheaply, she said. 

"Because of this there aren't as many events in a small town as there used to be," said Ratushniak. 

While Hythe's decision to dissolve was necessary to save the community, said Peterson, it's not something he's proud of as the village's last mayor. 

"I'm certainly not going to put it on my resume," he said quietly. 

"But sometimes when you're in a leadership role, you have to make tough decisions." 





Liam Harrap  is a journalist at CBC Edmonton. He is also a big fan of fruit and meat pies. Send story tips (and recipes) to him at liam.harrap@cbc.ca.
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Corporations Shouldn’t Be “The Master of Our Fate”

Perhaps this is another soul-searching moment when farmers and workers need to realize that they are both fair game for the corporate interests that control agriculture.

A farmer sits with a child in a John Deere tractor in an Iowa field.
 (Photo: Brad Covington/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

JIM GOODMAN
October 16, 2021

In any election, anywhere, 90% of the voters agreeing on any anything would be rare indeed. But, that is exactly what happened Sunday when John Deere workers voted down the agreement negotiated by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and John Deere management, an agreement workers said was slanted to the interest of corporate profit at the expense of working people.

One could ask why farmers should be concerned if Deere workers get a pay/benefit increase commensurate with the profits of the Deere corporation? Considering Deere is estimating 2021 earnings approaching $6 billion one would think workers are entitled to a fair slice of that?

We know they will not be decreasing prices for the machinery they sell nor will they back off on their forced service policy that farmers are required to sign, whereby service, no matter how trivial, cannot be done by the farmer unless it is approved by Deere. Only “authorized” mechanics or Deere dealerships can preform the repairs.

Really we’re all in the same boat, under the thumb of corporations hungry for profit who don’t want to share it let alone lose the potential for more.

While the initial cost of a new tractor is staggering to say the least, $20,000 to well over $500,000, repairs can be expensive and the down time waiting for repairs can be even more costly, especially when the farmer is forced to wait for “authorized’ repairs while his crops sit in the field. Authorized repairs, a legal scam used by Deere and other equipment manufacturers to keep equipment purchased by farmers under the manufactures control further increasing their profits. The same profits they are so reluctant to share equitably with their workers.

Perhaps this is another soul-searching moment when farmers and workers need to realize that they are both fair game for the corporate interests that control agriculture. Workers need fair wages, farmers need fair prices and the right to actually “own” the equipment they purchase.

I’ve never belonged to a union or worked for anyone other than myself but I have owned several John Deere tractors. Those old two cylinder models were generally easy to repair yourself, no forced service contract, no computer chips and still, I think the workers that built them did OK. But workers and farmers doing OK told the equipment manufacturers there was too much money left on the table. As with most things in the corporate world they wanted more profit and were always looking for better ways to squeeze it out of anyone they could.

Right to Repair legislation would end the monopoly of manufacturers controlling the repair information, whether it was a tractor, a car or a cell phone and make it possible for an independent repair shop, a farmer or anyone to repair the equipment they owned. Ouch—that would mean lost profit, just as increasing wages for workers meant lost profit.

There is no disputing that large agribusiness corporations like John Deere have made incredible profits from farmers around the world. Union workers, like farmers, are vastly underpaid relative to the profits made by the corporate entities that hold the power over those they employ and those they sell to. Whether it is keeping wages and benefits for workers low or forcing farmers into binding service contracts for the exorbitantly priced machinery they buy—it all comes down to corporate control over working people.

So, really we’re all in the same boat, under the thumb of corporations hungry for profit who don’t want to share it let alone lose the potential for more. Whether it’s food prices rising when farmers are losing money, workers struggling to pay their bills, or anyone who wanted to fix their own stuff without asking the manufacturer for permission.

Corporations want to control our lives, whether they’re agribusiness, technology, or big pharma—getting bigger, getting more control, and having too much influence over legislation. They really don’t care about how they make their profits, only how much they make. Perhaps it’s time for a Farm Labor Party that works for working people?


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Jim Goodman is a third-generation dairy farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin.
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John Deere workers on strike are part of a strengthening labor movement

America's laborers are ready to strike for better conditions. More power to them.

Oct. 17, 2021, 
By Hayes Brown, 
MSNBC Opinion Columnist

All around America, workers have had enough. After a year and a half of a pandemic, after decades of stagnant wages and exploding executive salaries, after industry after industry has used innovation as an excuse for exploitation, more than 100,000 workers are on strike or prepared to go on strike.

The men and women on the picket lines this “Striketober” — and those who are ready and willing to join them — represent the kind of cross-section of America that most politicians only dream of reaching. We’re talking about a movement that stretches from the liberal bastion of Hollywood to the factory lines of the Midwest to the coal mines of Alabama. And if we’re being honest about the working conditions in this country, the number of people demanding change should be much, much higher.

As of Thursday, more than 10,000 John Deere workers at 14 locations in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas have walked off the job. Last week, the strikers voted 9-to-1 to reject a proposed contract from Deere, according to Labor Notes, a resounding dismissal that surprised United Auto Workers union leadership and company management.

Deere is doing very, very well for itself this year, a fact that has fueled the workers’ dismay at being lowballed in contract negotiations. By the end of this fiscal year, the company projects that it will have earned around $5.7 billion in profits alone, blowing its previous best year out of the water. In that context, you can see why workers would be frustrated with inadequate wage increases and plans to end pensions for new employees.

The Deere strike is currently the largest in the country. That title was set to be stripped from them Monday: 60,000 members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees voted earlier this month to authorize what would have been an unprecedented strike. The willingness to walk off sets around the country came as conditions on those sets and behind the scenes on movie and television productions have only gotten worse over the last few years, union members told NBC News this month:

"If we don’t address this, I can't work in this industry till I'm 62, there's no way," said Gina Scarnati, 44, a specialty costume manufacturer who has worked in the industry for a decade. "We shouldn’t be begging for lunch breaks in 2021. I am 100 percent not financially prepared to go on strike, but we need to course correct. Right now, it's an industry I regret even getting into."

Making things worse has been discounts on labor provided to “new media” productions, like those from Netflix, Hulu, and Apple, despite a surge of new content from these companies. And the movies and shows on these platforms often mean a loss of future revenue that a traditional TV show might see as it moves from broadcast, to syndication, to digital purchase.

The IATSE and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced on Saturday night that they’d reached a deal that would keep productions filming come Monday. Though details of the agreement have yet to be distributed to members, IATSE International President Matt Loeb, in a statement, called the outcome “a Hollywood ending” for members. But the agreement still has to be ratified by union members — and as the UAW learned, that’s not a guarantee until all the votes are cast.
OCT. 16, 2021

Meanwhile, all eyes will be on Kaiser Permanente to see if nurses and other workers with the health care giant also go on strike next week. So far, 24,000 union members have voted to authorize a strike, demanding that Kaiser “scrap its plans for a two-tiered wage and benefits system, which would pay newer employees less than more tenured colleagues and offers them fewer health protections.” The Washington Post reported that another 50,000 Kaiser workers are asking for similar changes as their current contracts near their expiration date.

All of this is happening at a time when the wind is at the labor movement’s back. Gallup found last month that unions have a 65 percent approval rating with Americans, a level of support unseen since 2003. Taken together with ongoing strikes at Kellogg’s factories in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, another 1,000 coal miners on strike in Alabama and 2,000 nurses in Buffalo, New York demanding adequate staffing, we have the conditions of what one expert called a “strike wave.”

"Strikes can be contagious for unions and workers," Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations told NBC News. "There are shared issues that are pushing workers to go on strike — and workers are looking at each other and getting inspired."


It’s also all happening at a time when labor is in the driver’s seat for a change. Low-wage jobs remain unfilled even as Covid-related unemployment benefits have expired. This labor shortage has employers doing whatever they can to lure workers back into gigs that workers are no longer sure they even want.

Yes, management at all of these industries is scrambling to find scabs to take the place of the picketing union members. Kellogg’s is already shipping in “contractors” to work the cereal processing lines; replacement workers provided by a staffing agency in Michigan are crossing the line in Buffalo and drawing the ire of the New York attorney general. And at Deere factories, salaried workers are being made to staff the tractor assembly lines, which seems like something you really don’t want unqualified workers doing.

I encourage you to have empathy and act in solidarity.

Which, I have to say, really gets at the heart of why these employees are all choosing now to make their demands. These are all skilled workers who work very, very long hours — even if the money is good, the cash only comes in if you put in the hours. And in many cases, the money just isn’t that good, especially not for the soul-crushing conditions that folks are working through.

I how long some of these strikes will last. I don’t know if they’ll wind up disrupting you, the reader, and the life you lead. But if they do — if they mean that there are no Frosted Flakes on the shelf or that your favorite actor’s new movie is delayed — I encourage you to have empathy and act in solidarity. These aren’t unreasonable demands from these strikers. They just want to be paid fairly and treated with respect on the job.

That said, if you’re also feeling rundown and believe management at your company isn’t listening, do remember that you aren’t alone. And can I suggest joining a union, or even organizing one? As it turns out, when enough voices join together, it’s kind of hard to ignore them. So why not add yours to the chorus?

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.


Frustrated and weary over pandemic slog, more US workers are striking

Juliette MICHEL
Sat, 16 October 2021

These workers in Davenport, Iowa are among more than 10,000 US employees of the John Deere farm equipment maker now on strike, part of a growing nationwide movement (AFP/SCOTT OLSON)

Exhausted after working long hours during the coronavirus pandemic and resentful that their bosses are not sharing sometimes huge profits, tens of thousands of nurses, factory workers and other laborers are going on strike across the United States.

Some 31,000 employees of the Kaiser Permanente healthcare group in the western states of California and Oregon are poised to strike soon.

Since Thursday, 10,000 employees of the John Deere farm equipment company have been on strike, while 1,400 workers walked off the job at the Kellogg's cereal company on October 5. And more than 2,000 employees of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York, began striking October 1.

In Hollywood a planned strike by tens of thousands of cinematographers, hairdressers, makeup artists, sound editors and other film crew members that threatened to paralyze the US movie industry from Monday was narrowly averted over the weekend when the union reached a tentative three-year deal with producers.

But despite the Tinseltown agreement, the sudden rash of strikes this month has been so pronounced as to lead some to coin the word "Striketober," a neologism since embraced on social media even by prominent progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

- Pandemic sacrifices -

During the pandemic, workers say, they often had to bear extra burdens to make up for others who were staying home.

"We've sacrificed our time with our families, we missed ballgames with our kids and dinners and weddings, in order to keep boxes of cereal on the shelves," said Dan Osborn, a mechanic at Kellogg's for 18 years.

"And this is how we're getting repaid," he continued, "by asking us to take concessions at a time when the CEO and executives have taken increases in their compensation."

Osborn, the president of a local chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union (BCTGM), said workers object to a two-tier pay system that leaves some newer employees making far less than older workers.

"We are not asking for anything as far as increases in our wages and benefits," he said. Nor are workers opposing long hours.

But they do reject a pay system that leaves some employees earning less for the same work, and to a revocation of inflation-linked pay raises -- particularly at a time when prices have been surging.

"The strike can go however long it takes," Osborn said. "All we have to do is hold out one day longer than the company."

- Success inspires others -

Most of the strikes are motivated by demands for better working conditions, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, who specializes in union and labor issues at Cornell University in New York.

"Companies are making more profits than ever, and workers are being pushed to work harder than ever, sometimes risking their lives to go back to work in the context of Covid," she said.

So when employers refuse to compromise, Bronfenbrenner added, "workers are less willing to ratify contracts they feel don't meet their needs."

The exact number of strikes now under way is difficult to know, as the US government keeps track only of those affecting more than 1,000 employees.

But the movement has grown since a high-profile 2018 strike by West Virginia teachers, said Josh Murray, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Unhappy with the contract negotiated by their union, those teachers went on strike -- and were rewarded with a five-percent pay raise.

The result: a contagion of work stoppages.

"The more strikes that are successful, the more strikes follow, because workers start to believe they can actually win something and are willing to take the risk of not getting paid, of losing their job," Murray said.

- Social movements -

The Kellogg's strike followed another job action in July by 600 workers at a Frito-Lay snack food factory in Kansas. Frito-Lay is a subsidiary of PepsiCo.

That 19-day strike resulted in a guarantee of weekly time off, as well as pay raises.

And after a five-week strike by 1,000 employees of the Nabisco snack corporation -- a subsidiary of profitable giant Mondelez International -- the company dropped plans for a two-tier pay plan.

For many workers, the pandemic has been an empowering time.

"Some workers started seeing that, 'Oh, wow, we're actually essential, the economy shuts down without us,'" Murray said.

Unions have also profited in recent years from the rise in social movements with similar interests -- as when an Arizona hotel workers union allied itself to immigrant groups.

But Murray does not expect companies to give in easily.

"Eventually there will be backlash," he said. "Corporations aren't in the business of giving away or letting labor costs rise."

But the current dynamic reflects one economists and sociologists have seen over time, Murray said: "The tighter the labor market, the more powerful labor is, the more likely there are to be strikes."

jum/Dt/rle/bbk-mlm







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Alberta glacier suffered record melt this year — but researchers suggest it will get worse

By the end of the century, most of Saskatchewan Glacier will be gone, researcher says


Liam Harrap · CBC News · 
The Columbia Icefields straddles the B.C. and Alberta border and is shown in this photo. The Saskatchewan Glacier, located in Banff National Park, is the largest outflow from the icefield. (Submitted by Steve Beffort)

The Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park melted by more than 10 metres in the past year, researchers say.

"It clearly is the most extreme melt that we've seen," said Brian Menounos, glaciologist at the University of Northern British Columbia, while on CBC Edmonton's Radio Active.

The Saskatchewan Glacier, which drapes the B.C. and Alberta border, is one of over 400 glaciers in western Canada that have been surveyed twice per year since 2017.

Researchers use lasers, that are mounted onto planes, to measure changes in the glacier's thickness and elevation twice per year.

Lasers were mounted onto a plane to track glacier thickness and elevation change yearly. (Submitted by Steve Beffort)

Melting this summer even surpassed observational records that, Menounos says, date back much longer.

The rapid melting was caused, in part, by the early heatwave in June. Temperatures in the Canadian Rockies soared above 40 C, and coincided with the summer solstice and the longest days of the year, so there was less time for temperatures to drop.

Soot and wildfire smoke were also factors. They darkened the glacier's surface, leading it to absorb more heat from the sun's rays, said Menounos. 

As less seasonal snow falls, glaciers are expected to recede faster because more ice will be exposed to the sun, which will accelerate melting, said Martin Sharp, glaciologist at the University of Alberta. 

"Solar radiation is extremely effective at melting snow and ice and converting it to water," he said.

The Saskatchewan Glacier will be mostly gone by the end of the century, Menounos said.

That has consequences for humans and animals alike.

Glaciologist Brian Menounos, left, with his son, middle, and a former PhD student drilling into the ice of the Castle Creek Glacier in B.C. last fall. (Submitted by Margot Vore)

The Saskatchewan Glacier is the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan River, which flows through Alberta and supplies many communities with drinking water, including Edmonton.

Approximately one in four people living in Alberta will experience water shortages due to melting glaciers, according to a University of British Columbia study published last year.

The North Saskatchewan River is mainly fed by seasonal snow. But the glacier acts as a water reservoir, supplying cold water and providing a thermal buffer zone for aquatic ecosystems. This allows species like cold water fish, for example, to survive, Menounos explained.

LISTEN | Thinning Glaciers:

7:36Thinning glacier
Temperatures in the Canadian Rockies soared above 40 degrees...an all-time high. So just how did that affect Alberta's glaciers? Brian Menounos is a glaciologist at the University of Northern B.C. 7:36
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Gen Z on how to save the world: young climate activists speak out

With courage and ambition, those born into the reality of global heating are leading the way in confronting it. Ahead of the crucial Cop26 conference, we talk to young activists around the world. Introduction by author Olivia Laing

Sun 17 Oct 2021


From left, top to bottom: Vic Barrett, José Adolfo Quisocala, Anjali Sharma, Noga Levy-Rapoport, Ella Meek, Fionn Ferreira, Marinel Ubaldo, Aadya Joshi, Lesein Mutunkei, Isabel Wijsen, Scarlett Westbrook, Melati Wisjen, Amy Meek, Yusuf Baluch, Iris Duquesne, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, Disha Ravi, Autumn Peltier, Jamie Margolin, Mya-Rose

Autumn Peltier, 17, Canada
First Nations activist Autumn Peltier.
 Photograph: Maryam Southam Photography

“I was eight years old and attending a water ceremony in a First Nations community not far from mine,” says Autumn Peltier, recalling the moment that spurred her to become a clean-water advocate. “I went to the bathroom and all along the hallways there were signs that read ‘Do not drink the water’ and ‘Boil water advisory in effect’.” Quizzing her mother afterwards, she learned that the drinking water in this community, in northern Ontario, Canada, had been contaminated for 24 years.

Now, aged just 17, Peltier is chief water commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation. She first attracted attention when, at the Assembly of First Nations in 2017, she told prime minister Justin Trudeau that she was “very unhappy” with his record on water protection and oil pipeline projects.

The following year, she addressed world leaders at the UN General Assembly on the subject of water pollution. “Those platforms tell me that my message is being heard and Canada has to answer at that level,” she says. “It shows me I’m being effective for the water, the children and our rights as indigenous people of this land.”

If you could make one change… “I would encourage any new member of parliament to spend a week on the land and in a community that can’t drink water and live in the houses that need repairing. Have the ones in power experience what we are fighting for and why we do this advocacy work.” KF

READ THE OTHER BIOS HERE

Gen Z on how to save the world: young climate activists speak out | Environment | The Guardian

LONG READ
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The dark side of wellness: the overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies

‘It is very easy to get drawn in’: Rein Lively, aka QAnon Karen. 
Illustration: Hayley Warnham/The Observer

Extreme right-wing views and the wellness community are not an obvious pairing, but ‘conspirituality’ is increasingly pervasive. How did it all become so toxic?

Eva Wiseman
Sun 17 Oct 2021 

It was the afternoon of 4 July 2020, and Melissa Rein Lively’s video was about to go viral. A PR executive in Arizona, she already had the appearance of a person for whom a viral video was part of the plan, but with the super-groomed blondeness better suited to a branded beauty tutorial than a clip of face masks being torn from their racks. “Finally we meet the end of the road. This shit is over, we don’t want any of this any more!” she screams, holding the phone camera in one hand and tossing face masks with the other, in a video that swiftly became known as QAnon Karen. When two employees at the Scottsdale branch of Target confront her, she continues, “Why? I can’t do it cause I’m a blonde white woman? Wearing a fucking $40,000 Rolex? I don’t have the right to fuck shit up?”

Rein Lively had always thought of herself as a spiritual person. Her interests were grounded in “wellness, natural health, organic food”, she lists for me today from her home in Arizona, “yoga, ayurvedic healing, meditation, etc.” When the pandemic hit she started spending more time online, on wellness sites that offered affirmations, recipes and, on health, the repeated message to “Do your research.” She’d click on a video of foods that boost immunity and she’d see a clip about the dangers of vaccines. “A significant number of influencers previously focused on wellness and spirituality,” she noticed, “seemed to become dominated with what we now understand to be QAnon content.” QAnon is the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is fighting a deep-state cabal of Satanic paedophiles. It originated on far-right message boards before entering online wellness communities, where it found a largely female following, who continue to share phrases like “Save the Children”. The phrase was first used by QAnon believers spreading the false claim that Hillary Clinton abused children and drank their blood. Today that phrase is seen on social media posts by yoga teachers and wellness influencers speaking out against human trafficking.

“Much of what I read took a hard stance against the pharmaceutical industry and western medical philosophy, and was particularly critical of individuals like Bill Gates, who seemed to have an incredible amount of influence and involvement in public health policy,” continues Rein Lively. At first, she enjoyed what she was reading. She liked learning. She liked the community. She liked the idea that there were patriots in the government who were working quietly to help save the world. But as she clicked on and read about imminent genocide under the guise of a health crisis, she felt herself changing.

A number of influencers who previously focused on wellness and spirituality have become dominated with QAnon content
Rein Lively

In 2011, sociologists Charlotte Ward and David Voas coined the term “conspirituality”. Ward defined it as “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews”. It describes the sticky intersection of two worlds: the world of yoga and juice cleanses with that of New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups, covertly controlling the universe. It’s a place where you might typically see a vegan influencer imploring their followers to stick to a water fast rather than getting vaccinated, or a meditation instructor reminding her clients of the dangers of 5G, or read an Instagram comment explaining that vaccines are hiding tracking devices. It’s a place where the word “scamdemic” might comfortably run up the side of a pair of yoga pants (88% polyester, £40, also available in “Defund the Media” print, “World Hellth Organisation” and “Masked Sheeple”, in millennial pink).
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While the overlap of left-wing, magazine-friendly wellness and far-right conspiracy theories might initially sound surprising, the similarities in cultures, in ways of thinking – the questioning of authority, of alternative medicines, the distrust of institutions– are clear. But something is happening, accelerated by the pandemic – the former is becoming a mainstream entry point into the latter. An entry point that can be found everywhere from a community garden to the beauty aisle at a big Tesco. Part of what makes a successful influencer is the ability to compel their followers to trust them, and they do that by sharing their lives, their homes, their diets, their concerns. It’s become clear, both by the products they buy and the choices they make, that many people trust their influencers more than their own doctor.

The wellness industry today is reportedly worth $4.5trn, with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand worth $250m alone; in May, on the Goop site Paltrow curated a list of products recommended by her “functional medicine practitioner” to help ease long Covid, including an $8,600 necklace, for “hiking in”. This is a growth market, an industry that draws on ancient traditions to offer solutions to people who feel unlistened to and uncared for by modern medical practices. It can be stirred into tea, or pressed into the skin, or lit in the evening, or worn round the wrist. It is shaped as a quest. And as the pandemic chewed its way across the world, those following certain wellness channels closely noticed a shift in tone.

One night, Melissa Rein Lively saw a meme: an image of Polish Jews being put on a train in 1939, edited so they were wearing face masks. The caption said: “First they put you in the masks, then they put you in the box cars.” The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she says, “It was the most disturbing image I think I have ever seen. Everything I was learning and everything I have ever been afraid of connected in a way that convinced me that at least some semblance of what I was reading was true.” She was becoming convinced that nothing was really what it seemed; that there was a carefully constructed narrative being told, which was designed to control society. “I was willing to expand my thinking and consider a completely alternative theory, especially during a time of unprecedented chaos. What if nothing was what it seemed?” It was shocking, she says, and horrifying, and also, “Oddly comforting. What I had felt I knew was true, and others knew the same thing. The ‘truth’ as I saw it, was infuriating and I felt compelled to help others ‘awaken’ .” Which is when she went to Target and started shouting.

Research conducted during the pandemic suggests a link between Covid-related uncertainty, anxiety and depression and an increased likelihood of believing conspiracy theories. A report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate showed the most-followed social media accounts held by anti-vaxxers increased their followers by more than 7.8m in 2020. They have used the anxiety around Covid vaccines, the speed with which they were authorised, the politics that surrounded them and the systemic racism that led to communities of colour losing trust in the medical establishment, to spread their message. We are living in odd and untested times, when influencers and Facebook algorithms draw vulnerable people underground through the tunnels of the internet.

There are, however, silver linings. One benefit of the rise of conspiracy theories is the rise of conspiracy-theory explainers. Dr Timothy Caulfield works tirelessly, occasionally with a note of weariness, to explain and debunk misinformation. He’s studied the subject for decades, but has never seen it taken as seriously as it is right now; the World Health Organisation is calling this an “infodemic”. “The toleration of wellness pseudoscience has helped to fuel the current situation,” he says. The key to changing minds is to debunk it before it takes on an ideological spin.
‘These ideologies provide a sense of community – and someone to blame’: 
Abbie Richards. 
Illustration: Hayley Warnham/The Observer

“There is a strong correlation between the embrace of ‘wellness woo’ and being susceptible to misinformation. And as conspiracy theories and misinformation become increasingly about ideology, it becomes easier to sell both wellness bunk and conspiracy theories as being ‘on brand.’ In other words, if you are part of our community, this is the cluster of beliefs you must embrace – Big Science is evil, supplements help, you can boost your immune system, vaccines don’t work…” He could go on. “I truly hope that one of the legacies of the pandemic is a greater understanding of the harm that tolerating pseudoscience can do. The good news is that we are seeing more and more individuals get involved in the fight against misinformation.”

Like Abbie Richards, a chirpy Lena-Dunham lookalike whose disinformation videos have gone viral on TikTok. She has become famous for her “conspiracy theory pyramid”, which she uses to lead viewers away from reality, through things that really happened (like the FBI spying on John Lennon), to “the antisemitic point of no return”. She is fabulous. In the “Monological thinking” section, she explains how everything is connected to a rejection of authority. “If you don’t believe in climate change, you’re saying you don’t trust the scientists. If someone is feeling discontented, these ideologies provide them with a sense of community, and someone to blame,” she says.

Where Richards simplifies big ideas, offering them sugar-coated with a glass of Coke, the Conspirituality podcast, presented by a journalist, a cult researcher and a philosophical sceptic, goes deep, unravelling the “stories, cognitive dissonances and cultic dynamics” in the yoga, wellness and new spirituality worlds every week over a soft-spoken hour. It is dense and fascinating, and moves in and out of topics alternately Instagramable and apocalyptic within two breaths. Certain thoughts stay with me. “If you keep getting enlightened, are you ever really enlightened? When you attempt to integrate a holistic practice into a capitalist society, more is always demanded.” And, “Conspirituality is an ideology, but it’s also a financial racket and it’s also a way of being with other people.” As I listen, I become aware of how the intimate nature of a podcast encourages me to think about the subjects with a particular empathy – aside from the words spoken, the speaking itself encourages the listener to consider their own vulnerability to misinformation.

Conspirituality is an ideology, but it’s also a financial racket

Watching Melissa Rein Lively’s videos is disturbing. In one she calls police Nazis, in another she uses the N-word repeatedly. That summer, she says now, she’d begun, “to experience a rapid mental health spiral. On 4 July, I experienced a mental break that peaked at a Target store.” Mental illness is not uncommon in conspiracy theorists. In February, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism reported that over two-thirds of the 31 QAnon followers who’d been charged around the January insurrection in Washington, DC experienced severe mental health conditions. Many of the women sampled became involved in QAnon after learning their child had been abused.

Rein Lively was hospitalised for 10 days. Her husband filed for divorce. “I was shamed and harassed online as the internet called for me to be ‘cancelled’. I was close to the edge of suicide.” In hospital she worked with therapists unpicking unresolved trauma, including the death by suicide of her mother. “The instability and chaos of the pandemic brought back all of those life experiences. I was forced to re-experience them and ultimately seek help.”

Today, she is reunited with her husband, her Instagram a rainbow of bikini shots and videos about mental health. Does she feel differently about wellness and spirituality now? “I do. I think it is very easy to get drawn into that world. People fail to realise that wellness and spirituality is ultimately an industry. There are a lot of useful lessons,” she says, but, “I think it’s best to take them with a grain of salt.” Caulfield sees Rein Lively as “a good example of how we need voices within the communities. People who understand the values and experiences of people who have embraced wellness and conspiracies.” It’s never been more important, he believes, for wellness influencers to use their influence well.
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