The Conspiracists
Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
How do ordinary women become extremists?
Leafing through photos from the January 6 insurrection, extremist researcher Noelle Cook was struck by how many women looked like her: middle-aged white women in puffy coats. Women were not on the fringes of the extreme right, she realized. They were radicalizing each other, and the pandemic was changing them. So who were the women of J6? And why did some of them believe in shape-shifting reptilians and the health benefits of colloidal silver?
This is the world scholars call conspirituality, in which New Age religion, online wellness culture, and extremism blend and become laced with antisemitic and racist theories. With acute attention to the emotional lives of women and research on conspiracism, Cook introduces us to Tammy, who believed storming the Capitol would help take down a global cabal of pedophiles. We also meet Yvonne, convinced she is a starseed destined to lead others into the fifth dimension. We visit a trade show where vendors hawk everything from quantum healing devices to government cover-ups, and trace the movement's roots to a nineteenth-century mystical philosophy.
With arresting detail, The Conspiracists draws us into the lives of conspiratorial women to explore how and why women are becoming radicalized. Women are crafting entire worlds, Cook argues, and we ignore these worlds at our own peril. As misinformation spreads and extremism intensifies, The Conspiracists does not seek to excuse women's conspiracism but rather to understand it. Otherwise, we have no hope of countering its force.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this empathetic debut study, ethnographer Cook explores the rise of "conspirituality," a mix of new age spirituality and far-right, anti-government conspiracy, among middle-aged white American women. She does so through in-depth portraits of two women who stormed the Capitol on January 6: Yvonne, a former Marine who slid into conspiracy-thinking through watching livestreams of the infamous new age cult Love Has Won, as well as a "QAnon recruitment video" playing in the waiting room of her chiropractor's office; and Tammy, a grandmother whose beliefs "sound like an issue of old supermarket tabloid" (McDonald's is serving human meat; Trump is meeting with aliens). Though they live on opposite sides of the country, both women notably share the "same obscure spiritual language and belief system," including references to Kyron, "a mystical entity" who speaks through "a retired sound engineer from San Diego." The author contextualizes the two women's worldviews within America's long history of (frequently racist and antisemitic) alternative spiritualities, and she provides harrowing accounts of the "constant firehose of trauma" in Yvonne and Tammy's pasts, including sexual abuse, drug addiction, domestic violence, and, for Tammy, the wrongful incarceration of two children. Most affecting of all is the relationship forged between Cook and her subjects, an intimacy that highlights the extent of the women's isolation. It adds up to a moving call for compassion for those on America's fringes.
