qanon

Allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment, so to speak. Have you ever considered the idea that Swedish musician and composer Anna von Hausswolff might actually be, as you say, “ a high priestess…

QAnon won’t last forever. Sooner or later, even if the failure of their prophecies doesn’t necessarily do them in , conspiracy theories unravel and violent movements associated with them eventually…

Over the last year, I’ve scrolled past social media posts by members of diverse religious backgrounds and political opinions. However, because my ethnographic research is based in Mormon…

In the twentieth century the word “ cult ” (originally meaning “worship”) became a pejorative word that people apply to a group or movement that they do not like and perhaps fear. The word “cult”…

Since the murder of eight people at Atlanta-area spas on March 16, there’s been a fierce debate over the causes of the shooting rampage. Some, such as Ruth Graham of the New York Times, have pointed…

Doing research in a branch of the state library in Berlin a few years ago, I stumbled across a reference to a 1951 book called Are There Witches among Us? It had been published in West Germany by a…

America continues to divide and migrate toward opposing poles, one in which democratic government is a value and the other in which it’s a barrier to power. Christian nationalism, contributes to this…

By now we’ve all seen the pictures, saturating our social media landscapes with their grotesque glee. The becostumed horde, thronging through the windows, up the stairways, politely abiding by the…

This week, amid Democratic victories in Georgia’s Senate runoffs and a Christian nationalist attempt to overturn former Vice President Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election, the…

Positivity and positive thinking are very often held as inherently good qualities to embody. If you think positively, so the reasoning goes, you will live a better life. Self-help gurus and guides…