Wellness devotees and ultra-religious alike believed their bodies conferred special immunity

Evidence

At first, I couldn’t figure out the connection between these two groups and the two very different activities they represented—what was the shared bond between extreme faith and extreme fitness, between worshipping the Lord and worshipping the body? It grew clearer when I started spending time in the Mirror World, particularly in those corners where New Age wellness influencers were sharing Covid conspiracies. This was an evolution of the mindset that was first described in a 2011 academic paper as “conspirituality,” a term that has since been popularized through the book and podcast of the same name (the one I listen to far too much). Like the subset of the ultra-religious who were unconcerned about contracting Covid, this subset of the ultra-fit also believed they had special protections from the virus: that their temples—which were their own detoxed and buffed bodies—would keep them safe. Wellness and fitness was their force field, or so they seemed to think. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 563

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces and defines ‘conspirituality’ — a 2011 coinage for the New Age + conspiracy convergence that anchors Klein’s diagonalism thesis.