EP 36 will focus on Guru Jagat and her spiralling radicalization into COVID denialism. We’re working hard on the various layers of context that will help explain where this comes from, and predict where it might go. /1

We’ll feature an interview with a KY researcher and a journalist who dug into KY abuse history. We’ll look at ways in which high-demand groups just can’t resist co-opting a good crisis. /2

But we’ll also look at one of Jagat’s cult-network elders, Gurmukh, and how her more subtle COVID denialism is flavoured with an orientalist faux-solidarity with Indian farmers. /3

Yesterday on IG, Gurmukh shared an unsourced video montage of the massive farming protests that have been going on outside of Delhi and Mumbai since November. The farmers, many of whom are Punjabi Sikhs, are protesting the Hindu Nationalist BJP’s deregulation of agriculture. /4

PM Modi forced through laws in September which favour corporate agribusiness, and, critics say, will push the 80% of small-scale farmers closer to bankruptcy. /5 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-protests-in-india-are-writing-the-green-revolutions-obituary/

Gurmukh’s video doesn’t care about the life-and-death battle over food production. The video’s intent is to prove that COVID doesn’t exist. How does it do this? /6

The video shows protestors camped outside the cities with tents and outdoor kitchens, standing close to chant and protest the undemocratic changes.Their peaceful march into the cities has been blocked by paramilitaries with tear gas, water cannon, and concertina wire. /7

Gurmukh’s video points out that few if any of the protestors are wearing masks. When they prepare food they are not using gloves. They are not using hand sanitizer. (No mention is made about whether PPE is available.) /8

Astonishingly, the video asks “Where’s COVID?” As if the lack of PPE proves that COVID is absent. Even more astonishingly, it asks the viewers to simply believe that no one is contracting the virus in such close and dangerous quarters. /9

But a quick search reveals actual news sources quoting Indian officials expressing worry about the danger of the protests. /10

India Today reported *in December* that infection rates were surging in the camps, and public health officials were struggling to deploy tests and masks. /11 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmer-protests-not-ready-for-covid-19-tests-dozens-could-be-positive-1749188-2020-12-13

The real kicker is that the BS video ends with the platitude that “farmers are teaching us a life lesson” — about dispelling fear of a fictional virus. /12

This gross parasitization of a dangerous political conflict fits right in with the neo-colonial project of using India as the movie set and Indians as the props for the marketing of modern global yoga and its faux appeals to naturalness and simplicity. /13

Gurmukh’s post also feigns solidarity with working class Indians: a ploy affected by wealthy spiritual tourists that have roamed India 100+ years. Identify with the poor, gain “bohemian” cred, obscure wealth, assuage guilt, and return as importers of exotica. /14

The truth is, their presence in India has been made possible first by neo-colonial privilege, and is now facilitated by the neoliberal deregulation pushed by the BJP — the same policies the farmers are protesting. /15

So: Gurmukh’s post minimizes COVID. As this point, this is criminally negligent and likely violates social media TOS. /16

It cynically co-opts Indian politics and people to complain about public health measures that restrict a white yogapreneur’s freedom to do spiritual tourism and practice breath of fire without masks. /17

It objectifies the Indian working class to sell an orientalist spiritualization of precarity and strife, which the influencer never has to truly participate or invest in. /18

While Jagat interviewing Icke is heading towards peak conspirituality, Gurmukh posting that shite video is more of the normalized type of conspirituality that has slowly helped create the conditions for our current fever-dream. /end