Conspirituality1 Marras 2025

Brief: US v. Liberation Theology (Part 1)

This is the first of a two-part deep dive into how U.S. foreign policy stared down the political threat of Liberation Theology by promoting Evangelical Christianity in Latin America. The CIA and USAID, in league with Vatican conservatives like Cardinal Ratzinger, spent money and social capital on the suppression of this vital new movement which insisted that poverty is political and that faith without structural change is hollow. By contrast, the Evangelical emphasis on individual sin, salvation, and personal prosperity aligned with Cold War and neoliberal interests. Spiritualities engineered to serve empire don’t just pacify the poor abroad—they come back to police democracy at home. The “Evangelical boomerang” shows up in shifting Latino religious demographics and voting patterns, while the “reverse boomerang” hints that Liberation Theology language—once condemned—now shapes Pope Leo’s message in this time of rising fascism. If MAGA mystics, prosperity preachers, and tech-bro shamans offer a gospel of self-aggrandizement, Liberation Theology counters with a message of shared material reality: no one owns the food, we share it; the Sabbath serves people, not power; love of God is inseparable from love for the poor. Part 1 lays the intellectual and historical groundwork; Part 2 follows the covert money networks and then asks whether a newly emboldened Catholic social vision can stiffen global resistance to authoritarian capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Bonus Sample: Piker, the Zhongshan Suit, and Left Melancholy

Listen to the full episode There’s a lot going on when Hasan Piker wears a Zhongshan suit and praises Maoism. Matthew uses Wendy Brown's 1999 essay "Resisting Left Melancholy", which cites Walter Ben...

31 Elo 5min

Book Club: Plastic Shaman

During James Arthur Ray’s 2009 Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, the self-proclaimed spiritual teacher exhorted participants to “play full-on” in order to overcome their limiting beliefs and fear o...

29 Elo 36min

323: Joe Rogan Defects?

Support the podcast and listen ad-free Someday in the future, Joe Rogan may ask Jamie to be his mirror, and facilitate the next and most important psychedelic experience of his life: a walkthrough o...

27 Elo 1h 10min

Bonus Sample: Has RFK Jr Kept His Promises?

Listen to the full episode Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, ...

24 Elo 5min

Brief: Wetiko: Original, New Age & Marxist Views

Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 ...

22 Elo 27min

322: The Cult of Spiralism

Support the podcast Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have eng...

20 Elo 1h 11min

Bonus Sample: 1970’s Violent Revolutionary Chic

Listen to the full episode The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educate...

17 Elo 8min

Book Club: How the Internet Disrupted Science

How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exc...

15 Elo 38min