I feel like this is an understandable trend. With inflation and job markets and various conflicts around the world, combined with the near constant flood of near-realtime data online, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. This “anti-expert,” Qanon, flat-earth conspiracy trend fundamentally is a way for folks who feel like life is out of their control to get some of that control back by believing they have some piece of knowledge or information that gives them a “one up” on the “establishment.” I know something that you don’t, and that gives me power…when I don’t really have any.
Yeah, I think a big part of the trendiness of these groups on both sides comes down to a sense of powerlessness in the world. The "secret knowledge" allure is certainly part of it, and I think for both the Goop-left and Infowars-right there's a strong sense of "manifest your destiny", either by being a gun toting self-sufficient alpha male or by harmonizing your vibes with the cosmic mind to manifest positivity in your life.
We've focused on the individual so much in American society that people have a real hard time viewing their individual situations as anything other than a personal failure and something they alone must correct, so we wind up with this kind of wacky bullshit instead of, like, labor laws and healthcare.
We have labor laws and healthcare, they're just not enough and intrapreneurship probably isn't enough to fix them systemically. I see this as healthy growth, the people who don't get healed from what modern medicine currently covers are desperate enough to try these outlandish remedy attempts. If a lot of people have the same problems and figure out a cure, it will get incorporated into whatever they teach the MDs.
People ARE individuals, on a physical level too. Modern medicine is notoriously bad at addressing this, and until the technology catches up the only alternative to people trying things on their own is state-mandated trials on vulnerable groups.
