Anti-Vaxxers Unite: How parts of the wellness movement cross-pollinated with QAnon and turned it pastel
August 16, 2021 — HANNAH RICHTER
In 2019, the World Health Organisation listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. Whilst vaccination against measles saw an 80% drop in deaths between 2000 and 2017, rates have since increased, due to vaccine hesitancy and a decrease in immunisation. A disease that was almost entirely eradicated is causing fatalities once more. Now, researchers suggest that the anti-vaccine movement could undermine efforts to end this pandemic. As the pandemic continues, so too does the movement, increasing by the day, and uniting unlikely groups together.
Anti-vaxxers, those who refuse to vaccinate themselves (or their children), have been around for as long as vaccinations themselves. A 1930s cartoon recently resurfaced on Twitter, mocking anti-vaxxers and those falling for misinformation. In the 1990s and early 2000s, they were considered tree-hugging, earth-loving liberals and hippies, and were spearheaded by Hollywood stars such as Jenny McCarthy. However, over the past year and a half, many have begun to equate anti-vaxxers more with right wing conspiracy theorists, such as the QAnon supporters who led the attack on the Capitol. Whilst the anti-vaxx hippies of the previous century may not be as prominent anymore, or conform to the stereotypes we once saw them as, they have progressed into something new instead. The holistic, wellness, ‘New Age’ yogis are taking the online world by storm. With distrust of governments, traditional institutions, and modern medicine, this wellness community has been cross-pollinating with the far-right QAnon supporters, and serving anti-vaxx conspiracy theories to the masses.
“Researchers suggest that the anti-vaccine movement could undermine efforts to end this pandemic.”
While the wellness community often prides themselves on spirituality, their obsession with conspiracies is not something new, nor did it only become apparent during the pandemic. Conspiritualism was a term academically coined by Charlotte Ward and David Voas in 2011, used to describe the synthesis between ‘the female-dominated New Age (with its positive focus on self) and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory (with its negative focus on global politics)’. The two may seem ‘antithetical’, however, as it was already ten years ago that Ward and Voas wrote of conspirituality being a ‘rapidly growing web movement’, one can only imagine the size of it now. As the QAnon movement continues to spread their propaganda on conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic, the wellness community has taken to creating softer, more approachable versions. The term ‘Pastel QAnon’, coined by Marc-André Argentino, successfully describes this new stem of anti-vaxxers within the QAnon movement. Due to their more approachable messaging, they are able to draw in more women, as well as a younger audience, namely those who may not have initially been captivated by QAnon beliefs. Regardless of the branding and soft colours, Argentino’s research highlights that the Pastel QAnon community is really just ‘the QAnon we all know, along with all it entails: racism, medical/COVID disinformation, and violence’.
Despite the wellness community once being considered a more liberal, left wing group, some of them seem to be shifting to the right, often due to their dissatisfaction with COVID measures. After the March 2021 Dutch general elections, it became apparent that a number of members of the wellness community had voted for the far-right party, Forum for Democracy (FvD). In Dutch, conspirituality has its own term: samenzwevers, thus showing it has become just as much of a problem in the Netherlands as it has in English speaking countries. Writer Roxane van Iperen spoke out against the ‘wellness-right’ (in Dutch, wellness-rechts), calling them ‘a self-centred, privileged group'. Although documentary maker Sunny Bergman disagrees with this specific stereotype, she found it surprising that the samenzwevers had made the move from voting for left-wing parties to ‘voting for a fascist party under the guise of 'freedom' and 'love'’.
“The Pastel QAnon community is really just the QAnon we all know, along with all it entails: racism, medical/COVID disinformation, and violence.”
As wellness influencers surround their Pastel QAnon content in terminology such as ‘awakening’, and ‘enlightenment’, social media algorithms often find it difficult to pick up on and flag as misleading or misinformation, resulting in its ability to spread further into the mainstream. A recent study by CCDH showed that followers of wellness influencer accounts who were known to promote anti-vaxx content were being recommended more anti-vaccine content from verified accounts, as well as from leading anti-vaxxers already flagged to Instagram. It is clear that instagram’s algorithms can be dangerous, and are in dire need of reforming in order to curb this spread of vaccine misinformation, not only just in the wellness community.
Whilst on the one hand, the QAnon movement is causing divisions within families and communities, on the other, it is bringing unlikely groups together. Social distancing may have kept people far apart, but social media has united the anti-vaxxers across their pastel coloured world.
Having conversations with conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers is becoming increasingly important. We created a list of tips on how to do this.
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