Brief: The Spirituality of Vaccine & Mask Panics

Why do so many inflammatory culture war issues crystallize around vaccines and masks? What is so compelling about these forms of public health and mutual aid, that they become central to the right-wing imagination? 

For some, straight-up libertarianism might be a sufficient answer: the knee-jerk allergy to being asked to do anything as a social player. And beneath that might lie conspiratorial notions of Fauci being a Red, Bill Gates monetizing polio, or George Soros controlling Congress. 

Matthew argues that even those are surface stories, covering over a trembling anxiety about the status of the body in relation to the State, and God. 

Show Notes

Rudolf Steiner on Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines

Biss, Eula. On Immunity: An Inoculation. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices