questions around the remote language testing of immigrants

Earlier in the year, the UK government introduced a new system to test the English of people applying for visas to enter the country - and at the time, a Minister claimed the Home Office’s remote language-testing plans offered ‘significant benefits’:

Mike Tapp says new system for assessing visa applicants’ language skills could deliver ‘strengthened identity management and security and much greater visibility and control over the service for the department’ The Home Office has insisted that its proposals to introduce remote language assessments for visa applicants seeking the right to live and work in the UK have the potential to offer “significant benefits” to the department.

Currently, the Home Office’s UK Visas and Immigration section allows a range of providers to offer Secure English Language Tests in the UK and international locations. But under a procurement exercise that closed to bidders earlier this week, the department is seeking a supplier for “fully remote” English-language testing

But the language-testing industry is not happy about this, with providers waring the government that "Online English tests for migrants risk criminal abuse":

At the moment, migrants who want to study or work in the UK need to show they can speak English to internationally recognised standards by taking tests at one of more than 1,300 test centres around the world. But in November last year, the Home Office launched a tender, external for "fully remote" English tests to run for five years from December 2026 at the earliest.

It said the new system would see "customers" - meaning migrants applying for visas - choose where to take their test, providing secure conditions were met. From January, those tests were made tougher, with migrants told they needed to demonstrate the equivalent of A-level English to be considered for a skilled work visa and other categories.

Two-thirds of the current, in-person English tests are overseen by a consortium called International English Language Testing System (IELTS). It is comprised of the British Council, the UK's national cultural and educational organisation; Cambridge University Press and Assessments; and IDP, a large Australian education company.

The letter said applicants could cheat in a variety of ways, including using impersonators, working with an accomplice via screen–sharing or earpieces, or getting help from AI chatbots. The letter added that the current system would not allow test providers to act without "sufficient security and consistency". "This is particularly important, given the politically charged nature of the debate around migration and the need for more, not less, control and certainty over who is allowed to come to the UK."

Last August, the Australian government banned remote or at-home tests to assess the language competency of migrants.

In the latest issue of the E L Gazette, Mark Rendell, CEO of International House Trust, says that IELTS was right to walk away – the Home Office is making a huge mistake:

The Home Office’s decision to continue its pursuit towards the introduction of a single Home Office English Language Test (HOELT) to be delivered remotely and unsupervised for high stakes immigration purposes is surprising and deeply unsettling.

Fraudsters and bad actors will already be hatching ways to defraud the country. Options for deception are varied including impersonation, screen sharing, hidden devices, earpieces, chatbots, AI assistance, camera blind spots, HDMI splitters, browser extensions and ‘disrupted’ internet connections to circumvent security defences. Would-be migrants will be allowed to sit these life-changing tests in unsupervised locations of their choosing, rather than under direct invigilation having passed robust digital and human security checks...

The largest current Secure English Language Test is IELTS, and it has just been announced that IELTS is withdrawing from the tender to deliver the HOELT test because its creators do not believe that such a test of national significance can be delivered in a secure and fair way using a fully remote format.

There have been several cases recently where high stakes remote tests have been withdrawn from the market following concerns about widespread cheating including ACCA, the accountancy exam, and LSAT, the equivalent exam for the legal profession. Australian immigration authorities also recently announced that they had considered and rejected the adoption of remote language assessment...

Testing systems only have value if they are trusted and deliver accurate and fair results. It would be a great shame if the UK’s hard-earned reputation for world class standards was tarnished by the crash in public confidence and unwelcome press headlines that are likely to follow the introduction of fully remote assessment for high stakes purposes.

And indeed, there has already been a lot of negative press reaction, including: Migrants can cheat Labour’s online language tests (Telegraph); English lessons shouldn’t be an immigration test – why the UK’s new policy risks deepening exclusion - University of South Wales; Fury as migrants will no longer have to take English test in person in £816m deal | UK | News | Express.co.uk

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liberal democracy needs to create narratives

This week Slovenia’s ruling liberals defeated populists in a photo-finish election: 

Golob sought to frame the election in an interview with POLITICO as a choice between liberal democratic values and Janša’s Hungary-style illiberalism. 

What is Illiberal democracy?

Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, gave an oft-cited speech in 2014 where he proclaimed Hungary an illiberal democracy, stating that "a democracy does not necessarily have to be liberal" and that "the new state we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state." Modern advocates of illiberal democracy insist they are more democratic than others, and generally define themselves as being against liberal democracy, the West, and the United States. Vladimir Putin of Russia is an outspoken critic of liberalism, with him and Orban described as redefining it in ways that suit their agendas by equating it with multiculturalism, immigration, and LGBTQ rights.[21] The election of Donald Trump saw a large increase in scholarly research about illiberalism, what it means, and heavy debates on whether or not America is on the road to fascism.[22]

A question facing liberal democracies is how to counter propaganda/paranoia/conspiracy theories.

There are all sorts of suggested ways ahead, such as we should enjoy culture and the arts, that we should try and counter it with the same, and that we need to use reliable, evidence-based and non-partisan journalism.

One commentator who has suggested many of these strategies is the writer and academic Peter Pomerantsev - and one of his most powerful books has been a look at the propaganda and paranoia of the last two decades. There's a fabulous interview with him on his Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.

Today, liberal democracy is struggling even more.

We have been seeing the emergence of competing visions of international order - with the fracturing of the US-led liberal international order [March 2025]

And this month, the Swedish V-|Dem has published a report saying we are in danger of losing Liberal Democracy;

On March 17th, the Swedish-based Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute released its 2026 annual Democracy Report titled “Unraveling the Democratic Era?” with an aptly themed cover image: a tattered, threadbare American flag with the acronym “S.O.S.” spray-painted across its stripes. “The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history,” the report writes. Within a year of the second Trump Administration, executive aggrandizement has severely weakened checks and balances and displayed astonishing disregard for the rule of law. No longer is the United States a pillar of liberal democracy – rather, for the first time in fifty years, it is slipping towards a democratic grey zone.

The press has covered it as: ‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog.

Since 2012, Lindberg has led his small group of researchers in Sweden to become the world’s leading source for analysis of the health of global democracy. In their latest report, published on Tuesday, they conclude that the US, for the first time in more than half a century, has lost its long-term status as a liberal democracy. The country is now going through a rapid process of what the report’s authors call “autocratisation”.

“For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years, for Vučić in Serbia, it took eight years, and for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year,” Lindberg says.

US democracy is now back at the worst recorded level since 1965, when US civil rights laws first introduced de facto universal suffrage. All progress made since then has been erased, according to the report.

Worldwide, democracy has receded to its lowest levels since the mid-70s. “The world has never before seen as many countries autocratising at the same time,” Lindberg says.

A record 41% (3.4 billion) of the world’s population currently resides in countries where democracy is deteriorating, the report claims, adding that Washington is leading this global turn away from democracy.

The researchers use 48 different metrics to assess democratic health, such as the freedom of expression and the media, the quality of elections and the observance of the rule of law. The resulting “liberal democracy index” shows that the speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is unprecedented in modern history. The main factor is a “rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency”, Lindberg says. Congress has been marginalised, jeopardising the “checks and balances” (judicial and legislative constraints on the executive) so crucial to US democracy. At the same time, civil rights have been rapidly declining and freedom of expression is now at its lowest level since the 1940s.

Many commentators would say that liberal democracy needs to create narratives.

Including the idea that Liberal Democracy Needs A Story - by Dan Gardner:

Putin and Xi and Trump have their stories. So do Erdogan, Modi, Orban, and all the other reactionaries who have put freedom into headlong retreat. They are full of passionate intensity, to borrow from Yeats, while the best lack all conviction. But history, as they say, repeats, or at least rhymes. And ours is not the first era in which liberal democracy seemed to be on a terminal decline.

Others agree that democracy needs a narrative on political liberalism:

For the protection and continued existence of democracy in general and throughout the world, it is important to revive a narrative on what constitutes a liberal democracy. Here, it will be vital to reclaim the normative appeal of liberal democracy.

This appeal lies in the fact that individuals in non-liberal societies are always subjected to the prevailing majority doctrine, be it of a religious or other nature. In contrast, liberal democracies allow for a society in which the diversity of human experience, ways of life and life choices is possible without fear of being exposed to social, economic or political repression. Of all the political systems that we know, liberal democracy is the one that comes closest to the thought experiment designed by the liberal philosopher John Rawls referred to as the ‘veil of ignorance’. In this thought experiment, the future members of a society have to decide on a social order but do not know which position they will have in this society – so the best order is one in which everyone is protected against the arbitrary exercise of power by others.

Finally, some would call this The Age of Fortress Liberalism:

Some liberal theorists have tried to find comfort in the fortress mentality. The scholar and former politician Michael Ignatieff argues that liberal societies fight better when they understand that they are in danger. Drawing on the thought of Isaiah Berlin, Ignatieff argues “it will be up to the embattled fortresses of liberal democracy, and the conviction of their peoples, if liberty is to prevail.” Illiberal threats should strengthen liberals’ resolve to make hard choices.

Early liberal theorists grappled with the limits of universalizing their own principles. Baruch Spinoza, in suggesting a liberal ethos of tolerance, demanded liberal societies restrict teachings or religions which “tend to produce obstinacy, hatred, strife or anger.” When Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined society coming together around a civil religion, he said such a religion would only be intolerant of just one thing: intolerance. When courts restrict democracy in the name of the rule of law or liberals insist on fast-paced assimilation, they draw on a tradition which has recognized that liberalism relies on basic shared principles to work...

The practical strategy of reinventing liberalism as the preserve of besieged, sensible, Europeans is a difficult balancing act, because liberalism has always relied on the promise of future extension to rally its adherents. Similarly, once liberals lose confidence that their vision will inexorably spread by democratic, nonviolent means, they fall into the same “might makes right” logic as the illiberal ideologies in opposition to which they define themselves.

Today, the stronger future project belongs to the populist right, which promises a more homogeneous, child-rearing, religious, and nationalistic Europe. While these politicians have their own foibles, their adherents share a confidence that Europe’s mainstream has sorely lacked for almost a decade. Even if largely nostalgic, the populist vision of the future speaks to the experiences of Europeans today. For those outside the establishment, it is easier to believe in than in a fortress under siege.

To be sure, there are attempts to replace the liberal siege mentality with something more expansive and forward-looking: efforts like the “abundance” idea and its adaptations in Europe, or the effort to make affordability the central promise of a populist left. But so far, these movements have not had large electoral breakthroughs, in part because they have not gone beyond the fortress liberals on fundamental questions. On defense, immigration, and the threat of the far-right, abundance liberals and populist leftists remain cadets within the fortress.

The rise of fortress liberalism makes clear that European leaders still imagine their present challenges as temporary. Our leaders and our societies have not yet internalized the possibility of a return to the constant warring or the ceaseless inter-ethnic violence that defined pre-twentieth century Europe. In the minds of the world’s most powerful liberals, their task is to survive the siege day-to-day, whatever adaptations that requires. Retreating to the fortress has deprived them of any vision of what to create next, should “normalcy” return. Practicing this lost art of imagination may make for a stronger defense than Europe’s liberals have yet been able to muster.

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shattering paradise - or, the difference between an 'economic migrant' and an 'expat'

As Gaby Hinsliff writing in today's Guardian suggests, influencers have sold the world a fantasy Dubai – and now it’s gone in a puff of missile smoke:

The city was portrayed as an aspirational place to live, but now those who moved there are realising the precarity that comes with being an economic migrant.

Who could have guessed that living a few hundred miles as the drone flies from Tehran might have risks? Certainly not the anonymous hedge funder who fumed to the Financial Times that “the trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics”.

But if it’s hard to sympathise with the super-rich, as they discover that there are some things money can’t buy, then they are not the only Britons trapped in the Gulf. The deal Dubai offered economic migrants – which is what Britons seeking a better life in the Gulf are, much as some will hate the label – was a kind of real-life Truman Show: a sunny, shiny, sterilised low-crime haven for anyone itching to get rich or stay that way, sustained by stiff penalties for anyone publicly shattering its illusions.

Today's London Standard points out that influencers in Dubai have been warned they face prison for posting material about the conflict with Iran.

And earlier in the week, the Daily Mail's Guy Adams looked at The inside story of how the hollow Dubai dream has come crashing down... as expats are sent mysterious menacing warnings from the UAE government which hint all might not be as well as it seems.

Here we are looking at the world of the 'expat' - and a decade ago, the BBC was considering the difference between an expat and an immigrant:

The word expat is loaded. It carries many connotations, preconceptions and assumptions about class, education and privilege — just as the terms foreign worker, immigrant and migrant call to mind a different set of assumptions.

But what makes one person an expat, and another a foreign worker or migrant? Often the former is used to describe educated, rich professionals working abroad, while those in less privileged positions — for example, a maid in the Gulf states or a construction worker in Asia — are deemed foreign workers or migrant workers. The classification matters, because such language can in some cases be used as a political tool or to dehumanise — as the debate around the word “migrant” suggests.

It's not just 'semantics', it's also a question of law: Expat vs Immigrant vs Migrant vs Refugee vs Asylee Defined | American Visa Law Group

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rage-bait

Did you know that the Oxford Word of the Year 2025 was rage bait?

Do you know what rage-baiting is all about?

In a very long entry, Wikipedia tells us:

In internet slang, rage-baiting (also ragebaiting, rage-farming, or rage-seeding) is the manipulative tactic of eliciting outrage with the goal of increasing internet traffic, online engagement, and revenue, as well as attracting new subscribers, followers, or supporters.[1][2][3] This manipulation occurs through offensive or inflammatory headlines, memes, tropes, or comments that provoke users to respond in kind.[4][5][6][7]

For the most up-to-date and colloquial definitions, we can go to Urban Dictionary: rage bait

But what's the effect been? Here's a video looking at How Ragebait RUINED the Internet

And why is it happening? Here's a BBC report on What is rage-baiting and why is it profitable?

It's still very much in the news today.

From Maynooth University this week: The problems with coining terms like 'rage bait' and 'brain rot'

From Brussels two days ago: Rage-bait: Meet the influencers calling Brussels the 'worst city in Europe' just for views

And from Fordham University yesterday: When is Rage Bait Too Much?

Finally, is there the same use and interest in your own country?

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the 'life in the uk' test: a critique

The British government has had in place for some years now its Life in the UK Test which, if passed, will enable people to become UK citizens.

There are lots of websites that ask if you “think you know Britain?” - and give you an example text to try out online. And when people who already have a British passport try it themselves, well, it's actually quite difficult, as with this journalist on the Daily Express realised last year: I took the Life in the UK citizenship test - it's not so simple.

Other commentators would say that the test is actually not relevant to life in the UK, with the Guardian recently suggesting: Forget Hadrian’s Wall. The UK citizenship test should ask about Corrie, bus queues and Greggs.

In fact, there is considerable criticism of the test.

In June 2022, the UK parliament's Lords Committee requested an urgent review of the Life in the UK Test:

The Committee found several problems with the Test:an official handbook full of obscure facts and subjective assertions (including offensive historical content),

• inaccessible test centres,
• poorly-phrased questions that trivialise the process, and
• costs that can be prohibitive for some, among others.

The Committee also stressed the need to reintroduce taught courses, known to promote social cohesion and gender equality, as an alternative for those who may find a test particularly challenging.

The Committee is astonished that the Government has not yet conducted its long-overdue review of the Test and of its associated handbook. The Committee calls on the Government to appoint an Advisory Group to conduct a review to be published by a set deadline.

Others feel very much the same, with this study from the Durham Law School asking The Life in the UK citizenship test:Is it unfit for purpose?:

The Life in the UK citizenship test was launched in 2005 and revised in 2007. The test must be passed by anyone applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) or naturalisation. Past editions were criticised for factual inaccuracies and their failure to include much information about British history and culture. The third edition was published in March 2013. It is a comprehensive departure in form and content from past tests that raises several serious concerns about the construction of the test. Its inability to meet its central goal as a test of knowledge about life in the United Kingdom renders it unfit for purpose and it is in need of urgent reforms. 

The UK Immigration Lawyers also ask:  Is the Life in the UK Test Fair? New Survey Raise Big Questions:

Our survey has exposed surprising gaps in historical and cultural knowledge among Brits. The findings raise questions about the fairness of Life in the UK Test for British citizenship or settlement applications.

This is not just the opinion of journalists, academics and lawyers, as Wikipedia notes in its piece on the Life in the United Kingdom test:

The test has been frequently criticised for containing factual errors,[1] expecting candidates to know information that would not be expected of native-born citizens[2] as well as being just a "bad pub quiz" and "unfit for purpose".[3][4]

In other words, if most British citizens were asked to complete this test, they would fail - which might question whether they should 'qualify' as being British citizens!

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how corrupt is your country?

It's possibly the case that concentrated wealth leads to concentrated power.

And it seems to be the case that concentrated wealth and power lead to corruption.

Looking at corruption and extreme wealth, corruption fosters extreme wealth, acting as a greasing wheel that contributes to this unbalanced economic process. Therefore, billionaires face incentives to perform these types of acts which tend to perpetuate the corrupt system. However, legal mechanisms are also significant determinants of extreme wealth.

The idea that 'power corrupts' has been around for a long, long time, as shown in this look at power and its corrupting effects: the effects of power on human behavior and the limits of accountability systems.

The latest figures from Transparency International has something to say about the state of the world today, with a report out today: CPI 2025: Findings and insights

Britain doesn't fare very well: Results published today show the UK's score has fallen to 70, down from 71 last year. This marks the UK's lowest point... The UK remains 20th in the global ranking for the third consecutive year, a significant decline from its top ten position back in 2017. Corruption Perceptions Index 2025: UK Corruption concerns risk becoming 'new normal'

The United States has done even worse: The United States is now tied with the Bahamas and is outranked by Uruguay, Lithuania and the United Arab Emirates... The ranking has been trending downward for the past 10 years. Last year, it took a hit when President Donald Trump paused investigations into corporate foreign bribery and cut enforcement of a foreign agent registration law and other moves, CNN reported. US slips to 29th place in global corruption perception index

The message is clear: Corruption is surging worldwide, threatening public trust, enabling organized crime, and weakening democratic institutions, Transparency International warned Tuesday in its 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Experts say shrinking civic space and faltering accountability are fueling the problem, putting governance—and citizens—at risk. Corruption Threatens Democracies Worldwide, Transparency International Warns

How is your country doing?

Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 - Transparency.org

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academic freedom in the united states

This blog has looked at press freedom around the world - but what about academic freedom?

In the United States, they seem quite determined in banning books: the school curriculum and critical race theory.

Here's a report from the latest Philosophy Now magazine in their News: February/March 2026:

Philosophy Professor Banned from Teaching Plato’s Symposium

More than 200 courses at Texas A&M University have been flagged or cancelled as part of a review called by the system board into course content related to race and gender, according to academics who contacted Inside Higher Education and other publications. The scope of the review has extended well beyond contemporary material. Alongside feminist writers and queer filmmakers, foundational figures in Western philosophy have been targeted.

Philosophy professor Martin Peterson, scheduled to teach his usual course on Contemporary Moral Problems, was instructed by university leadership to remove several passages by Plato from his syllabus. In an email from department chair Kristi Sweet, Peterson was given a choice: either eliminate “modules on race and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,” or else be reassigned to a different course. This effectively banned him from teaching Plato’s Symposium, a canonical Socratic dialogue focused on the nature of love that also discusses issues relating to patriarchy, masculinity and the human condition. Peterson objected strongly, and as the dispute escalated he wrote: “Your decision to bar a philosophy professor from teaching Plato is unprecedented … You are making Texas A&M famous – but not for the right reasons.” Despite his protest, Peterson ultimately agreed to revise the syllabus, replacing the censored material with lectures on free speech and academic freedom. Rather than ignoring the incident, Peterson plans to incorporate it directly into his course material: “I’m thinking of using this as a case study and assign some of the texts written by journalists covering the story to discuss,” he explained. “I want [students] to know what is being censored.”

And here's the reaction from the press at the time:

Professor Replaces Banned Plato Texts With Article on Censorship

Texas A&M Removes Plato from Introductory Philosophy Class

Is Plato woke? Texas A&M professor speaks out after being banned from teaching the Greek philosopher | WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR

A&M demands prof remove sexual orientation and race from his philosophy class - Dallas Voice

There's an intensifying kind of threat to academic freedom: Watchful students serving as informants

Here's an interview with the professor - and a comment that follows:

I taught Philosophy for forty years before my retirement; and Professor Peterson has, ostensibly been charged with "corrupting the youth" as was one of the charges levied against Socrates. Thankfully, he is not likely to be silenced in in the same way as Socrates. And I applaud the good professor's sense of Socratic restraint in his apologia. The real harm is done to his students, who have been denied the chance to have him guide them to favoring philos over eros, as Socrates argues in his speech. I taught The Symposium many times, and can say that my students' reading it--and in open dialogue about the many perspectives on love that it poses--was one of the most transformative classroom experiences for students that I can recall. I can only hope that Professor Peterson's accusers will come out of their cave, and see the light.

INTERVIEW: Texas professor censored over Plato curriculum speaks out | The College Fix

What about academic freedom generally in the United States?

Examining threats to academic freedom in America and the world | Harvard Kennedy School

University of North Carolina moves to define academic freedom

40 strikes on academic freedom in 2025: Is US higher ed losing its nerve? - The Times of India

Explained: Why US universities are rejecting Trump’s controversial higher education compact

How University Governing Boards Can Protect the Independence of Colleges and Universities - Center for American Progress

5 growing threats to academic freedom - Yahoo News UK

And elsewhere?

Academic Freedom Index

How to protect your university against authoritarianism | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Academic freedom under threat for more than 50% of world’s population - Index on Censorship

The UK ranks sixty-fourth in global academic freedom ranking, marking steady decline - Committee For Academic Freedom

But perhaps we should define the term first!

Academic freedom - Wikipedia

Committee For Academic Freedom - Homepage

What Is Academic Freedom — and Why It Matters Beyond the University - YouTube

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leopold kohr: opposing the cult of 'bigness' - and understanding that 'small is beautiful'

The idea that Small Is Beautiful was first popularised by the German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher over fifty years ago.

But his challenge to 'bigness' came from his mentor Leopold Kohr. And indeed, another of Kohr's pupils gave the lecture The Wisdom of Leopold Kohr at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics - this being the educationalist and philosopher Ivan Illich who has featured several times on this blog:

During his life-time, this teasing leprechaun was recognized by very few as a man ahead of his time. Even today, few have caught up with him; there is still no school of thought that carries on his social morphology... Throughout his life, Kohr labored to lay the foundations for an alternative to economics; he worked to subvert conventional economic wisdom, no matter how advanced.

With more on Leopold Kohr from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics:

Believing in the effectiveness of returning to the local level to solve the problems affecting humankind, he saw small self-governing communities as best able to solve their problems with their own resources.

He was against 'bigness':

Leopold Kohr was highly critical of the claim that the world is split into too many states and opposed pan-nationalist, continental and global unions. He argued that the success of Swiss Confederation did not lie in a union between the French, German and Italian-speaking peoples, as that would lead to the domination of Swiss Germans and to the gradual decline of other groups. The reason that Switzerland remained diverse was that instead of having three nationalities, it was federated into 22 cantons, representing the actual cultural divisions of Switzerland. Kohr argued that number of autonomous cantons "eliminates all possible imperialist ambitions on the part of any one canton, because it would always be outnumbered by even a very small combination of other".[15]

According to Kohr, a European Federation of unequally large states would lead to a domination of a single nation and thus an erosion of dialects and smaller languages "with just the same inevitability as the German federation, in which 24 small states were linked to the one 40-million Power of Prussia ended up in Prussian hegemony". For him, a successful European unification can be based only on the Swiss model, which would entail splitting the existing nation-states into smaller ones on the basis of cultural and historical regions. He defends the concept of Kleinstaaterei by arguing that while in the Middle Ages, wars were common, they were brief and caused little to no devastation. However, after the consolidation of Europe into a few large states, every war that erupted between caused huge destruction and loss life.[15]...

Kohr also discusses the problem of cultural heritage and cultural assimilation. According to him, culture is a product of individuals, and since individual cannot prosper under a large power, neither can culture. He describes democracy as a "system of divisions, factions, and small-group balances", which slowly wither away under internal consolidation of a large state and with it the ability for cultural and intellectual flourishment.[27]

Following the banking crisis of 2009, the author Paul Kingsnorth wrote in the Guardian that this economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness':

One man who would not have been surprised by this crisis of bigness, had he lived to see it, was Leopold Kohr. Kohr has a good claim to be the most important political thinker that you have never heard of...

Drawing from history, Kohr demonstrated that when people have too much power, under any system or none, they abuse it. The task, therefore, was to limit the amount of power that any individual, organisation or government could get its hands on. The solution to the world's problems was not more unity but more division. The world should be broken up into small states, roughly equivalent in size and power, which would be able to limit the growth and thus domination of any one unit. Small states and small economies were more flexible, more able to weather economic storms, less capable of waging serious wars, and more accountable to their people. Not only that, but they were more creative. On a whistlestop tour of medieval and early modern Europe, The Breakdown of Nations does a brilliant job of persuading the reader that many of the glories of western culture, from cathedrals to great art to scientific innovations, were the product of small states.

To understand the sparky, prophetic power of Kohr's vision, you need to read The Breakdown of Nations. Some if it will create shivers of recognition. Bigness, predicted Kohr, could only lead to more bigness, for "whatever outgrows certain limits begins to suffer from the irrepressible problem of unmanageable proportions". Beyond those limits it was forced to accumulate more power in order to manage the power it already had. Growth would become cancerous and unstoppable, until there was only one possible endpoint: collapse.

Here are some very helpful reviews and summaries of The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr on Goodreads

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parodying websites

Parody is often linked to dissent and satire, as well as irony - and today it is very much part of the current issues around populism, culture wars and woke.

One example of parody would be the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

And in the news, we have: Comedy duo create Band Aid parody, Spicy Burlesque Parody 'The Empire Strips Back' and Die Hard musical parody showing at Norwich Puppet Theatre.

And back to the politics, it is suggested that 2025 was the year the far-right became a parody of itself.

This also brings us to the world of the parody website - for example: The Onion and ClickHole - Because All Content Deserves To Go Viral.

Whereas website spoofing might be legally questionable, as the Spoof website service suggests, it can actually work as a piece of political activism. In many countries, you can legally make a parody website:  Under US law a parody often counts as fair use, but it must be a “true parody” — that is one that seeks to comment on or criticize the original, not just a work that modifies the original to be funny.

The latest parody website parodies the United States' most prestigious performing arts venue, formerly known as The Kennedy Center - YouTube. The actual website is currently offering a Queue-it system because it is unable to manage the traffic wanting to enter it...

From the 'Trump-Kennedy Center', we do get this press release: Kennedy Center Board elects President Donald J. Trump as Board Chair | Kennedy Center Or as the USA Today news website asks: Did Trump rename the Kennedy Center after himself? Yes, that and more. Which has meant that artists cancel Kennedy Center shows after the Trump name change.

Also in today's news, we learn that a South Park writer has already purchased ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’ website domain to troll the president:

A former South Park writer bought two website domain names in order to troll Donald Trump after predicting the president’s move to rename the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Toby Morton saw that the writing was on the wall before the writing was on the wall, and purchased TrumpKennedyCenter.org and TrumpKennedyCenter.com back in August.

Earlier this month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the world-famous performing arts center would be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center after a unanimous – but potentially illegal – vote from the institution’s new board, made up of members hand picked by the president. The move has already prompted public protests, as well as multiple artists to pull out of performances scheduled at the center in the coming weeks and a lawsuit that claims that the name change is unlawful as it can only be approved by Congress.

Morton, who has credits with the satirical cartoon and Mad TV, is known to have bought political domains in order to turn them into satirical. He told The Washington Post that he had purchased the Kennedy Center names after guessing the president’s plans.

And here is HOME | Trump Kennedy Center... [which does say at the bottom of the home page: 'THIS WEBSITE IS PARODY']

It's all a bit of a mess, with suggestions that Trump's White House, Kennedy Center moves could hurt the GOP in 2026, in that Trump’s ‘Marie Antoinette thing’ could cost Republicans in midterms.

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yinka shonibare, artist

The future is African whether in language [Nigeria is the third largest country when it comes to English speakers] or music or politics. 

But also when it comes to art - with an exhibition happening at London's Tate Modern on Nigerian Modernism

As a review on the BBC says, Nigerian Modernism gets recognition, as "a transfer of the old ideas, old items, old technologies, old thought into a different, modern time". It is "projecting the present, and showing the way towards the future".

Certainly when it comes to art and culture, there are all sorts of adventures in art at the British Museum - from Status Symbols (1200 - 1400 AD), Ife head to The First Global Economy (1450 - 1600 AD), Benin plaque - the Oba with Europeans to The World of Our Making (1914 - 2010 AD), Throne of Weapons.

Another place to go for art in London is the Royal Academy and its summer exhibition - and back in 2014 it was British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare at the Royal Academy.

Ten years later, and Shonibare was a gorgeously recognisable artist, although some critics say he's simply doing the same thing.

Judge for yourself in a new BBC documentary: In My Own Words - Series 2: Yinka Shonibare - BBC iPlayer [and a comment about being an artist at 25:50]

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lexical lab online and online resources

The Lexical Lab platform is innovative, stimulating and full of useful up-to-date English:

Jay Doubleyou: Lexical Lab: learn languages with an online teacher through everyday english and common words, chunks, idioms, phrasal verbs, phrases and expressions used in spoken language

Their social media is also informative - from the founders Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley

They also offer an excellent Blog

You can sign up to their very entertaining Newsletter, which this month looks at 'No-vember'

November has flown by, to be honest, and I've been busy teaching online. With Lexical Lab, we've now only got one more week of our twelve-week term to go before we knock off, but we will be back early in 2025 with more, so do keep an eye on our website and make sure you follow us on Instagram too...

I’ve been writing the last webinar of the year which is on Saturday 6th December. We'll be discussing the nature of difficulty and challenge in the classroom – and why easier doesn't always mean better. You can sign up here.

PS: Here's my vote for the greatest Xmas song of all-time! Enjoy.

To finish on a more serious note, Two weeks ago, Ternopil was the site of a massive Russian terror attack. Earlier today they did an Instagram Live with Tetyana Ivanenko, a teacher based in the city talking about the situation there now, her roots in eastern Ukraine, how the war is affecting her teaching and her students, and much more besides:

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LIVES WITH UKRAINIAN TEACHERS: Tetyana Ivanenko - YouTube

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how good is grokipedia?

HOW GOOD IS WIKIPEDIA?

This is from a blog post from two years ago: Jay Doubleyou: Search results for wikipedia

Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet | WIRED [2020]

“Wikipedia Is Good for You!?” by James Purdy | Thematic Reading Anthology

Opinion | Science shows Wikipedia is the best part of the Internet - The Washington Post [2016]

Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher | Economist

Is Wikipedia a good source? When to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it [2023]

Is Wikipedia a good source? When to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it

In some countries, students are told not to use it - but perhaps they need to learn how to use it instead:

Students are told not to use Wikipedia for research. But it’s a trustworthy source [2021]

5 Reasons to Actually Encourage Middle and High School Students to Use Wikipedia | Edutopia [2021]

What about today?

As this entry on the website says at Wikipedia: Don't cite Wikipedia on Wikipedia - Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia. As a user-generated source, it can be edited by anyone at any time, and any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or simply incorrect.

This piece from this year from the website The Online Reputation and Wikipedia Blog asks Is Wikipedia Reliable in 2025:

Wikipedia is a great starting point for online research. It has a very good reputation and consistently ranks at the top of Google search results and has information on almost every topic. But is Wikipedia a reliable source? The answer as to whether it is trustworthy is both yes and no.

Sometimes, Wikipedia can be an accurate source of information. It is updated regularly and contains a wealth of knowledge from various sources (these are two of the main reasons it ranks so high in search). Articles that have many editors who are clearly experts and that include solid citations and references are usually quite reliable. Articles with less oversight tend to be less reliable.

Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia. This means anyone can edit its pages, which leads to wild inconsistencies across its pages. With 45,175,790 registered Wikipedia users, there is always the potential for bias or inaccuracies.

Therefore, when reading information on Wikipedia, it’s important to take the time to verify the accuracy of the information by looking for other sources that corroborate the facts.

So, Wikipedia is a good starting-off point.

But what about its 'politics'?

It's a long-standing point as to what might be the Ideological bias on Wikipedia - Wikipedia

One of the founders says it is biased: Wikipedia co-founder says online encyclopedia has been completely corrupted by woke ideology | Daily Mail Online

The other says not: Wikipedia is not woke, insists founder Jimmy Wales

On the right they say: How Wikipedia became Wokepedia - spiked

And on the left they say: Wikipedia’s Deep Ties to Big Tech | Institute for New Economic Thinking

Here's an excellent piece from the Manhattan Institute which says it's OK but could do better with regard to any political bias: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased?

And a piece from today's Le Monde very much looks at the current situation: Wikipedia, under fire from conservatives and shaken by AI:

Nearing its 25th anniversary, the online encyclopedia faces multiple challenges: accusations of 'woke' bias, threats to contributors, AI-generated content and declining readership. Despite these issues, Wikipedia remains resilient. But for how long?

Wikipedia is "controlled by far-left activists." "Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority." "I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia." These are just a few of the increasingly virulent messages posted online by Elon Musk, the world's richest man.

On October 27, Musk took things a step further by launching his own encyclopedia, Grokipedia, which he claimed would represent "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." More than 885,000 articles, all generated by artificial intelligence (AI), make up what he called a site "10X better" than Wikipedia....

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES - AND ARE THEY ANY GOOD?

There are indeed other places to go, as detailed in this blog piece from 2021: Jay Doubleyou: alternative wikipedias

Although the best are probably here: 5 Terrifying Bastardizations of the Wikipedia Model | Cracked.com

Now we have Grokipedia. which according to it:  

Grokipedia is an open source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge.

And according to Grokipedia - Wikipedia:

Grokipedia is an AI-generated online encyclopedia developed by xAI. The site was launched on October 27, 2025, as version 0.1. Entries in Grokipedia are created and edited by the Grok large language model (LLM). Many articles are derived from Wikipedia, with some copied nearly verbatim at launch.

A problem seems to be its sources.

The Guardian [liberal/left] has said: In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“Chatroom contributions are given equal status with serious academic work,” Richard Evans, an expert on the Third Reich, told the Guardian, after being invited to test out Grokipedia. “AI just hoovers up everything.”

The problem, said David Larsson Heidenblad, the deputy director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in Sweden, was a clash of knowledge cultures.“We live in a moment where there is a growing belief that algorithmic aggregation is more trustworthy than human-to-human insight. The Silicon Valley mindset is very different from the traditional scholarly approach. Its knowledge culture is very iterative where making mistakes is a feature, not a bug. By contrast, the academic world is about building trust over time and scholarship over long periods during which the illusion that you know everything cracks. Those are real knowledge processes.”

Andrew Dudfield, the head of AI at Full Fact, a UK-based factchecking organisation, said: “We really have to consider whether an AI-generated encyclopedia – a facsimile of reality, run through a filter – is a better proposition than any of the previous things that we have. It doesn’t display the same transparency but it is asking for the same trust. It is not clear how far the human hand is involved, how far it is AI=generated and what content the AI was trained on. It is hard to place trust in something when you can’t see how those choices are made.”

The Financial Times says Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is a major own goal | Financial Times:

Musk, who has called Wikipedia, on which Grokipedia is modelled, “Wokepedia” and has described the site as “an extension of legacy media propaganda”, demonstrates a facile understanding of human knowledge. After all, even our best approximations of what is true are constantly shifting, as new facts and developments emerge, and as the values that shape our understanding change...

Go and have a poke around in it and you will see what I mean. You will find Tommy Robinson described as a “citizen journalist” in glowing terms in the very first sentence of his entry. You will see Elon Musk’s 20lb weight loss highlighted in his entry as if that were important information, and you will find out that can be attributed to intermittent fasting (rather than to Mounjaro). You will read Kremlin talking points in the first paragraph of the entry on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, like the idea that the former is “denazifying” the latter. You might also be somewhat mystified — given its purported role in propagating legacy media propaganda — to find that, often, “content is adapted from Wikipedia”.

Instead of setting up a serious challenger to Wikipedia, Musk has scored a major own goal. Grokipedia demonstrates that, while humans might be highly imperfect, biased and tribal beings, they are still better than AI at getting to the truth (even when a majority of them have “liberal” biases) and it shows that, in a world in which stores of trust are so depleted, in which it’s so hard to know what’s real and what is fake, a site like Wikipedia is more important than ever.

Even Grok, the xAI chatbot the new site is named after, told me that “while Grokipedia improves on specific Wikipedia flaws — like verbose, overly critical entries on conservative topics — its AI gatekeeping creates a centralised ‘Musk’s truth’ filter, lacking Wikipedia’s distributed checks”, and that “it trades one set of biases for another, often with less accountability.”

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the cosmopolitan, the multilingual, the multicultural: we are all citizens of somewhere

CITIZENS OF SOMEWHERE

The former UK prime minister Theresa May made a conference speech back in 2016, where she said:

if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means. [see the Video]

But others would disagree.

In the annual set of Reith Lectures on the BBC, Prof Appia said: 'Mrs May, we are all citizens of the world,':

Real cosmopolitanism is not a privilege; it is an obligation. It does not belong to the rarefied circles of some frequent-flyer upper class.It belongs to anyone who cares about global justice, about the environment, about the alleviation of strife and carnage beyond our immediate national borders.

A disease that starts, unnoticed, in an African forest can devastate a Manchester family; CO2 emissions from India can derange the weather around the Gulf Stream; an ideological pathology that incubates in schools halfway around the world can bring down jets and skyscrapers.

We can be tempted to imagine - like children who think they can hide by closing their eyes - that our human concerns can stop neatly at the border, with a wider world kept forever at bay. But that is the unaffordable luxury.

If cosmopolitanism involves a simple recognition that our lives are interrelated in ways that transcend boundaries and that our human concerns must, too, it has brute reality on its side. A citizen of the world? Better believe it.

But where do the prime minister's ideas come from? Here we look at How Theresa May Understands People as 'Somewheres' and 'Anywheres':

One of these commentators is David Goodhart, whose book, The Road to Somewhere, ... manages to state the intellectual case for Mayism in a very concise way. The book’s central distinction – repeated ad nauseam throughout – is cleaved through the middle of the UK population. It is between “Anywheres”, who make up roughly 25 percent of the population, and “Somewheres”, who make up about 50 percent (the rest are “Inbetweeners”, although we’re never told very much about them).

The Anywheres are the hated metropolitan elitists of the Mayist narrative: high-achievers whose worldview values “autonomy, mobility and novelty”, placing a much lower value on “group identity, tradition and national social contracts”. They are comfortable with immigration, pro-international development and have progressive views about minority rights. Typically, they have what Goodhart calls “portable, achieved” identities – which means they’ve left the area they grew up in to attend a residential university and now live in London, or “even abroad”. The Anywhere worldview encompasses a broad swathe of educated society from “polished business executives to radical academics”.

Somewheres, by contrast, are the real bloody people of the UK. “Socially conservative and communitarian by instinct,” they have “rooted, ascribed” identities based on “group belonging and particular places”. They feel “uncomfortable about many aspects of cultural and economic change – such as mass immigration… the reduced status of non-graduate employment and more fluid gender roles”... 

Goodhart’s central distinction is bogus. Somewheres are supposed to be authentic, rooted in space and place; Anywheres, meanwhile, are inauthentic elites who have abandoned their roots to pursue personal success.

This doesn’t work for at least two reasons. On the one hand, Goodhart struggles throughout with the fact that – far from being placeless – Anywhere identity is in fact associated with one very specific place: London, which has a distinct culture of its own. On the other, it is conveniently forgetful of the very real financial struggles that young Anywheres in particular often face: leaving your hometown and moving to London is hardly any guarantee of great wealth...

Jonathan Freedland also doesn't like the easy divisions in his look at The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart

First, in his sympathy for Somewheres he caricatures Anywheres. Too easily does his category – which, by his measure, should include between 8 million and 10 million people – collapse into an upmarket version of the hated “metropolitan liberal elite”. He makes the same mistake as Theresa May did when she declared last year: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” This is to assume that those who look outward are automatically disconnected from the people around them. But a visit to even the much derided, ultra-remain districts of, say, north London would show areas that are still genuine communities, right down to their neighbourhood street parties for the Queen’s 90th birthday. Anywheres come from somewhere too...

Where Goodhart goes wrong above all is on Britain’s ethnic and religious minorities. Even though he concedes that these groups can exhibit Somewhere-ish attitudes – prioritising stable families, for example – he frames them throughout as the cloud on the Somewheres’ horizon, the blot that has darkened the Somewheres’ previously sunny landscape. It is their arrival that has changed Britain beyond recognition, their presence that has to be dealt with.

Perhaps my own experience as a member of Britain’s Jewish community has skewed my perspective, but I’d suggest that the very qualities Goodhart most admires among the Somewheres – including neighbourliness, trust and a sense of shared destiny – are to be found in Britain’s minorities. They have not caused the social fragmentation he laments: globalisation, automation and a thousand other shifts bear more blame than they do. If anything, and especially in the cities, they point to a remedy for those Anywheres Goodhart believes have become unmoored. Minorities might be more of a model than a threat, more to be emulated than to be feared.

Even if that is asking too much, surely the task now is not to look back to the time when homogeneity made a cohesive society easy, but to ask how today’s heterogeneous society might be made more cohesive, despite the difficulties. Goodhart is right that people are more inclined to share with those they regard as their fellows: so the challenge is to make all citizens, including the newer ones, appear to each other as fellows.

COSMOPOLITAN, MULTILINGUAL, MULTICULTURAL PLACES

Firstly, a good question on Reddit: What are/were a few traditionally multilingual towns/cities around the world? : r/linguistics

HOIMA:

As for the most multilingual/cultural continent, it is Africa that is so linguistically diverse:

A study conducted by Shigeki Kaji of Kyoto University in 2013, centred on inhabitants of the Ugandan town of Hoima, found that the average inhabitant knows 4.34 languages. Interestingly, Uganda has no lingua franca, i.e. no common language used by speakers with different native languages. The average Ugandan therefore has to employ multiple languages during the course of daily life, depending on where he is and to whom he is speaking.

Such multilingualism is impressive, particularly when one considers that we are not talking about language scholars, but about average citizens just going about their business and flicking effortlessly between four or more languages.

WREXHAM:

We can consider Wales as Britain’s hidden corner of bilingualism:

Tucked away in the corner of the UK, one of the world’s most monolingual countries, you’ll find a beacon of bilingualism for the rest of the world: Wales. Out of the four home nations that make up the United Kingdom, Wales has led the way in its efforts to revive and promote the Welsh language, and has set a precedent for other countries all over the world. What makes this more impressive, is that it has managed to do so while living side-by-side with global giant English.

And Wrexham has been chosen as a bilingual town to promote the Welsh language...

SARAJEVO:

Today, there is life beyond war in Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo 30 years on. And despite all the attempts at ethnic cleansing, multicultural Sarajevo is the most diverse city in Europe.

CHERNIVTSI:

In his book Borderlines: A History of Europe in 29 Borders by Lewis Baston, the author walks us across these European borders and shares their stories. The book is named 'one of the most engaging and fascinating histories of Europe I've read for years' in a review by Dominick Sandbrook, the history podcaster.

Lewis Baston finishes his book by looking at Chernivtsi - "Secret Capital of Europe."

Deutsche Welle takes us to the undiscovered charm of Chernivtsi in a nice little video and there are many webpages looking at this town in the borderlands of Ukraine/Romania/Hungary/Slovakia/Poland, this place on the Brink: The forsaken Paradise , or this Little Vienna of the East.

Here's a very touching piece on coming across the book by someone whose grandparents lived there: Crying in bookstores, thinking of borders. And they finish:

Today, I teared up in a bookstore. Today, I bought a book because the first two paragraphs of its final chapter made me feel like crying. I picked it up and leafed through it to kill time, and because the title, Borderlines, caught my eye. I picked it up with some cynicism, wondering what this book might have to teach me about borders. I went to the last chapter, ‘The secret capital of Europe (Ukraine/ Romania)’ because I was curious what this book had to say about a border that tore hearts in half in my family. I read the first paragraph and I felt like crying.

Cernăuți (Chernivtsi) was my paternal grandparents’ birthplace, a home they fled under duress as young people, and where they never returned. A childhood home my grandmother spoke of often, when I went to visit her in the summers. These few lines, read by chance today, seemed to echo her words. Her voice, and not the writer’s, filled the page under my eyes.

Thus it was that, picking up a book at random in a listless moment, I found myself fighting back tears in a little bookshop in a quiet seaside town more than 1,400 miles away from where my grandparents started their lives’ journeys.

I am tired of tyranny, greed, and borders seared with violence, borders that shift with the desires and interests of small-minded men.

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conspirituality

Some five years ago, we had a lot of things coming together: Covid conspiracy theories, and a proliferation of mis/disinformation and fake news.

We even saw the creation of a lunatic fringe in a sleepy ye Olde England...

This is a reflection of what is seen as the disturbing phenomenon known as Conspirituality:

a portmanteau neologism describing the overlap of conspiracy theories with spirituality, typically of New Age varieties

From the Journal of Contemporary Religion from 2011: 

It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a "paradigm shift" in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian "new world order" is to act in accordance with an awakened "new paradigm" worldview.[4]

There's a website with regular podcasts and blog pieces devoted to looking at conspirituality:

Investigating the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.

And it's a book:

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat (Audio Download): Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker, Matthew Remski, PublicAffairs: Amazon.co.uk: Audible Books & Originals

It asks questions, as in this interview in Rolling Stone magazine: What is Conspirituality? Here's How Wellness World Got Red-Pilled

Why Are So Many Popular Wellness Influencers Red-Pilled?

Derek Beres, co-author of 'Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat,' talks the rise of misinfo in self-help spaces

EJ Dickson - June 13, 2023

A few years ago, around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a perplexing shift in the wellness space. Yoga teachers, holistic healers, crystal sellers — people who had never posted anything remotely political, seemed, all of a sudden, to start posting about the dangers of 5G radiation, surgical masks, blood-drinking pedophiles, and “gender ideology.” And while a few major influencers in the space spoke out against this trend, it seemed as if more and more wellness figures were getting red-pilled by the day. 

This was the seed for the creation of Conspirituality, a podcast by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker about the intersection of the wellness space and (largely, right-wing) conspiracy theories. All three had a vested interest in investigating this topic: both Beres and Walker were involved in the yoga community for decades, while Remski was involved in several self-help groups that he later referred to as “cults.” And with the rise of the pandemic, with everyone and their mother seemingly posting baseless claims about Wayfair sex trafficking children and Covid vaccines killing young people, it was an opportune time for them to launch a podcast calling them out. (Editor’s note: the author of this article appeared on an episode of the Conspirituality podcast to discuss natural childbirth influencers.) 

Now, Beres, Remski, and Walker have coauthored a book: Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, which documents the modern-day rise of wellness gurus and misinformation peddlers like Kelly Brogan and JP Sears while probing the age-old racist roots of practices like contemporary yoga. Rolling Stone caught up with Beres to discuss celebrity influencers (and who he finds the scariest), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s run for office, and Oprah’s surprising role in the misinfo space. 

What is Conspirituality? Here's How Wellness World Got Red-Pilled

And finally, concern is going mainstream, with this recent piece in the New World/European magazine on the sick age of conspirituality:

The sick age of conspirituality

Egged on by Trump and RFK Jr, a deadly blend of conspiracy theory and wellness woo-woo is going mainstream

Matthew d’Ancona 1 October 2025

Two crazy old guys talking nonsense about public health policy – right? Well, yes. Last week, Donald Trump, flanked by his health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, declared that pregnant women who take Tylenol (paracetamol) increase the vulnerability of their babies to autism: a lie.

The president claimed that the Amish, many of whom shun modern medications and vaccines, “have no autism”: another lie...

The sick age of conspirituality - The New World

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