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ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. This is a CEE workshop Yoga Alliance, The Rise of Conspiracy Theories and How to Address Them. My name is Alex Stavitsky- Zeineddin. I am she, he, her and I am a Yoga Alliance 200-hour cert certified instructor in Maryland. I just wanted to make sure first that you have this poll that you can tell us where you are coming from, North America, et cetera. You'll see that I think on your screen. And then I would like to present our speaker. Cecile Guerin is a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international think tank working to fight extremism, disinformation and polarization. Her work focuses on social media analysis and network mapping related to far-right extremist mobilization, dis disinformation and conspiracy theories online. A long-standing yoga practitioner, she completed her 200-hour yoga with hot pod yoga and is interested in how the yoga community it play a role in fighting radicalization. With that, is there anything else I've missed here? The theme of the week again that we're doing is Techniques, Training and Practice Week. With that, Cecile, hello.

CECILE GUERIN: Hello. Thank you, Alex, for the introduction. Welcome to everyone. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about the difficulty topic of conspiracy theories and how they have impacted the yoga community. I very much look forward to this discussion discussion. I'm going to share my screen now. If you'll just give me a minute to figure out that. In my day job I monitor and analyze extremism and disinformation, mainly focusing on social media analysis and open-source intelligence. About a year ago, in the very early days of the pandemic, I was doing research about COVID-19 conspiracy theories as part of my day-to-day job and I very quickly found that the Facebook pages and groups and Instagram accounts I was looking at fell under the umbrella of what we call conspiraactuality, the conflation between new age thinking and conspiracy theories. I found these accounts and pages appeared as the most active producers of conspiracy content which, as a yoga practitioner, was particularly interesting to me. Parallel to that, in my private social media interactions I found that yoga teachers and influencers shared conspiracy theories about the pandemic, anti- anti-vacciconspiracy theories and adopted the language of QAnon, which is the main conspiracy theory that has dominated during COVID-19. Today I'm going to talk about -- I'll briefly introduce QAnon, what it is, where it comes from and why it has grown so much during the pandemic. I will talk as well about how conspiracy theories have become embedded in the yoga community and what yoga teachers, practitioners and organizations can do to help spread -- to help counter the spread of dis disinformation. I'd like to start with a definition of conspiracy theories. There are quite a lot out there, but this one I find particularly helpful in framing the discussion. A conspiracy theory, according to political signists is an explanation of past, ongoing or future events or circumstances that cites as a main causal factor a small group of powerful persons acting in secret for their own benefit and against the common good. I think the key idea here is the idea of a group of powerful people working against the common good. This us versus them narrative and the idea of mall he have lent elites working against ordinary citizens is at the heart of QAnon and many of the conspiracy theories that have emerged during COVID-19. You've probably heard of QAnon in some shape or form. There has been a lot of talk about QAnon in the media recently and lately because of the Capitol insurrection on January 6 in which many QAnon followers took part. What is QAnon? QAnon at the simpest level is an online conspiracy theory that first started in October 2017 on the platform called 4 Chan, an unregulated message board with very little content moderation where people share, among other things, memes, explicit political content and discussions about gaming. Back in October October 2017, an anonymous user called themselves Q, starting posting about former President Trump's secret war against the Satan worshiping elite, which according to them was running child sex trafficking operations. That secret elite in QAnon language became known as the deep state, an expression you might have heard before. The deep state, according to the QAnon conspiracy theory, includes a number of top-level Democrats, Hollywood figures and various members of the elite. Since 2017, the person or people who are posting under the name of Q produced over 4,000 messages. They're called Q Drops or you may have heard the word breadcrumbs as well. These messages have been posted on 4 Chan and similar platforms, like 8 Chan and 8 Kun fringe platforms. The QAnon conspiracy has developed its own language. Believers in QAnon think -- they are waiting for the storm, which is the moment when Donald Trump defeats his enemies and the deep state is exposed exposed. This process happens through what the conspiracy called the great awakening. You may also have heard WWGIWGA, a statement of unity frequently used by QAnon followers. The QAnon conspiracy theories closely linked to Donald Trump himself and he's often called the hero or the savior but followers. What's important to bear in mind is that while it may be closely linked to Donald Trump, some of the fears that QAnon taps into are not new at all. The idea that there are pedophile elites kidnapping children and performing satanic rituals on them is not new. Actually, a year before QAnon first emerged, you had pizzagate which started on 4 Chan, where people thought they had founded coded and hidden messages that seemed to point to a child sex trafficking operation in a pizza place in Washington and that led a man from North Carolina to investigate that conspiracy. In the 1980s and 1990s, the US and other parts of the world, rumors started spreading which claimed elites were kidnapping children again to perform say tappic rituals on them. QAnon existed on the fringes for a few years, but in 2020 we saw a shift in how -- how fringe QAnon was. In 2020, QAnon went from a fringe movement to a mainstream movement. I'll tell you a little bit more about why. I would argue that with the Capitol riots, it became a mainstream extremist movement when people entered the Capitol. I believe that the pandemic really played a key role in bringing QAnon into the mainstream. So when the virus started spreading and lockdowns were introduced in various countries and people spent more time online, we saw an explosion of conspiracy theories online fueled by the breakdown of trust and security that the pandemic had caused. And established disinformation online communities like the anti- anti-vacciers increased their followers significantly and used their narrative. QAnon started merging with other conspiracy theories, like the anti-vacci, anti- anti-5G, and some of the narratives of the pandemic, all the while fueling distrust of mainstream media. The narrative was you can't trust the political elites. They are using the pandemic to impose dictatorship. You can't trust the World Health Organization either and mainstream media are lying to you. So QAnon was also key in spreading disinformation about Black Lives Matter after George Floyd's killing and rumors about voter proud during the 2020 elections in North America. What also happened in 2020 is that QAnon went international. Before 2020, it was very much a US US-based conspiracy theory, but we saw it emerge -- we started seeing QAnon in UK anti-lockdown protests, the same in Berlin, Germany and France, where QAnon has acquired a life of its own and adapted to the local context. December 2020 NPR poll showed that 17 percent of Americans believe in the core message of QAnon, that there are pedophile elites kidnapping children and using the pandemic to create a dictatorship dictatorship. A further 37 percent of people polled said they weren't sure about whether that was true or not. What QAnon did against the backdrop of the pandemic was offering a narrative of empowerment. So the idea is that evil, sex trafficking elites who are using the pandemic to control the world, but you can see through that, you can uncover the truth, and you can be awakened. I think we shouldn't undersummit how powerful this message of agency became when you don't have much agency at all because you're in lockdown. There's nothing you can do and the world is in a very uncertain place. The language and the slogans of QAnon started spreading widely online. Not just the hashtag QAnon but the language of the great awakening, or slogans like do your research, which is deceptive, but it was widely used by QAnon to basically say don't trust the mainstream media. So you may be asking what's wrong with doing my own research? And I would say that the short answer is there's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing wrong with questioning sources. But there's a clear difference between a healthy sense of critical thinking and the questioning and contextualization of sources and believing in harmful conspiracy theories that aim to manipulate the members. I think there's a clear difference there. QAnon has led to direct harm in the non-virtual world. QAnon has been linked to a number of attacks in America mainly but also elsewhere, which led the FBI to declare QAnon a domestic terror threat in the US in 2019. QAnon has also launched coordinated harassment and disinformation campaigns against public figures. A lot of them are women. So actresses, TV presenters and so on. And of course on January 6 we saw the Capitol insurrection, which really was a key moment in accelerating the response to QAnon and it was the moment when a lot of public figures, tech companies as well, became aware of how big a threat QAnon was. Researchers like me have been warning about QAnon for a long time, but it took a while for tech companies to acknowledge the scale of the problem. Back in July and August 2020, when QAnon was spreading disinformation about the virus and the pandemic, tech companies started removing the explicit hashtags like where we go one, we go all or hashtag QAnon. Facebook and Twitter updated their policies, which decimated part of the QAnon content online and that crackdown has become even bigger since the attack on the Capitol. The fact that Donald Trump is no longer president has divided the movement because for many followers of QAnon inauguration day was seen as the day of the storm when Donald Trump defeats his enemies. But of course nothing of the sort has happened and when Joe Biden was inaugurated, it became quite clear that the predictions of QAnon were false. So many of the followers have disengaged and feel betrayed today. But others keep going and still believe the storm is coming and they are descending descending ever deeper into paranoia. QAnon hasn't disappeared despite having taken a hit.

Much of QAnon has moved to unregulated channels. A lot of people are moving from Facebook and Instagram to Telegram, Parler and Gab. These are less regulated platforms. A lot of QAnon content is also still on mainstream social media. If you try to type hashtag QAnon on Instagram, you probably wouldn't find content directly very easily. But very quickly if you know what you're looking for, you can find quite easily QAnon content on these platforms. Further to that, many of the push-and-pull factors that brought people into QAnon are still there, and I believe that the vulnerabilities that QAnon tapped into are still present. Various communities, whether they're religious, social or of another nature, have a role to play in thinking about how to provide a safe space for people who are trying to disengage. I think that's also something that -- that's a reflection also for the yoga community to have. I'm going to pause there for a moment before I speak about the impact on the yoga community, but I'm happy to take any questions or clarify anything needed. ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: I do see, Cecile, a question here: What do you say about conspiracy theories that have been proven to be true and not conspiracy theories after all? The US has tons of them them. That was the question.

CECILE GUERIN: I think that it's an interesting question. Certainly there have been cases where evidence of wrongdoing on the part of political institutions or indeed industry groups or lobbies have been proven right. But many conspiracy theories are also -- also haven't been proven right. I understand that when some of these conspiracies are proven right, it does lead to a certain level of distrust towards institutions. That distrust is towards political, medical institutions is extremely strong today. I think that - - what I would argue is that with conspiracies like QAnon, they have really been linked to quite obvious and outright disinformation have been linked to a lot of off-line harms and online harms as well. The tactics of QAnon are deceptive and answer to manipulate. This isn't to say that any conspiracy is false, but I think there are differences in degrees, and QAnon has been one of the most harmful and manipu manipulative theories that has active over the last few months.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: I'm looking through some questions here. What conspiracy theories have been proven right? Please be specific?

CECILE GUERIN: Is that a question for me?

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Yes, it is.

CECILE GUERIN: I'm not actually able to answer the question specifically what conspiracy theories have been proven right. I think that a lot of investigative journalism has exposed wrongdoings on the part of industry groups and lobbies, but I can't really think of a specific conspiracy theory that has been proven right. It depends what you mean here by conspiracy theory. I think there are two separate questions here. One person is saying conspiracy theories are proven right. I think we have to ask the person in the first place what they're thinking about specifically.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: I know your second part will be directed more towards the yoga community, but there is a question here: How much should we be accommodating folks talking about conspiracy in class? Maybe that will be something for the second part of this discussion. Right now we're looking more at the questions specific to yoga, at least what I'm seeing in the chat. So maybe go on to the second part of your presentation and then we'll open up to more questions directly related to the yoga community.

CECILE GUERIN: Sounds good. Over the last few months and over the last year really, a number of yoga and meditation teachers and, more broadly, new-age influencers, so people covering meditation, holistic health and a number of other connected areas of interest have amplified QAnon by sharing some of QAnon QAnon's messages and narratives, by suggesting that the pandemic is a hoax, that the government is manipulating people or by inviting figures, QAnon figures, on their podcasts and YouTube channels. Some of these people have substantial social media audiences. So I would like to mention here the conspiratuality podcast, launched by a group of yoga teachers who have done the comprehensive and important job of documenting examples of social media posts and social media influencers who have amplified QAnon. Posts which are often shared by yoga practitioners, among others, who are promoting QAnon's ideas wouldn't use the word QAnon directly, especially these days where a lot of the QAnon -- the explicit QAnon content has been removed from platforms. So you would not necessarily know you're looking at QAnon when you're seeing it. Posts will be talking about, for instance, the spiritual warfare against manipulating puppets. I couldn't include the whole screenshot, it it goes on to use QAnon hashtags or they will use words like the great awakening to promote a documentary that claims that lockdowns are a manipu manipulation, for instance. So essentially, many of the ways in which QAnon has infiltrated parts of the yoga world is through indirect and implicit language. This is called the type of content, Pastel QAnon. Pastel QAnon is essentially QAnon but appearing in nice nicely designed Instagram posts that appear alongside inspirational quotes, beautiful sunsets, yoga poses, and which are put together using software. This type of content is designed to anticipate to new audiences, including yoga practitioners. Pastel QAnon has been QAnon's entry point into the yoga community and a vehicle for appealing to more feminine demographics. So the 4 Chan and 8 Chan environment I talked about at the beginning is a masculine and aggressive environment environment. Pastel QAnon has really softened the edges and made QAnon more appealing to certain audiences. QAnon got into the yoga world through this type of visual adaptation but also by hijacking. A turning point has been the save our children movement, which started in July 2020 as a fundraising campaign for legitimate anti-trafficking charity. That campaign was hijacked by QAnon, which used the hashtag really widely to propagate false and or widely exaggerated claims about a global child sex trafficking operation led by Democrats and Hollywood figures. This was the moment when QAnon got into new online communities and broadened its audience. It got into yoga groups, well wellness groups or parenting groups. That's the moment when we saw yoga teachers and new age figures adopt the narratives of QAnon. This was also key in terms of engaging women into QAnon. In the UK, for instance, where I live, the organizeers, two women organized the save the children demonstrations. One of them is an active QAnon figure. She appeared on the livestream with Charlie Ward, a prominent British QAnon figure and she regularly posted on meditation. So we can see the sort of intersections here. There is a gendered element to it, but I would say that whilst yoga has allowed QAnon to appeal to more women, there is also something to be said about masculinity and the intersections here between QAnon and new forms of masculinity. You probably heard of the QAnon Sheaman who appeared in the Capitol insurrection and who has been described by his lawyer as a spiritual person who practices yoga. I think this raises an interesting question about the intersections between QAnon and new age thinking and new forms of masculinity as well. When I saw started studying this subject, I was curious to understand why the yoga community might be access susceptible to conspiracy theories. It's not the only community that could be susceptible to it, but it has been a vehicle for conspiracy theories. I believe there are two types of reasons for it. I would class classify them as coincidental reasons and more structural reasons. To start with, I think that people within the yoga community have fallen for QAnon for the same reasons anyone else could have fallen for it. I think that the breakdown of certainty that came with COVID-19 has led a lot of people down the rabbit hole. I think that lockdowns and the pandemic has deprived many people from their off-line support networks and QAnon online communities have provided that sense of community or have replaced the off-line community networks that people used to have. When you hear stories of people who have been drawn into QAnon and who have since disengaged, they will tell you that they were spending time online during the pandemic and they found a video and they clicked on it and it resonated with them and then social media algorithms took them to further content. That's how they got into it. I believe a lot of people genuinely believe in QAnon, but I also think there were more opportunistic reasons as well and factors. So I think that many people who started sharing QAnon content a few months ago realized they gained a lot of followers online when they did that. Some people lost followers but they also gained followers and in many cases the gains were more appealing than the losses. They realized that they could make some money along the way and they could use that to sell whatever products they were already selling, so advice, books, talks, and so on. And in the context where so many yoga studios are closing and so many yoga teachers are struggling in terms of income income, I think this has been an appealing way to weather the pandemic in a way. There was recently in the US a survey showed that in 2020 there was a 23 percent increase in permanent yoga studio closures, which just goes to show that a lot of people are now deprived of incomes. And then I think there are structural reasons which I think are quite interesting. A number of researchers have studied the topic of con conspirittuality. It predates yoga. There was also a trend a few years ago. Here I'm using the work of scholars Ward and Voas, who argued that conspirittual conspirittuality brings together two apparently contradictory ways of thinking about the world. One borrows from conspiracy theory and one borrows from new age thinking. On the one hand, there's the idea that a secret group is trying to control the political and social order and on the other hand there's the idea that humanity is undergoing a paradigm shift in consciousness. By embracing the paradigm shift in consciousness and alternative ways of thinking about the world, you can resist the first, you can resist that change in political and social order. I also think the contemporary yoga industry, especially in the West, has centered itself on self-care and individual realization. I think that has opened up a space for right-wing conspiracy theories to take hold. I also think that within yoga there are organizations that are trying to rethink what yoga is in terms of political engagement. I'm thinking here about the work of non-profit organizations which are trying to re repoliticize yoga a little bit to avoid thinking of yoga just as self-care and poses and a series of yoga poses but also as active political engagement. Yoga has also I believe embraced transgression in its practice. As yoga practitioners we are encouraged to think against the grain, to question ideas, and again there are good aspects of questioning established facts facts. But I think this also goes hand in hand with an interest in alternative paradigms and hidden patterns. This idea of hidden patterns and alternative ways of thinking about the world is also how QAnon has built itself and the idea of deciphering Q's Q's messages was really part of the appeal for many followers. If you have a certain inclination to look for alternative paradigms and hidden patterns, you may find that QAnon can be appealing. So I think that the yoga and wellness worlds have been a vehicle for the broadening of conspiracy theories. The majority of yoga teachers and practitioner do not engage with conspiracy theories theories. But it's a notable minority and it's a notable trend. Again, not to overgeneralize what it means for the yoga community. On the practical level you might be asking what do I do, what can I do as a yoga practitioner or teacher if I'm concerned about this issue or if I see that my students are sharing or engaging with QAnon narratives? What can you do? I think that this is a complicated issue to which there is no simple answer. I'll try to offer a few thoughts. I think to really start with, I would say that I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I think that as an individual there isn't that much you can do to address conspiracy theories. I believe that a big social problem like the radicalization of parts of entire communities is something that cannot be solved by individual solutions. I think it takes a big social effort to solve. As someone who works for an organization that studies political extremism, at ISD we have run programs that have tried to engage with people who are previously in far-right extremist groups groups, for instance. Our programs, de-radicalization programs that organizations run. These are time againstive and take a lot of work and you don't always have a guarantee it's going to work. At ISD, we have run programs that try to disengage people from political extremist groups which rely on networks of former extremists who try to engage with these communities. Having said that, I think that whilst addressing conspiracy theories will require a big effort from tech companies, which need to regulate their content better, which requires education initiatives and community-led initiatives, I think there are things you can do as yoga teachers and practitioners in the short term. I would say my first piece of advice would be engage and not dismiss. While it can be tempting if someone comes to you with some of the most extreme QAnon narrative to say you're wrong and you don't know any better and you're stupid, I think that's extremely damaging. So I don't think people should be dismissed and I think that trying to understand why they believe what they believe is important. Similarly, sending people an article that proves they're wrong is not extremely helpful. Sending them an article by a mainstream newspaper might not be helpful because if they think the mainstream media are lying to them, that's not going to help an awful lot. However, what you can do is engage a conversation, and potentially have a bit of a debate, a bit of a conversation where you can actually try to expose or highlight the interest that some people may have in sharing conspiracy theories, because QAnon has ideological and financial motivations. There are motivations behind conspiracy theorists sharing of this type of content. I think that raising awareness in the community and taking a stance without amplifying is also helpful. We have seen -- I have seen certainly over the last few months many yoga organizations, studios, teachers, community on this on -- communicate, taking an active stance on social media. I think that teachers and yoga practitioners who have large social media audiences, but even if they don't, any teacher who is trusted by their students has a role to play in sharing fact-based information. Certainly my own yoga teachers have been very active in sharing fact- based information around the pandemic, around vaccination and other topics. This is all about the lockdown and what we do in lockdown and on social media. But I think there is a broader question about the post-pandemic world and what we do when the studios reopen. As I said earlier, the QAnon movement has been hit by the fact that many people have realized now that the predictions of QAnon are false and many people are disengaging and are feeling vulnerable and have felt betrayed after following the movement for so long. So I think that when the studios reopen, I think yoga can provide a safe space for people who have been drawn into conspiracy theories. I think that a lot of the accident gaugement from conspiracy theories comes from the off-line and community spaces that have been lost during the pandemic where conspiratorial online communities have replaced those. This is also something to think about for yoga practitioners and organizations. I will leave it at that for the moment, but I just want to finish by sharing a few resources if you'd like to read more or listen to some podcasts or just check out a few resources. I'd invite you to look at the conspiratuality podcast, which has been set up by yoga teachers and a number of cult survivors as well well, which documents quite extensively, the intersections. You can also check out our work. We've published a lot of research on the topic. And the excellent QAnon anonymous podcast, which unpacks a lot of what QAnon is and is very easy to listen to. That's it for me for now. I'm happy to take questions.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Excellent. Thank you, Cecile. I do have a few questions here. I'm seeing -- I thought the first one would be good: What does QAnon actually stand for? With that also what is the ideological and financial interests of QAnon? That too just to clarify.

CECILE GUERIN: What does QAnon stand for? I think -- the way I've come to think of QAnon is -- I think it's provided a blueprint for a lot of other conspiracy theories. What QAnon stands for is the dis distrust of institutions, and some of that distrust may be justified to an extent. But taking the distrust of any institution to the extreme. I think a real social fear and panic around child sexual abuse, which again it's a legitimate fear, but playing on those two things to make false claims and to target public figures and to target institutions and individuals. ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: There are a few other questions here. Can you make a distinction between conspiracy theories and cover-ups? I ask because some people who have been drawn into conspiracy theories may use uncovered cover-ups as evidence that conspiracy theories may be credible without understanding the difference.

CECILE GUERIN: Yes, it is a big question. I think that conspiracy theories -- a cover-up has been proven and documented, and a conspiracy theory is essentially something that you just cannot prove. What QAnon has done is communicate about so many things and make so many claims that are impossible to prove. The less plausible something is and the more convoluted in a way, the more questions you need to ask. I think that with QAnon, the allegations and the narratives have been so convoluted and so -- in a way so out- outlandish that they have become impossible to prove one way or the other. I think cover- ups are -- have been documented by journalistic sources. There have been investigations, as you said, of cover-ups. These tend to be documented by several media sources. I think that's the important thing. When something is proven right or wrong, it tends to have been documented by a number of sources who have done extensive work on the topic. But it's a difficult one, for sure.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: OK. Is it distrust of institutions? I think this one is specifically the continuation of with Trump. Why does it believe and desire the continuation of Trump, especially the way he treats women, the poor. I guess the question is really: Is it a distrust of institutions.

CECILE GUERIN: Could you repeat the question?

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Basically I think it's reiterating what you have been saying, that QAnon is kind of the conseptember of distrusting institutions. It's really more of a statement. I can see that you're mainly linking extremist views with the radical right. In Chile, we have a problem with the extreme left who seem to be more about the plandemic and anti-vacci anti-vaccimovement.

CECILE GUERIN: When it comes to QAnon, QAnon has been described as a right-wing conspiracy theory. As you can see with the Capitol event, there has been a convergeence between QAnon and a number of far-right groups in America. You saw the people with QAnon signs alongside white supremacist symbols. As such, I don't think QAnon per se is right wing or left wing. In America, because it is linked to Donald Trump, it has a distinctive right-wing dimension. But the broad premise of QAnon is not necessarily politicized. Being French I've done quite a bit of work on QAnon in France and I can see that it appeals to people on both sides of the political spectrum. It could appeal to both. So I don't think we can reduce it to one or the other. We should be mindful of the fact that depending especially on which -- in which countries it appears, it can definitely appeal to people who have more left weaning ideas, so to speak.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Is there a document or video or other media that lists the QAnon narratives?

CECILE GUERIN: There has been a lot and so much has been written about QAnon. I'll have to think on that, because there have been excellent investigations and writing on the topic across a lot of media. There are a couple of documentaries which I'm happy to dig out for you which have been well-made. Off the top of my head, I don't remember the exact titles, but there have been a couple of good ones lately.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Related to the spiritual community. That was part of that question. Are there people serving as leaders of the QAnon movement that profit financially by promoting QAnon? CECILE GUERIN: I think it depends which field you look at. One of the things I didn't mention in my presentation is that a lot of QAnon followers or people who have promoted QAnon online are just individuals like you and me. There are many anonymous QAnon follow followers, so you wouldn't necessarily know who these people are. But there are people who have been active in promoting QAnon on social platforms, and there are prominent figures within QAnon. The Ron Watkins, who used to run the 8 Chan platform and who stepped down recently was a prominent figure within QAnon and he was key in spreading some of the disinformation about voter fraud in the US during the elections. You have active QAnon people online. Within the yoga industry, you have yoga teachers who have been quite central in spreading some of the -- and yoga influencers who have been central in spreading QAnon content and have done quite well off the back of that, again, in terms of followers and getting some engagement, so presumely also profiting also financially off it. I don't want to name and shame, so I won't give names, but the podcast lists a number of figures who have been key within yoga and within the broader wellness world. I would encourage you to look them up as well. Essentially, in terms of who Q is, that is still a question that's open. We still don't know who the people posting as Q are, but there have been active propagators of QAnon who have taken QAnon from the fringe platforms to the more mainstream platforms. Then when it comes to people who have shared QAnon, they tend to be just regular people. A lot of them, especially in the yoga community, were just regular yoga teachers, without necessarily a politicized past. So it just shows as well that people didn't necessarily have a particular background of political engagement before that.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: One thing for people looking for how to work with, if there are people having concerns or maybe as yoga teachers, they're asking: Do you have a recommended script for when maybe a yoga student is being co-opted, so to speak, to convince them maybe of how they're being co-opted?

CECILE GUERIN: I think there is no script. I think that's a slight problem. As I said, I think, sad sadly, telling people that they're wrong and that they should see the light or something like that is just not going to work. So I think that starting a conversation and pointing out -- one of the things I actually find helpful as well is when people do say -- when people do engage with the QAnon conspiracy and say that -- talk about the elite and the child sex trafficking, one of the helpful ways in which I try to debunk that is also say for that conspiracy theory to be true, do you realize how many people would have to lie every day, in their everyday job, to cover up something like that? Because the claims of QAnon are so big, that it would require thousands and thousands of people every day to lie and to cover something like that up and to have no integrity. I find that is maybe a helpful way of framing things. But I do not guarantee that will convince people. That's why I think there is much bigger work to be done that would require training, for sure. I think there are genuine trainings to be done in terms of how to bring people back from conspiracy theories, how to engage with people. As I said, when it comes to political extremism, which is different from conspiracy theories, it takes work to bring people back and it takes social workers, it takes support networks for people to disengage, it takes outreach efforts, and these efforts don't always pay off. But it doesn't mean they're not valuable, because they do pay off sometimes. So you have to appreciate the small successes there.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: One thing I find interesting in this question is I'm wondering how to recognize language, meaning are there specific words you think that are being used by teachers who are more with QAnon? Someone is saying about light leader mastermind, in quotes. Are there cues with the language choice? CECILE GUERIN: The particular posts I chose actually use hashtag the great awakening. You at the beginning you're not sure what it's trying to say. From what I've seen online, the great awakening is the biggest kind of coded word that appears in posts shared by yoga and meditation practitioners. Because the language of awakening is also a language that I think sits well with a lot of the language that we use in yoga when we reflect about parts of the yoga philosophy philosophy. So I think it can slip in quite easily. In itself, the word awakening is not problematic. When it appears alongside a discussion of the pandemic and lockdowns and other theories. The sort of find your truth, the great awakening, tend to come back quite a lot. You do sometimes see language around light and darkness as well. So the sort of dark forces. But I think you'd have to read the whole post and be attuned to then what is that post talking about? Is it talking about manipulation by governments and the pandemic being a hoax or is it then -- does it then go on to talk about masks being useless or something else? Again, the awakening is probably -- the great awakening is probably the most obvious one.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: With the few minutes remaining here, I wanted -- there's a question here. Just in general, are there certain personalities that tend to be inclined to the conspiracy theorist, and why is that?

CECILE GUERIN: That's a big question. I'm not a psychology expert, but there have been interesting studies about that and there have been a few scholarly articles which I could point you to. There was an interesting article, which I will have to dig up for you, which suggested that people who are not necessarily religious but spiritual, have a certain spiritual background, may be more inclined to -- again coming back to this idea of alternative paradigms and hidden patterns, may be more prone to believing in conspiracy theories. There have been as well studies around people's personal backgrounds and what people experienced in childhood and the impact of traumas on people's beliefs and how that may impact potential susceptibilities to conspiracy theories. I think this is a sort of debated field that not that much research has been produced about. Again, there have been a few articles, which I'm happy to -- scholarly articles in the field of psychology that have bonded that. But I think it's a question that goes a little beyond my expertise as a researcher, not as a psychologist, but a very interesting one.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: I see a question here that maybe we need to answer too. What is the literal meaning of QAnon? Is it anonymous, as in Q is anonymous?

CECILE GUERIN: Yes.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: OK. Let me see anything else. Maybe one more. Can you elaborate a bit more about the differences between political extremism and conspiracy theory? I think that's probably the last question we have time for, as we have only four minutes left.

CECILE GUERIN: Extremism and political extremism, the way we describe extremism in our work is that when it comes to political extremism, it's a view of the world that poses the existence of two groups. There's the the in-group and the outgroup. The idea of extremism is treating the outgroup as separate and as alien. Further to that, you're adding a political dimension to it. Typically when it comes to far- right extremism, far-right extremism would treat certain groups as outgroups, say Muslims or certain categories or minorities, be they religious or other. Whereas a conspiracy theory in itself doesn't supplemental a political dimension to it. It doesn't necessarily have a partisan or political nature. It is a belief system. It again poses the idea of a plot by elites to cover up -- to sort of act against the interests of everyone else. I think they're quite separate ideas. ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: I think that's really the amount of time left here, I think we don't have much more time left. So I just wanted to again say thank you to Yoga Alliance but also thank you for everybody for joining us today. As a reminder, Cecile Guerin is the person who has been speaking with us today. She is a researcher and also a Yoga Alliance teacher. This is part of a series this week of what is techniques, trainings and practices for Yoga Alliance. I am not familiar with what's coming up next for Yoga Alliance, but just take a look at the postings on the website. There are a bunch of different other discussions available throughout the week and coming weeks. Anything else, Cecile, that you think you need to add to this?

CECILE GUERIN: No. Thank you very much to everyone for the insightful questions. It has been a pleasure being with you today. Thank you.

ALEX STAVITSKY-ZEINEDDIN: Thank you so much.