New Age nonsense
Williamson’s career in the New Age movementwas launched with her bookA Return to Love, which was largely acommentary and endorsement of a 1976 book of allegedchannelingsknown asA Course in Miracles(alsohere).She has subsequently written numerous books, earning her the title “the highpriestess of pop religion”. She is, at the very least, one of the majorproponents ofNew Thought.
A central element in Williamson’s teachings– andNew Thoughtbeliefs in general – has been the non-denominational version of theprosperity gospelbeliefs: (variations over)the law of attraction.In her 2012 book The Law of Divine Compensationit was formulated as: “Towhatever extent your mind is aligned with love, you will receive divinecompensation for any lack in your material existence. From spiritual substancewill come material manifestation. This is notjust a theory;it is a fact.”so there. After all, she can state that it’s a fact because the whole point ofthe idea is that you can make claims true by asserting them.
Otherpieces of wisdomoffered by Williamson include:
- “Just beneath the surface, this isn’t politics it’s black magic.Entirely apsychicbattle. Use your shield of Virtue and your sword of Truth”
- “disease is loveless thinking materialized” (Williamson isunderstandably cagey about what she means by that, but it is false no matterhow you parse it)
- “Everyone feels on some level like an alien in this world,because we ARE. We come from another realm of consciousness, and long for home.”
- “God is BIG, swine flu SMALL. See every cell of your body filledwith divine light. Pour God’s love on our immune systems. Truth protects,”in connection with the H1N1 pandemic
- “Yin is feminine, earth; yang is masculine, sky.When God is seen as He, the soul is seen as She. Just archetypes. Spiritimpregnates soul.”
- “A wisdom culture is emerging from the imaginal cells of adisintegrating individualistic society. We’re pregnant with the possible world.”
- “Every soul on earth is pregnant now with a new possibility. Doyou have the courage to face your fear and give it birth within yourself?” (Strangereferences topregnancy is a recurring feature in Williamson’s words ofwisdom.)
When launching her presidential campaign,Williamson said that“I want this to be a campaign for people who are ready to be deep thinkers.These are very serious times. We need deep thinking,” thus effectivelywarning potential voters to pick a different candidate.
Williamson’s New Thought beliefs – and howremarkably they reflect the New Thought beliefs of another presidentialcandidate,Donald Trump– are discussed in illuminating detailhere.
Anti-vaccine sympathies
Williamson is anti-vaccine. And yes, wewill repeat it:Marianne Williamson is antivaccine.And that is the case even if she often sometimes across as merely moderatelysympathetic to the movement to those who don’t recognize the dogwhistles.
Officially, Williamson believes thatvaccine mandates are “Orwellian” and “draconian” and has comparedvaccine mandates to abortion, saying that the mandates interfere with whatpeople want to do with their bodies. “Personal choice” is, of course,a standard call from anti-vaccinationists,who tend not to focus on the fact that it istheir children they don’tvaccinate nor on the immunocompromised members of their societies – in shortthatthe personal choice not to vaccinateis more analogous tothepersonal choice to drunk drive with your kids unsecured in the back seat.
Williamson has, on numerous occasions, triedto suggest she was walking back her anti-vaccine remarks, but they keep poppingup. In 2019, for instance,she claimed thatvaccines require further safety studies and raised concerns about something shecalled “neurons-toxins” (you might think she meant “neurotoxins”, butvaccinesdon’t contain any of those).She also vowed that, as president, she’d order the CDC to establish “anindependent commission to review/reform vaccine safety,” being apparentlyblithely unaware ofthe National Vaccine Advisory Committee.
She has earlierstated that“I understand the controversial aspects of vaccinations, and I share many ofthe concerns” (2011) and that she believes that the“skepticism”is healthy (2015) and that while vaccines do protect against measles, she israther concerned aboutthe “overload” of vaccines(know your dogwhistle!).She also claimed thatBig Pharmaapparently covers up results of studies of vaccines they don’t like and thatvaccines are currently not being independently tested (utterly false),and she has elsewhere suggested that there is a link between vaccines and an(imaginary)worsening of health among American kids: Indeed, Williamsonclaimed thatthe incidence of chronic disease in children has risen to “54%”.That’s false,but what is particularly telling is that the figure comesfrom antivaxxerRobert Kennedy, Jr’sChildren’s Health Defense (Williamson stated that she wasJAQing offover the causes of those putative numbers, but immediately continued to talkabout vaccines, even thoughvaccines couldn’t have been the causeeven if the figure had been correct;hereis a discussion of how Kennedy arrived at the figure. The figure is not correct).Moreover, Williamson has suggested that the existence of theNational Vaccine Injury Compensation Program shows that vaccines are unsafe.
Of course, you might claim that she is justpandering to the antivaccine crowd, not necessarily sharing their beliefs.Which really doesn’t matter. Pandering to the antivaccine crowdmakes youantivaccine – whether you share their beliefs in your heart’s heart or not ispretty fucking irrelevant (though evidence is, for the record, pretty strongthat Williamsondoesshare them and is just desperately trying to comeacross as reasonable – no one likesbeing called “anti-vaccine”).We’ll also include a dishonorable mention to Faye Flam forher clueless defenseof Williamson’s antivaccine views.
Other forays into denialism andpseudoscience
Williamson has called for a ban onglyphosate,claiming that it can cause cancer (no,there is no evidence that shows such a link) and, to frame it as anti-corporatism, that the use of glyphosate helpsMonsanto,whose patent on glyphosate expired in 2000.
She is also aGMO denialist,and has for instance linked to theanti-GMOconspiracy organization Center for Food Safety. In addition, Williamson hasdismissedantidepressant drugsas “medicalization” of normal sadness (“a normal spectrum of humandespair, normal human despair, which traditionally was seen as the purview ofspirituality and religion”), and suggested that her New Age wellness adviceis much better. There is an illuminating analysis of Williamson’santi-psychiatry rhetorichereand her disease-denialist rhetoric in generalhere.
According to herself,she isn’t anti-science, though: “I am not anti-science (that one is almost funny,given how much I quote Einstein).” Of course, as JoeWV points out, “[q]uotingEinstein doesn’t make you pro-science but accusing all of western world’suniversities, doctors, hospitals, governments and scientific organizations ofbeing bribed by pharmaceutical companies is what makes you anti-science.” Whatis true, though, is that Williamsondoeshave a long history ofspreadingfake quotes attributed to Einstein.
During her 2020 presidential nominee run,many of her more idiotic quotes were brought to light. Williamson herself oftenresponded by claiming that they were taken out of context, so here we willpresent a fewincontext:
- “In the traditional Western medical model, a healer’s job is toattack disease. But if the consciousness of attack is the ultimate problem, howcould it be the ultimate answer? A miracle worker’s job is not to attackillness, but rather to stimulate the natural forces of healing. We turn oureyes away from sickness to the love that lies beyond it.”
- “God is all that is good. He creates only love, therefore he didnot create sickness. Sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist. It ispart of our worldly dream, our self-created nightmare. Our prayer to God isthat He awaken us from the dream.”
- “When a child presents a cut finger to his or her mother, thewoman doesn’t say, ‘Bad cut.’ Rather, she kisses the finger, showers it withlove in an unconscious, instinctive activation of the healing process. Whyshould we think differently about critical illness? Cancer and AIDS and otherserious illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream, and theirmessage is not ‘Hate me,’ but ‘Love me’.”
The picture her critics painted of her asan idiot offering grifts and nonsense to people in difficult situations is, inother words, accurate. There is a good analysis of some of the dangers associatedwith Williamson’s ideashere.
Diagnosis: To some extent, at least, alove-and-fluff version of Donald Trump, complete with post-truth rhetoric,denialism and New Thought bullshit. We won’t say she’s “as dangerous as Trump”,but she’s pretty damn dangerous.
Hat-tip:rationalwiki