'Strange overlaps': Journalist notes far-right leaders 'veer into the occult'

Journalist Anne Applebaum has noticed an odd international political alliance forming between far-right nationalists and traditionally left-wing wellness warriors who share a mutual loathing of the principles of the Enlightenment.

Writing in The Atlantic, Applebaum uses the recent example of Călin Georgescu, the Romanian presidential candidate who seems to have gamed TikTok algorithms to nearly make himself the president.

While Georgescu's embrace of mystical faith in his immune system over western medicine appears to be something out of New Age natural wellness videos, he also mixes it in with a conspiratorial nationalism and pro-Kremlin talking points that have become a staple of American right-wing influencers over the last decade.

Taken together, she believes some on the far left and far right have merged to create a unified coalition best embodied by President-elect Donald Trump's embrace of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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"Among their number are health quacks and influencers who have developed political ambitions; fans of the quasi-religious QAnon movement and its Pizzagate-esque spin-offs; and members of various political parties, all over Europe, that are pro-Russia and anti-vaccine and, in some cases, promoters of mystical nationalism as well," she writes. "Strange overlaps are everywhere. Both the left-wing German politician Sahra Wagenknecht and the right-wing Alternative for Germany party promote vaccine and climate-change skepticism, blood-and-soil nationalism, and withdrawal of German support for Ukraine. All across Central Europe, a fascination with runes and folk magic aligns with both right-wing xenophobia and left-wing paganism."

Applebaum notes that this newfound belief in mysticism has also coincided with voters who dismiss or even embrace criminality among their leaders, most infamously when Americans voted to elect Trump again even after dozens of felony convictions.

"In a world where conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too," she writes.

Read the full analysis here.