Novak Djokovic's Wellness Guru Is Guiding the Tennis Star's Anti-Vax Behavior
Novak Djokovic's Wellness Guru Is Guiding the Tennis Star's Anti-Vax Behavior
Since coming under Chervin Jafarieh's influence, Djokovic has been vocal about his increasingly fringe views
Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia this month for refusing the Covid vaccine, raising questions about who is influencing him to hold such conspiratorial views.
“An iconic world tennis star may influence people of all ages, young or old, but perhaps especially the young and the impressionable, to emulate him,” a three judge panel ruled in expelling the star. “This is not fanciful; it does not need evidence.”
Djokovic, the number one mens player in the world, will also not be allowed to play in the French Open if he remains unvaccinated.
“Conspirituality,” a merging of New Age mysticism and right-wing conspiracy theories that’s on the rise in the age of Covid, is the driving force behind Djokovic’s rejection of medical science. It’s an ideology of libertarian selfishness that uses the global consciousness language of the spirituality movement as cover.
Djokovic’s adherence to the ideology has led to his association with Chervin Jafarieh, a real estate tycoon turned wellness guru who denies the efficacy of vaccines and the questions the severity and causes of the pandemic.
I’ll be discussing Djokovic, Jafarieh, and the conspirituality movement in general today with expert Antonio Valladares today at 5pm EST on my Callin podcast. Join us live—details below.
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The conspirituality movement
Conspirituality has been growing in popularity for years, but has been supercharged since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
As The Irish Times’s Brian Boyd wrote on January 13:
There is a growing middle class “wellness” movement that has been radicalized through the social media conduits of Facebook groups, WhatsApp messages and Instagram Live videos.
Conspirituality (an amalgam of “conspiracy” and “spirituality”) describes the state of mind that develops when spiritual holistic beliefs begin to align with a libertarian ideology that is skeptical of modern science/medicine and denies the efficacy of measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccination.
Djokovic has bought into the ideology completely, and he’s taken those in his circle along for the ride. His wife, Jelena, has posted on social media claiming that 5G at least partially causes Covid and that vaccines don’t work.
But it’s Jafarieh who appears to have taken the fullest advantage of the tennis star’s gullibility.
“Our trademarked triple threat Zinc formulation”
A one-time real estate magnate whose company Blaqk Diamond made him millions, Jafarieh changed course in 2018 and formed a new company, Cymbiotika. The wellness brand promotes all manner of wellness products, tinctures, and pills.
In a 2020 interview with Authority Magazine, Jafarieh waxed philosophical about his background, intimated that he was a child savant, and gave “advice” to readers about how to handle the pandemic. Perhaps the most telling of Jafarieh’s recommendations in the interview comes in his snap response to a question on hope.
What are the best resources you would suggest to a person who is feeling anxious?
Our Cymbitoka channel on Youtube is filled with information videos and meditations.
Jafarieh, who describes himself on his popular Instagram page as a “scientist,” often posts declarative statements about health and wellness preceded with “in my opinion” as if to ward off accusations of disinformation. His “opinions” seem to always end up in one place: shilling his products.
On Wednesday, for example, Jafarieh told his audience he believes the greatest health problem facing humanity is parasites—luckily at Cymbitoka they have a product just for that.
“Our trademarked triple threat Zinc formulation was designed out the gate as a formula to enhance immunity throughout the body, to increase T3 connection with all receptors, and to help stimulate natural hormones,” Jafarieh said. “It then evolved further with 2 forms of copper that work synergistically together to not only regulate energy levels in the body, but to ALSO KILL PARASITES that don’t belong.”
Changing water’s molecular structure by magical thinking
Djokovic has parroted some of Jafarieh’s more outlandish ideas, most notably that positive thinking directed at water can change the element’s molecular makeup.
“Scientists have proven that in experiment, that molecules in the water react to our emotions to what has been said,” Djokovic said.
To be clear, this has not happened. Jafarieh cites the teachings of a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto—a pseudo-scientist whose book making the claim has been widely discredited.
“Mind power and blood purity”
The anti-vax beliefs espoused by Djokovic and Jafarieh—among others—are not based in traditional conspiracy theories, as sport journalist Barney Ronay wrote in The Guardian:
This is not alien lizard stuff. It’s not the great human cull or the fake-a-demic. Instead the resistance seems to come from somewhere else, from sunlit pagodas where magnetic people in crisp linen robes talk about their energy, their aura, their yacht, from a place of mind power and blood purity, of bamboo silica supplements and chocolate-flavoured Organic Longevity Mushrooms.
Unsurprisingly, Jafarieh cites philosopher Rudolf Steiner as a major influence. Steiner’s teachings inspired Waldorf schools and education, but his more devout followers have embraced his Anthroposophy philosophy and applied it to medicine and other disciplines.
To discuss Djokovic, Jafarieh, and the conspirituality movement as a whole, I’ll be joined this afternoon by Antonio Valladares for a live chat on my Callin podcast.
Valladares is a fitness coach in New York who studied under wellness guru Paul Chek before becoming disillusioned with the industry and rejecting its more conspiratorial aspects. He’s an expert in the history of American spirituality as a movement and a business.
You can check out our previous chat, which focused on alt-right wellness personality JP Sears, here.
I hope you’ll join us—if you haven’t already, download the Callin app and subscribe to The Flashpoint podcast, then join us live for this and subsequent shows.
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This guy was warning us from the start that the vaccines weren't actually going to stop us from catching or transmitting Covid while the powers that be were promising us it had "95%" efficacy rate and that you couldn't transmit Covid once you were injected and in your mind he's the bad guy?