The Redpilling of the Wellness Industry: JP Sears, Paul Chek, and Trump
Adherents to the New Age health and wellness industry's ideology are being taken in by a turn to the far-right
Far-right comedian and wellness guru JP Sears on Friday met with Donald Trump, the culmination of a years-long journey from New Age satirist to red-pilled humorist.
Citing “Nome” Chomsky, Sears said that he had been misinformed about Trump in the past, but now believes the former president is someone who “genuinely cares about our country and people of all races.”
“If you arrive at a different conclusion based on what you’ve been told to think,” Sears added, “I do not respect that.”
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I wrote about Sears’s attacks on the trans community and descent into far-right conspiracy theories last week in a piece about his transphobic remarks at a series of November performances in Spokane, Washington.
Following the article’s publication, I talked to Alexis Gallaway-Tonasket, one of the staffers at the club who was there for the shows, and Antonio Valladares, a former member of the wellness community who knows Sears from their days working under Paul Chek.
Sears studied under Chek, a holistic fitness expert, for years, Valladares told me. The belief system they adhere to has roots going back to the early 19th century and functions in some ways like a multilevel marketing scheme.
Valladares said that one can look at the early videos Sears made sending up New Agers as evidence of this effort—they’re about far more than just making people laugh.
“His main thing back then was saying, ‘Oh look at these New Age weirdos,’” Valladares told me. “That's all marketing because portraying other people as fringe weirdos makes you seem as an authority.”
Listen to the whole conversation at the link.
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