How NOT to Cover Right-Wing Psychedelia
Psymposia discusses the recent right wing psychedelia coverage in The New Yorker, and their history with the author of the piece.
Footnotes:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/are-psychedelics-right-wing-now
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] We'll be discussing a recent New Yorker article by Michelle Look on right-wing psychedelia. Of course, if you're reading The New Yorker, you're probably not in tune. You're just seeing it for the first time. Like, this is some new thing. This is really old news, though. And there's not like no deep analysis or no implications. It's just like a surface level piece. In my opinion, it is old news. Were Michelle interested in actually unpacking any of this stuff? They could have looked at scholarly research that has been done by people like Nishe and Pace in their right-wing psychedelia paper and it really does unpack like the implications and then people like Michelle are like, "Oh my god, look." It's just kind of bizarre that like she didn't even bother to not even not cite you but like even look into it. It seems like she's extremely aware of going out of her way to avoid it.
[00:49] Yeah, MAPS hosted a conference last year where they had a panel which basically just turned into a [expletive] on Psymposia session because they hosted the journalist who wrote the hit piece about us in the New York Times, Rachel Newer. They hosted the journalist who wrote the long piece about us in Wired. And then they had Michelle look on this panel who to be honest I don't think we had ever made a single bit of commentary about Michelle or mentioned her. In fact in private chat I think I had shared Michelle's Rave New World blog as like an outlet that I actually kind of liked the reporting of because it reported from like an on the ground kind of like party scene aspect of the psychedelic culture. I think she has a blind spot around Psymposia and the work that we do to be maybe hanging around with the wrong sort of piece.
[01:41] So, this was her on that panel. I'm so glad that you guys are bringing up your Psymposia stories. I was really hoping that they would. I was like, this panel is going to get spicy and it did. I think this is a issue on the progressive left side where we are very scared to call out organizations that lead that are led by queer non-binary or trans people because of identity politics. Yeah. Meanwhile, she's on stage with [laughter] Yeah. Yes. Yes. on stage with the New York Times journalist and wired journalist who wrote like hit pieces about not just hit pieces but things that were just wrong. Welcome to the Psymposia podcast.
[02:31] I'm Russell here with Brian Pace, Normie, Mike, and Nay. Today we'll be discussing a recent New Yorker article by Michelle Look on right-wing psychedelia. This piece is just kind of a another addition in the long line of recent articles on right-wing psychedelia that have come out recently kind of acting as if this wasn't something that anyone saw coming. So, the New Yorker is publishing an article, are psychedelics right-wing now by Michelle Look, who we'd taken a look at her previous blog post on all of this not too long ago as well. But she kind of came out with an article that for the most part repeats a lot of the points she was making in that blog post, but had a few new quotations we wanted to get into and we had some further commentary on it.
[03:21] Normie, did you have anything that you wanted to bring up at the start here regarding this article? It's just sort of like a sloppification of right-wing stuff, you know, that's been going on for a while. It's sort of in the category of like, you know, all the articles for the last decade that have started out psychedelics may hold tremendous promise for the nation's veterans, but it's like we're moving now towards, you know, psychedelics may have implication, political implications or those right, did you hear about the right-wing things? I don't know. This is like old [expletive] news. Like 5-year-old news. Not in the case of not in the specifics of say Rick Perry and Brian Huard, but this is old news that's like finally making its way up to garbage like mainstream media.
[04:09] I guess of course if you're reading The New Yorker, you're probably not in tune. You're just seeing it for the first time. Like this is some new thing. This is really old news though, you know, and nothing there's like no analysis and there's not like no deep analysis or no implications. It's just like a surface level kind of slop garbage piece in my opinion. Yeah. It's basically just that you don't think it's pushing any doing any new covering any new ground essentially from or is it more than that? I don't think so. That I agree. I mean it's not pushing new ground. And to Norm's point when I was reading it, I was surprised that Michelle and writing in the New Yorker that really the implications aren't discussed. Like the implications of bringing Rick Perry, the implications of bringing this kind of right-wing insurgency into the field.
[04:59] It's written as if it's a weird thing, but there's no discussion of why it's that strange or what you should take away from inviting these voices into the space really. So, it's kind of you a novel a novelty, a curiosity, but the implications are not unpacked. [laughter] Yes. What makes it a perfect New Yorker piece? It's theodine anecdote that a person could share at brunch or over, you know, martinis someplace at happy hour. Did you know that psychedelics are right-wing now? According to the New Yorker and precisely without any kind of, you know, unpacking of what that might like mean, is that good?
[05:46] Is that bad? What are the factors that led us here? What even is rightwing? you know, isn't really fully explored in this piece. Like, you know, it's a it's just a in a lot of ways like a laundry list of various recent characters who've arrived on the scene, you know, in other places and then kind of rounded up in this piece as, you know, here, take a look at Brian Hubard, who you probably saw next to Joe Rogan in the executive order. Oh, you didn't. Okay. Well, here's them. And then there's your requisite, you know, quote from Rick Doblin in there tying it all together, you know. Yeah. It's like a napkin, you know. I mean, at this point, if I said like, you know, who were the main kind of psychedelic well-known people out there, political people out there, you'd put Rick Perry probably almost at the top of that list.
[06:36] You know, MAPS has put him on this pedestal to achieve their own political and business objectives and the fact that like Rick Perry is a monstrous human like an incredibly antisocial human like and I guess younger people I don't know if younger people who were sort of into psychedelics or following this like know any like about his history at all. Just I was looking I've known about Rick Perry obviously for a while. He took over the governorship when Bush got elected president back in 01 01 2000 something like that. He's overseen Yeah. of Texas. Yeah. He's over He oversaw 279 executions while he was governor. He rejected healthc care expansion in Texas.
[07:22] He opposed the ACA. He backed a constitutional amendment to ban samesex marriage. He's a climate change denier. He has this crazy quote from 2014 when he was asked if he believed homosexuality was a disorder. And he said, "Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire to not do that." And I look at the homosexual issue the same way. Like the fact that this guy is anywhere even near like a conversation on mental health and especially like at like mental health including psychedelics is is is insane. Yeah. I mean I do recall Rick Perry running for president and you know proposing when asked to eliminate the department of education and in a lot of ways that sort of thinking on the right pre prefigured doge as we have seen it today.
[08:20] Well, he was specifically asked that he was going to cut three agencies. And when asked what agencies he would cut, he didn't know the third one and his candidacy sort of tanked in the month or two after that. Yeah. And to the quote that you read Normy me about there from Rick Perry, he comes up in the recent series we just published on psychedelics and conversion therapy as kind of one of these main figures that the rights bringing in who has like you said made these horribly anti-trans, anti- like queer statements. And that's discussed pretty in-depth in our part three interview with Caleb Graves if anyone's interested in that. Another thing about this article that I wanted to bring up is that it is old news.
[09:07] It's exactly five-year-old news. And were Michelle like interested in actually unpacking any of this stuff. They could have looked at, you know, some scholarly research that has been done by people like Nishe and Pace in their rightwing psychedelia paper, which is one of the first papers I read by you, and I loved it. And it really does unpack like the implications, the sort of like precience too. It was like you saw that this was happening. You called it and then people like Michelle are like, "Oh my god, look." It's just kind of bizarre that like she didn't even bother to not even not cite you, but like even look into it. It seems like it is just very superficial and very Oh, she's extremely aware of going out of her way to avoid it.
[09:58] She was one of the journalists that she talked she was talking about Psymposia maps was it last year? Yes. And if we if we're interested in kind of reviewing that, we certainly can. I've got the clip. The article itself says that this kind of space would be unfathomable even a decade ago. And yeah, like you point out, right-wing psychedelia riding psychedelia came out in 2020. I think even before then, we were kind of on the train of discussing the issues with maps taking Mercer's money and all of this kind of stuff. And just real quick, I want to point out in terms of like the sort of line of appropriate citation or the history of these, you know, conversations, like even in my own earliest writing on this, which is Lucy in the Sky with Nazis, I was pointing to and, you know, benefiting referring readers to Alan Piper's great work on this, the monograph Strange Drugs Make for Strange Bedfellows and you know, so it reminds me of some of the work that you
[11:00] Know was in Martin Lee's acid dreams. Any, you know, real his historian of psychedelics comes across right-wing figures all the time. Yeah. Rick Doblin, five, six years ago, whenever it was at this point, was going around doing public speeches highlighting how [expletive] cool it was that he was able to talk to Steve Bannon about psychedelics in Breitbart. They were trying to place articles in Breitbart. This isn't new news. at all. No, no, not at all. This is the consequences of what we were covering years ago. And to the point we were discussing earlier of is Michelle look even aware of our work. The maps hosted I believe this was psychedelic science 2025.
[11:46] Is that correct? Just last year, MAPS hosted a conference last year where they had a panel hosted by journalist Mtha Busby called the dark side of psychedelia, which basically just turned into a like [expletive] on Psymposia session because they hosted the journalist who wrote the hit piece about us in the New York Times, Rachel Newer. They hosted the journalist who wrote the long piece about us in Wired. What was his name? Also, yeah, John Smley, which is also even it was even more of an attempted hit piece than ended up published, but they had stronger guard rails for factchecking and so the published version was less antagonistic towards us as the original draft. Yeah. And then they had Michelle Look on this panel who to be honest, I don't think we had ever made a single bit of commentary about Michelle or mentioned her.
[12:40] In fact, in private chat, I think I had shared Michelle's Rave New World blog as like an outlet that I actually kind of liked the reporting of because it reported from like an on the ground under like a like decrim kind of like party scene aspect of the psychedelic culture. And I think that's really the only commentary that had ever been brought to our group before about Michelle was like, "Oh, look, this is actually okay sometimes to read." in other articles that I've read by her, she is a very talented writer and very strong presenter as well. So, she has a lot of great ideas and a lot of talent, but I think she has a blind spot around Psymposia and the work that we do to be maybe hanging [laughter] around the wrong sort of people. Yeah.
[13:25] So, this was the panel sponsored at a maps conference talking [expletive] about us. So, this was her on that panel. I think I'm so glad that you guys are bringing up your Psymposia stories. I was really hoping that they would. I was like, "This panel is going to get spicy." And it did. No, for real though, I think that a lot of journalists are scared of taking on Psymposia. And rightfully so. And sources, a lot of people in general are really afraid of taking on Psymposia. Even I when, you know, when I saw this happening, I was like, "Oh god, do I really want to report on this? they're just going to come at me next, you know, and then definitely not as a freelance reporter, I'm definitely not getting paid enough to deal with this [expletive] which is also another [laughter] but one thing I wanted to say that I think is very interesting about Psymposia and the fear around it that a lot of people won't say out loud is I think this is a issue on the progressive left side where we are very scared to call out organizations that lead that are led by queer
[14:25] Non-binary or trans people because of identity politics. And I think that was definitely an issue. A lot of people are like, "Oh, Psymposia, they're so progressive. They're led by these kinds of people. Like, they must be in the right." And I think that's sort of like the imp the rippling effect of like the first wave of Black Lives Matter activism. And don't get me wrong, like I'm progressive left, okay? Like I'm totally on that side. But I think that we need to be more critical about what the issues actually are rather than just siding with certain orgs because of the identity politics that they're playing. See, she doesn't what she doesn't understand is that within her brain, she's like infected with propaganda and narrative that was seated intentionally by the industry to make us into the thing that she is unaware was was taking place.
[15:16] So there's like this artificial the people doing it literally right there. [laughter] It's wild. It's so [expletive] ignorant. She's like I'm not saying she's a bad person or anything like that, but she doesn't know what she doesn't know. And then so she's now on stage publicly advertising what she doesn't know. And it's just I can't wrap my head around that. Beyond embarrassing. I can't wrap my head around that identity politics straw man thing. like no woke one was crazy. Am I right? It's basically the train she feels like she's on. These people are queer, but that's why we should actually pay attention to attacking them. [laughter] Yeah. Well, could I say something about that in this particular case? I mean, it's wild to me that anyone could say that the field has, you know, a problem with something that needs to be done to make it easier to come after Psymposia.
[16:09] Like that that is just a bananas like priority to have in light of how much we are constantly attacked by people. And also to present like to say such an ignorant comment and then act like anyone like act like us responding to it is aggress is aggressive. Like that's also it just speaks to the reality tunnel that exists on that side of the field. that this right here is what coming at, you know, this author actually amounts to is ridiculous. Like you've been pilledled by people who think that, you know, some meme account or people who aren't affiliated with Psymposia are Psymposia. Like it's not.
[16:55] We'll talk about work that's in the public space, especially if it happens to be, you know, on our beat, which this recent piece very much is, you know, but it's a it's one of those things where people are conflating any kind of critique or push back with some sort of personal attack, and it's just not I mean, I'm personally offended if someone like describes the work that I do as woke one, like I'm the most [laughter] not woke one person. Like you if that's your critique against Psymposia, you've clearly never had a conversation with me or know my views at all because like a lot of that stuff in the woke one, which we're not calling it, like that was cringe to me. So like I why am I some of it some of it's valid, some of it was ridiculous to like to just cast that wide net is is is so is lazy is like beyond lazy.
[17:52] Has she ever reached out for us for a comment on anything? Does she never journalist though, right? I mean she hasn't really Well, she No, she did cover us. I mean, she included us as like a reason why the LOS was torpedoed. Like that that was endorsed. Has she reached out to anyone on this team? No. I mean, I spoke to her at a at an event that I was at. Was it last year? And I like I said, I'm a fan of her talents and her writing. And I think it's a it's partially a reflection of her like who's in her ear, like what her social surroundings are telling her. And I think that if like for example, if she and I spent more time hanging out, I think that she would have a very different perspective.
[18:38] Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, she's on stage with [laughter] Yeah. Yes. Yes. on stage with the New York Times journalist and wired journalist who wrote like hit pieces about it. They're not just hit pieces, but things that were just wrong. You know, you can read our rebuttal to Rachel Newer and Andrew Jacobs piece like they got so much wrong and intentionally distorted many things. Yes. Yeah. let alone Semley's. Well, in Semly's piece, just from like a rhetoric perspective, since that's one of my wheelhouses, I find it so interesting how overboard he went in humanizing Rick Doblin, like in the sense of he has he's this like quirky figure and he describes his like environment and how he's acting, whereas like all of my perspectives, it's like this abstract screen.
[19:28] Like there's no humanization of me at all. And that's just such a tell about like the one-sided nature of th those kinds of narratives, you know? It's like people who are trying to humanize different perspectives don't only do it in one direction, right? Yeah. So, just kind of jumping off like lack of citations, there was there's a couple pieces. I always like when these right-wing articles come out, even if they're like missing a lot of citations because they always provide me new little trinkets for my collection of quotes from like people in the space that people would say were wouldn't exist or weren't actually their opinions just years ago. And so she did have a quote from Rick Doblin and a quote from Rick Perry I wanted to review really quick.
[20:15] The quote from Rick Doblin was that he was saying that we need to show that psychedelics are coming to heal people who society values and we tend to demonize addicts. Quote, the fact that you can take psychedelics and stay Christian, stay Republican, that's the key learning that society needed in order to integrate these drugs. I just think that the quotes are just becoming more and more explicit than they were years ago. But on that that quote, Pace shared [laughter] a funny comment in the chat about it saying you're welcome essentially because [laughter] that that was our that was basically the argument we were making in right-wing. And just to stress that was not widely accepted when we wrote that article.
[21:03] Like now people looking back at the looking at the article now are like, "Oh, this is so obvious." But it really was not obvious to people at the time. Right. Right. There had been, you know, what a third of a dozen peer-reviewed neuroscience papers andor survey papers that that were asserting they were going to make you less authoritarian and environmental and more liberal and that kind of thing. And it's just that's just Harris and his crew. Yeah. Taylor, they were pretty well debunked even by themselves. I think a little bit later if I remember right. Yeah. But there I even in some of these discourses there there was like at one point I think Carheart Harris said something to the effect of like but there is the still the possibility in certain contexts and it's like yes context is exactly the thing that we are discussing as being an issue here you know let's see the second quote I wanted to bring into the conversation here was from Rick Perry who she quotes saying
[22:06] Someone asks from in like a conservative perspective like weren't we just saying like just say no to drugs like five years ago and in this conference that Perry was attending and Perry clarifies his position. I am still anti-drugs recreationally. He says I am very much against the legalization of drugs. Rather he was advocating for these psychedelics to be rescheduled so that they could be researched with the ultimate goal of dispensing psychedelic treatments under the health care system with the same oversight as prescription medications. But other members of Texas's conservative establishment were dub were still dubious. They don't do that and go to a concert, a woman asked of the drugs in question. Another guest unintentionally hit on one of the movement's main unresolved tensions when he asked where I came from and how its supply would be controlled in the long term.
[22:52] Like, it's nothing new. It's just it's becoming more and more just normal to have the opinion that I'm pro- psychedelics and anti-legalization and anti-recreational use [laughter] and like some of these aren't just fringe figures anymore. These are like the main voices like propagating this like the policy and lobbying around these substances now. I mean I think it's okay if you get a note from your pastor though, right? You can use them then, right? Just a joke. Yeah. get on your couch with your eye shades like he did and go meet Satan. I think that was another bit from the article where he like met Satan and he goes, "Get behind me, Satan." Satan disappears. He gets to see his dog again, you know. But I don't know why he doesn't just make a AI sim simulacum of his dog or just, you know, clone his dog from some leftover dog hair.
[23:43] He probably has the money. So many options. And then the only other quote that I had from the article that I wanted to bring up was from Mason Marx who commented on the executive order. Mason Marx being a kind of legal scholar. Is that correct? A law professor at Michigan State University who Michelle quoted saying the executive order really couldn't have been based solely or even primarily on science because the science is just so lacking. I was kind of happy to see at least that [laughter] quote made it into the article. Good for Mason. He's one of the people I could probably count on. Five hands in this space who's actually had five hands. Five fingers. I have five hands. Don't you? Five. What did I say? Nor AI agent confirmed. You can count on five hands. I'm going to try that again.
[24:29] But it's one of the only people in this space who's had the courage to like say [expletive] you guys like and actually put out how he feels about this space. like cuz he came in pretty enthusiastic psychedelics initially repeating some of the kind of like cultist enthusiastic propaganda lines. Yeah. And through his work in Oregon like quickly realized what a nightmare this whole industry was just built on like horrible internal contradictions and a mess. What was the quote again? The quote was that the executive order couldn't have been based on science because the science is so like shallow currently. Yeah, completely true.
[25:14] Yeah. Was there anything else on what it was based on? Vibes. Oh, yeah. The Let me I'll pull it back up here and see if there was any other indication really quick. The order singling out of Ivagane, the only psychedelic mentioned by name surprised analysts given how much less research exists on it than on psilocybin or MDMA. I kind of forget what the paragraph after that was, but essentially that I think he's implying that it's more based on the characters and figures pushing it right now and kind of amenable audience that is this administration to these kinds of arguments, politics. Yes. Anyone else have anything they want to say about this article or do we want to hop into our next bit on the resubmission of the MDMA application? Well, just to stress, we already said that there's this is a really important topic and will continue to be an important topic, but to cover it in the way that it needs to be covered requires going further than just noting the development.
[26:13] You know, some there's a lot of misunderstanding about why this topic is so important to discuss. Like people like Hamilton Morris have said and kind of mocked our work in the past saying that like oh right-wing people take psychedelics too. Who knew? You know then that that's not the point. The point is that when psychedelics are used towards the ends of the people who are on the far right and the fascist side of the government, that can be very dangerous and the implications of that are important to unpack in part because people don't even realize. They hear all of this glowing hype narrative about psychedelic medicine and then are desperate for healing and searching this out and they don't even realize that they're walking into like a wolf situation, you know.
[27:01] So, just I personally feel just a great need like a responsibility to warn people that there's like, you know, not this is not all light and healing in this area. I wanted to just maybe as a parting comment like just wanted to talk about this somewhat nonsequeter quote that I think was kind of emblematic of the level of analysis of the article in which what is it they quote Paul Austin the host of the thirdwave podcast and micro doing coach for the entrepreneurial class he's quoted as saying that Austin Texas no relation I presume is the quote psychedelic center of the world at this point.
[27:47] This is not unpacked. This is not addressed. I don't know other than, you know, tapping into extremely online like podcast sphere narratives about Texas and Austin as being like the new place to be if you're a culture maker in the Rogan sphere. Like there's just no what a weird assertion to just drop in the middle of a piece like this. Well, now now now THC even is extremely illegal there, right? Like I don't know what right exactly like on what basis is Austin, Texas the psychedelic center of the world other than that there are as in lots of places where there are culture creators and such people talking about them.
