Aubrey "Warrior Poet" Marcus recently dropped a new video featuring his spoken word poetry and boy, is it a doozy. It's titled "Breasts" and is, well, all about breasts. Before getting into his latest poetic offering, though, let's learn a little about Marcus, a wellness influencer and rising star in Austin's anti-vax, anti-mask, New Age spiritual movement.
Marcus, has been described by Conspirituality Podcast as "the Joe Rogan of conspirituality." He founded the supplement company Onnit (based on the philosophy of "Total Human Optimization"), which was also partly owned by Joe Rogan. Marcus stepped down from running Onnit in 2020 and has been building an ever-expanding wellness and spirituality empire since — he hosts a podcast focused on spirituality, wellness, divine masculinity, psychedelics, and other related topics; he runs a spiritual life coaching program called "Fit for Service"; he hosts "Arkadia," an annual music and wellness festival; he leads "Plant Medicine" (i.e. ayahuasca) retreats; and more. He also recently expressed his full support for Presidential candidate RFK, Jr.—the anti-vaccine darling of the disinformation dozen. While introducing RFK, Jr. on his podcast, Marcus said that he's full of "integrity, courage, wisdom," and posited that "everything he says is backed by research, backed by fact." Marcus went on to pledge his support for the candidate: "I will follow [him] to the end" . . . "I'm all in."
Ben Cohen of The Banter has traced Marcus' increasing embracing of conspiracy theories, which started in earnest during the early stages of the pandemic:
Like many other wellness influencers and New Age figures, Marcus's social media postings began to take an extremely troubling turn during the Covid pandemic. Over the past year, he has promoted anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists and fringe doctors like Zac Bush, taken a strange interest in the topic of child slavery, and shared posts from rabid anti-maskers and Alt Right Trump supporters.
Conspirituality Podcast has created several episodes devoted to Marcus, including 87. The Aubrey Marcus Spectacle, which deconstructs a marketing video for "Fit for Service," Marcus' spiritual life-coaching program. Conspirituality Pod describes what they call Marcus's "Indigenous cosplay":
The visuals centre around what looks like a haka ritual dance, through which customers release their inner warriors, nurture their affiliate links and jazz up their socials. On point for the influencer age, the ritual plays out in a narcissistic hall of mirrors, choreographed for performance by programme participants in order to promote the programme they are performing in. Naturally, Matthew will be using the analytical frameworks of spectacle and simulation from Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard to make sense of it. He'll also apply Renato Rosaldo's concept of "imperialist nostalgia" to explore the ugly conflicts in Marcus's indigenous cosplay.
"Breasts" isn't the first spoken word poetry Marcus has gifted the world. Ben Cohen describes a conspiracy-laden poem Marcus released last year, "A Revolution of Solidarity":
It was a confused, emotionally manipulative, and embarrassingly bad piece of anti-vaxx/anti- mask propaganda, produced in collaboration with prominent conspiracy theorist Mikki Willis (creator of "Plandemic") and far right anti mask activist and comedian JP Sears. Featuring deeply disturbing footage of starving children and abused women, Marcus appeared link child slavery, spousal abuse, poverty and starvation to vaccines and mask wearing during the pandemic. The poem has been viewed almost 400,000 times and has spread widely in New Age circles.
Most recently, The New York Post recently published an overview of Marcus, calling him a "spiritual guru of sorts," and providing a primer on his controversial ideologies and practices.
Now, with all of that context, let's get back to Marcus' new "Breasts" poem. He introduces his latest work on his Instagram (posted below). In the poem, Marcus sings the spiritual praises of breasts and exclaims that women have body sovereignty, while he simultaneously pleads with women to "pause the scalpel." While the text is bad enough—I mean, I almost choked on my coffee when I got to "teat of source" and "fecund cleavage"—to get the full effect of the rhythmic cringe-fest, you really need to hear him recite it.
Click here for a critical primer on the "Warrior Poet" movement, here to listen to Aubrey Marcus interview RFK, Jr., here for Conspirituality Podcast's Episode 107: "An Open Letter To Aubrey Marcus," and here to read the New York Post's overview.
