That also helps to make sense of why many of these superstitions (not just History Channel bs but alt medicine, new age spirituality, and the like) so often lead into far right political spaces. It’s just another way to divide the working classes, and make money off people while they’re at it. Lots of people go into these places very angry with “the system” and their lot in life, so it also heads off a lot of revolutionary potential.

What I find most interesting, or maybe ironic, is how (according to the oft quoted Caliban and the Witch) the ruling class at the dawn of capitalism used the which hunt around the Renaissance/enlightenment period to eradicate all of this type of superstition, magic, and folk knowledge. At that time such knowledge had exactly the opposite potential it does now, namely undermine the power of a bourgeoisie state to exploit the nascent working classes and force people to go along with the newfound scientific method of understanding, controlling, and shaping the world.