Part Two: Savitri Devi: The Woman Who Turned Nazism into a Religion

is what it means. This has never been totally clied what edging is, but I think that this I am the first person to edge more than a hundred thousand people at the same time. Wow. Okay, that was a flex on many levels, and I'm just going to through it. Okay. So that's what edging is, just plowing through it. Wow. Edging is when you're like, I'm not going when you bring someone to Yeah, you go to the edge of orgasm, but you keep you keep you keep stopping, and then

that's the joke. Okay, Okay, Well I've brought up the joke originally, and now I'm explaining why I was corrected, which is what all great comedians do. So in October of nineteen, Hitler's death still fresh on her mind. Savitri Devi took part in the Festival of Kali at the

Kalighat Temple in Calcutta. Now. Kali is the Hindu deity of destruction, a blueskinned goddess, and in traditional depictions, she wears a necklace of severed heads, a skirt made from severed arms, and wields just about every conceivable manner of ancient weapon in her many arms. You see a lot of times. Yeah, it's really cool. Like some of the statues of her like fucking twenty feet tall. It's metal as hell. Um. Yeah. So, as the goddess of destruction,

Kali tends to inspire some pretty powerful feelings. As Tri stared up at the image of her goddess covered in gore and armed with massive swords the size of small ours, she blgged Cali for her blessing, a blessing of violence and destruction against the Allied powers who had destroyed her beloved Nazi Germany. She left the ceremony convinced that it was now her duty to do what she'd failed to do back in nineteen thirty nine. She had to finally travel to Germany and take part in the resistance to

the Allies by any means necessary. She left her twenty cats in the care of a friend and left her Oh my god, and the cats. Yeah, it's pretty wild cats behind. This is a person who leaves her twenty cats behind and the care of a friend to go be a Nazi, like a month or two after Hitler died, Like months after Hitler do you get that texts just like hey, um so, like I have to go do a thing. Could you look after my cats? Indefinitely? Right? No? No?

Could you look after my cats? And definitely will I go to try to resurrect Nazism in nineteen forties Germany parentheses there's twenty of the cats, by the way, just because, oh my god, it's good stuff. All the cruel and horrible things that this woman has done. I don't even know all of them. Yet this has to be like

top ten. This is bad. It's pretty bad. She's a bad Yeah, she's not a great friend or person, but she does finally reach the birthplace of Hitlerism, the center of the ideology she'd adopted for herself in nineteen She later wrote in her book Golden the Furnace that the gods had ordained that I should have a glimpse of ruins, bitter irony of fate. Germany at that point was still largely destroyed and chopped up into four pieces by its

victorious enemies. So Very Tree's writing about this time shows a wild ignorance about the extent of actual Nazi crimes, because she's so horrified and how bad things are in Germany. She writes, quote one remembers, I say that episode of the Second War is one beholds the ruins of all the German cities, the plight of men and women in the overcredit areas still fit to live in, and all the misery, all the bitterness consequent of that devilish bombing.

Streams of fire, tons of phosphorus relentlessly poured over his people for five years. These were England's thanks to Adolf Hitler for having shown mercy to her soldiers in his hour of victory. These were the thanks of the United States of America for his older's orders not to shoot.

The parachute is captured on German soil, which is like so she's she's framing the the British evacuations uh from the coast of France as like German mercy rather than incompetence on Hitler's behalf, which they actually were just rank and competence on Hitler's behalf. He's also talking about the mercy of Germany and not killing captured Allied UH paratroopers,

which was illegal. And in doing this she's ignoring, for one example, the Malmedy massacre, in which a WAFF and s S troop massacred eight four American POWs with machine guns. She's also ignoring the estimated three point three million Russian POWs who died in German custody. But if I wind up actually arguing actual history with a dead Nazi will be here all day. So we're just going to move forward from that. But fair she whitewashes things a bit,

is the point? Just a bit, just a scooch Just obviously it's gonna be horrible seeing Germany after World War Two, because like the bombing campaign over Germany was one of the greatest crimes in history. That said, they kind of had it coming tonight. I mean, fun man, if anyone has ever deserved that, it's fucking Nazi Germany. They do present themselves as a pretty clear target. Good, yeah, you

can you can say the Allies. Maybe the Allies went overboard in some areas, will also being like, but what were they supposed to do? I think a bit of an overreaction may have been Historically you're like, okay, okay, yeah, you gotta do something. Yeah, you know, I it's it's something to not be happy about. But of the list of historical crimes I'm going to be outraged at, it's

lower than, for example, the ones committed by Nazi Germany. Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. Um. Now, before visiting Germany, Savitri had hung out in Sweden, where a number of Nazis had fled after the war. There she met spinn Head and a Nazi supporting explorer and author, and a number of former members of the Nazi Party who were hiding out there because you know, it was a crime to be a Nazi. Now, she told them her mission was to deliver a message of hope to

the German people. Now, since Nazism was a bit unpopular after the Second World War, she wasn't able to find any printers in Sweden to actually print out this message of hope, so instead, Savitri Devi had to write out

five hundred leaflets by hand. Each featured a swastika, and these words quote men and women of Germany, in the midst of unspeakable riggers and suffering, hold fast to our glorious national socialist faith and resist, Defy the people, Defy the powers which work to denazify the German nation and the whole world. Nothing can destroy what is built on truth. We are pure gold which can be tested in the furnace. The furnace may glow and crackle, nothing can destroy us.

One day we will rebel and triumph again. Hope and wait, Heil Hitler. So she writes five of these by hand and wearing a sorry and swastika earrings. Savitri Devi takes a train across Germany and tosses out hundred of leaflets um over the course about fifteen hours. Attached to each was a gift, a small amount of coffee, sugar, butter, sardines or cigarettes. She considered this journey to be an act of religious devotion, describing the leaflets as written and

throne by the gauze through me. As her train crossed from Germany into Belgium, She's sang a Hindu him to Shiva. So a lot of commitment, a lot of commitment is going into this yes, yes, and that is all you can say. Yeah, that is yeah. Now. So she gets inspired by the success of her first visit and she plans two more trips through Germany. She spent a little bit of time resting in London and meeting up with

fascists in London. Uh and because of all the fascists that are in London, she's able to actually find a printer to print up six thousand additional leaflets to take to Germany. Using a connection to an old friend in France, she secured a military permit to visit Germany for a longer period of time, claiming not falsely that she intended to write a book about the nation's post war trials. Her second tripped into Germany lasted three months and she

successfully handed out all six thousand leaflets. She also met with a number of old Nazis, none of the none of them were very high ranking. These were like third rate Nazis, former po w's, and some of these POWs did have legitimate stories of Allied brutality that they faced in captivity, because like you know, it was a war. Um. She interviewed numerous German citizens, introducing herself at the start

as a committed Nazi. To gain their trust, Savitri would then talk about her belief that Adolph Hitler was still alive somewhere in the world, and a shure these defeated Nazis that surely there were only two or three years away from a revival of Nazism in Germany. Imagine that Hitler was your tupac, Like that is such a wild That's like Hitler's like, No, he's on an island somewhere. You don't understand He's going to drop amazing album. Yeah, he's got an album. Really, Yeah, you don't be the

holograms a decoy? Yeah that sleek. I mean, I think we can. I mean that said, we both agreed that the hologram is a deco. Oh no, the hologram is absolutely decoy. Okay. Now, one of of these conversations um that Savitri had with a former Wehrmacht soldier is worth me reading out here. And I'm gonna quote again from the book Hitler's priestess quote, continuing his narrative to post war conditions and occupied Germany. The old fighter's face darkened.

Nice people to talk about freedom and justice. These damned democrats, they have tied us hand and foot, so we cannot move. They have muzzled us, so we can offer no resistance while they plunder our country left and right, dismantle and carry off our factories piece by piece, cut down our forests, take our oil, our iron or steel, all that we have, and into the bargain, make people believe that we were to blame for the war, These confounded liars. He lusted

for revenge. He longed for the day when the last Allies ran for their lives to escape Germany, when Paris would lay in ruins at its next German occupation, next time he would show neither mercy nor good humor. Savitri Devi felt a sense of mounting excitement as his mood became ever uglier, and he began to describe in a raised voice, how he would kill his enemies. This was the spirit she sought, the rolling eyes of a wounded animal, a war god of the Stone age, thirst for blood,

barbaric magnificence. It was a perfect meeting of minds, the violent, resentful German and the Aryan prophetess of revenge. The day of reckoning seemed already nearer. Oh okay uh, she's a fun trip to Germany. I mean, you know, she had me at the beginning with the you know, feeling plundered and betrayed by the Democratic Party. Sure, yes, that's a strong start talking about the Democratic Party. Though I know, I know, I just there, Rob Robber, I was away

from the mic at that point. What else can I do? I can confirm you were not away from the mic, as I think everyone you're right upon. This is revisionist, This is absurd, This is Savitri DEVII levels of revisionists. You are the Savitri Devi of this party. That's so mean. At least make me the Elizabeth Holmes of this podcast. Jeez, you have not earned that yet, James, Make me a fun one, Make me a fun bastard. Come on, make me a fun tragic one with a pony tail at least. Yeah,

there's nothing tragic about Savitri um So. She returned to France at December of ninety eight and immediately began to write a book, Gold in the Furnace, about her experiences and her growing conception of Hitlerism is something beyond what the old National Socialists had really believed. In February of nineteen nine, three chapters into her book, Savitri Devi was arrested by French authorities. She spent a total of six months. Yeah, because you know it's illegal to be a Nazi for

good reason. I'm like, wait, hold on, unpacked that, yes, I understand. Yeah. She spent a total of six months in pre trial attention and then prison after her conviction for spreading Nazi propaganda. The time behind bars was good for Savitri, as it historically often is for Nazis who fancy themselves writers like her Idol Adolf Hitler. She used her prison time as an excuse to finish her first book. Just uses it as like a sabbatical, as one would

is sabbatical. Yeah, it's an old Nazi story. She also took the opportunity to meet even more old Nazis. A lot of National Socialists were still imprisoned by the British occupation forces, and these old fighters were all too happy to talk with Savitri Devi. Her dearest friend in the prison was a former war dress from the bergen Belson concentration camp, a quote beautiful looking woman, a blonde of

about my age. In Devie's words, she claimed that this war criminal had the classical beauty of a chieftain's wife in ancient Germany. And again this was a woman who worked at a concentration camp voluntarily the languages. So yeah yeah, and writes about like how cruel this woman's imprisonment was and how nice the concentration camps was. Like she's trash, She's she's trashed, She's she's absolute trash. I'm not gonna like spend a lot of time debunking her ship, like

she's garbage. Yeah, and it's crazy. I mean it's like she is the one that that is like providing all of this information to She is the source. Yeah, she is the source. And again I can't say it enough. She never had the kutzpah to actually go to Nazi Germany while it existed. I think because number one, she would have been disappointed because like none of this this weird religious ship she attached to it was an actual

part of Nazism in Nazi Germany. Um, Like she would have like she would have been like a just like she might have gotten knocked up by some Nazi, like at the orders of Heinrich Heimbler, but she wouldn't have Um, she wouldn't have been anything special in Nazi Germany. The odds are good. Like maybe they would have tried to use her to like propagandize because she knew a bunch of languages. I don't know. They might have liked had to try to reach out to India. But probably she

would have just been another person. I don't know. I think that's an interesting aspect of it that isn't emphasized enough. She just wasn't willing to actually go to Nazi Germany in this place, she claimed, ruled Yeah, cool, so well. In late nineteen nine, Savitri Devi was again a free woman, and she published her first book to widespread acclaim from

the international Nazi community. From this point on, Devy became a prolific author, writing up every significant event in her life through a mixture of supposedly nonfiction works as well as fanciful tales. For example, she retold the story of her first trip back to Europe and the children's fable Long Whiskers and the Two Legged Goddess, whose heroine is a cat loving Nazi named Helio Dora. No, that can't

be real. Yeah, that sounds like random words selected from Uh, well, it all makes sense, like the Heliodora's really a self insert charactered cats Helio Savitri Devii's obsessed with sun, gods and goddesses a good how embarrassing for her. What's embarrassing is that Savitri writes that her self insert fantasy character has quote no human feelings in the ordinary sense of

the word. She had been from her very childhood much too profoundly shocked at the behavior of man towards animals to have any sympathy for people suffering an account of their being Jews. Okay, the Holocaust is it bad? Have you seen what happened to cats when I was a kid. But here's the take that is a wild take to be like, you know how we resolve, uh, like violence towards cats also cause violence towards people. Yeah, surely the Holocaust is cool because cats have been mistreated? Is Vitri?

She just goes to a whole other place. She's like, did you know, like when you're having like when you're having an argument with someone who doesn't want to have a good faith argument with you, and you're just like, well what about this? And they're like, well what about cats in France? What about that? Huh? And You're like, I don't I've been stunned like a pokemon. I don't know.

And over the next few years, Savitri wrote and conversed with increasingly aged Nazis and gradually refined her theories about the world, until in nineteen fifty eight she published what would prove to be her magnum opus, The Lightning in the Sun. In this work, the ideas Savitri had been rattling around in her head all finally came together. Hitler, she concluded, was a man against time, fighting to uphold

Aryan virtues and blood against the corruption of modernity. She placed him at the center of her own trinity, one that replaced the decadent Christian one she'd grown up despising, and her trinity. I dare you to make less sense than the trinity? She picks, Yeah, you think, who do you think? Who do you think's first? Hitler? Well, Hitler is the most important, but he's not the first, oh, the first. No, it goes in order of it goes in order of, like time period. So these are all

historical figures. First one is definitely uh someone ancient Greek, no, ancient Egyptian at the first atheist. He's generally called he was like this, this pharaoh who declared himself the sun God, and like tried to institute monotheism and then he died and everything he did was burned by the people who came after him because they thought he was an asshole. Um. And it's weird because she like hates monotheism so much,

but he's like one of the people she loves. I think just because he's the sun god and she's got a weird she'll make an exception. She'll give any sun god a pass. Basically, it's it's fucking weird. Um. Second in her holy trinity is gang Scott, does she And here's why? Why? Um? It would it wouldn't make sense. I mean, basically history's greatest conqueror. He's a great conqueror

and he's not Christian or Jewish or anything. You know. Yeah, So act In is the Sun and the con is the lightning and Hitler, she believes, combines the best attributes of both the Pharaoh's wisdom with the strategic mind of Genguscott. Genghis Khan succeeded in invading Russia during the winter. So

I don't know where you're coming from. This woman is okay, one of these two knew how to invade Russia, and it was not Hitler and then Hitler or is there, Yeah, the third is hit because he combines the best parts of Acinat just like a terrible cartoon. She would not watch this cartoon wild. Yeah, it's so dumb. Um. Yeah. So there's probably a couple of reasons for her obsession with Acant And for one thing, Akinat was deeply revered by the Theosophical Society, which you will remember from our

our episodes on anthroposophy. Um, and the Theosophical Society held a lot of ties also to the Tulist Society and all the other weird little occult groups who supported the Nazis. Early on had been a utopian thinker who tried and failed to a stay a perfect city. Good Rich Clark, Sametri's biographer, writes that she saw his son worshipping cult as quote rejection of all politics that promotes man's interest at a cost to the beauty and abundance of nature,

which is just invented by her. Like, yeah, I feel like maybe she's she's like me and Jack Skellington. She's just kind of there for the aesthetic and maybe doesn't fully understand she is okay, Jack Skellington. Yeah, that is okay, Okay, Now I'm now, I'm like, I understand this mindset. If this holy Trinity doesn't work for you, consider embracing the holy Trinity of the products and services that support this show. Products, services, and god, what's the third one? Each is one and

a half of the trinity. That's how good both products and services are. Wow. Yeah they add up to three products. M h, we're back. So um God, there's so much to get through with this. This woman's fucking stupid, stupid, fucking beliefs, but they're very important. They're they're stupid, and they're also kind of they're so dumb and complicated. They're so and comicated a lot of phases. They all make sense.

I'll say that they don't make sense of the fact that they're true, but like, based on her history and like the things that she imbibes, they all makes I can see why why she came to these conclusions. But they're super dumb. So the core of her Nazism is a love of nature, which was a big part of

actual original Nazism too. They were very into like like natural life and ship and like taking care of the land and animal welfare UM, and some of her early books that she wrote when the Nazis were in power, but before she was explicitly a Nazi, like The Impeachment of Man UM, don't explicitly reference in Nazism. And these books like The Impeachment of Man is still kind of popular among chunks of the New Age and environmentalist movements today.

Savitri Devi's passionate writing on animal rights is actually one of the many little roads that exist between the green movement and the neo Nazi movement. UM, and it's really fucked up. UM. Devi herself famously railed against the Allied forces purging Germany of its fascist organizations, saying that quote, you cannot denazifying nature. Um. She believed that nature was fundamentally nationalist, national socialist. UM. And yeah, that's a that's

a take. I'm gonna read a quote from the Man now, and I want to remind you there are people who are like environmentalists, who are not Nazis, who read this book today and don't really realize what's going on a civilization that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged war crimes, acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause, and tolerate slaughter houses and vivisection laboratories and circuses in the fur industry, infliction and pain upon creatures

that can never before or against any cause, does not deserve to live out with it, bless the day it will destroy itself. So that a healthy, hard, frank, and brave, nature loving and truth loving elite of superman with a life centered faith, a natural human aristocracy is beautiful on its own higher level, as the four legged kings of the jungle might again rise and rule upon its remains forever. So again you see how because of the kind of

stuff she's written, she's there's this, there's these bridges. She's a big part of why there's bridges between the eco movement and the Nazi movement. And there very much are on like the hard edge of the of the of the eco movement, of the anticlimate change movement, there are Nazis and left wing activists who kind of increasingly seem like Nazis in a lot of cases. Is not to say that, like even supporting radical environmental action makes you

a Nazi. It's to say that, like part of the what schre achieved is building in roads between these groups and the Nazi movement. So now more there's a lot of people that get into Nazism through environmentalism, and Savitri Devi is a part of that um And that's kind of the story we're telling today. Snazism really knows how to ruin a good thing. It wasn't as good at it before Savitri Devi. It's always been a ruiner, but she really took it to new levels, elevated how bad

it was. Yea. So the lightning in the sun her opus pose. It's a cyclical view of history. She believe that time began with a Golden Age in which it was dominated by the perfect a sun god age like a sun god. And this degraded slowly into a Silver age and then a Bronze age. And both of these worst ages featured increased racial mixing that weakened the arians. They also featured pernicious Jewish influence. The next age is the kali Yuga, or Dark Age, which Savitri believed the

world had all really entered into. She also called this dark age the reign of the Jew. No. Yeah, the only way out of this dark age was for the man against time. Hitler to gather up the terrible weapons of the Dark Age and use them to bring about the return of the Golden Age, presumably through genocidal purging of non arians in the establishment of a strict racial hierarchy.

Her book was dedicated quote to the godlike individual of our times, the man against Time, the greatest European of all times, both sun and lightning, as a tribute of unfailing loyalty and love forever and ever God. You know, there's been a lot said about fan culture. I don't agree with all of it, but you know, this is a real argument against fan culture. This is the worst fan culture has ever gone. I feel comfortable saying this is this is this is the worst it can go.

This is bad stand culture. It's bad, bad, bad there and and even the way that she rights and structures these things, it kind of you can hear that like interest in like ancient history in there, because it just sounds like she's kind of connecting these lines that don't actually exist to make it sound like to I mean, kind of like the way she like arguably maybe lifted some of her own like self mythologizing from mind comps, Like she's just like putting something she wants to say

into a familiar framework. Yeah, it's called syncretics. Well, this is part of syncretism, is like taking these other things that you like and sticking it onto this thing. Um. And this is like the main thing she goes down in history for for doing to Nazism. Now I have I have a lot of debates with myself putting this together about how much detailed to get into about Savitri's theories. There's a really dark, very vile world of esoteric Hitlerist

fantasy based in large part off of her writing. And this ship is dangerous. Um. It spreads a kind of ideological infection that grabs impressionable chldren primarily in a vice like grip, and turns them into something very dangerous. And a lot of people have died from this, and I am not going to If you're very knowledgeable about this, you will notice there is a lot of things I'm leaving out just because like this is enough to understand it, and I don't want to just like be spreading weird

Nazi propaganda to an audience. Um of as you said, a hundred thou people, the Robert that is the most merciful thing you've ever done on this entire podcast. Yeah, it's just too dangerous in my opinion. That's good, that's yeah, I agree. And I don't even know what it was. It's fucking weird, stupid ship. But yeah. The last thing that's really important to understand about Davitri Devi's beliefs is that she decided Hitler was what she called well, she

was not the only person. Other people had the same idea, but she's one of the more prominent ones. The kali Yuga, the tenth incarnation of vishnu um and she used several segments from August Kuba's x I advised book The Young Hitler. I knew Kubazek was Hitler's friend when they were like teenagers. He wrote a terrible book. It's valuable because it's the only insight we haven't hit Hitler at that period. But he clearly wrote it to make money. Is it like

my friend Dahmer? Is it like that? It's like the same vibe of like this horrible person. Yeah, I knew, you're like cool. Yeah, but you also get the feeling that kuba Zeck didn't really think he was horrible until

he like he was writing it. Initially to be a biography that was published under the Nazi regime as like a pro Hitler piece of propaganda, and then they lost the war, and then he just kind of rewrote it so that it could be like, well, now I'm just I guess I'm just going to explain my evil friend to the ally so Fu sinister. Oh my god. I mean, there are people care's a lot of debates to have about kubaz Eck, but most historians will agree, well, you have to read Kubazek. You have to take him with

like a lot of salt. Yeah, he's trying to takes him with no salt at all. And she pulled several passages from his book as like evidence that Hitler was the Kali Yuga and was like channeling fucking Vishnu. Yeah, it's this woman does not understand Shades of Gray even remote.

She's just okay, she would have written Shades of Gray, though if she had been around, I wish she had like agains the better world, Oswit, literally every single person you've ever told me about on this cursed show, Robert, everything would have been better off if people had just channeled their horny energy into fan fiction instead. Of brutal Hayden murder every single time. Masturbating the fan fiction is the only things that will save us from the next Hitler.

It will absolutely and and and that's where the Kylo ren stands come in. If you know an angry person who spends too much time writing fan fiction for under no circumstances, stop them, encourage that behavior. Yea, the lives that I can't even begin to tell you. Yeah, it's good, Okay, so this is okay horrible. Back to what you were saying,

that was horrible. So she like reads Kubazek and she becomes convinced that a couple of chunks of that book are evidence that Hitler is channeling Vishnu is the avatar

of Vishnu Um. Yeah. Yeah, there's like there these moments in the book where like Hitler will like that that Kubazek writes very like Purple Prosy, where Hitler will like suddenly, like in the middle of a conversation like make some sort of like grand statement about the future, and it's like maybe it's true because he was Hitler, Like it wouldn't be the weirdest thing of Hitler had always been that guy, right, Sure, But Also, kubaz Eck wrote this, well,

after Hitler, you know, was done with and it's entirely possible. He was like, people are going to expect him to make grand speeches that are like dark and crazy about the future because he was Hitler, and he threw them in there because that's what like, we don't know. Um. Yeah.

So decades later, uh Savitri Devi would claim that her initial inspiration for the idea that Hitler was the Kla Yuga had come from a conversation she'd had in nineteen thirty six with Satyananda Swami, the founder and the head of the Hindu mission where she'd worked. She claims that sat Yananda used to say, and I'm cluding directly from her writing here, Adolf Hitler is the reincarnation of the

god Vishnu. Vishnu is the aspect of the Hindu trinity, who goes to keep things from rushing to destruction, to keep them back to going against time. Time is destruction. You have to destroy in order to create again. But there are forces that try to postpone destruction. And he said Hitler was the reincarnation of that force. And he was. He was. But it's a nice thing to hear a

very refreshing thing to hear from a Hindu stage. I told him, I came here because I'm really a pagan, a worshiper of the Sun, and I believe in the pagan reaction of Emperor Julian. And I came to India to get, if possible, a sort of tropical equivalent of what we have had in Europe before Christianity. And I am not a disciple of any Indian. I'm a disciple of Adolph hit There he said, good, good, Adolf Hitler. He's as much a Hindu as any of our Hindus.

He's an incarnation of the god Vishnu, probably never happened, but might have particulate. Yeah, it is, but one of the things that Hindu scholars, who again are generally very critical of a lot of all of these claims of seats, will point out some like one of the kind of downsides of sort of this very open aspect of Hindu mythology where it kind of upset accepts new things and new gods and other religions, and like it's a very

open canonically in a lot of ways. And so there were a lot of Indians who would have who very well might have been like, Okay, you worship Hitler. Sure, he's probably like this, like because like they're just looking at a way to understand through their religion, just thing that matters to you. Like yeah, again, who knows, Um, you'll get different opinions on this than a on who you go to. UM. So yeah, we don't know what's true.

What is important is that after Savitri Devi starts writing about all this ship, a lot of Nazis come to believe it. In fact, the reeling and wounded remaining Nazis of the West um felt like Savitri's occult musings were basically a breath of fresh air, and she spent her middle and later years traveling around and meeting fascists all

over the world. In nineteen sixty one, she made her first direct connection with the English neo Nazis of the British National Party or b n P. As the war years receded further and further away, an international agglomeration of fascist inclined folks began to link up and plan together for a resurgence of Nazism. Savitri Devi was at the center of it. As this paragraph from Hitler's priestess Illustrates quote. She lost no time in contacting Andrew Fontaine, the president

of the BNP. A spring camp attended by twenty delegates from European nationalist groups was held on Fontaine's estate at Narford at Narford, Norfolk, in May of nineteen sixty one. Those present included Robert Lyon, a young leader in the American National States Rights Party, which violently opposed a segregation in the South, representatives from German neo Nazi groups, and

Savitri Devi. Another key figure was x S S Lieutenant Friedrich Borth born in nineteen This blue eyed, blonde Austrian Nazi had served in the Luftwaffa and the OFFA s S. As a teenage officer, he had commanded an assault group and won the Iron Cross. After serving a three year jail sentence in post war Vienna, he published an SS veteran magazine, Dust Camarade, which was swiftly suppressed by the Soviet authorities. Thereafter, he was connected with numerous extreme right

wing groups and attended the most international fascist gatherings. He led the boom Himer toured Yugant until it's banning in nineteen fifty nine. And then bring the Legion Europa, the Austrian section of UH theer Arts June You Europe, another international grouping inspired by the French O a s and Algeria and Belgian Rancorps over the loss of the Congo. After a busy schedule of lectures at Narford, the participants celebrated their Nordic racial identity with Folkish songs and tankards

of traditional ale around the campfire. So you see what's happening here. Savitri Devi gets pulled into not just neo Nazi groups and not just old Nazis. She's meeting with the American States Rights Party, She's meeting with like these Belgians who are angry that they've lost control of the Congo, and she's meeting with all these old neo Nazis in the British National Party and stuff. Um would you say at this point she is out of her depth in

terms of I can't believe you did that. No, no, no, no, no, I think no, no, She's not out of her depth at all. Um, she is. What she is doing is helping to draw She's not the only force doing this, but she's helping to draw these groups together by providing the early Like these are all separate groups, like the Cause of desegregation, like a lot of racists who don't

want America disegregated, fought against the Nazis. She is a part of all these different, like very far right groups, including Nazis, coming together and in a lot of cases starting to embrace these weird, this weird Nazi religion. She's um she's invented as something to unify all of them.

That's what starts to happen in this period. And that's what's really unique about this period is like these are all groups like the Belgian, like pro Congolese control of like the Belgium, Like the Belgians weren't pro Nazi, but like these Belgians start to get pro Nazi now because like they realize there's like this white identity thing, but also this this weird religion that is more attractive to them than actual national socialism would have been. It's interesting.

I mean, it seems like part of her effectiveness lies in like having so many little bits of things for people to latch onto, so that even if you don't agree with the larger ideology, there's a worm on a hook that will get you in. That's called syncretism. That's what syncretism really is, is like all these different things kind of it's like a catamari of ideology with like Nazism at the core, but all these things sticking to it,

and these things get other people stuck to them. Um. So like yeah, that's what we start to see happening in the early nineteen sixties. Um. In nineteen sixty two, Savitri was in England again for a gathering of worldwide Nazis that included Bastard pod main character George Lincoln Rockwell. Oh I know a thing about to get not great Oka.

Savitri Devi was one of the signatories for the World Union of National Socialists and proposed organization to form a quote combat efficient International Apparatus to facilitate a return to Nazi values and the extermination of non whites from Western nations. Now ones wound up being a bust for several reasons, including the fact that Rockwell was almost immediately kicked out of the United Kingdom, but he and Savitri developed a

friendly relationship. The leader of the American Nazi Party had been on the lookout for a new American fascist religion, something esoteric and enchanting that he could use to draw in new members in a way that national socialist political theory and unvarnished racism just did not. And he must have thought The Lightning in the Sun had some potential for he published an abridged version of the book in the National Socialist World magazine, The Lightning in the Sun

the US. The Lightning in the Sun, it should be said, could be a y a book that like is out right now, it might be to be entirely honest, and that why a book might actually be Nazi propaganda hidden his young adult which, oh, you can't put it past yeah, no, no, no, much like for example, the band Ace of Basse Wait what yeah, the ASA base where Nazis. Did you not hear that? Oh? Adam Todd Brown read a great article about this for correct, The base of ass was a

Nazi submarine base. If you watch the music video for all that she wants is another baby. The woman who just wants another baby to get on welfare is like holding a star of David the entire time, and there's all these long, lingering shots of it. There's a bunch of other stuff. The sign that they saw is clearly a swastika. If you listen to the lyrics, it's fucked up. Um wow. But we have to blaze past that right now. I found I found a book called Lightning on the

Sun that's pretty closely Nazi ship. It's about a guy named Glenn the Store. Yeah, Glenn Schmidler, who might be a moon god. Yep, that's some Nazi ship there, or anti Nazi, since Nazi Savitri was all about the sun God, it could be either. Really, so, Savitri Devi would go on to spend the bulk of her remaining years in India, traveling irregularly when the demands of her national socialist beliefs

took her around the world. She remained convinced all her life that Hitler would return, either in a new incarnation or after revealing that he had somehow survived the war and lead a resurgent Nazism to global victory. She retired in nineteen seventy, living for a time at the home of her friend Francois Dior in England. That's the de or you're thinking of, really, yeah, it's well, it's it's like the daughter, I think of the woman who created the line. Yeah daughter, Oh good. She was a big

Nazi backer before the war. Yeah, wow, okay, learning more? I love fashion knowledge. Savitri Devi was kicked out of Door's house eventually for her twin habits of refusing to bathe ever and chewing on garlic constantly. Disgusting. Come on, that's what gets the reaction, Sophie, She's terrible, Harley. I was chewing on garlic a lot over the summer. It helps preserve your voice. I don't think that's why she was doing it. Does she do you have to bathe?

Who chewing on garlic? Do we know what happened to her cats? Oh? Solid question, Jamie. Well, she had numerous pet cats. What happened to those she left to Nazi Germany with? She I was just about to say she spent most of her remaining year is living alone in India with dozens sometimes of pet cats and at least one cobra um. She always had a funkload of cats. Yeah,

this woman. I couldn't get away from her cats. One thing about her that you would think that cats live long enough that the original twenty cats she left behind would still be alive. But that because I think a lot of them were. I think a lot of them were she she was taking them with. I don't know precisely, but my assumption, based on everything I know Savitri Devi, is that she would have absolutely tried to get back her original cats if it was possible. She was very

endo cats. She would not have abandoned the cats. I don't think she was. She was real consistent about that part. Yeah. As she grew older, Devy became more and more convinced that the United States represented the most fertile ground for the growth of the esoteric Nazi religions he had spent her life helping to construct. In nineteen two, she decided to travel to the United States to do what she could do to help American Nazism break out as a national force. She died it on the way while staying

at a friend's house in Great Britain. Her ashes, however, finally made it across the pond to the United States of America, and American Nazis laid her to rest by sprinkling her on their heroes grave George Lincoln Rockwell. So Rockwell and Savitri Devi's share a grave. Yeah wow, Okay, So she's like, okay, yeah, you know who doesn't share a grave with George Lincoln Rockwell and Savitri Devi. The products and services were about to hawk. Yes for now,

you never know. Now we're back. We're back. So Savitri Devi's dead, But this is not the end for her. Um, not really, because starting in the late nineteen seventies, a famous Holocaust denier in publisher Ernst Zundel, had found her old work and started pushing it back into circulation. Now, but it only developed a limited audience in those early

post war days. But now, nearly twenty years later, uh, people were ready for esoteric hitlersm the book Hitler's Priests notes, by the late nineteen seventies, the historical experience of the Third Reich was quickly receding into the past, as popular literature and films ably demonstrated Nazism was becoming something mythical, even fantastic, and also plastic that could be molded and

combined with novel associations. By publishing the work of Savitri Devi, Zundel aimed to create a new cultic interest in Hitler, linking him to ancient mysteries, the world of nature, and powerful religious symbols drawn from the Oriens. She was just saying that by saying it's plastic, he's pointing out, we have all these weird movies now about like Nazis on

the Moon. You know, You've got these fanciful stories like Wolfenstein, these games about like Nazi like all of this, this this fictional sort of world that's been built up, like mythology built up around the Nazis, usually not by people who are actual Nazis in a lot of cases, just by people who are like, well, they're the worst people ever, so I can make them the bad guys. That's an easy go for a bad guy. Um. But Zundel is like, this is a fucking opportunity because kids are growing up

reading about these cool, evil, bad guy Nazis. And for the same reason that kids love dressing up as Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars, kids get interested in the Nazis from this. And he sees Savitri Devi's work is like, I can fucking get a shipload of kids interested in

Nazism by pushing this stuff back out there. And he's fucking right now, yeah, yeah, another important architect of this whole thing and who we're not going to get into enough, but I will do an episode on in the future is a Chilean Nazi named Miguel Serrano UM, and it's from Miguel that we actually get the term esoteric Hitlerism. Serrano and Devi seemed to have reached essentially the same conclusion about Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu through slightly

different intellectual roots. UM. Miguel was a student of Young and a Mithrist, which we just don't have enough time to get into once again, the Theosophical Society UM. He was also an early Avid Western practitioner of yoga. Miguel corresponded with Devi during her lifetime. Before he died in two thousand nine, he gave interviews to Nazi magazines with names like black Son, where he said this about Savitri Devi quote, Savitri Devi is the greatest warrior after Adolf Hitler,

Rudolf Hess and Joseph Gebel's. Moreover, she was the first to discover the ancient and spiritual power behind Hitlerrism. She envisioned a new religion and inaugurated a sanctuary for Hitler in India. She was as I myself am anti Christian. She initiated completely on her own all that I have developed up until now. It is not mere coincidence that the Spanish Catholics published an attack against Savitri Devi Atto Iron and me. It was very late in her life

when we started to write each other. We just missed each other in Europe by one week. I arrived a few days after her death. I think that Savitri Devi will be the greatest sister of all the pre Sevesotera hitlersm the beasts of Wotan. And he's like wearing a male feminist T shirt while he does this. He's like, I don't hate women. I like this. I like the worst woman I've ever heard of love. He would not have warned me I will say that much. But you're

getting the spirit of the guy, right. He's a real gigantic piece of ship, and we're not getting into it up. But he gives her credit as like the real motive force behind the religion that Hitlerrism becomes, even though he's also like kind of independently coming to a lot of the same conclusions and even earlier in some cases. Like she's the popularizer in a lot of ways. She has

a big role in that um. And yeah, he's we'll talk about him more later today, Savitri Devi's fingerprints can be found all over the radical and murderous chunks of the fascist right. The Fair Creek Division, an accelerationist neo Nazi organization that's very similar to Adam Wafan Division, similar enough to talk about for the purposes of this podcast. Both of them seek to bring about the destruction of the current world order through destabilizing attacks. The Fair Creek

Division directly cites Devy as an inspiration. The group's gab of bio includes this Devy quote. Creation and destruction are one to the eyes of one who can see beauty. Savitri's beliefs went on to have a big influence on Adam Waffen two and the members of the Base who weren't FBI agents, anti fascists or journalists, which is basically,

these seven guys you got arrested. That's a familiar yeah, yeah, in these groups like the Base that we can see some hint of what makes a Vitri Devi so dangerous. The leader of the Michigan Cell of Adam Waffen Division, who was DOCST a few days before I wrote this episode, reached his position in charge of the Michigan Cell when he was fifteen years old. The three members of the base who were arrested in Georgia in the process of trying to spark a race war were ages nineteen, twenty

one and twenty five, respectively. These acceleration as esoteric hitler Ists tend to be young, and there is disagreement on the average age at which people enter cults, but the work of Dr John G. Clark, a psych professor at Harvard, who surveyed five current and former cult members, suggests an average age of nineteen and a half for new cult members. He also points out that most new cult members are male.

This is because young men are particularly vulnerable to being enraptured by ideologies that offered them a sense of purpose and belonging. It's one of the reasons the same age group as the ideal recruitment population for soldiers. But Esotera Hitlerism doesn't just suck these kids in because they're young. And to explain this new part, I'm gonna have to talk a little bit about Kechism, and I am very sorry. Do we do we have? Do we absolutely? Is it? Absolutely? Yeah?

We really do. Kechism started out as a joking parody of religion invented by the ship posters four chan and eight chan during gamer Gate. It's very dumb and talking about it makes me feel very silly. But the short of it is Kechism started out, and for probably most people still is a dumb gag and a way for them to make fun of members of minority groups by pretending to be members of a victimized religion because they think that's funny. The whole thing focuses around ship posting

and spreading memes. But as the Trump campaign ramped up and this weird internet movement started to have an impact on the real world, some, particularly unhinged annon, started to take Kechism more seriously. Well, others just thought the joke kept getting funnier and spread it around for that reason. Lawrence Murray, a writer for the fascist podcast The Right Stuff, was probably the first person to purposefully meld Kechism with

Savitri Devi's philosophy into something he called esoteric Keckism. He started shooting out memes that replaced Hitler with Pepe as an avatar of Vishnu, stuff like that. It's very dumb.

When interviewed, Murray claims he was only half joking. With the whole idea, but like any joke of the sort on the Internet, it spread like wildfire, and a certain chunk of the people who saw it took it seri reously, which led them to the work of more serious fascist thinkers, people likes of Etrea Devi, and led some of them

into accelerationist groups like Adam Woffen and the Base. It is not a coincidence that Honders Brevic, the Utoya, Norway shooter who massacred dozens of children at a left wing summer camp, directly praised Hindu nationalism in his manifesto. It is also not a total coincidence that both Honders Brevick and Brenton Tarrant, the christ shoot shooter, claimed to be Knights Templar, members of a Christian order fighting against Muslims basically.

And it is not a coincidence that the Urban Dictionary page for Kechism, written by a gamer gator, describes it as a red pilled ideology originating from the true Knights Templar. And again, all of this is joking. All of this is not joking. It's both at once. It's the contradiction of modern fucking Yeah. Well, that's yeah, the great the greatest trick the devil ever played was irony poisoning, because

you just can't. Yeah, you can't argue with that. Um. And some people will say, and it's possible there is are some central figures behind this spread of syncretism, like sinister individuals who have like kind of put all this together purposefully, or at least put pieces of it together purposefully. But I tend to be of the belief that most, if not all, of it is a morphous and acephalis. It happened without a head, without much intention on its own.

There may have been bits of intention here and there, like esoteric Keeckism, but a lot of it just happened because of the sort of structures Savitri Devi built Um. It's it's just kind of the natural result of the amorphous and sticky nature of the faith that she created. If Hindu mythology and ancient Egyptian history can be folded in with Adolf Hitler and the Aryan myth, why can't Keechisum wind up in there too? Can't the Knights Temple

are fit in there too? All these weird little subcultures you've got Norse mythology, chan culture, gamer culture, new age, spiritualism, environmentalism, even veganism. All these things appeal heavily to a lot of young people. And the more little bridges that you can build between these different communities and actual extermination is Nazi beliefs, the more young men will kind of accidentally fall in and get caught in this net. It's like

a tunnel spider's web. And at the end the great innovations have e treat every brought like that's that's the

innovation she brought to Nazism. She took what was a dead political system that couldn't spread outside of Germany, not really, and turned it into a living, syncretic religion, something with vitality, something capable of mutating and absorbing and staying relevant, and something capable of inspiring young men to commit murder in the memory of Adolf Hitler nearly a century after his death, could you give me that word one more time, of of the the syncretism syncretism, Yeah, I mean it's and

and if you are able to, you know, find a way to get a group of people who are looking for something to believe in, who are maybe a little bit okay, you know what, You're right. I was, um, but yeah, just like finding a group of vulnerable, vulnerable people ideologically that needs something to believe in and put a delicious chocolate coating on the outside of it. Uh, it seems to work. It works. So how do you feel about Savitri fan? You gotta check out her books.

Can't say I'm a fan she. I don't think that I would. I don't think we would have been friends in junior high and I don't think we would have been friends now. I yeah, no, I mean I truly. And it is interesting that we don't talk about her. I had no idea this person existed. I why do you think that is? There's a there's a degree to which I think a lot of people who knew about her and are like researchers didn't really want to because there's this worry about making a bigger deal of it

than it is. It's kind of like I didn't really write about h N much until the christ Street shooting, when it was like, okay, well now we gotta the base. Now it's gotten to this point like all right, we gotta fucking talk about Savitri dev Devi and esoteric Hitlerism, Like we gotta get some of this out there. Um, I do think it's also just like not super well known. I think she was seeing like really, to be entirely honest, I think most of her efforts would have looked like

a failure to most of observers. Observers up until maybe at the earliest a decade ago. You know, people who were really aware of what was going on would have known earlier, but most people, even pretty well informed people, would have been like, well, this is kind of a dead end and just something to like make fun of up until we start to the internet. Really is what what provides this with the last ingredient it needs to take all? Yeah, she like pioneered the red pill mentality,

like it's yeah, she's a big part of that. Yeah, and we're not like Julius Evola is a big part of this. Who's Steve Bannon fucking loves take away any credit from any of the red pil pioneers. Everyone deserves to take up space. We'll get them all. We'll get them all on this show. We will, we will. They deserve it weller as usual. This was absolutely horrifying and you've ruined my day. Thank you. Good. Yeah, that's the goal. Okay, good, well, and I've got I've got some plugables, like you can

listen to my podcast My Year in Mensa. It's online now. There's only four episodes. It's real quick. I'm on Twitter at Jamie Loftus help Instagram at Jamie car Superstar on tour for the next month or so. Jamie Loftus is innocent dot com. And that's what I have to say. I love when we talk about the worship in the entire world and at the end you're like, so, what's your Twitter handle? This is if you really want to learn more about esoteric hitlersm follow Sophie's Twitter Why underscore,

Sophie Underscore? Why rather subolutely violent? No, gosh, you know, you know what. It has been on Twitter for less than forty eight hours, already getting accused of crimes. Robert gonna be canceled by the time this came up because he blew his nose on the mic no less than four times several hours. I am, I am ill, You're ill, I know, but you know, but I mean now you're just now you're just bragging about it. Follow our podcast

at Bassard's Pot on Instagram. Don't tell anyone to do so, sorry, listeners, what to do for I'm get it together? I know I didn't sleep last night, and the episodes nobody, Well, I know we've had the sleep last night. That does that excuse the nose blowing? My friend having trouble sleeping? Does it excuse the nose blower? No? No, no, Robert, Sophie, Robert, that's going to be okay? It is not. We're always getting mad. And the episode, my friend and go take

a nappy. The episode is over. Go hug a cat, cat. Can you stop nazis cat and encourage the angriest person you know to write fan fiction? That's truly the greatest service you can do. Both of those things are critical. Alright, episodes over. Bye by