0:03

Welcome back to Behind the

0:05

Bastards, the podcast where

0:08

every week we read about a terrible

0:10

person, and this one is part two of the story

0:13

of Savitri Debbie and most

0:15

importantly, today is the episode

0:17

recorded on the tail end of my recorder's battery.

0:19

So we are fucking daredevils

0:22

right now.

0:24

Wow.

0:24

Okay, I like Robert, you're edging.

0:27

Yeah, this is the podcast edging.

0:31

Yes, this is edging. This is what

0:33

it means.

0:33

This.

0:33

I've never been totally cloi, but

0:36

I think that this.

0:37

I am the first person to edge

0:39

more than one hundred thousand people at the same

0:41

time.

0:42

Wow.

0:43

Okay, that was a flex on many levels,

0:45

and I'm just going to wow through

0:47

it.

0:48

Okay.

0:48

So that's what edging's all about.

0:51

Edging is just plowing through it. Wow.

0:54

Wait.

0:55

Edging is when you're like, I'm

0:58

not.

0:58

Going when you bring someone to Yeah, you go to like the edge

1:00

of orgasm, but you keep

1:02

stopping.

1:03

And then your leg that's the joke.

1:05

No, okay, okay,

1:07

Well I've brought up the joke originally,

1:09

and now I'm explaining why I was corrected.

1:11

Yes, which is what all great comedians do.

1:14

So so in October of

1:16

nineteen forty five, Hitler's death

1:19

still fresh on her mind, Savitri

1:21

Devi took part in the Festival of Kali

1:24

at the Kaligat Temple in Calcutta

1:26

Now. Kali is the Hindu deity of destruction,

1:29

a blue skinned goddess, and in traditional depictions,

1:31

she wears a necklace of severed heads, a

1:34

skirt made from severed arms, and

1:36

wields just about every conceivable manner

1:38

of ancient weapon in her many

1:40

arms. You see a lot of times. Yeah, it's

1:42

really cool. Like some of the statues of her are like fucking

1:45

twenty feet tall. Its metal as hell. Yeah.

1:49

So, as the goddess of destruction, Khali

1:52

tends to inspire some pretty powerful feelings.

1:54

As Savitri stared up at the image of her

1:56

goddess, covered in gore and armed with massive

1:58

swords the size of small she belegged

2:01

Khali for her blessing, a blessing of violence

2:03

and destruction against the Allied powers who

2:05

had destroyed her beloved Nazi Germany.

2:08

She left the ceremony convinced that it was now her

2:10

duty to do what she'd failed to do back in

2:13

nineteen thirty nine. She had to

2:15

finally travel to Germany and take part

2:17

in the resistance to the Allies by any

2:19

means necessary. She left her

2:21

twenty cats and the care of a friend and

2:23

left her.

2:24

That's so mean to that friend.

2:26

Oh god, and the cats.

2:29

Yeah, it's pretty wild cats

2:33

behind. This

2:35

is a person who leaves her twenty

2:37

cats behind and the care of a friend to

2:39

go be a Nazi, like a month

2:42

or two after Hitler died, Like months after Hitler

2:44

dies.

2:44

You can get that text here, just like, hey,

2:48

so, like I have to go do a thing.

2:50

Could you look after my cats indefinitely?

2:53

Right?

2:54

No?

2:54

No, could you look after my cats and definitely

2:57

while I go to try to resurrect

2:59

Nazism in nineteen forties

3:01

Germany.

3:02

Parentheses, there's twenty of the cats.

3:04

By the way,

3:09

Oh my god.

3:13

I mean that's all this good stuff, all

3:15

the cruel.

3:16

And horrible things that this woman has done,

3:18

and I don't even know all of them.

3:19

Yet this has to rank like top

3:21

ten. This is bad.

3:24

It's pretty bad. She's a bad Yeah,

3:27

she's not a great friend or person. No,

3:29

but she does finally reach the birthplace of

3:31

Hitlerism, the center of the ideology

3:34

she'd adopted for herself in nineteen

3:36

forty eight. She later wrote in her

3:38

book Gold in the Furnace, that the

3:40

gods had ordained that I should have a glimpse of ruins,

3:43

bitter irony of fate. Germany

3:46

at that point was still largely destroyed and chopped

3:48

up into four pieces by its victorious enemies.

3:51

So Very Tree's writing about this time shows

3:53

a wild ignorance about the extent of

3:55

actual Nazi crimes, because she's so horrified

3:58

at how bad things are in Germany. She

4:00

writes, quote one remembers, I

4:02

say that episode of the Second War, as one beholds

4:04

the ruins of all the German cities, the plight of

4:06

men and women in the overcrowded areas still fit

4:08

to live in, and all the misery, all the bitterness

4:11

consequent of that devilish bombing. Streams

4:13

of fire, tons of phosphorus relentlessly

4:15

poured over his people for five years. These

4:18

were England's thanks to Adolf Hitler for having

4:20

shown mercy to her soldiers in his hour

4:22

of victory. These were the thanks of the United

4:24

States of America for his older orders

4:26

not to shoot the parachutists captured on German

4:28

soil, Which is like, so

4:31

she's framing the British

4:34

evacuations from the

4:36

coast of France as like German

4:38

mercy, rather than incompetence on Hitler's

4:40

behalf, which they actually were, just rank and competence

4:43

on Hitler's behalf. No, he's also talking

4:45

about the mercy of Germany and not killing

4:47

captured Allied paratroopers,

4:51

which was illegal. And in doing

4:54

this, she's ignoring, for one example,

4:56

the Malmedy massacre, in which a Waffan SS

4:59

troop massacred eight for American POWs

5:01

with machine guns. She's also ignoring

5:03

the estimated three point three million Russian POWs

5:06

who died in German custody. But if I wind

5:08

up arguing actual history with a dead

5:10

Nazi will be here all day. So we're just gonna move

5:12

forward from that.

5:13

But fair fair, she whitewashes

5:15

things a bit, is the point. Yeah, you

5:19

a bit, just a bit a scooch.

5:22

Just obviously it's gonna be horrible

5:24

seeing Germany after World War Two,

5:26

because like the bombing campaign over Germany

5:29

was one of the greatest crimes in history. That

5:31

said, they kind of had it coming.

5:37

The tags tonight.

5:40

I mean, fuck man, if

5:43

anyone has ever deserved that, it's fucking

5:45

Nazi Germany.

5:46

I mean they are they do present

5:49

themselves as a pretty clear target.

5:52

Good.

5:53

Yeah, yeah, you can.

5:55

You can say the Allies. Maybe the Allies

5:57

went overboard in some areas, while also being

5:59

like, but what were they supposed to do?

6:02

I think a bit of an overreaction may

6:05

have been like it's historically

6:07

You're like, okay, okay, yeah,

6:10

you gotta do something.

6:11

Yeah, you know, I

6:13

it's it's something to not be

6:16

happy about. But of the list

6:18

of historical crimes I'm going to be outraged

6:20

at, it's lower than, for example,

6:23

the ones committed by Nazi Germany.

6:27

Yeah, sure, sure yeah.

6:30

Now, before visiting Germany, Savitri had

6:33

hung out in Spheeden, where a number of

6:35

Nazis had fled after the war. There

6:37

she met s Finnhead and a Nazi supporting

6:39

explorer and author, and a number of former

6:42

members of the Nazi Party who were hiding out there

6:44

because you know, it was a crime

6:46

to be a Nazi. Now, she told them her mission

6:48

was to deliver a message of hope to the German

6:51

people. Now, since Nazism

6:53

was a bit unpopular after the Second

6:55

World War, she wasn't able to find any

6:57

printers in Sweden to actually print out this

7:00

message of hope. So instead Savitri

7:02

Devi had to write out five hundred leaflets

7:04

by hand. Each featured a swastika,

7:07

and these words quote

7:09

men and women of Germany, in the midst of unspeakable

7:12

riggers and suffering, hold fast to our glorious

7:14

national socialist faith and resist, Defy

7:16

the people, Defy the powers which work to do Nazify

7:19

the German nation and the whole world. Nothing

7:21

can destroy what is built on truth. We

7:23

are pure gold, which can be tested in the furnace.

7:26

The furnace may glow and crackle, nothing can

7:28

destroy us. One day we will rebel and

7:30

triumph again. Hope and wait, Heil

7:33

Hitler. So

7:35

she writes five hundred of these by hand, and

7:38

wearing a sari and swastika earrings,

7:40

Savitri Devi takes a train across

7:43

Germany and tosses out hundred of leaflets

7:46

over the course of about fifteen hours. Attached

7:48

to each was a gift, a small amount of coffee,

7:51

sugar, butter, sardines or cigarettes.

7:53

She considered this journey to be an act of religious

7:56

devotion, describing the leaflets as written

7:58

and throne by the gaw through me. As

8:01

her train crossed from Germany into Belgium,

8:03

she sang a Hindu hymn to Shiva.

8:06

So she

8:08

is a lot of commitment, A lot

8:10

of commitment is going into this.

8:13

Yes, yes, and that is all you

8:15

can say.

8:16

Yeah, that is yeah. Now.

8:19

So she gets inspired by the success of her

8:21

first visit and she plans two more trips through Germany.

8:24

She spent a little bit of time resting in London

8:26

and meeting up with fascists in London, and

8:28

because of all the fascists that are in London, she's

8:31

able to actually find a printer to print up six

8:33

thousand additional leaflets to take to Germany.

8:36

Using a connection to an old friend in France, she

8:38

secured a military permit to visit Germany

8:40

for a longer period of time, claiming not

8:42

falsely that she intended to write a book

8:44

about the nation's post war trials. Her

8:47

second trip into Germany lasted three

8:49

months and she successfully handed out all

8:51

six thousand leaflets. She also met with

8:53

a number of old Nazis. None of

8:55

them were very high ranking. These were like third rate

8:58

Nazis,

8:59

the former POWs.

9:01

And some of these POWs did have legitimate stories

9:04

of Allied brutality that they'd

9:06

faced in captivity because,

9:08

like you know, it was a war. She

9:10

interviewed numerous German citizens, introducing

9:13

herself at the start as a committed Nazi

9:15

to gain their trust. Savitri would then

9:17

talk about her belief that Adolf Hitler was still

9:19

alive somewhere in the world and assure these defeated

9:22

Nazis that surely they were only

9:24

two or three years away from a revival of Nazism

9:27

in Germany.

9:27

Imagine Hitler was your tupac,

9:30

Like that is such a wild that's

9:32

like Hitler's.

9:34

No, he's on an island somewhere. You don't

9:36

understanding.

9:40

Album. Yeah, he's got really

9:43

Yeah, you.

9:44

Don't the

9:46

holograms a decoy? Oh

9:49

yeah, sleek, I mean I

9:51

think we can. I mean that said, we both agree that

9:53

the hologram is a decoy.

9:55

Oh no, the hologram is absolutely

9:57

decoy. Now.

9:59

Uh.

9:59

One one of these conversations

10:02

that Savitri had with the former Wehrmacht soldier

10:05

is worth me reading out here. And I'm going to quote again

10:07

from the book Hitler's priestess quote,

10:10

continuing his narrative to post war conditions

10:12

and occupied Germany, the old fighter's face darkened

10:14

nice people to talk about freedom and justice.

10:16

These damned democrats. They have tied us

10:18

hand and foot so we cannot move. They have muzzled

10:21

us so we can offer no resistance while they plunder

10:23

our country left and right, dismantle and

10:25

carry off our factories piece by piece, cut

10:27

down our forests, take our oil, our iron, our

10:29

steel, all that we have, and into the bargain,

10:32

make people believe that we were to blame for the

10:34

war, These confounded liars. He

10:36

lusted for revenge. He longed for the day

10:38

when the last Allies ran for their lives to escape

10:41

Germany, when Paris would lay in ruins at

10:43

its next German occupation, next time

10:45

he would show neither mercy nor good humor. Savitri

10:47

Devi felt a sense of mounting excitement as his

10:49

mood became ever uglier, and he began to

10:52

describe in a raised voice how he would kill

10:54

his enemies. This was the spirit she sought,

10:56

the rolling eyes of a wounded animal, a war

10:58

god of the stone age for blood,

11:00

barbaric magnificence. It was a perfect

11:02

meeting of minds, the violent, resentful German

11:05

and the Aryan prophetness of revenge. The day

11:07

of reckoning seemed already nearer. Okay,

11:11

h she is a fun trip to Germany.

11:14

I mean, you know, she had

11:16

me at the beginning with the you know, feeling

11:18

plundered and betrayed by the Democratic

11:21

Party.

11:22

Sure, yes, that's a strong I was.

11:24

Not talking about the Democratic Party though.

11:25

I know, I know, I just

11:28

there, Rob Robert,

11:31

I was.

11:31

Away from the mic at that point. What else can I do?

11:34

I can confirm you were not away

11:36

from the mic as I think everyone.

11:39

I believe you're right upon.

11:42

This is revisionists, This is

11:44

absurd.

11:45

This is Savitri Debbie levels of revisionist.

11:48

You you were the Savitri Debbie

11:51

of this podcast.

11:52

That's so mean. At least make me the Elizabeth

11:55

Holmes of this podcast.

11:56

Geez, you have not earned that yet,

11:58

James.

11:58

Make me a fun one,

12:03

Make me a fun bastard. Come on, make

12:05

me a fun tragic one with a pony tail.

12:08

At least.

12:10

Yeah, there's nothing tragic about Savitri.

12:12

No.

12:14

So she returned to France in December of nineteen forty

12:16

eight and immediately began to write a book, Gold

12:18

in the Furnace, about her experiences and her growing

12:20

conception of Hitlerism is something beyond

12:23

what the old National Socialists had really

12:25

believed. In February of nineteen

12:27

forty nine, three chapters into her book, Savitri

12:30

Devi was arrested by French authorities. She

12:32

spent a total of six months. Yeah, because

12:34

you know, it's illegal to be a Nazi for

12:37

good reason.

12:38

I'm like, wait, hold on, unpacked that yes, I

12:40

understand.

12:42

Yeah. She spent a total of six months in pre

12:44

trialed attention and then prison after

12:47

her conviction for spreading Nazi propaganda.

12:49

The time behind bars was good for Savitri, as

12:51

it historically often is for Nazis who

12:53

fancy themselves writers like her Idol

12:56

Adolf Hitler. She used her prison time as

12:58

an excuse to finish her first book.

13:00

She uses it as like a sabbatical, as

13:02

one would is sabbatical.

13:03

Yeah, it's an old Nazi

13:05

story. She also took the opportunity

13:08

to meet even more old Nazis.

13:11

A lot of National Socialists were still imprisoned

13:13

by the British occupation forces, and these

13:15

old fighters were all too happy to talk with Savitri

13:17

Devi. Her dearest friend in the prison

13:20

was a former wardress from the bergen Belsen

13:22

concentration camp, a quote beautiful

13:25

looking woman, a blonde of about my age,

13:27

In Devi's words, she claimed

13:30

that this war criminal had the classical beauty

13:32

of a chieftain's wife in ancient Germany.

13:34

And again, this was a woman who worked at a

13:36

concentration camp voluntarily.

13:38

Yeah.

13:38

The language is so yeah yeah.

13:41

And writes about like how cruel

13:43

this woman's imprisonment was and how nice

13:46

the concentration camps was.

13:47

Like she's trash tsh, She's

13:49

absolutely trash.

13:50

I'm not gonna like spend a lot of time debunking

13:53

her shit like she's garbage.

13:54

Yeah, and it's crazy.

13:56

I mean it's like she is the one that

13:59

is providing all of this information

14:01

too.

14:02

She is the source.

14:03

Yeah, she is the source. And again I

14:05

can't say it enough. She never had

14:07

the kutzpa to actually go to

14:10

Nazi Germany while it existed. I

14:13

think because number one, she

14:15

would have been disappointed because like none of this

14:17

this weird religious shit she attached to it

14:19

was an actual part of Nazism in

14:21

Nazi Germany. Like

14:24

she would have like she would have been like a just

14:28

like she might have gotten knocked up by

14:30

some Nazi, like at the orders of Heinrich

14:32

Kimler, But she wouldn't have She wouldn't

14:34

have been anything special in Nazi Germany. The

14:36

odds are good, Like maybe they would have tried to

14:39

use her to like propagandize

14:41

because she knew a bunch of languages. I don't know. They

14:43

might have like had to try to reach out to India. But probably

14:45

she would have just been another person. I don't

14:47

know. I think that's an interesting aspect of it that isn't emphasized

14:49

enough. She just wasn't willing to actually go to Nazi

14:52

Germany, this place, she claimed, ruled.

14:54

Yeah, ugh, cool,

14:58

cool, so well. In late

15:00

nineteen forty nine, Savitri Devi was again a

15:02

free woman, and she published her first book

15:04

to widespread acclaim from the international Nazi

15:07

community. From this point on, Devi became

15:09

a prolific author, writing up every significant

15:11

event in her life through a mixture of supposedly

15:14

nonfiction works as well as fanciful tales.

15:16

For example, she retold the story of

15:18

her first trip back to Europe and the children's

15:21

fable Long Whiskers and the Two

15:23

Legged Goddess, whose heroine

15:25

is a cat loving Nazi named Heliodora.

15:28

No, that cat can't be real.

15:30

Yeah, yeah, it's a real.

15:32

Book that sounds like random

15:34

words selected from a uh, well.

15:37

It all makes sense, like the Heliodor's

15:39

early a self insert characters

15:42

everything cats, Helio, Savitri

15:45

Devi's obsessed with sun, gods and goddesses.

15:48

God, how embarrassing

15:50

for her.

15:52

What's embarrassing is that Savitri writes

15:54

that her self insert fantasy character

15:56

has quote no human feelings

15:58

in the ordinary sense of the word. She

16:01

had been from her very childhood much too

16:03

profoundly shocked at the behavior of man towards

16:05

animals to have any sympathy for people

16:07

suffering an account of their being Jews.

16:11

Oh, okay, the

16:13

Holocaust?

16:13

Is it bad? Have you seen what happened to cats

16:16

when I was a kid.

16:17

But here's the quite a take.

16:21

That is a wild take to be like, you

16:23

know how we resolve like

16:27

violence towards cats also

16:29

cause violence towards people.

16:31

Yeah, surely all.

16:32

The Holocaust is cool because cats

16:35

have been mistreated? Is watching?

16:38

She just like goes to a whole other place.

16:40

She's like, did you know, like when you're having

16:43

like when you're having an argument with someone who doesn't want

16:45

to have a good faith argument with you, and you're

16:47

just like, well what about this?

16:48

And they're like, well, what about cats? In France. What

16:50

about that? Huh? And you're like, I don't I've

16:53

been stunned like a pokemon. I

16:57

don't know.

16:59

Over in the next few years, Savitri wrote

17:02

and conversed with increasingly aged Nazis

17:04

and gradually refined her theories about the world,

17:06

until in nineteen fifty eight she published

17:09

what would prove to be her magnum opus,

17:11

The Lightning in the Sun. In

17:13

this work, the ideas Savitri had been rattling

17:15

around in her head all finally came

17:17

together. Hitler, she concluded, was

17:20

a man against time, fighting

17:22

to uphold Aryan virtues and blood

17:24

against the corruption of modernity. She placed

17:26

him at the center of her own trinity, one

17:29

that replaced the decadent Christian one she'd grown

17:31

up despising, and her trinity, I

17:34

dare you to make less sense than the trinity

17:36

she picks.

17:37

They're okay, yeah, no.

17:38

I think who do you think? Who do you thinks? First?

17:41

Hitler?

17:43

Well, no, Hitler's the most important, but he's not

17:45

the first.

17:45

Oh he's not the first.

17:46

What though, it goes in order of it goes in order

17:49

of, like time period. So these are all

17:51

historical figures.

17:52

First one is definitely someone

17:55

ancient Greek, no.

17:57

Ancient Egyptian Achan Naughton, the

17:59

first Monotheist, he's generally

18:01

called he was like this, this pharaoh who declared

18:04

himself the Sun God and like tried

18:06

to institute monotheism, and then he died

18:08

and everything he did was burned by the people who came

18:10

after him because they thought he was an asshole. Okay, And

18:13

it's weird because she like hates monotheism

18:15

so much, but he's like one of the people she

18:17

loves. I think just because he's the sun god

18:20

and she's got a.

18:20

Weird say, she'll make an exception.

18:23

She'll give any sun god a pass.

18:24

Basically, it's it's fucking weird.

18:28

Second in her holy Trinity is Genghis

18:30

Kott.

18:31

What does

18:35

she and

18:37

here's why why.

18:40

It It wouldn't make sense.

18:42

I mean, basically history's

18:44

greatest conqueror. He's a great conqueror and

18:46

he's not Christian or Jewish or anything, you

18:48

know. Okay, Yeah,

18:52

So Aka Naton is the Sun and

18:54

the con is the lightning and

18:56

Hitler, she believes, combines the best

18:59

attributes of both the pharaoh's wisdom

19:01

with the strategic mind of Genghis

19:03

Kot. Genghis

19:06

Khan succeeded in invading Russia

19:08

during the winter. So I don't know where

19:10

you're coming from any question.

19:13

This woman is okay.

19:16

One of these two knew how to invade

19:18

Russia and it was not Hitler.

19:20

And then is the third one Hitler or is

19:22

there?

19:23

Yeah? The third is Hitler because he combines the

19:25

best parts of act.

19:27

This a terrible cartoon. She's

19:30

not watched this cartoon wild.

19:32

Yeah, it's so dumb. Yeah.

19:36

So there's probably a couple of reasons

19:38

for her obsession with Acat. For one thing, act

19:40

was deeply revered by the Theosophical

19:43

Society, which you will remember from our uh Our

19:45

episodes on anthroposophy, and

19:48

the Theosophical Society held a lot of ties

19:50

also to the Tuless Society and all the other

19:52

weird little occult groups who'd supported the Nazis

19:55

early on. Acton had

19:57

been a utopian thinker who tried and failed

19:59

to a stay ablish a perfect city. Good

20:02

Rich Clark, Savitri's biographer writes

20:04

that she saw his son worshipping cult as

20:06

quote rejection of all politics

20:08

that promotes man's interest at a cost to

20:10

the beauty and abundance of nature. Which

20:12

is just invented by her.

20:14

Like she's yeah, I feel like maybe

20:16

she's She's like me and Jack Skellington, She's

20:18

just kind of there for the aesthetic and maybe

20:21

doesn't fully understand what

20:23

she is all about the Okay,

20:28

Jack Skellington, Yeah, that is

20:30

okay, Okay, now I'm now, I'm like, I

20:32

understand this mindset.

20:34

If this Holy Trinity doesn't work for you,

20:37

consider embracing the Holy Trinity of

20:39

the products and services that support

20:41

this show.

20:42

Products, services, and god,

20:44

what's the third one?

20:45

Each each is one and a half of the trinity.

20:47

That's how good both products and services are.

20:49

Wow.

20:51

Yeah, they add up to three products.

20:54

Mm hmmm, we're

21:01

back. So God,

21:05

there's so much to get through with this. This woman's

21:07

fucking stupid, stupid, fucking

21:09

beliefs, but they're very important.

21:11

They're stupid, and

21:13

they're also kind.

21:14

Of they're so dumb and complicated.

21:16

They're so dumb and complicated. They

21:21

all make sense. I'll say, like,

21:23

Gal, they don't make sense to

21:25

the fact that they're true, but like, based on her history

21:28

and like the things that she imbibes, they all

21:30

makes I can see what why she came to

21:32

these conclusions, but they're super dumb.

21:35

So the core of her Nazism is a

21:37

love of nature, which was a big part of actual

21:39

original Nazism too. They were very into

21:42

like like natural

21:45

life and ship and like taking care of the land

21:47

and animal welfare. And

21:50

some of her early books that she wrote when

21:53

the Nazis were in power, but before she was

21:55

explicitly a Nazi, like The Impeachment

21:57

of Man, don't explicitly

21:59

reference Nazism. And these books, like The Impeachment

22:02

of Man is still kind of popular among chunks

22:04

of the New Age and environmentalist movements today.

22:07

Savitri Devi's passionate writing on animal

22:09

rights is actually one of the many little roads

22:11

that exist between the green movement and the neo

22:13

Nazi movement, and it's

22:16

really fucked up. Dev herself

22:18

famously railed against the Allied forces

22:21

purging Germany of its fascist organizations,

22:23

saying that quote, you cannot denazifying

22:26

nature. She believed that nature

22:28

was fundamentally nationalists, national socialist.

22:32

And yeah, that's

22:34

a bad take.

22:36

I'm gonna read a quote from the Imagement

22:38

of Man now, and I want to

22:40

remind you there are people who are like environmentalists

22:43

who are not Nazis who read

22:45

this book today and don't really realize

22:47

what's going on. Quote. A

22:50

civilization that makes such a ridiculous

22:52

fuss about alleged war crimes, acts of

22:54

violence against the actual or potential enemies

22:56

of one's cause, and tolerates slaughterhouses

22:58

and vivisection laboratories and circuses

23:01

in the fur industry, infliction and pain upon creatures

23:03

that can never be for or against any cause,

23:05

does not deserve to live out with

23:07

it. Blessed the day it will destroy itself,

23:09

so that a healthy, hard, frank and brave, nature

23:12

loving and truth loving elite of superman with

23:14

a life centered faith, a natural human

23:16

aristocracy is beautiful on its own higher

23:19

level, as the four legged kings of the jungle might

23:21

again rise and rule upon its remains

23:23

forever. So again,

23:27

you see how because of the kind of stuff she's

23:29

written, she's there's there's these bridges. She's

23:31

a big part of why there's bridges between the

23:33

eco movement and the Nazi movement. And

23:35

there very much are on like the hard edge

23:38

of the of the of the eco movement,

23:40

of the anti climate change movement. There

23:42

are Nazis and left wing activists who

23:44

kind of increasingly seem like Nazis

23:47

in a lot of cases. Just not to say that like even

23:49

supporting radical environmental

23:51

action makes you a Nazi, it's to

23:53

say that, like, part of the what Sevitri

23:56

achieved is building in roads

23:58

between these groups

24:00

and the Nazi movement. So now more

24:02

there's a lot of people that get into Nazism

24:05

through environmentalism, and Savitri Devi's

24:07

a part of that. And that's

24:09

kind of the story we're telling today.

24:11

Sazism really knows how to ruin a good thing.

24:14

It wasn't as good at it before Savitri

24:17

dev It's always been a ruiner, but she really

24:19

took it to new levels.

24:20

Oh good, as long as she elevated how bad it

24:22

was.

24:22

Yeah.

24:23

Yeah.

24:24

So the Lightning in the Sun her

24:26

opus, posits a cyclical view

24:28

of history. She believed that time

24:30

began with a Golden Age, in which it

24:32

was dominated by the perfect.

24:34

Area like

24:34

age.

24:36

Like a sun god. Yeah, And

24:39

this degraded slowly into a Silver

24:41

Age and then a Bronze Age. And

24:43

both of these worse ages featured

24:46

increased racial mixing that

24:48

weakened the arians. They also

24:50

featured pernicious Jewish

24:52

influence. The next age

24:55

is the kali Yuga, or dark

24:57

Age, which Savitri believed the world

24:59

had all already entered into. She also

25:01

called this dark age the reign of the Jew.

25:05

No.

25:06

Yeah, the only way out of this dark age was for

25:08

the Man against Time Hitler to gather

25:11

up the terrible weapons of the dark Age

25:13

and use them to bring about the return of the Golden

25:16

Age, presumably through genocidal purging

25:18

of non arians and the establishment of a strict

25:20

racial hierarchy. Her

25:23

book was dedicated quote to the godlike

25:25

individual of our times, the Man against

25:28

Time, the greatest European of all times,

25:30

both sun and lightning. Yeah,

25:35

as a tribute of unfailing loyalty

25:37

and love forever and ever God.

25:39

You know, there's been a lot said about fan culture.

25:42

I don't agree with all of it, but you know, this

25:44

is a real argument against fan culture.

25:47

This is the worst fan culture has ever gone.

25:49

I feel comfortable saying bad.

25:51

This is this is this is this is

25:53

the worst it can go.

25:54

This is bad stand culture.

25:56

It's bad, bad, bad there and even

25:58

the way that she writes

26:00

and structures these things, it kind

26:02

of you can hear that like interest

26:05

in ancient history in there, because it just

26:07

sounds like she's kind of connecting these lines that

26:10

don't actually exist to make it sound like

26:12

to I mean kind of like the way she like arguably

26:15

maybe lifted some of her own

26:17

like self mythologizing from mind comps.

26:19

Like she's just like putting something she wants

26:22

to say into a familiar framework.

26:24

Yeah, it's called syncretisy. Well, this

26:27

is part of syncretism, is like taking

26:29

these other things that you like and sticking

26:31

it onto this thing. And

26:34

this is like the main things

26:36

she goes down in history for doing

26:39

to Nazism. Yeah, now I

26:42

have I have a lot of debates with myself putting this together

26:44

about how much detailed to get into about

26:46

Savitri's theories. There's a really

26:48

dark, very vile world of esoteric

26:51

Hitlerist fantasy based in large part

26:53

off of her writing. And this shit is dangerous.

26:56

It spreads a kind of ideological infection that

26:58

grabs impressionable children, primarily

27:01

in a vice like grip, and turns them into something

27:03

very dangerous. And a lot of people have died from this, and

27:05

I am not going to If you're very knowledgeable

27:08

about this, you will notice there is a lot of

27:10

things I'm leaving out just because like this

27:12

is enough to understand it. And I don't want

27:14

to just like be spreading weird

27:16

Nazi propaganda to an audience.

27:20

As you said, one hundred thousand

27:22

people, the Robert

27:24

that is the most merciful thing you've ever done on this entire

27:26

podcast.

27:27

Yeah, it's just too dangerous

27:29

in my opinion.

27:30

That's good. That's yeah, I agree. And

27:32

I don't even know what it was.

27:34

It's fucking weird, stupid

27:37

shit. But yeah. The last

27:39

thing that's really important to understand about Savitri

27:41

Devi's beliefs is that she decided Hitler

27:43

was what she called well, she was not the only

27:45

person. Other people had the same

27:47

idea, but she's one of the more prominent ones.

27:49

The kali Yuga, the tenth incarnation

27:52

of Vishnu, and she used

27:55

several segments from August kubaz K's

27:57

ill advised book The Young Hitler. I knew Kubazek

27:59

was Hitler's friend when they were like teenager.

28:03

He wrote a terrible book. It's valuable

28:06

because it's the only insight we haven't hit Hitler at

28:08

that period, but he clearly wrote it

28:10

to make money.

28:10

Is it like my friend Dahmer? Is it like

28:13

that? Yeah, it's like that same

28:15

vibe of like this horrible person.

28:17

Yeah, I knew you're like.

28:19

We were buried cool. Yeah, but

28:22

you also get the feeling that Kubazek

28:24

didn't really think he was horrible until he like

28:26

he was writing it initially to be in a

28:28

biography that was published under the Nazi regime

28:31

as like a pro Hitler piece of propaganda, so

28:33

they lost the war, and then he just

28:35

kind of rewrote it so that it could be like, well, now

28:37

I'm just I guess I'm just going to explain my evil

28:40

friend to the allies.

28:41

It was so fucking sinister.

28:43

Oh my god, I mean

28:46

the people. SHARE's a lot of debates to have about

28:48

Kubazek, but most historians

28:51

will agree, well, you have to read Kubazek.

28:53

You have to take him with like a lot

28:55

of salt. Yeah, he's trying to takes

28:59

him with no salt at all. And she pulls several

29:01

passages from his book as

29:03

like evidence that Hitler was the Collie

29:05

Yuga and was like channeling fucking

29:08

Vishnu.

29:12

Yeah, it's this.

29:13

Woman does not understand Shades of

29:15

Gray even remote.

29:16

No, she's just okay.

29:20

She would have written Shades of Gray though if

29:22

she had been around.

29:23

I wish she.

29:24

Had, like against

29:26

the better world.

29:27

Yeah, as with literally every single person

29:29

you've ever told me about on this cursed show,

29:31

Robert, everything would have been better off

29:34

if people had just channeled their horny

29:36

energy into fan fiction instead

29:38

of brutal hate and murder every

29:42

single time.

29:44

Masturbating to fan fiction is the only

29:46

things that will save us from the next Hitler.

29:48

It will absolutely and and and

29:50

that's where the kylo ren stands

29:53

come in.

29:54

If you know an angry person who spends

29:56

too much time writing fan fiction

29:59

for under no circumstances, stop them,

30:01

encourage that behavior.

30:03

Yeah, them doing

30:06

it of.

30:07

I can't even begin to tell you.

30:10

Yeah, it's good.

30:10

Okay, So this is horrible, Okay, horrible, back

30:13

to what you were saying, that was horrible.

30:14

So she like reads Kubazek and she

30:16

becomes convinced that a couple chunks of that book

30:18

are evidence that Hitler is channeling Vishnu,

30:21

is the avatar of Vishnu.

30:24

Yeah, so yeah,

30:26

there's like there are these moments in the book where like, Hitler

30:28

will like that that Kubazak writes very

30:31

like purple Prosy, where

30:33

Hitler will like suddenly like in the middle of a conversation,

30:35

like make some sort of like grand statement about

30:37

the future. And it's like, maybe it's true

30:39

because he was Hitler, Like it wouldn't be the weirdest thing

30:41

of Hitler had always been that guy, right,

30:44

sure. But also Kubazek

30:46

wrote this, well, after Hitler, you

30:48

know, was done with and it's

30:51

entirely possible he was like, people are going to expect

30:53

him to make grand speeches that are like dark

30:55

and crazy about the future because he was

30:57

Hitler, and he threw them in there because

30:59

that's what people like, We don't know, ye.

31:03

Yeah. So decades

31:05

later, Savitri Devi would claim

31:07

that her initial inspiration for the idea

31:09

that Hitler was the calai Yuga had come

31:11

from a conversation she'd had in nineteen

31:14

thirty six with Satyananda Swami,

31:16

the founder and head of the Hindu mission where she'd worked.

31:19

She claims that Satyananda used to say, and I'm

31:21

cluding directly from her writing here,

31:23

Adolf Hitler is the reincarnation of the

31:25

god Vishnu. Vishnu is the aspect

31:28

of the Hindu Trinity who goes to keep things from rushing

31:30

to destruction, to keep them back to go on against

31:32

time. Time is destruction. You have to destroy

31:34

in order to create again. But there are forces that

31:36

try to postpone destruction. And he said

31:38

Hitler was the reincarnation of that force, and

31:40

he was. He was. But it's a nice thing to hear,

31:42

a very refreshing thing to hear from a Hindu sage.

31:45

I told him, I came here because I'm really a pagan,

31:47

a worshiper of the Sun, and I believe in the pagan

31:49

reaction of Emperor Julian. And I came

31:51

to India to get, if possible, a sort of tropical

31:54

equivalent of what we have had in Europe before Christianity.

31:57

And I am not a disciple of any Indian. I'm at aciple

31:59

of Adolf Hitl. He said, good, good,

32:01

Adolf Hitler. He's as much a Hindu as any of

32:03

our Hindus. He's an incarnation of the god

32:05

Vishnu, probably never happened,

32:07

but might have, I mean.

32:10

Particulate.

32:11

Yeah, it is. But one of the

32:13

things that Hindu scholars, who again are generally

32:15

very critical of a lot of all of these claims, if Saveetris,

32:18

will point out some like one

32:20

of the kind of downsides of sort of this

32:22

very open aspect of Hindu

32:25

mythology where it kind of accepts

32:27

new things and new gods and other religions,

32:29

and like it's very open canonically

32:32

in a lot of ways. And so there were a lot

32:34

of Indians who would have who very well might

32:36

have been like, oh, okay, you worship Hitler.

32:38

Sure, he's probably like this, like because

32:41

like they're just looking at a way to understand through their

32:43

religion this thing that matters to you. Like,

32:46

yeah, again, who knows, you'll

32:49

get different opinions on this than ane

32:52

who you go to. So, yeah,

32:55

we don't know what's true. What is important

32:57

is that after Savitri Devi starts writing about

33:00

all this shit, a lot of Nazis come to believe

33:02

it. In fact, the reeling and wounded remaining

33:04

Nazis of the West felt

33:06

like Savitri's occult musings were basically

33:08

a breath of fresh air, and she spent her

33:11

middle and later years traveling around and meeting

33:13

fascists all over the world. In nineteen

33:15

sixty one, she made her first direct connection with the

33:17

English neo Nazis of the British National

33:19

Party or b and P. As

33:22

the war years receded further and further away,

33:24

an international agglomeration of fascist

33:26

inclined folks began to link up and plan together

33:29

for a resurgence of Nazism. Savitri

33:31

Devi was at the center of it. As this paragraph

33:33

from Hitler's Priestess illustrates quote.

33:36

She lost no time in contacting Andrew Fontaine,

33:38

the president of the B and P. A spring

33:41

camp attended by twenty delegates from European nationalist

33:43

groups was held on Fonteane's estate at Narford

33:46

at Narford, Norfolk, in May of nineteen

33:48

sixty one. Those present included Robert

33:50

Lyon, a young leader in the American

33:52

National States Rights Party, which violently opposed

33:55

to segregation in the South, representatives

33:57

from German neo Nazi groups, and Savitri

33:59

Devi. Another key figure was EXSS

34:01

Lieutenant Friedrich Borth born in nineteen

34:03

twenty eight. This blue eyed, blonde Austrian

34:06

Nazi had served in the Luftwaffa and the VAFNSS.

34:08

As a teenage officer, he had commanded an assault

34:11

group and won the Iron Cross. After serving

34:13

a three year jail sentence in post war Vienna,

34:15

he published an SS veteran magazine, Das

34:17

Camrade, which was swiftly suppressed by the Soviet

34:20

authorities. Thereafter, he was connected

34:22

with numerous extreme right wing groups and attended

34:24

the most international fascist gatherings. He

34:26

led the boom Heimertured Yugen until its

34:28

banning in nineteen fifty nine, and then branded the Legion

34:30

Europa, the Austrian section of THEO

34:33

Arts, GEO and Europe, another international

34:36

grouping inspired by the French Oas in Algeria

34:38

and Belgian rancors over the loss of the Congo.

34:41

After a busy schedule of lectures at Narfurt,

34:43

the participants celebrated their Nordic racial identity

34:45

with Folkish songs and tankards of traditional

34:48

ale around the campfire. So you see what's

34:50

happening here, Savitri Devi gets

34:52

pulled into not just neo Nazi

34:54

groups and not just old Nazis. She's meeting

34:56

with the American States Rights Party, she's

34:59

meeting with like the Belgians who are angry

35:01

that they've lost control of the Congo, and she's

35:03

meeting with all these old neo Nazis and the British

35:05

National Party and stuff.

35:07

Would you say at this point she is out

35:10

of her depth in terms of

35:13

I can't believe you did that.

35:14

No, no, I did no,

35:16

no, no, I think she No,

35:20

she's not out of her depth at all. Okay, she

35:23

is. What she is doing is helping

35:25

to draw She's not the only force doing this, but

35:27

she's helping to draw these groups together by

35:29

providing the early Like

35:32

these are all separate groups, like the Cause of desegregation,

35:35

like a lot of racists who don't want America

35:37

to segregated, fought against the Nazis. She

35:39

is a part of all these different, like very

35:42

far right groups, including Nazis,

35:44

coming together and in a lot

35:46

of cases, starting to embrace these weird

35:49

this weird Nazi religion she's she's

35:52

invented as something to unify all of them.

35:54

That's what starts to happen in this period.

35:57

And that's what's really unique about this

35:59

period is like these are all groups like the

36:01

Belgian, like pro Congolese

36:03

control of like the Belgium, Like the Belgians

36:05

weren't pro Nazi, but like these

36:08

Belgians start to get pro Nazi now because

36:10

like they realize there's like this white identity

36:13

thing, but also this weird

36:15

religion that is more attractive

36:17

to them than actual national socialism would

36:19

have been.

36:20

It's interesting, I mean it seems like part of

36:22

her effectiveness lies in like having so

36:25

many little bits of things

36:27

for people to latch onto, so that even if

36:29

you don't agree with the larger ideology, there's

36:31

a worm on the hook that'll get you in.

36:34

That's called syncretism. That's

36:36

what syncretism really is, is like all these

36:38

different things kind of it's like a Katamari

36:40

of ideology with like Nazism at

36:42

the core, but all these things sticking to it, and

36:45

these things get other people stuck to them,

36:48

so like, yeah, that's what we start to see happening

36:51

in the early nineteen sixties. In

36:53

nineteen sixty two, Savitri was in England

36:55

again for a gathering of worldwide Nazis

36:58

that included Bastard pod main

37:00

character George Lincoln

37:03

Rockwell.

37:04

I know this, ALR.

37:12

Things are about to get way. Yeah,

37:15

not great, okay.

37:18

Savitri Devi was one of the signatories

37:20

for the World Union of National Socialists,

37:22

a proposed organization to form a quote

37:24

combat efficient international apparatus

37:27

to facilitate a return to Nazi values

37:30

and the extermination of non whites from Western

37:32

nations. Now ones

37:34

wound up being a bust for several reasons,

37:37

including the fact that Rockwell was almost immediately

37:39

kicked out of the United Kingdom, but

37:41

he and Savitri developed a friendly relationship.

37:44

The leader of the American Nazi Party had been

37:46

on the lookout for a new American fascist

37:48

religion, something esoteric and enchanting

37:50

that he could use to draw in new members

37:52

in a way that national socialist political

37:54

theory and unvarnished racism just

37:57

did not, And he must have thought The Lightning

37:59

in the Sun had some potential for he published

38:01

an abridged version of the book in the National

38:04

Socialist World magazine, The.

38:06

Lightning in the Sun over to the US.

38:08

The Lightning in the Sun, it should be said, could be a YA

38:11

book that like is out

38:13

right now.

38:13

I it might be to be entirely

38:15

honest, and that YA book

38:18

might actually be Nazi propaganda

38:20

hidden his young adult thing.

38:22

Which oh you can't put it past?

38:24

Yeah yeah, no, no, no,

38:26

much like for

38:28

example, the Bad Ace of Bass.

38:32

Wait what Yeah,

38:34

the Ace of Base were Nazis? Did you not hear that?

38:37

No?

38:37

Oh? Adam Todd Brown wrote a great article about this for

38:39

correct, the Base of Aces was a Nazi submarine

38:42

base. If you watch the music video for

38:44

All That She Wants is another baby. The woman who

38:47

just wants another baby to get on welfare is

38:49

like holding a star of David the entire time,

38:51

and there's all these long, lingering shots of it.

38:53

There's a bunch of other stuff. The sign

38:55

that they saw is clearly a swastika if you

38:57

listen to the lyrics, it's fucked up.

39:00

Wow.

39:01

But we have to blaze past that right now.

39:03

I found a book called Lightning on

39:05

the Sun.

39:08

That's pretty close. It's about a Nazi

39:10

shit.

39:10

It's about a guy named Glenn Schmidt. Win's

39:12

a store, Yeah, Glenn.

39:14

Schmidt, who might

39:16

be Nazi.

39:17

A moon god.

39:19

Yep, that's some Nazi shit there. It is or

39:22

anti Nazi, since Nazi Savitri was

39:24

all about the sun God, it could be either. Really wow.

39:27

So Savitri Devi would

39:29

go on to spend the bulk of her remaining years in

39:31

India, traveling irregularly when the

39:33

demands of her national socialist beliefs took

39:35

her around the world. She remained

39:37

convinced all her life that Hitler would return,

39:39

either in a new incarnation or after revealing

39:42

that he had somehow survived the war and lead

39:44

a resurgent Nazis into global victory.

39:46

She retired in nineteen seventy,

39:49

living for a time at the home of her friend Francois

39:51

Dior in England. That's

39:54

the Dior you're thinking of? Really, yeah,

39:57

it's well, it's the it's like the daughter I think

39:59

of the woman who created the line. Yeah,

40:01

mean granddaughter.

40:02

Oh good?

40:03

She was a big Nazi backer before the war.

40:05

Yeah wow, okay, learning

40:08

more? I love fashion knowledge.

40:11

Savitri Devi was kicked out of Door's

40:14

house eventually for her twin habits of

40:16

refusing to bathe ever and chewing on

40:18

garlic constantly.

40:19

Can we disgusting?

40:22

Come on girl?

40:27

Okay, that's what gets the reaction, Sophie,

40:30

because she's terrible.

40:35

I was chewing on garlic a lot over the summer.

40:37

It helps preserve your voice. I don't think

40:39

that's why she was doing it.

40:40

Does Do

40:42

we have to bathe while chewing on garlic?

40:45

Do we know what happened

40:47

to her cats?

40:48

Oh?

40:49

Solid question, Jamie.

40:50

Well, she had numerous pet

40:52

cats.

40:53

What happened to those twenty cats she left

40:55

to Nazi Germany with?

40:57

She I was just about to say. She spent most

40:59

of her remaining years living alone in India

41:01

with dozens, sometimes of pet cats.

41:03

And at least one cobra. She always

41:05

had a fuck load of cats. Yeah, this

41:07

woman couldn't get

41:09

away from her cats. One thing about

41:11

her.

41:12

You wou think that cats live long enough that the original

41:14

twenty cats she left behind would still be alive.

41:16

But then I think a lot of them were. I think a

41:18

lot of them weren't.

41:19

Oh, she was taking them with.

41:20

I don't know precisely,

41:22

but my assumption, based on everything I know Savitri

41:24

Devi, is that she would have absolutely tried

41:27

to get back her original cats if it was possible.

41:29

She was very into cats. Yeah,

41:33

she would not have abandoned the cats. I don't think

41:35

she was real consistent

41:37

about that part. Yeah.

41:41

As she grew older, Devi became more and more

41:43

convinced that the United States represented

41:45

the most fertile ground for the growth of the esoteric

41:48

Nazi religions he had spent her life helping

41:50

to construct. In nineteen eighty

41:52

two, she decided to travel to the United States

41:54

to do what she could do to help American Nazism

41:57

break out as a national force. She

41:59

died on the way while staying at a friend's

42:02

house in Great Britain. Her ashes,

42:04

however, finally made it across the pond to

42:06

the United States of America, and American

42:08

Nazis laid her to rest by sprinkling

42:10

her on their hero's grave, George

42:12

Lincoln Rockwell. So Rockwell and Savitri

42:15

Devi's share a grave.

42:16

Yeah, wow, Okay,

42:19

So she's like, okay.

42:20

Yeah, you know who doesn't share a grave with

42:22

George Lincoln Rockwell and Savitri Devi.

42:24

The products and services were about to hawk.

42:28

Yes, for now, you never

42:30

know.

42:30

For now, for now, we're

42:39

back.

42:39

We're back.

42:40

So Savitri Devi's dead.

42:43

Good finally, But this

42:45

is not the end for her, not

42:48

really, because starting in the late nineteen seventies,

42:50

a famous Holocaust and iron publisher,

42:52

Ernst Zundel, had found her old work

42:55

and started pushing it back into circulation. Now,

42:57

but it only developed a limited audience in

42:59

those early post war days. But now,

43:01

nearly twenty years later, people

43:04

were ready for esoteric hitlersm the

43:06

book Hitler's Priestess notes. By the late

43:08

nineteen seventies, the historical experience

43:11

of the Third Reich was quickly receding into

43:13

the past, as popular literature and

43:15

films ably demonstrated Nazism

43:17

was becoming something mythical, even fantastic

43:19

and also plastic that could be molded

43:22

and combined with novel associations

43:25

lyrics. By publishing the

43:27

work of Savitri Devi, Zundel aimed

43:30

to create a new coltic interest in Hitler,

43:32

linking him to ancient mysteries, the world

43:34

of nature, and powerful religious symbols drawn

43:36

from the orients she was just saying there by saying it's plastic,

43:39

because he's pointing out we have all these weird

43:41

movies now about like Nazis on the Moon.

43:43

You know, you've got these fanciful stories like Wolfenstein,

43:45

these games about like Nazi, like

43:47

all of this, this this fictional

43:51

sort of world that's been built up, like mythology

43:53

built up around the Nazis, usually

43:55

not by people who are actual Nazis, and a lot

43:57

of cases just by people who are like, well, they're the

43:59

worst people ever, so I can make them the bad

44:01

guys. That's an easy go for a bad guy. Sure,

44:05

But Zundel is like, this

44:07

is a fucking opportunity because kids are growing

44:10

up reading about these cool, evil,

44:12

bad guy Nazis. And for the same

44:14

reason that kids loved dressing up as Imperial Stormtroopers

44:17

from Star Wars, kids get interested

44:19

in the Nazis from this, and he sees Savitri

44:21

Devi's work as like, I can fucking get a shitload

44:24

of kids interested in Nazism by pushing this stuff

44:26

back out there. Oh okay, and

44:28

he's fucking right, yeah

44:30

now, yeah yeah.

44:33

Another important architect of

44:35

this whole thing, and we're not going to

44:37

get into enough, but I will do an episode on in the future

44:40

is a Chilean Nazi named Miguel Serrano.

44:43

And it's from Miguel that we actually get the term

44:46

esoteric hitlersm Serano and Devi

44:48

seem to have reached essentially the same conclusion

44:50

about Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu through

44:53

slightly different intellectual roots. Miguel

44:56

was a student of Young and a mythrist

44:58

which we just don't have enough time to get into,

45:00

and a member of the day once again,

45:03

the Theosophical Society. He

45:06

was also an early Avid Western

45:08

practitioner of yoga. Miguel

45:11

corresponded with dev during her lifetime.

45:13

Before he died in two thousand and nine. He gave interviews

45:16

to Nazi magazines with names like Black

45:18

Sun, where he said this about Savitri

45:20

Devi. Quote, Savitri

45:22

Devi is the greatest warrior after Adolf Hitler,

45:25

Rudolph Hess and Joseph Gebels. Moreover,

45:27

she was the first to discover the ancient and spiritual

45:30

power behind Hitlerism. She envisioned

45:32

a new religion and inaugurated a sanctuary

45:34

for Hitler in India. She was, as I myself

45:37

am anti Christian. She initiated

45:39

completely on her own all that I have developed

45:41

up until now. It is not mere coincidence

45:44

that the Spanish Catholics published an attack against

45:46

Savitri Devi, Otto Ron and me.

45:48

It was very late in her life when we started to write

45:50

each other. We just missed each other in Europe by

45:52

one week. I arrived a few days after her

45:54

death. I think that Savitri Devi will be the

45:56

greatest sister of all the priests of esoteric

45:59

hitlersmasts of Wotan.

46:01

And he's like wearing a male feminist T shirt

46:03

while he does this. He's like, I don't hate women.

46:06

I like this.

46:07

I like the worst woman I've ever heard

46:09

of love.

46:10

He would not have worn him, I will say that

46:13

much. But you're getting

46:15

the spirit of the guy, right, Yeah, he's a

46:17

real gigantic piece of shit. We're not

46:19

getting into it up, but he gives her credit as

46:21

like the real motive force

46:23

behind the religion that Hitlerism

46:26

becomes, even though he's also

46:28

like kind of independently coming to a lot of the same conclusions

46:30

and even earlier in some cases. Like

46:33

she's the popularizer in a lot of way. She

46:35

has a big role in that. And

46:38

yeah, he's we'll talk about him more later

46:41

today. Savitri Devi's fingerprints

46:43

can be found all over the radical and murderous

46:46

chunks of the fascist right. The Fair

46:48

Creek Division an accelerationist neo

46:50

Nazi organization that's a very

46:53

similar to Adam Woffen Division, similar

46:55

enough to talk about for the purposes of this podcast.

46:58

Both of them seek to bring about the isolent destruction

47:00

of the current world order through to stabilizing attacks.

47:03

The Fair Creek Division directly cites dev

47:05

as an inspiration. The group's gab

47:08

bio includes this dev quote,

47:10

creation and destruction are one to the eyes

47:12

of one who can see beauty. Savitri's

47:16

beliefs went on to have a big influence on Adam

47:18

Waffen too and the members of the base who

47:20

weren't FBI agents, anti fascists

47:22

or journalists, which is basically those seven guys

47:24

who got arrested.

47:26

That's familiar.

47:27

Yeah, yeah, in

47:30

these groups like the Base,

47:32

that we can see some hint of what makes Savitri

47:34

dev so dangerous. The

47:37

leader of the Michigan Cell of Adam Waffen

47:39

Division, who was docked a few days before

47:41

I wrote this episode, reached his

47:44

position in charge of the Michigan Cell when

47:46

he was fifteen years old. The

47:48

three members of the Base who were arrested in Georgia

47:51

in the process of trying to spark a race war were

47:53

ages nineteen, twenty

47:55

one, and twenty five, respectively.

47:58

These acceleration esoteric

48:00

Hitlerists tend to be young, and

48:03

there is disagreement on the average age

48:05

at which people enter cults, but the work

48:07

of doctor John G. Clark, a psych professor

48:09

at Harvard who surveyed five hundred current and former

48:12

cult members, suggests an average age

48:14

of nineteen and a half for new cult members.

48:17

He also points out that most new cult

48:19

members are male. This is because

48:21

young men are particularly vulnerable to being enraptured

48:23

by ideologies that offer them a sense of purpose

48:26

and belonging. It's one of the reasons the

48:28

same age group is the ideal recruitment population

48:30

for soldiers, but esoteric hitlersm

48:33

doesn't just suck these kids in because they're young.

48:35

And to explain this new part, I'm going to

48:37

have to talk a little bit about techism,

48:40

and I am very sorry.

48:42

No, do.

48:45

We absolutely, absolutely,

48:47

yeah, we.

48:48

Really Dochism

48:51

that is a joking parody of religion

48:53

invented by the shit posters four chan

48:55

and eight chan during gamer Gate. It's very

48:57

dumb and talking about it makes me feel very

49:00

silly. But the short of it is keechism

49:02

started out, and for probably most people still

49:04

is a dumb gag and a way for them to make

49:07

fun of members of minority groups by pretending

49:09

to be members of a victimized religion

49:11

because they think that's funny. The whole

49:13

thing focuses around shit posting and spreading

49:15

memes. But as the Trump campaign ramped up

49:17

and this weird internet movement started to have an impact

49:20

on the real world, some, particularly

49:22

unhinged Anon, started to take keechism

49:24

more seriously, while others just thought

49:27

the joke kept getting funnier and spread it around.

49:29

For that reason, Lawrence

49:31

Murray, a writer for the fascist podcast

49:33

The Right Stuff, was probably

49:35

the first person to purposefully meld keechism

49:38

with Savitri Devi's philosophy

49:40

into something he called esoteric

49:42

keechism. He started shitting out

49:44

memes that replaced Hitler with Pepe as an avatar

49:47

of Vishnu, stuff like that It's very dumb.

49:49

When interviewed, Murray claims he was only

49:52

half joking with the whole idea, but

49:54

like any joke of the sort on the Internet, it

49:56

spread like wildfire, and a certain chunk of

49:58

the people who saw it took it seriously, which

50:01

led them to the work of more serious fascist

50:03

thinkers, people like Savitri Devi,

50:06

and led some of them into accelerationist

50:08

groups like Adam Woffen and the Bass.

50:11

It is not a coincidence that andders Brevic,

50:13

the Utoya, Norway shooter who massacred

50:15

dozens of children at a left wing summer camp,

50:18

directly praised Hindu nationalism

50:20

in his manifesto. It is also not

50:22

a total coincidence that both anders Brevik

50:24

and Brenton Tarrant, the christ shooter, claimed

50:27

to be Knights Templar, members of a

50:29

Christian order fighting against Muslims,

50:31

basically, and it is not a

50:33

coincidence that the Urban Dictionary

50:36

page for Keekism, written by a

50:38

gamer gator, describes it as a

50:40

red pilled ideology originating from

50:42

the true Knights templar. And again,

50:45

all of this is joking. All of this is

50:48

not joking. It's both at once. It's

50:50

the contradiction of modern fucking

50:52

yeah.

50:52

Well that's yeah. The greatest

50:55

trick the Devil ever played was irony poisoning,

50:58

because you just can't.

50:59

Yeah, you can't argue

51:01

with that. And yeah,

51:04

some people will say, and it's possible. There

51:06

is are some central figures behind

51:09

this spread of syncretism, like sinister

51:11

individuals who have like kind of put all

51:13

this together purposefully, or at least put pieces

51:15

of it together purposefully.

51:17

Yea.

51:17

But I tend to be of the

51:19

belief that most, if not all, of

51:21

it is amorphous. In Acephalis, it happened

51:24

without a head, without much intention on

51:26

its own. There may have been bits of intention here and there,

51:28

like esoteric techism, but a lot

51:30

of it just happened because

51:32

of the sort of structure Savitri Devi

51:35

built. It's just

51:37

kind of the natural result of the amorphous and

51:39

sticky nature of the faith that she created.

51:42

If Hindu mythology and ancient Egyptian

51:44

history can be folded in with Adolf Hitler

51:46

and the Arian myth. Why can't Cechism

51:48

wind up in there too? Why can't the Knights

51:50

Templar fit in there too? All these

51:53

weird little subcultures you've got, Norse mythology,

51:55

chan culture, gamer culture, new age,

51:57

spiritualism, environmentalism, even veganism.

52:00

All these things appeal heavily to

52:02

a lot of young people. And the more little

52:05

bridges that you can build between these different

52:07

communities and actual extermination

52:09

is Nazi beliefs, the more young men

52:11

will kind of accidentally fall

52:14

in and get caught in this net. It's

52:16

like a tunnel spider's web. And

52:18

at the end, the great innovations

52:20

have each read, every brought like that's that's

52:22

the innovation she brought to Nazism. She

52:24

took what was a dead political system

52:27

that couldn't spread outside of Germany, not really,

52:29

and turned it into a living, syncretic religion,

52:32

something with vitality, something capable

52:35

of mutating and absorbing and staying

52:37

relevant, and something capable of inspiring

52:39

young men to commit murder. And the memory of Adolf

52:42

Hitler nearly a century after his.

52:44

Death, Could you give me that word one more time.

52:46

Of this syncretism.

52:48

Syncretism, Yeah, I mean it's and

52:51

if you are able to, you know, find

52:53

a way to get a group

52:55

of people who are looking for something

52:58

to believe in, who are maybe a little bit

53:00

okay, you know what, You're right?

53:02

I was, but

53:05

yeah, just like finding a.

53:06

Group of vulnerable, vulnerable

53:08

people ideologically that need something to believe

53:11

in and put a delicious chocolate

53:13

coating on the outside of it.

53:16

It seems to it works. It works.

53:22

How do you feel about Savitri? You a

53:24

fan? You gotta check out her books.

53:26

I can't say I'm

53:28

a fan she. I don't think that we would.

53:31

I don't think we would have been friends in junior high

53:33

and I don't think we would have been friends

53:36

now. I yeah, no,

53:38

I mean I truly. And it is interesting that we

53:40

don't talk about her. I

53:42

had no idea this person existed.

53:45

I why do you think

53:47

that is? There's a degree to there's a degree

53:49

to which I think a lot of people who know about

53:51

her and are like researchers didn't really

53:54

want to because there's this worry about

53:56

making a bigger deal of it than it is. Sure,

53:58

it's kind of like I didn't really write about eight

54:00

Chan much until the christ Churt shooting, when

54:02

it was like, okay, well now we got to the

54:05

base. Now it's gotten to those points, like all right,

54:07

we got to fucking talk about Savitri dev Debi

54:10

and esoteric hitlersm Like, we got to

54:13

get some of this out there. I

54:16

do think it's also just like not super

54:18

well known. I think she was seen like

54:20

really, to be entirely honest, I

54:23

think most of her efforts would have looked like a failure

54:25

to most observers. Observers

54:27

up until maybe

54:29

at the earliest decade ago. Okay,

54:32

you know, people who were really aware

54:34

of what was going on would have known earlier, but

54:36

most people, even pretty well informed

54:38

people, would have been like, well, this is kind of a dead end

54:41

and just something to like make fun of up until

54:44

we start to the internet. Really

54:46

is what provides this with the last

54:48

ingredient it needs to take on.

54:50

Oh yeah, she like pioneered the red pill

54:52

mentality, like it's yeah, yeah,

54:55

she was a.

54:55

Big part of that. Yeah, and we're

54:57

not like Julius Evola is a big part of this.

54:59

Who Steve Bannon fucking loves Let's

55:02

me not let me.

55:02

Not take any credit from any

55:04

of the Red pil Pioneers.

55:06

Everyone deserves to take up space.

55:09

We'll get them all. We'll get them all on the show.

55:11

We will, we will. They deserve it. Mm

55:14

hmm, well serve it well,

55:17

Robert as usual. This was absolutely horrifying

55:19

and you've ruined my day. Thank you?

55:22

Good? Yeah, that's the goal.

55:23

Okay, good,

55:25

And.

55:28

I've got I've got some pluggables, like you can listen

55:30

to my podcast, My Year in Mensa. It's

55:33

online now, there's only four episodes. It's real

55:35

quick. I'm on Twitter at

55:38

Jamie Loftus help Instagram

55:40

at Jamie car Superstar on

55:42

tour for the next month or so. Jamie

55:44

Loftus is innocent dot com.

55:46

And that's what I have to say. I

55:49

love when we talk about the warship in the entire world

55:51

and at the end you're like, so, what's your Twitter

55:53

handle?

55:54

This is Twitter? If

55:58

you really want to learn more about esotery,

56:01

Hitler is follow Sophie's Twitter.

56:04

Why underscore, Sophie underscore?

56:06

Why Rob absolutely

56:09

violent?

56:10

Cannot shut make

56:12

me fire you no?

56:15

You know, Hitler, you know what?

56:17

Have been on Twitter for less than

56:20

forty eight hours already getting accused

56:22

of crimes. Robert's

56:25

gonna be canceled by the time this came out because he blew

56:27

his nose on the mic no less than four times

56:30

hours.

56:31

I am, I am ill, You're

56:34

ill.

56:34

I know, but you know, but I mean now you're just

56:37

now you're just bragging about it.

56:40

Follow our podcast at

56:42

Bessard's pod on Instagram.

56:44

Don't tell me what to do, so oh sorry,

56:47

listeners, what to do.

56:49

For get it together?

56:51

I know I didn't sleep last

56:54

night and the.

56:54

Episodes nobody I

57:00

know we've had the Nazism sleep

57:03

last night? That does that excuse the nose

57:05

blowing? My friend having trouble sleeping?

57:07

Does it excuse the nose blowing? No?

57:09

No, No, Robert,

57:12

Sophie, Robert, that's going to be okay.

57:15

It is not.

57:17

We're always getting mad. And the episode my friend

57:19

and go take a nap.

57:20

Yeah, the episode is over. Yay,

57:23

Go hug a cat or dog?

57:26

Cats? Can you stop Nazis cat

57:30

and encourage the angriest person you know

57:32

to write fan fiction.

57:34

That's truly the greatest service you can do.

57:35

Both of those things are critical.

57:38

All right, Episode's over, Bye bye,