Author Topic: Fascism and the New Age  (Read 33222 times)

Offline educatedindian

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Fascism and the New Age
« on: May 03, 2005, 09:42:48 pm »
An entry on a film. I don't suppose anyone has seen it or knows about this woman Devi/Portas?

http://www.spitfirelist.com/f172.html
FTR-172 Fascism and the New Age: The Life and Times of Savitri Devi (Two 30-minute segments) $8.50
One of the tactics of contemporary fascist and Nazi groups is the seduction, infiltration and co-option of groups and philosophies that are not, in and of themselves, fascist. The New Age and Green movements are among the targets of contemporary Nazi infiltration and elements of each have been successfully seduced. A Nazi mystic and ideologue named Savitri Devi (nee Maximiani Portas) is an icon to contemporary Nazi elements and her philosophy overlaps, and has been accepted by, certain elements of both Green and New Age philosophy. This broadcast sets forth both the history and the philosophy of Savitri Devi....
Devi was connected to both American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell and William Pierce, the leader of the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries. (For more on Pierce see FTR-90.) Most of the second half of the program consists of analysis of the confluence between Devies Nazi occultism and elements of New Age and "Deep Ecology" philosophies. Sharing a misanthropic, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, atavistic, irrationalist orientation that views animals as equal or superior to homo sapiens, Devi's fascism has led to her acceptance in certain New Age and Green circles. The Rosicrucians, for example, have published one of her titles. (See also RFA #'s 3 and 4, Miscellaneous Archive Shows M7, M14-17, M19, M21, M53, M58 and FTR #'s 9, 10, 11, 12, 27, 60, 64, 65, 70-72, 81, 87, 92, 97.) (Recorded on 10/3/99.)

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2005, 10:04:00 pm »
Spitfirelist seems to be dedicated to a lot of conspiracy beliefs by the likes of Mae Brussell, but you can find the Nuage/Nazi connection elsewhere.

"Esoteric Hitlerism" as pushed by Devi and Chilean fascist Miguel Serrano.

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Nazi+mysticism&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1
"With the fall of the Third Reich, Esoteric Hitlerism took off as Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, was now able to be deified. Savitri Devi was the first major exponent of post-war Esoteric Hitlerism (see her Hitlerian Esotericism and the Tradition (http://library.flawlesslogic.com/souvenirs_10a.htm)), and connected Hitler's Aryan ideology to that of the pro-independence Indians (specifically Hindus) such as Subhas Chandra Bose. For her, the swastika was an especially important symbol, as it symbolized the Aryan unity amongst the Hindus and Germans (and was also a symbol of good fortune for the Tibetans). Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history, and called Hitler an avatar of Vishnu....
Miguel Serrano
The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat. He wrote both The Golden Ribbon--Esoteric Hitlerism and Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar.
He believed that Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews) in a last battle and inaugurating a Fourth Reich....
Mysticism in modern Neo-Nazism
Modern Neo-Nazism has links to ??satrú, and the black metal scene. Mystic influences often appear in modern Nazi music, particularly references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus. On the other hand, many northern European polytheist organisations and groups have stated clearly that Neo-Nazism and its ??satrú connections are certainly not to be considered what is common or 'mainstream' with their adherents. Organisations such as the Theods, the ??satrúarfélagid, and the Northvegr groups are particularly notable in their disavowal of any connections.

Modern Conspiracy Theories
Modern variations of the theory involve Hitler having escaped to the Antarctic, where he joined with a subterranean dinosauroid master race, with whom he now travels inside of UFOs underground, generally beneath the South pole or throughout the center of the hollow earth, but sometimes to a Nazi moon base as well. These Reptilian companions, sometimes seen to be Hyperboreans, are said to possess mighty "Vril" rods capable of easily defeating even modern armies."

Wonder if this is part of what influenced Ickes?

Offline debbieredbear

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2005, 10:26:32 pm »
I have always felt the nuage people to be racist. They cannot believe that Indians could have made the pyramids in Mexicao and Central America. They think that it is impossible that Indians could have drawn lines in the Andes Mountains. They then make up crap about how Aliens, MU, Atlantis ect must have taught Indians these things. Grumble grumble. I must be ranky because I am getting over the flu.

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2005, 10:28:48 pm »
Quote
I don't suppose anyone has seen it or knows about this woman Devi/Portas?


I've heard about her, but haven't yet read the only serious work on her that I'm aware of: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 'Hitler's Priestess'. This reviewer thinks the author has exaggerated her importance:

Quote
Hitler's Priestess should be seen as a natural progression from Goodrick-Clarke's prior book The Occult Roots of Nazism (New York, 1994), which similarly sought out the origins of Nazism in obscure occult sects. The only difference is that Goodrick-Clarke's targets are no longer wizened old Wilhelmine sages, but marginal environmentalist groups. While radical and often inflammatory, they are neither the precursors nor the successors to Nazism the author believes them to be. And like Occult Roots, Hitler's Priestess lacks proof of the influence his ideologue had on anyone. In fact, given that Devi's works came out through her husband's own publishing house, one can only assume that very few read her works at all. While she seems to have been well connected, whether she was anything more than a gadfly remains to be proven.


http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_200112/ai_n9011306

In this vein, I'd suggest reading a pair of essays by Biehl and Staudenmaier: 'Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience'. (AK Press 1995, ISBN 1-873176-73-2)

I don't think the authors mention Devi/Portas, but
Quote
...in order to preserve the liberatory aspects of ecology, the authors, as social ecologists, explore the German experience of fascism and derive from it historical lessons about the political use of ecology - a problem that is of great relevance to ecology movements today.


Unlike the Canadian Journal of History reviewer above, Biehl and Staudenmaier think that some 'marginal environmental groups' *are* successors to Nazism in important respects.

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2005, 11:14:02 pm »
Quote
Wonder if this is part of what influenced Ickes?


I think that's quite likely: David Icke came to the attention of British anti-fascists when he quoted chunks of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', a poisonous forgery purporting to expose a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, in his book 'The Robots' Rebellion'. He blamed Jews for antisemitism in the same book, and declared that 'the truth' about the Holocaust had yet to be revealed. The British neo-nazi group Combat 18 encouraged its supporters to go and see Icke on the strength of this book. Icke believes that this is evidence of a giant conspiracy to discredit him.

He read about the Protocols in 'Behold A Pale Horse', written by another nuckin' futbar, Milton William Cooper, who claimed to have found the plans for world domination left in a government-surplus photocopier (I bet Harley's kicking himself for not thinking of that story first). Cooper died in a police shoot-out at his home a few years ago.
« Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 12:00:00 am by Barnaby_McEwan »

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2005, 02:26:26 pm »
In the US, Behold a Pale Horse is very popular among both the militia/"patriot" movement, and fundamentalists/End Times believers.

The two people Devi is mentioned having ties to, George Rockwell and William Pierce, are very big names in the US Far Right. Rockwell founded the US Nazi Party after WWII. Pierce's National Alliance is probably the biggest US fascist group. And the Turner Diaries are what influenced Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

A search of "Savitra Devi" "New Age" gives you 600 hits, though many are links examining the ties or selling Goodrich-Clarke's book. Found Devi quoted lovingly at an Asatru site, http://www.vaidilute.com/asatru.html
and at a neo-Nazi site book review
http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/2005/022105letters.htm
:Is 'Merrie England' ready for armed revolt?
The Uprising by Colin Jordan.
Published by NS Publications, 2004
"Jordan went on to found the White Defence League, which merged with other organisations into the first incarnation of the British National Party. In 1962, he founded the National Socialist Movement, and that same year was instrumental in setting up the World Union of National Socialists, along with George Lincoln Rockwell, Savitri Devi, John Tyndall, and others."

And quoted at a conspiracy site by "the Big Underground Nazi" when discussing why he hates Jews.
http://www.voxfux.com/archives/00000085.htm

One UFO site will put you in contact with a disciple of Devi's, Ernst Zundel, a neo Nazi imprisoned in Canada who wrote about "Nazi flying saucers."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufonet/message/15373

And I think you posted this link a while back, the Rainbow Swastika, when talking about Ickes and Alice Bailey.
http://texasturkey.us/backup/na_nazism.html


Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2005, 05:00:51 pm »
I think we can agree that new age thinking is riddled with authoritarianism, antisemitism, racism, contempt for the suffering of others and so on, all of which have obvious parallels in fascism. Given that, I think there are bound to be lots of people who are attracted to both ideologies. I think what's going on with neo-fascists' rediscovery of people like Savitri Devi is that they're latching onto a 'colourful' figure and crediting her with more influence than she really had. It was Rockwell and Pierce, not Devi, who led influential and unfortunately sometimes effective neo-nazi groups. She may have been 'connected' with them, but what evidence is there that she influenced them? Can we find new age/occultist ideas in their writings or recorded speeches? Did they tell their followers to study astrology or yoga, for example?

I think Hannah Newman's documentation of nuage antisemitism is valuable, but her overall view of the phenomenon is far too conspiratorial for my liking. She also uncritically quotes completely unreliable authors like Trevor Ravenscroft when writing about Hitler's supposed occult career. I think she'd benefit from reading the appendix to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 'The Occult Roots of Nazism', which surveys postwar books on the Nazis and the occult and lays bare the abysmal scholarship and outright invention of some of them.

Also I don't think her portrait of Nazism as an 'occult-based' movement is very realistic. Fiirstly most Nazis saw themselves as good Christians, leadership included. Secondly it makes the Nazi leadership sound much more cohesive than it really was. I wish I had the time to properly study this, but my limited reading to date leads to the opinion that the Nazi regime was run on all levels like a gangster empire, all leaders feuding with each other and jockeying for favour with the big boss.

Some Nazi leaders, like Himmler, Hess, and Darré, were very interested in occultism but others were revolted by it, seeing it as a 'Jewish' spiritual perversion.

I agree with you about Evola's defenders. I think he was probably a pretty creepy guy. Here are a couple of pages on yet another book I haven't had time to read:

http://www.aucegypt.edu/faculty/sedgwick/trad/book.htm

http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/atmw.htm

The other major Western figure who espoused Traditionalism is our old friend Mircea Eliade. He was Romanian, and was an enthusiastic member of Romania's home-grown fascist movement before WWII:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:sDy7LttdUOoJ:users.ox.ac.uk/~sjoh0748/Malaise.htm+eliade+sympathy+fascination+iron+guard&hl=en

(Later: I've changed a mistake: 'good Catholics' now reads 'good Christians')
« Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 12:00:00 am by Barnaby_McEwan »

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2005, 03:38:33 pm »
If you look at the Stormfront site you'll see a long debate between neo Nazis who know quite a bit about yoga, reincarnation, "magick", hermeticism, and ironically, the Kaballah.

Another very elaborate discussion of Nuage/hermetic/pagan ideas is at
http://www.whiterevolution.com/archives/200308

Also found someone complaining on Liberty Forum about too many Nuagers coming on there. (Liberty Forum/Lobby is a clearinghouse for all kinds Far Right types.) http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_members&Number=293177440&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&part=11

In a weird way we might even be grateful they spend their time on silly debates instead of far worse things.

Serrano clearly did use quite a few Nuage ideas, and he's a pretty big figure in his country's fascist movement. Evola's works are all over the place listed as influential on neo Nazis.

Found this in a review of a book on Pierce.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0759609330/qid=/sr=/ref=cm_lm_asin/002-3969928-9400846?v=glance
"Griffin not only conducts interviews with Dr. Pierce, he makes sure to read books that have influenced Pierce throughout his life. Griffin provides exegesis on several books and prominent figures of the movement. George Shaw's Man and Superman, Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf, Revilo Oliver, Savitri Devi, George Lincoln Rockwell and William Gayley Simpson are all examined in minute detail by Griffin."
And the book has an entire chapter on Pierce's belief in "cosmotheism."

I'm not trying to tie Nuage to the fascism at its high tide, since the Nuage didn't start until 30 years later. And I realize neo Nazis are more often influenced by ideas like Christian Identity, at least in the US. I'm more interested in seeing how common it is for Nuagers to look the other way when they endorse writers on the Far Right like Blavatasky, Eliade, Devi, and Evola.


Offline educatedindian

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2005, 03:41:04 pm »
A piece of an interesting speech at a conference.

"Despite the spies and flying saucers, neo-fascism was essentially backward-looking into the 1960s. People like George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party would dress up like storm troopers and go get beaten up. James Madole and his National Renaissance Party tried to promulgate a novel synthesis of theosophy, science fiction and fascism, but they were just street-corner cranks.

In the 1970s, the situation changed. Nazi Germany became Atlantis, a magical society that had sunk out of sight, but which might someday rise again. There had always been a literature about the role of the occult in the Third Reich. With the rise of the New Age Movement, this kind of interpretation became not just popular but plausible. Pseudo-historical accounts like Trevor Ravencroft's "Spear of Destiny," 22 in which Hitler is portrayed as an evil magician, were wildly inaccurate on their face, but they are fun to read, so many people did.

To some extent, the magical Reich was just a new story device; Nazi villains had something new to be villainous about. On the other hand, a wing of the budding Satanist movement decided that, if the Nazis were that evil, then they must have been onto something, so they began a revival of folkish magic and Nazi themes. These became important in Black Metal and Industrial music. 23 On the less extreme end, pro-Nazi science fiction began to appear. Those mythological postwar Nazi bases played a role, as did the hidden underground realms of Agarthi and Shambalah, and hollow-earth theories having to do with secret entrances in the Arctic to the land of the Titans. 24
As Goodrick-Clarke points out, another factor that favored the expansion of esoteric fascism was the beginning of large-scale immigration into Western Europe. In his analysis, it was the immigration into central Europe in the late 19th century that gave the earlier occult revival its popular traction. Political terrorism and vandalism in the '60s and '70s had been largely a leftist activity. In the '80s and '90s, it increasingly became a right-wing affair. Goodrick-Clarke suggests that neo-Nazism is a form of multiculturalism; it's just another instance of people making up an ethnic identity and clinging to it for dear life. 25

The New Age was less innocent than it seemed. It was not an accident, as the Marxists used to say, that Mircea Eliade was Julius Evola's long-time correspondent. Back in the 1970s, William Irwin Thompson and David Spangler and the Lindisfarne Foundation were clearly getting ready for the end of Evola's Kali Yuga. 26 Actually, the best fictional presentation of the whole esoteric scenario I know of is in Doris Lessing's forays into science fiction, particularly "Shikasta" 27 and "The Sirian Experiments." Even "The Lord of the Rings" starts to look fishy, because there are few more attractive portrayals of the world of Tradition. Italian fascists use the books for recruiting, to the continuing horror of the Tolkien Society."
http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/ata.htm

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2005, 06:49:21 pm »
Quote
And the book has an entire chapter on Pierce's belief in "cosmotheism."


Aha, now that's interesting. Found this:

Quote
HIPPIE HITLERISM

Like all good megalomaniacs, Pierce wasn't content mulching up the brains of his disgruntled followers. He wanted their souls, too. And so the atheist, following in the footsteps of L. Ron Hubbard, decided to found a religion with a name just as crass as Hubbard's ersatz creation: Cosmotheism.

The fundamentals of Cosmotheism, for what they were, didn't originate with Pierce. In 1968, Pierce had published a condensed version of Savitri Devi's The Lightning and the Sun in the Nazi Party's National Socialist World.


http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/dossier/pierce.html

So it looks like Devi was more influential in the States that I first thought.

Quote
I'm not trying to tie Nuage to the fascism at its high tide, since the Nuage didn't start until 30 years later...I'm more interested in seeing how common it is for Nuagers to look the other way when they endorse writers on the Far Right like Blavatasky, Eliade, Devi, and Evola.


I see what you're saying. When I'm feeling charitable, I tend to think that nuagers' refusal to condemn racist ideas in people like Blavatsky or Steiner comes from fearful thoughts like:

'That racist stuff is obviously crap. Oh no, maybe all that stuff about karma/astrology/whatever is crap too! Maybe I've wasted all that time and effort! How will I explain and simultaneously fill the emptiness of my life? Now what do I do?'

When I'm not feeling so charitable, I just think they're racists themselves.

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #11 on: May 06, 2005, 07:22:21 pm »
Quote
I have always felt the nuage people to be racist. They cannot believe that Indians could have made the pyramids in Mexicao and Central America. They think that it is impossible that Indians could have drawn lines in the Andes Mountains. They then make up crap about how Aliens, MU, Atlantis ect must have taught Indians these things.


I think that would make me cranky, if I was Indian. It's interesting that newagers don't tend to say the same things about European megaliths. About those, UFO believers tend to say not that they were built by aliens but that they were for communicating with aliens, or facilitating their landings or some similar purpose, putting ancient Europeans closer than Indians to the aliens' supposedly higher level of development.

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #12 on: May 06, 2005, 09:35:16 pm »
More on 'cosmotheism':

The Southern Poverty law Center describes it as a
Quote
...bogus religion conjured up by neo-Nazi leader William Pierce primarily as an unsuccessful tax dodge (and possibly also to compete with Ben Klassen's Church of the Creator)...few members take Cosmotheism seriously.

www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=154

Maybe Pierce had cynical motives for promoting Devi's ideas.

I did take a look at the Stormfront forum and found what you pointed out, a lot of bizarro neo-nazi jabbering. Also I noticed that the Stormfront logo at the top right is in a Fraktur (Schwabacher) typeface, which was declared to be 'Judenlettern' by Martin Bormann in 1941. D'oh!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28typeface%29
« Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 12:00:00 am by Barnaby_McEwan »

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2005, 03:16:03 pm »
Some people at Freedom of Mind gave me some pretty good suggestions.

German authors describing the Green/Nazi/Nuage connections.
http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/schweidlenke.html

Len Oakes' books, including one looking at Castaneda in particular.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0815603983/002-3969928-9400846?v=glance

http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorations/prophetic_charisma_psychological_explanation%20part1.htm

One on Steiner and theosophy.
http://www.sociologyesoscience.com/esoterica/occultc-4.html

Found a pretty out there site claiming Nuage is just the latest version of Gnosticism and is thus just a Satanic conspiracy.
http://www.diakrisis.org/OldtoNewGnosticism.htm

A really good bibliography.
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/holism2.html

And yet another Stormfront discussion with one member arguing Hitler was a "ritual magician."
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194417

Offline Barnaby_McEwan

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Re: Fascism and the New Age
« Reply #14 on: May 08, 2005, 09:52:07 am »
Thanks for those links, Al;

Quote
And yet another Stormfront discussion with one member arguing Hitler was a "ritual magician."
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194417


The evidence he cited is Hannah Newman's site again, and the rest of the thread participants seems too busy infighting to notice that he cited a Jew. It was pleasing to see the bickering between the WASP and Slav fascist camps in that thread, and I laughed out loud when one of them wrote:

Quote
Regarding Slavic race, maybe it doesn't exist, but Hitler and common germans believed it did.so that's all what matters in a given time ,not some academic discussions


Someone should tell him the white race is a social construction too!
« Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 12:00:00 am by educatedindian »