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

Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Savitri Devi.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where
every week we read about a terrible person, and this
one is part two of the story of Savitri Debby
and most importantly, today is the episode recorded on the
tail end of my recorder's batteries. So we are fucking

(00:22):
dare devils right now. Wow? Okay, I like Robert, you're edging. Yeah,
this is the podcast edging. Yes, this is edging. This
is what it means. This has never been totally clied
what edging is, but I think that this I am
the first person to edge more than a hundred thousand
people at the same time. Wow. Okay, that was a

(00:43):
flex on many levels, and I'm just going to through it. Okay.
So that's what edging is, just plowing through it. Wow.
Edging is when you're like, I'm not going when you
bring someone to Yeah, you go to the edge of orgasm,
but you keep you keep you keep stopping, and then

(01:04):
that's the joke. Okay, Okay, Well I've brought up the
joke originally, and now I'm explaining why I was corrected,
which is what all great comedians do. So in October
of nineteen, Hitler's death still fresh on her mind. Savitri
Devi took part in the Festival of Kali at the

(01:24):
Kalighat Temple in Calcutta. Now. Kali is the Hindu deity
of destruction, a blueskinned goddess, and in traditional depictions, she
wears a necklace of severed heads, a skirt made from
severed arms, and wields just about every conceivable manner of
ancient weapon in her many arms. You see a lot
of times. Yeah, it's really cool. Like some of the
statues of her like fucking twenty feet tall. It's metal

(01:46):
as hell. Um. Yeah. So, as the goddess of destruction,
Kali tends to inspire some pretty powerful feelings. As Tri
stared up at the image of her goddess covered in
gore and armed with massive swords the size of small ours,
she blgged Cali for her blessing, a blessing of violence
and destruction against the Allied powers who had destroyed her
beloved Nazi Germany. She left the ceremony convinced that it

(02:10):
was now her duty to do what she'd failed to
do back in nineteen thirty nine. She had to finally
travel to Germany and take part in the resistance to
the Allies by any means necessary. She left her twenty
cats in the care of a friend and left her
Oh my god, and the cats. Yeah, it's pretty wild

(02:32):
cats behind. This is a person who leaves her twenty
cats behind and the care of a friend to go
be a Nazi, like a month or two after Hitler died,
Like months after Hitler do you get that texts just
like hey, um so, like I have to go do
a thing. Could you look after my cats? Indefinitely? Right? No? No?

(02:54):
Could you look after my cats? And definitely will I
go to try to resurrect Nazism in nineteen forties Germany
parentheses there's twenty of the cats, by the way, just because,
oh my god, it's good stuff. All the cruel and

(03:16):
horrible things that this woman has done. I don't even
know all of them. Yet this has to be like
top ten. This is bad. It's pretty bad. She's a
bad Yeah, she's not a great friend or person, but
she does finally reach the birthplace of Hitlerism, the center
of the ideology she'd adopted for herself in nineteen She

(03:37):
later wrote in her book Golden the Furnace that the
gods had ordained that I should have a glimpse of ruins,
bitter irony of fate. Germany at that point was still
largely destroyed and chopped up into four pieces by its
victorious enemies. So Very Tree's writing about this time shows
a wild ignorance about the extent of actual Nazi crimes,
because she's so horrified and how bad things are in Germany.

(04:00):
She writes, quote one remembers, I say that episode of
the Second War is one beholds the ruins of all
the German cities, the plight of men and women in
the overcredit areas still fit to live in, and all
the misery, all the bitterness consequent of that devilish bombing.
Streams of fire, tons of phosphorus relentlessly poured over his
people for five years. These were England's thanks to Adolf
Hitler for having shown mercy to her soldiers in his

(04:22):
hour of victory. These were the thanks of the United
States of America for his older's orders not to shoot.
The parachute is captured on German soil, which is like
so she's she's framing the the British evacuations uh from
the coast of France as like German mercy rather than
incompetence on Hitler's behalf, which they actually were just rank

(04:42):
and competence on Hitler's behalf. He's also talking about the
mercy of Germany and not killing captured Allied UH paratroopers,
which was illegal. And in doing this she's ignoring, for
one example, the Malmedy massacre, in which a WAFF and
s S troop massacred eight four American POWs with machine guns.
She's also ignoring the estimated three point three million Russian

(05:05):
POWs who died in German custody. But if I wind
up actually arguing actual history with a dead Nazi will
be here all day. So we're just going to move
forward from that. But fair she whitewashes things a bit,
is the point? Just a bit, just a scooch Just
obviously it's gonna be horrible seeing Germany after World War Two,

(05:26):
because like the bombing campaign over Germany was one of
the greatest crimes in history. That said, they kind of
had it coming tonight. I mean, fun man, if anyone
has ever deserved that, it's fucking Nazi Germany. They do

(05:48):
present themselves as a pretty clear target. Good, yeah, you
can you can say the Allies. Maybe the Allies went
overboard in some areas, will also being like, but what
were they supposed to do? I think a bit of
an overreaction may have been Historically you're like, okay, okay, yeah,

(06:10):
you gotta do something. Yeah, you know, I it's it's
something to not be happy about. But of the list
of historical crimes I'm going to be outraged at, it's
lower than, for example, the ones committed by Nazi Germany. Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. Um. Now,

(06:31):
before visiting Germany, Savitri had hung out in Sweden, where
a number of Nazis had fled after the war. There
she met spinn Head and a Nazi supporting explorer and author,
and a number of former members of the Nazi Party
who were hiding out there because you know, it was
a crime to be a Nazi. Now, she told them
her mission was to deliver a message of hope to
the German people. Now, since Nazism was a bit unpopular

(06:54):
after the Second World War, she wasn't able to find
any printers in Sweden to actually print out this message
of hope, so instead, Savitri Devi had to write out
five hundred leaflets by hand. Each featured a swastika, and
these words quote men and women of Germany, in the
midst of unspeakable riggers and suffering, hold fast to our
glorious national socialist faith and resist, Defy the people, Defy

(07:17):
the powers which work to denazify the German nation and
the whole world. Nothing can destroy what is built on truth.
We are pure gold which can be tested in the furnace.
The furnace may glow and crackle, nothing can destroy us.
One day we will rebel and triumph again. Hope and wait,
Heil Hitler. So she writes five of these by hand

(07:37):
and wearing a sorry and swastika earrings. Savitri Devi takes
a train across Germany and tosses out hundred of leaflets
um over the course about fifteen hours. Attached to each
was a gift, a small amount of coffee, sugar, butter,
sardines or cigarettes. She considered this journey to be an
act of religious devotion, describing the leaflets as written and

(07:58):
throne by the gauze through me. As her train crossed
from Germany into Belgium, She's sang a Hindu him to Shiva.
So a lot of commitment, a lot of commitment is
going into this yes, yes, and that is all you
can say. Yeah, that is yeah. Now. So she gets

(08:19):
inspired by the success of her first visit and she
plans two more trips through Germany. She spent a little
bit of time resting in London and meeting up with
fascists in London. Uh and because of all the fascists
that are in London, she's able to actually find a
printer to print up six thousand additional leaflets to take
to Germany. Using a connection to an old friend in France,
she secured a military permit to visit Germany for a

(08:40):
longer period of time, claiming not falsely that she intended
to write a book about the nation's post war trials.
Her second tripped into Germany lasted three months and she
successfully handed out all six thousand leaflets. She also met
with a number of old Nazis, none of the none
of them were very high ranking. These were like third
rate Nazis, former po w's, and some of these POWs

(09:03):
did have legitimate stories of Allied brutality that they faced
in captivity, because like you know, it was a war. Um.
She interviewed numerous German citizens, introducing herself at the start
as a committed Nazi. To gain their trust, Savitri would
then talk about her belief that Adolph Hitler was still
alive somewhere in the world, and a shure these defeated
Nazis that surely there were only two or three years

(09:25):
away from a revival of Nazism in Germany. Imagine that
Hitler was your tupac, Like that is such a wild
That's like Hitler's like, No, he's on an island somewhere.
You don't understand He's going to drop amazing album. Yeah,
he's got an album. Really, Yeah, you don't be the

(09:46):
holograms a decoy? Yeah that sleek. I mean, I think
we can. I mean that said, we both agreed that
the hologram is a deco. Oh no, the hologram is
absolutely decoy. Okay. Now, one of of these conversations um
that Savitri had with a former Wehrmacht soldier is worth
me reading out here. And I'm gonna quote again from

(10:07):
the book Hitler's priestess quote, continuing his narrative to post
war conditions and occupied Germany. The old fighter's face darkened.
Nice people to talk about freedom and justice. These damned democrats,
they have tied us hand and foot, so we cannot move.
They have muzzled us, so we can offer no resistance
while they plunder our country left and right, dismantle and
carry off our factories piece by piece, cut down our forests,

(10:28):
take our oil, our iron or steel, all that we have,
and into the bargain, make people believe that we were
to blame for the war, These confounded liars. He lusted
for revenge. He longed for the day when the last
Allies ran for their lives to escape Germany, when Paris
would lay in ruins at its next German occupation, next
time he would show neither mercy nor good humor. Savitri
Devi felt a sense of mounting excitement as his mood

(10:50):
became ever uglier, and he began to describe in a
raised voice, how he would kill his enemies. This was
the spirit she sought, the rolling eyes of a wounded animal,
a war god of the Stone age, thirst for blood,
barbaric magnificence. It was a perfect meeting of minds, the violent,
resentful German and the Aryan prophetess of revenge. The day
of reckoning seemed already nearer. Oh okay uh, she's a

(11:12):
fun trip to Germany. I mean, you know, she had
me at the beginning with the you know, feeling plundered
and betrayed by the Democratic Party. Sure, yes, that's a
strong start talking about the Democratic Party. Though I know,
I know, I just there, Rob Robber, I was away
from the mic at that point. What else can I do?

(11:34):
I can confirm you were not away from the mic,
as I think everyone you're right upon. This is revisionist,
This is absurd, This is Savitri DEVII levels of revisionists.
You are the Savitri Devi of this party. That's so mean.
At least make me the Elizabeth Holmes of this podcast. Jeez,

(11:57):
you have not earned that yet, James, Make me a
fun one, Make me a fun bastard. Come on, make
me a fun tragic one with a pony tail at least. Yeah,
there's nothing tragic about Savitri um So. She returned to
France at December of ninety eight and immediately began to

(12:17):
write a book, Gold in the Furnace, about her experiences
and her growing conception of Hitlerism is something beyond what
the old National Socialists had really believed. In February of
nineteen nine, three chapters into her book, Savitri Devi was
arrested by French authorities. She spent a total of six months. Yeah,
because you know it's illegal to be a Nazi for
good reason. I'm like, wait, hold on, unpacked that, yes,

(12:40):
I understand. Yeah. She spent a total of six months
in pre trial attention and then prison after her conviction
for spreading Nazi propaganda. The time behind bars was good
for Savitri, as it historically often is for Nazis who
fancy themselves writers like her Idol Adolf Hitler. She used
her prison time as an excuse to finish her first book.
Just uses it as like a sabbatical, as one would

(13:02):
is sabbatical. Yeah, it's an old Nazi story. She also
took the opportunity to meet even more old Nazis. A
lot of National Socialists were still imprisoned by the British
occupation forces, and these old fighters were all too happy
to talk with Savitri Devi. Her dearest friend in the
prison was a former war dress from the bergen Belson
concentration camp, a quote beautiful looking woman, a blonde of

(13:26):
about my age. In Devie's words, she claimed that this
war criminal had the classical beauty of a chieftain's wife
in ancient Germany. And again this was a woman who
worked at a concentration camp voluntarily the languages. So yeah yeah,
and writes about like how cruel this woman's imprisonment was
and how nice the concentration camps was. Like she's trash,

(13:48):
She's she's trashed, She's she's absolute trash. I'm not gonna
like spend a lot of time debunking her ship, like
she's garbage. Yeah, and it's crazy. I mean it's like
she is the one that that is like providing all
of this information to She is the source. Yeah, she
is the source. And again I can't say it enough.
She never had the kutzpah to actually go to Nazi

(14:10):
Germany while it existed. I think because number one, she
would have been disappointed because like none of this this
weird religious ship she attached to it was an actual
part of Nazism in Nazi Germany. Um, Like she would
have like she would have been like a just like
she might have gotten knocked up by some Nazi, like

(14:31):
at the orders of Heinrich Heimbler, but she wouldn't have Um,
she wouldn't have been anything special in Nazi Germany. The
odds are good. Like maybe they would have tried to
use her to like propagandize because she knew a bunch
of languages. I don't know. They might have liked had
to try to reach out to India. But probably she
would have just been another person. I don't know. I
think that's an interesting aspect of it that isn't emphasized enough.
She just wasn't willing to actually go to Nazi Germany

(14:52):
in this place, she claimed, ruled Yeah, cool, so well.
In late nineteen nine, Savitri Devi was again a free woman,
and she published her first book to widespread acclaim from
the international Nazi community. From this point on, Devy became
a prolific author, writing up every significant event in her
life through a mixture of supposedly nonfiction works as well

(15:15):
as fanciful tales. For example, she retold the story of
her first trip back to Europe and the children's fable
Long Whiskers and the Two Legged Goddess, whose heroine is
a cat loving Nazi named Helio Dora. No, that can't
be real. Yeah, that sounds like random words selected from Uh, well,

(15:37):
it all makes sense, like the Heliodora's really a self
insert charactered cats Helio Savitri Devii's obsessed with sun, gods
and goddesses a good how embarrassing for her. What's embarrassing
is that Savitri writes that her self insert fantasy character
has quote no human feelings in the ordinary sense of

(15:59):
the word. She had been from her very childhood much
too profoundly shocked at the behavior of man towards animals
to have any sympathy for people suffering an account of
their being Jews. Okay, the Holocaust is it bad? Have
you seen what happened to cats when I was a kid.
But here's the take that is a wild take to

(16:23):
be like, you know how we resolve, uh, like violence
towards cats also cause violence towards people. Yeah, surely the
Holocaust is cool because cats have been mistreated? Is Vitri?
She just goes to a whole other place. She's like,
did you know, like when you're having like when you're

(16:43):
having an argument with someone who doesn't want to have
a good faith argument with you, and you're just like,
well what about this? And they're like, well what about
cats in France? What about that? Huh? And You're like,
I don't I've been stunned like a pokemon. I don't know.
And over the next few years, Savitri wrote and conversed
with increasingly aged Nazis and gradually refined her theories about

(17:06):
the world, until in nineteen fifty eight she published what
would prove to be her magnum opus, The Lightning in
the Sun. In this work, the ideas Savitri had been
rattling around in her head all finally came together. Hitler,
she concluded, was a man against time, fighting to uphold
Aryan virtues and blood against the corruption of modernity. She

(17:26):
placed him at the center of her own trinity, one
that replaced the decadent Christian one she'd grown up despising,
and her trinity. I dare you to make less sense
than the trinity? She picks, Yeah, you think, who do
you think? Who do you think's first? Hitler? Well, Hitler
is the most important, but he's not the first, oh,
the first. No, it goes in order of it goes

(17:48):
in order of, like time period. So these are all
historical figures. First one is definitely uh someone ancient Greek, no,
ancient Egyptian at the first atheist. He's generally called he
was like this, this pharaoh who declared himself the sun God,
and like tried to institute monotheism and then he died
and everything he did was burned by the people who

(18:10):
came after him because they thought he was an asshole. Um.
And it's weird because she like hates monotheism so much,
but he's like one of the people she loves. I
think just because he's the sun god and she's got
a weird she'll make an exception. She'll give any sun
god a pass. Basically, it's it's fucking weird. Um. Second
in her holy trinity is gang Scott, does she And

(18:37):
here's why? Why? Um? It would it wouldn't make sense.
I mean, basically history's greatest conqueror. He's a great conqueror
and he's not Christian or Jewish or anything. You know. Yeah,
So act In is the Sun and the con is
the lightning and Hitler, she believes, combines the best attributes

(18:59):
of both the Pharaoh's wisdom with the strategic mind of Genguscott.
Genghis Khan succeeded in invading Russia during the winter. So
I don't know where you're coming from. This woman is okay,
one of these two knew how to invade Russia, and
it was not Hitler and then Hitler or is there, Yeah,

(19:23):
the third is hit because he combines the best parts
of Acinat just like a terrible cartoon. She would not
watch this cartoon wild. Yeah, it's so dumb. Um. Yeah.
So there's probably a couple of reasons for her obsession
with Acant And for one thing, Akinat was deeply revered
by the Theosophical Society, which you will remember from our

(19:45):
our episodes on anthroposophy. Um, and the Theosophical Society held
a lot of ties also to the Tulist Society and
all the other weird little occult groups who supported the Nazis.
Early on had been a utopian thinker who tried and
failed to a stay a perfect city. Good Rich Clark,
Sametri's biographer, writes that she saw his son worshipping cult

(20:06):
as quote rejection of all politics that promotes man's interest
at a cost to the beauty and abundance of nature,
which is just invented by her. Like, yeah, I feel
like maybe she's she's like me and Jack Skellington. She's
just kind of there for the aesthetic and maybe doesn't
fully understand she is okay, Jack Skellington. Yeah, that is okay, Okay,

(20:31):
Now I'm now, I'm like, I understand this mindset. If
this holy Trinity doesn't work for you, consider embracing the
holy Trinity of the products and services that support this show. Products, services,
and god, what's the third one? Each is one and
a half of the trinity. That's how good both products
and services are. Wow. Yeah they add up to three products.

(20:54):
M h, we're back. So um God, there's so much
to get through with this. This woman's fucking stupid, stupid,
fucking beliefs, but they're very important. They're they're stupid, and
they're also kind of they're so dumb and complicated. They're

(21:16):
so and comicated a lot of phases. They all make sense.
I'll say that they don't make sense of the fact
that they're true, but like, based on her history and
like the things that she imbibes, they all makes I
can see why why she came to these conclusions. But
they're super dumb. So the core of her Nazism is

(21:37):
a love of nature, which was a big part of
actual original Nazism too. They were very into like like
natural life and ship and like taking care of the
land and animal welfare UM, and some of her early
books that she wrote when the Nazis were in power,
but before she was explicitly a Nazi, like The Impeachment
of Man UM, don't explicitly reference in Nazism. And these

(22:01):
books like The Impeachment of Man is still kind of
popular among chunks of the New Age and environmentalist movements today.
Savitri Devi's passionate writing on animal rights is actually one
of the many little roads that exist between the green
movement and the neo Nazi movement. UM, and it's really
fucked up. UM. Devi herself famously railed against the Allied
forces purging Germany of its fascist organizations, saying that quote,

(22:24):
you cannot denazifying nature. Um. She believed that nature was
fundamentally nationalist, national socialist. UM. And yeah, that's a that's
a take. I'm gonna read a quote from the Man now,
and I want to remind you there are people who
are like environmentalists, who are not Nazis, who read this

(22:45):
book today and don't really realize what's going on a
civilization that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged war crimes,
acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of
one's cause, and tolerate slaughter houses and vivisection laboratories and
circuses in the fur industry, infliction and pain upon creatures
that can never before or against any cause, does not

(23:06):
deserve to live out with it, bless the day it
will destroy itself. So that a healthy, hard, frank, and brave,
nature loving and truth loving elite of superman with a
life centered faith, a natural human aristocracy is beautiful on
its own higher level, as the four legged kings of
the jungle might again rise and rule upon its remains forever.
So again you see how because of the kind of

(23:28):
stuff she's written, she's there's this, there's these bridges. She's
a big part of why there's bridges between the eco
movement and the Nazi movement. And there very much are
on like the hard edge of the of the of
the eco movement, of the anticlimate change movement, there are
Nazis and left wing activists who kind of increasingly seem
like Nazis in a lot of cases. Is not to
say that, like even supporting radical environmental action makes you

(23:52):
a Nazi. It's to say that, like part of the
what schre achieved is building in roads between these groups
and the Nazi movement. So now more there's a lot
of people that get into Nazism through environmentalism, and Savitri
Devi is a part of that um And that's kind
of the story we're telling today. Snazism really knows how

(24:12):
to ruin a good thing. It wasn't as good at
it before Savitri Devi. It's always been a ruiner, but
she really took it to new levels, elevated how bad
it was. Yea. So the lightning in the sun her
opus pose. It's a cyclical view of history. She believe
that time began with a Golden Age in which it

(24:32):
was dominated by the perfect a sun god age like
a sun god. And this degraded slowly into a Silver
age and then a Bronze age. And both of these
worst ages featured increased racial mixing that weakened the arians.
They also featured pernicious Jewish influence. The next age is

(24:55):
the kali Yuga, or Dark Age, which Savitri believed the
world had all really entered into. She also called this
dark age the reign of the Jew. No. Yeah, the
only way out of this dark age was for the
man against time. Hitler to gather up the terrible weapons
of the Dark Age and use them to bring about
the return of the Golden Age, presumably through genocidal purging

(25:18):
of non arians in the establishment of a strict racial hierarchy.
Her book was dedicated quote to the godlike individual of
our times, the man against Time, the greatest European of
all times, both sun and lightning, as a tribute of
unfailing loyalty and love forever and ever God. You know,

(25:40):
there's been a lot said about fan culture. I don't
agree with all of it, but you know, this is
a real argument against fan culture. This is the worst
fan culture has ever gone. I feel comfortable saying this
is this is this is the worst it can go.
This is bad stand culture. It's bad, bad, bad there
and and even the way that she rights and structures

(26:01):
these things, it kind of you can hear that like
interest in like ancient history in there, because it just
sounds like she's kind of connecting these lines that don't
actually exist to make it sound like to I mean,
kind of like the way she like arguably maybe lifted
some of her own like self mythologizing from mind comps,
Like she's just like putting something she wants to say

(26:22):
into a familiar framework. Yeah, it's called syncretics. Well, this
is part of syncretism, is like taking these other things
that you like and sticking it onto this thing. Um.
And this is like the main thing she goes down
in history for for doing to Nazism. Now I have

(26:42):
I have a lot of debates with myself putting this
together about how much detailed to get into about Savitri's theories.
There's a really dark, very vile world of esoteric Hitlerist
fantasy based in large part off of her writing. And
this ship is dangerous. Um. It spreads a kind of
ideological infection that grabs impressionable chldren primarily in a vice
like grip, and turns them into something very dangerous. And

(27:04):
a lot of people have died from this, and I
am not going to If you're very knowledgeable about this,
you will notice there is a lot of things I'm
leaving out just because like this is enough to understand it,
and I don't want to just like be spreading weird
Nazi propaganda to an audience. Um of as you said,
a hundred thou people, the Robert that is the most

(27:24):
merciful thing you've ever done on this entire podcast. Yeah,
it's just too dangerous in my opinion. That's good, that's yeah,
I agree. And I don't even know what it was.
It's fucking weird, stupid ship. But yeah. The last thing
that's really important to understand about Davitri Devi's beliefs is
that she decided Hitler was what she called well, she

(27:44):
was not the only person. Other people had the same idea,
but she's one of the more prominent ones. The kali Yuga,
the tenth incarnation of vishnu um and she used several
segments from August Kuba's x I advised book The Young Hitler.
I knew Kubazek was Hitler's friend when they were like teenagers.
He wrote a terrible book. It's valuable because it's the

(28:06):
only insight we haven't hit Hitler at that period. But
he clearly wrote it to make money. Is it like
my friend Dahmer? Is it like that? It's like the
same vibe of like this horrible person. Yeah, I knew,
you're like cool. Yeah, but you also get the feeling
that kuba Zeck didn't really think he was horrible until
he like he was writing it. Initially to be a

(28:28):
biography that was published under the Nazi regime as like
a pro Hitler piece of propaganda, and then they lost
the war, and then he just kind of rewrote it
so that it could be like, well, now I'm just
I guess I'm just going to explain my evil friend
to the ally so Fu sinister. Oh my god. I mean,
there are people care's a lot of debates to have
about kubaz Eck, but most historians will agree, well, you

(28:52):
have to read Kubazek. You have to take him with
like a lot of salt. Yeah, he's trying to takes
him with no salt at all. And she pulled several
passages from his book as like evidence that Hitler was
the Kali Yuga and was like channeling fucking Vishnu. Yeah,

(29:12):
it's this woman does not understand Shades of Gray even remote.
She's just okay, she would have written Shades of Gray,
though if she had been around, I wish she had
like agains the better world, Oswit, literally every single person
you've ever told me about on this cursed show, Robert,
everything would have been better off if people had just

(29:34):
channeled their horny energy into fan fiction instead. Of brutal
Hayden murder every single time. Masturbating the fan fiction is
the only things that will save us from the next Hitler.
It will absolutely and and and that's where the Kylo
ren stands come in. If you know an angry person

(29:55):
who spends too much time writing fan fiction for under
no circumstances, stop them, encourage that behavior. Yea, the lives
that I can't even begin to tell you. Yeah, it's good, Okay,
so this is okay horrible. Back to what you were saying,
that was horrible. So she like reads Kubazek and she

(30:16):
becomes convinced that a couple of chunks of that book
are evidence that Hitler is channeling Vishnu is the avatar
of Vishnu Um. Yeah. Yeah, there's like there these moments
in the book where like Hitler will like that that
Kubazek writes very like Purple Prosy, where Hitler will like suddenly,
like in the middle of a conversation like make some
sort of like grand statement about the future, and it's

(30:38):
like maybe it's true because he was Hitler, Like it
wouldn't be the weirdest thing of Hitler had always been
that guy, right, Sure, But Also, kubaz Eck wrote this, well,
after Hitler, you know, was done with and it's entirely possible.
He was like, people are going to expect him to
make grand speeches that are like dark and crazy about
the future because he was Hitler, and he threw them

(30:59):
in there because that's what like, we don't know. Um. Yeah.
So decades later, uh Savitri Devi would claim that her
initial inspiration for the idea that Hitler was the Kla
Yuga had come from a conversation she'd had in nineteen
thirty six with Satyananda Swami, the founder and the head
of the Hindu mission where she'd worked. She claims that

(31:19):
sat Yananda used to say, and I'm cluding directly from
her writing here, Adolf Hitler is the reincarnation of the
god Vishnu. Vishnu is the aspect of the Hindu trinity,
who goes to keep things from rushing to destruction, to
keep them back to going against time. Time is destruction.
You have to destroy in order to create again. But
there are forces that try to postpone destruction. And he
said Hitler was the reincarnation of that force. And he was.

(31:41):
He was. But it's a nice thing to hear a
very refreshing thing to hear from a Hindu stage. I
told him, I came here because I'm really a pagan,
a worshiper of the Sun, and I believe in the
pagan reaction of Emperor Julian. And I came to India
to get, if possible, a sort of tropical equivalent of
what we have had in Europe before Christianity. And I
am not a disciple of any Indian. I'm a disciple
of Adolph hit There he said, good, good, Adolf Hitler.

(32:02):
He's as much a Hindu as any of our Hindus.
He's an incarnation of the god Vishnu, probably never happened,
but might have particulate. Yeah, it is, but one of
the things that Hindu scholars, who again are generally very
critical of a lot of all of these claims of seats,
will point out some like one of the kind of
downsides of sort of this very open aspect of Hindu

(32:24):
mythology where it kind of upset accepts new things and
new gods and other religions, and like it's a very
open canonically in a lot of ways. And so there
were a lot of Indians who would have who very
well might have been like, Okay, you worship Hitler. Sure,
he's probably like this, like because like they're just looking
at a way to understand through their religion, just thing
that matters to you. Like yeah, again, who knows, Um,

(32:49):
you'll get different opinions on this than a on who
you go to. UM. So yeah, we don't know what's true.
What is important is that after Savitri Devi starts writing
about all this ship, a lot of Nazis come to
believe it. In fact, the reeling and wounded remaining Nazis
of the West um felt like Savitri's occult musings were
basically a breath of fresh air, and she spent her

(33:10):
middle and later years traveling around and meeting fascists all
over the world. In nineteen sixty one, she made her
first direct connection with the English neo Nazis of the
British National Party or b n P. As the war
years receded further and further away, an international agglomeration of
fascist inclined folks began to link up and plan together
for a resurgence of Nazism. Savitri Devi was at the

(33:32):
center of it. As this paragraph from Hitler's priestess Illustrates quote.
She lost no time in contacting Andrew Fontaine, the president
of the BNP. A spring camp attended by twenty delegates
from European nationalist groups was held on Fontaine's estate at
Narford at Narford, Norfolk, in May of nineteen sixty one.
Those present included Robert Lyon, a young leader in the

(33:52):
American National States Rights Party, which violently opposed a segregation
in the South, representatives from German neo Nazi groups, and
Savitri Devi. Another key figure was x S S Lieutenant
Friedrich Borth born in nineteen This blue eyed, blonde Austrian
Nazi had served in the Luftwaffa and the OFFA s S.
As a teenage officer, he had commanded an assault group
and won the Iron Cross. After serving a three year

(34:13):
jail sentence in post war Vienna, he published an SS
veteran magazine, Dust Camarade, which was swiftly suppressed by the
Soviet authorities. Thereafter, he was connected with numerous extreme right
wing groups and attended the most international fascist gatherings. He
led the boom Himer toured Yugant until it's banning in
nineteen fifty nine. And then bring the Legion Europa, the
Austrian section of UH theer Arts June You Europe, another

(34:35):
international grouping inspired by the French O a s and
Algeria and Belgian Rancorps over the loss of the Congo.
After a busy schedule of lectures at Narford, the participants
celebrated their Nordic racial identity with Folkish songs and tankards
of traditional ale around the campfire. So you see what's
happening here. Savitri Devi gets pulled into not just neo
Nazi groups and not just old Nazis. She's meeting with

(34:56):
the American States Rights Party, She's meeting with like these
Belgians who are angry that they've lost control of the Congo,
and she's meeting with all these old neo Nazis in
the British National Party and stuff. Um would you say
at this point she is out of her depth in
terms of I can't believe you did that. No, no, no, no, no,
I think no, no, She's not out of her depth

(35:21):
at all. Um, she is. What she is doing is
helping to draw She's not the only force doing this,
but she's helping to draw these groups together by providing
the early Like these are all separate groups, like the
Cause of desegregation, like a lot of racists who don't
want America disegregated, fought against the Nazis. She is a
part of all these different, like very far right groups,

(35:43):
including Nazis, coming together and in a lot of cases
starting to embrace these weird, this weird Nazi religion. She's
um she's invented as something to unify all of them.
That's what starts to happen in this period. And that's
what's really unique about this period is like these are
all groups like the Belgian, like pro Congolese control of

(36:04):
like the Belgium, Like the Belgians weren't pro Nazi, but
like these Belgians start to get pro Nazi now because
like they realize there's like this white identity thing, but
also this this weird religion that is more attractive to
them than actual national socialism would have been. It's interesting.
I mean, it seems like part of her effectiveness lies
in like having so many little bits of things for

(36:27):
people to latch onto, so that even if you don't
agree with the larger ideology, there's a worm on a
hook that will get you in. That's called syncretism. That's
what syncretism really is, is like all these different things
kind of it's like a catamari of ideology with like
Nazism at the core, but all these things sticking to it,
and these things get other people stuck to them. Um.

(36:48):
So like yeah, that's what we start to see happening
in the early nineteen sixties. Um. In nineteen sixty two,
Savitri was in England again for a gathering of worldwide
Nazis that included Bastard pod main character George Lincoln Rockwell.
Oh I know a thing about to get not great Oka.

(37:18):
Savitri Devi was one of the signatories for the World
Union of National Socialists and proposed organization to form a
quote combat efficient International Apparatus to facilitate a return to
Nazi values and the extermination of non whites from Western nations.
Now ones wound up being a bust for several reasons,
including the fact that Rockwell was almost immediately kicked out

(37:39):
of the United Kingdom, but he and Savitri developed a
friendly relationship. The leader of the American Nazi Party had
been on the lookout for a new American fascist religion,
something esoteric and enchanting that he could use to draw
in new members in a way that national socialist political
theory and unvarnished racism just did not. And he must
have thought The Lightning in the Sun had some potential

(38:00):
for he published an abridged version of the book in
the National Socialist World magazine, The Lightning in the Sun
the US. The Lightning in the Sun, it should be said,
could be a y a book that like is out
right now, it might be to be entirely honest, and
that why a book might actually be Nazi propaganda hidden

(38:21):
his young adult which, oh, you can't put it past yeah, no, no, no,
much like for example, the band Ace of Basse Wait
what yeah, the ASA base where Nazis. Did you not
hear that? Oh? Adam Todd Brown read a great article
about this for correct, The base of ass was a

(38:41):
Nazi submarine base. If you watch the music video for
all that she wants is another baby. The woman who
just wants another baby to get on welfare is like
holding a star of David the entire time, and there's
all these long, lingering shots of it. There's a bunch
of other stuff. The sign that they saw is clearly
a swastika. If you listen to the lyrics, it's fucked up.
Um wow. But we have to blaze past that right now.

(39:03):
I found I found a book called Lightning on the
Sun that's pretty closely Nazi ship. It's about a guy
named Glenn the Store. Yeah, Glenn Schmidler, who might be
a moon god. Yep, that's some Nazi ship there, or
anti Nazi, since Nazi Savitri was all about the sun God,

(39:25):
it could be either. Really, so, Savitri Devi would go
on to spend the bulk of her remaining years in India,
traveling irregularly when the demands of her national socialist beliefs
took her around the world. She remained convinced all her
life that Hitler would return, either in a new incarnation
or after revealing that he had somehow survived the war
and lead a resurgent Nazism to global victory. She retired

(39:47):
in nineteen seventy, living for a time at the home
of her friend Francois Dior in England. That's the de
or you're thinking of, really, yeah, it's well, it's it's
like the daughter, I think of the woman who created
the line. Yeah daughter, Oh good. She was a big
Nazi backer before the war. Yeah, wow, okay, learning more?

(40:09):
I love fashion knowledge. Savitri Devi was kicked out of
Door's house eventually for her twin habits of refusing to
bathe ever and chewing on garlic constantly. Disgusting. Come on,
that's what gets the reaction, Sophie, She's terrible, Harley. I

(40:35):
was chewing on garlic a lot over the summer. It
helps preserve your voice. I don't think that's why she
was doing it. Does she do you have to bathe?
Who chewing on garlic? Do we know what happened to
her cats? Oh? Solid question, Jamie. Well, she had numerous
pet cats. What happened to those she left to Nazi

(40:56):
Germany with? She I was just about to say she
spent most of her remaining year is living alone in
India with dozens sometimes of pet cats and at least
one cobra um. She always had a funkload of cats. Yeah,
this woman. I couldn't get away from her cats. One
thing about her that you would think that cats live
long enough that the original twenty cats she left behind
would still be alive. But that because I think a

(41:17):
lot of them were. I think a lot of them
were she she was taking them with. I don't know precisely,
but my assumption, based on everything I know Savitri Devi,
is that she would have absolutely tried to get back
her original cats if it was possible. She was very
endo cats. She would not have abandoned the cats. I
don't think she was. She was real consistent about that part. Yeah.

(41:41):
As she grew older, Devy became more and more convinced
that the United States represented the most fertile ground for
the growth of the esoteric Nazi religions he had spent
her life helping to construct. In nineteen two, she decided
to travel to the United States to do what she
could do to help American Nazism break out as a
national force. She died it on the way while staying

(42:01):
at a friend's house in Great Britain. Her ashes, however,
finally made it across the pond to the United States
of America, and American Nazis laid her to rest by
sprinkling her on their heroes grave George Lincoln Rockwell. So
Rockwell and Savitri Devi's share a grave. Yeah wow, Okay,
So she's like, okay, yeah, you know who doesn't share

(42:22):
a grave with George Lincoln Rockwell and Savitri Devi. The
products and services were about to hawk. Yes for now,
you never know. Now we're back. We're back. So Savitri
Devi's dead, But this is not the end for her. Um,

(42:47):
not really, because starting in the late nineteen seventies, a
famous Holocaust denier in publisher Ernst Zundel, had found her
old work and started pushing it back into circulation. Now,
but it only developed a limited audience in those early
post war days. But now, nearly twenty years later, uh,
people were ready for esoteric hitlersm the book Hitler's Priests notes,

(43:08):
by the late nineteen seventies, the historical experience of the
Third Reich was quickly receding into the past, as popular
literature and films ably demonstrated Nazism was becoming something mythical,
even fantastic, and also plastic that could be molded and
combined with novel associations. By publishing the work of Savitri Devi,

(43:28):
Zundel aimed to create a new cultic interest in Hitler,
linking him to ancient mysteries, the world of nature, and
powerful religious symbols drawn from the Oriens. She was just
saying that by saying it's plastic, he's pointing out, we
have all these weird movies now about like Nazis on
the Moon. You know, You've got these fanciful stories like Wolfenstein,
these games about like Nazi like all of this, this

(43:49):
this fictional sort of world that's been built up, like
mythology built up around the Nazis, usually not by people
who are actual Nazis in a lot of cases, just
by people who are like, well, they're the worst people ever,
so I can make them the bad guys. That's an
easy go for a bad guy. Um. But Zundel is like,
this is a fucking opportunity because kids are growing up

(44:10):
reading about these cool, evil, bad guy Nazis. And for
the same reason that kids love dressing up as Imperial
Stormtroopers from Star Wars, kids get interested in the Nazis
from this. And he sees Savitri Devi's work is like,
I can fucking get a shipload of kids interested in
Nazism by pushing this stuff back out there. And he's
fucking right now, yeah, yeah, another important architect of this

(44:36):
whole thing and who we're not going to get into enough,
but I will do an episode on in the future
is a Chilean Nazi named Miguel Serrano UM, and it's
from Miguel that we actually get the term esoteric Hitlerism.
Serrano and Devi seemed to have reached essentially the same
conclusion about Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu through slightly
different intellectual roots. UM. Miguel was a student of Young

(44:57):
and a Mithrist, which we just don't have enough time
to get into once again, the Theosophical Society UM. He
was also an early Avid Western practitioner of yoga. Miguel
corresponded with Devi during her lifetime. Before he died in
two thousand nine, he gave interviews to Nazi magazines with
names like black Son, where he said this about Savitri

(45:20):
Devi quote, Savitri Devi is the greatest warrior after Adolf Hitler,
Rudolf Hess and Joseph Gebel's. Moreover, she was the first
to discover the ancient and spiritual power behind Hitlerrism. She
envisioned a new religion and inaugurated a sanctuary for Hitler
in India. She was as I myself am anti Christian.
She initiated completely on her own all that I have

(45:41):
developed up until now. It is not mere coincidence that
the Spanish Catholics published an attack against Savitri Devi Atto
Iron and me. It was very late in her life
when we started to write each other. We just missed
each other in Europe by one week. I arrived a
few days after her death. I think that Savitri Devi
will be the greatest sister of all the pre Sevesotera
hitlersm the beasts of Wotan. And he's like wearing a

(46:02):
male feminist T shirt while he does this. He's like,
I don't hate women. I like this. I like the
worst woman I've ever heard of love. He would not
have warned me I will say that much. But you're
getting the spirit of the guy, right. He's a real
gigantic piece of ship, and we're not getting into it up.
But he gives her credit as like the real motive

(46:23):
force behind the religion that Hitlerrism becomes, even though he's
also like kind of independently coming to a lot of
the same conclusions and even earlier in some cases. Like
she's the popularizer in a lot of ways. She has
a big role in that um. And yeah, he's we'll
talk about him more later today, Savitri Devi's fingerprints can

(46:43):
be found all over the radical and murderous chunks of
the fascist right. The Fair Creek Division, an accelerationist neo
Nazi organization that's very similar to Adam Wafan Division, similar
enough to talk about for the purposes of this podcast.
Both of them seek to bring about the destruction of
the current world order through destabilizing attacks. The Fair Creek

(47:04):
Division directly cites Devy as an inspiration. The group's gab
of bio includes this Devy quote. Creation and destruction are
one to the eyes of one who can see beauty.
Savitri's beliefs went on to have a big influence on
Adam Waffen two and the members of the Base who
weren't FBI agents, anti fascists or journalists, which is basically,
these seven guys you got arrested. That's a familiar yeah, yeah,

(47:29):
in these groups like the Base that we can see
some hint of what makes a Vitri Devi so dangerous.
The leader of the Michigan Cell of Adam Waffen Division,
who was DOCST a few days before I wrote this episode,
reached his position in charge of the Michigan Cell when
he was fifteen years old. The three members of the
base who were arrested in Georgia in the process of

(47:51):
trying to spark a race war were ages nineteen, twenty
one and twenty five, respectively. These acceleration as esoteric hitler
Ists tend to be young, and there is disagreement on
the average age at which people enter cults, but the
work of Dr John G. Clark, a psych professor at Harvard,
who surveyed five current and former cult members, suggests an

(48:13):
average age of nineteen and a half for new cult members.
He also points out that most new cult members are male.
This is because young men are particularly vulnerable to being
enraptured by ideologies that offered them a sense of purpose
and belonging. It's one of the reasons the same age
group as the ideal recruitment population for soldiers. But Esotera
Hitlerism doesn't just suck these kids in because they're young.

(48:35):
And to explain this new part, I'm gonna have to
talk a little bit about Kechism, and I am very sorry.
Do we do we have? Do we absolutely? Is it? Absolutely? Yeah?
We really do. Kechism started out as a joking parody
of religion invented by the ship posters four chan and

(48:55):
eight chan during gamer Gate. It's very dumb and talking
about it makes me feel very silly. But the short
of it is Kechism started out, and for probably most
people still is a dumb gag and a way for
them to make fun of members of minority groups by
pretending to be members of a victimized religion because they
think that's funny. The whole thing focuses around ship posting
and spreading memes. But as the Trump campaign ramped up

(49:17):
and this weird internet movement started to have an impact
on the real world, some, particularly unhinged annon, started to
take Kechism more seriously. Well, others just thought the joke
kept getting funnier and spread it around for that reason.
Lawrence Murray, a writer for the fascist podcast The Right Stuff,
was probably the first person to purposefully meld Kechism with

(49:38):
Savitri Devi's philosophy into something he called esoteric Keckism. He
started shooting out memes that replaced Hitler with Pepe as
an avatar of Vishnu, stuff like that. It's very dumb.
When interviewed, Murray claims he was only half joking. With
the whole idea, but like any joke of the sort
on the Internet, it spread like wildfire, and a certain
chunk of the people who saw it took it seri reously,

(50:00):
which led them to the work of more serious fascist thinkers,
people likes of Etrea Devi, and led some of them
into accelerationist groups like Adam Woffen and the Base. It
is not a coincidence that Honders Brevic, the Utoya, Norway
shooter who massacred dozens of children at a left wing
summer camp, directly praised Hindu nationalism in his manifesto. It

(50:21):
is also not a total coincidence that both Honders Brevick
and Brenton Tarrant, the christ shoot shooter, claimed to be
Knights Templar, members of a Christian order fighting against Muslims basically.
And it is not a coincidence that the Urban Dictionary
page for Kechism, written by a gamer gator, describes it
as a red pilled ideology originating from the true Knights Templar.

(50:44):
And again, all of this is joking. All of this
is not joking. It's both at once. It's the contradiction
of modern fucking Yeah. Well, that's yeah, the great the
greatest trick the devil ever played was irony poisoning, because
you just can't. Yeah, you can't argue with that. Um.
And some people will say, and it's possible there is

(51:07):
are some central figures behind this spread of syncretism, like
sinister individuals who have like kind of put all this
together purposefully, or at least put pieces of it together purposefully.
But I tend to be of the belief that most,
if not all, of it is a morphous and acephalis.
It happened without a head, without much intention on its own.
There may have been bits of intention here and there,

(51:28):
like esoteric Keeckism, but a lot of it just happened
because of the sort of structures Savitri Devi built Um.
It's it's just kind of the natural result of the
amorphous and sticky nature of the faith that she created.
If Hindu mythology and ancient Egyptian history can be folded
in with Adolf Hitler and the Aryan myth, why can't
Keechisum wind up in there too? Can't the Knights Temple

(51:51):
are fit in there too? All these weird little subcultures
you've got Norse mythology, chan culture, gamer culture, new age, spiritualism, environmentalism,
even veganism. All these things appeal heavily to a lot
of young people. And the more little bridges that you
can build between these different communities and actual extermination is
Nazi beliefs, the more young men will kind of accidentally

(52:13):
fall in and get caught in this net. It's like
a tunnel spider's web. And at the end the great
innovations have e treat every brought like that's that's the
innovation she brought to Nazism. She took what was a
dead political system that couldn't spread outside of Germany, not really,
and turned it into a living, syncretic religion, something with vitality,

(52:34):
something capable of mutating and absorbing and staying relevant, and
something capable of inspiring young men to commit murder in
the memory of Adolf Hitler nearly a century after his death,
could you give me that word one more time, of
of the the syncretism syncretism, Yeah, I mean it's and
and if you are able to, you know, find a
way to get a group of people who are looking

(52:57):
for something to believe in, who are maybe a little
bit okay, you know what, You're right. I was, um,
but yeah, just like finding a group of vulnerable, vulnerable
people ideologically that needs something to believe in and put
a delicious chocolate coating on the outside of it. Uh,
it seems to work. It works. So how do you

(53:22):
feel about Savitri fan? You gotta check out her books.
Can't say I'm a fan she. I don't think that
I would. I don't think we would have been friends
in junior high and I don't think we would have
been friends now. I yeah, no, I mean I truly.
And it is interesting that we don't talk about her.
I had no idea this person existed. I why do

(53:47):
you think that is? There's a there's a degree to
which I think a lot of people who knew about
her and are like researchers didn't really want to because
there's this worry about making a bigger deal of it
than it is. It's kind of like I didn't really
write about h N much until the christ Street shooting,
when it was like, okay, well now we gotta the base.
Now it's gotten to this point like all right, we

(54:07):
gotta fucking talk about Savitri dev Devi and esoteric Hitlerism,
Like we gotta get some of this out there. Um,
I do think it's also just like not super well known.
I think she was seeing like really, to be entirely honest,
I think most of her efforts would have looked like
a failure to most of observers. Observers up until maybe

(54:29):
at the earliest a decade ago. You know, people who
were really aware of what was going on would have
known earlier, but most people, even pretty well informed people,
would have been like, well, this is kind of a
dead end and just something to like make fun of
up until we start to the internet. Really is what
what provides this with the last ingredient it needs to

(54:49):
take all? Yeah, she like pioneered the red pill mentality,
like it's yeah, she's a big part of that. Yeah,
and we're not like Julius Evola is a big part
of this. Who's Steve Bannon fucking loves take away any
credit from any of the red pil pioneers. Everyone deserves
to take up space. We'll get them all. We'll get

(55:10):
them all on this show. We will, we will. They
deserve it weller as usual. This was absolutely horrifying and
you've ruined my day. Thank you. Good. Yeah, that's the goal. Okay, good, well,
and I've got I've got some plugables, like you can
listen to my podcast My Year in Mensa. It's online now.

(55:34):
There's only four episodes. It's real quick. I'm on Twitter
at Jamie Loftus help Instagram at Jamie car Superstar on
tour for the next month or so. Jamie Loftus is
innocent dot com. And that's what I have to say.
I love when we talk about the worship in the
entire world and at the end you're like, so, what's
your Twitter handle? This is if you really want to

(55:59):
learn more about esoteric hitlersm follow Sophie's Twitter Why underscore,
Sophie Underscore? Why rather subolutely violent? No, gosh, you know,
you know what. It has been on Twitter for less

(56:19):
than forty eight hours, already getting accused of crimes. Robert
gonna be canceled by the time this came up because
he blew his nose on the mic no less than
four times several hours. I am, I am ill, You're ill,
I know, but you know, but I mean now you're
just now you're just bragging about it. Follow our podcast

(56:41):
at Bassard's Pot on Instagram. Don't tell anyone to do so, sorry, listeners,
what to do for I'm get it together? I know
I didn't sleep last night, and the episodes nobody, Well,
I know we've had the sleep last night. That does

(57:04):
that excuse the nose blowing? My friend having trouble sleeping?
Does it excuse the nose blower? No? No, no, Robert, Sophie, Robert,
that's going to be okay? It is not. We're always
getting mad. And the episode, my friend and go take
a nappy. The episode is over. Go hug a cat, cat.

(57:27):
Can you stop nazis cat and encourage the angriest person
you know to write fan fiction? That's truly the greatest
service you can do. Both of those things are critical. Alright,
episodes over. Bye by