Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Part Two: Savitri Devi The Woman Who Turned Nazism into a Religion

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Savitri Devi. Jamie’s new Cool Zone Media show Sixteenth Minute launches on May 7th! Every week, she gets to know one of the internet’s most notorious main characters, and how the algorithm delivering them to you changes their brain and yours. Up first: Antoine Dodson, the dress, and Boston slide cop!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Scott Weinberger, journalist and former deputy sheriff. In my new podcast series, Cold-Blooded, I'm embedded in the cold case investigation into the death of firefighter Billy Halpern. Experience this investigation in a truly unique way, untangling secrets that may reveal the answers to not only one case, but almost a dozen. Listen to Cold-Blooded, the Apollo Jim murders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect presents Family Therapy, and I'm your host, Elia Connick.

Jay is the woman in this dynamic who is currently co-parenting two young boys with her former partner David. David, he is the leader. He just don't want to leave me. But how do you lead a woman? How do you lead in a relationship? Like, what's the blue part? David, you just asked the most important question.

Listen to Family Therapy on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get emotional with me, Radhita Vleukya, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry. We're going to be talking with some of my best friends. I didn't know we were going to go there, Amir. People that I admire.

When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right? Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhida Vlukya on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Debbie.

And most importantly, today is the episode recorded on the tail end of my recorder's battery. So we are fucking daredevils right now. Wow. Okay. I like, Robert, you're edging. Yeah. This is the podcast equivalent of edging. Yes. This is edging. This is what it means. I've never been totally clear on what edging is,

but I think that this is it. I am the first person to edge more than 100,000 people at the same time. Wow, okay, that was a flex on many levels, and I'm just going to plow through it. Okay, so- That's what edging's all about. Edging is to plow through it. Okay, so. That's what edging's all about. Edging is just plowing through it.

Wow, wait, edging is when you're like, I'm not gonna. It's when you bring someone to, yeah, you go to like the edge of orgasm, but you keep stopping it. And then you're like, that's the joke. No, okay.

Okay, well, I brought up the joke originally, and now I'm explaining why I was correct to do so, which is what all great comedians do. So in October of 1945, Hitler's death still fresh on her mind, Savitri Devi took part in the festival of Kali at the Kaligot temple in Calcutta. Now Kali is the Hindu deity of destruction, a blue skininned 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.

Metal. You see a lot of times, yeah, it's really cool. Like some of the statues of her are like fucking 20 feet tall. It's metal as hell. Yeah. So as the goddess of destruction, Kali tends to inspire some pretty powerful feelings. As Savitri stared up at the image of her goddess covered in gore and armed with massive swords the size of small cars, she begged Kali for her blessing, a blessing of violence and destruction against the allied powers who had destroyed her beloved Nazi Germany. She left the ceremony convinced that it was now her duty to do what she'd failed to do back in 1939. She had to finally travel to Germany and take part

in the resistance to the Allies by any means necessary. She left her 20 cats in the care of a friend and left her- That's so mean to that friend. Oh my God. And the cats. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Imagine being that friend, oh my God. And the cats, yeah, it's pretty wild. Imagine being that friend. So she leaves 20 cats behind. This is a person who leaves her 20 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 dies. You get that text, you're just like, hey, so like I have to go do a thing. Could you look after my cats indefinitely? Right? No, no. Could you look after my cats indefinitely while I go to try to resurrect Nazism in 1940s Germany? Parentheses, there's 20 of the cats, by the way.

They're here just like, it gets worse and worse. Oh my God. Wow, I think that, I mean of all- It's good, it's good stuff. Of all the cruel and horrible things that this woman has done, and I don't even know all of them yet, this has to rank like top 10. This is bad. It's pretty bad. She's a bad friend.

Now, Savitri, yeah, she's not a great friend or person. No. But she does finally reach the birthplace of Hitlerism, the center of the ideology she'd adopted for herself in 1948. She later wrote in her book, Golden the Furnace, that, the gods had ordained that I should have a glimpse of ruins, bitter irony of fate. Germany at that point was still largely destroyed and chopped up into four pieces by its victorious enemies. So Vietri's writing about this time shows a wild ignorance about the extent of actual Nazi crimes because she's so horrified at how bad things are in Germany. She writes, quote, all the German cities, the plight of men and women in the overcrowded areas still fit to live in and all the misery, all the bitterness, consequent of that devilish bombing, streams

of fire, tons of phosphorus relentlessly poured over his people for five years. These were England's thanks to Adolf Hitler for having shown mercy to her soldiers in his hour of victory. These were the thanks of the United States of America for his orders not to shoot the parachute as captured on German soil. Which is like, so she's framing the British evacuations from the coast of France as like German mercy rather than incompetence on Hitler's behalf, which they actually were just rank incompetence on Hitler's behalf. No kidding. She's also talking about the mercy of Germany and not killing captured allied paratroopers, which was illegal.

And in doing this, she's ignoring, for one example, the Malmedy Massacre, in which a Waffen SS troop massacred 84 American POWs with machine guns. She's also ignoring the estimated 3.3 million Russian POWs who died in German custody. But if I wind up arguing actual history with a dead Nazi, we'll be here all day, so we're just going to move forward from that, but she whitewashes things a bit is the point. Yeah. Just a bit.

You a bit, just a bit. A skoosh. Just obviously it's going to be horrible seeing Germany after World War II because like the bombing campaign over Germany was one of the greatest crimes in history. That said, they kinda had it coming. Like. They're. They're.

Ooh, the takes are coming in hot tonight. I mean, fuck man. If anyone has ever deserved that, it's fucking Nazi Germany. Yeah, no, I mean they are, they do present themselves as a pretty clear target. Good Lord, yeah. Yeah.

You can say the Allies maybe, the Allies went overboard in some areas while also being like, but what were they supposed to do? I think a bit of an overreaction may have been like, it's historically you're like, okay, okay. You gotta do something about it. Yeah, you know, 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. Ah, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, now before visiting Germany, Savitri had hung out in Sweden, uh, where a number of Nazis had fled after the war. There she met Sven Hedden, a Nazi supporting explorer and author, and a number of former members of the Nazi party who were hiding out there because, you know, it was a crime

to be a Nazi now. She told them her mission was to deliver a message of hope to the German people. Now, since Nazism was a bit unpopular after the Second World War, she was unable to find any printers in Sweden to actually print out this message of hope. So instead, Savitri Devi had to write out 500 leaflets by hand, each featured a swastika and these words, quote, men and women of Germany in the midst of unspeakable rigors and suffering, hold fast to our glorious national socialist faith and resist, defy the people, defy the powers, which worked 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 500 of these by hand and wearing a sari and swastika earrings, Savitri Devi takes a train across Germany and tosses out 100 of leaflets over the course of about 15 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 thrown by the gods through me. As her train crossed from Germany and to Belgium, she sang a Hindu hymn to Shiva. So, she is on brand. I mean, a lot of commitment, A lot of commitment is going into this.

Yes, yes. And that is all you can say. Yeah, that is, yeah. Now, so she gets inspired by the success of our 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. And because of all the fascists that are in London, she's able to actually find a printer to print up 6,000 additional leaflets to take to Germany.

Using a connection to an old friend in France, she secured a military permit to visit Germany for a longer period of time, claiming, not falsely, that she intended to write a book about the nation's post-war trials. Her second trip into Germany lasted three months, and she successfully handed out all 6,000 leaflets. She also met with a number of old Nazis. None of them were very high ranking. These were like third rate Nazis. Oh, then who cares?

Some of them were battered former POWs. And some of these POWs did have legitimate stories of allied brutality that they'd faced in captivity. Because like, you know, it was a war. Yeah. She interviewed numerous German citizens, introducing herself at the start that they'd faced in captivity because like, you know, it was a war. 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 Adolf Hitler was still alive somewhere in the world and assure these defeated Nazis that surely they were only two or three years away from a revival of Nazism in Germany. Which is optimistic. Imagine if Hitler was your Tupac. Like that is such a wild.

That's exactly it. Like Hitler's literally her Tupac. She's like, no, he's on an island somewhere. You don't understand. This is all part of a greater plan. He's gonna drop an amazing album. Yeah. He's got an album.

You've really, yeah. You've got basically predicted the rest of this. The hologram's a decoy. Oh. Yeah. Oh, that's bleak. I mean, I think we can, I mean, that said, we both agree that the hologram is a decoy. Oh, that's bleak. I mean, I think we can, I mean, that said, we both agree that the hologram is a decoy. Oh no, the hologram is absolutely decoy. Yeah, it's a decoy.

Okay. Now, one of these conversations that Savitri had with the former Wehrmacht soldier is worth me reading out here. And I'm going to quote again from the book Hitler's Priestess, quote, Continuing his narrative to post-war conditions in occupied Germany, the old fighter's face darkened. Nice people to talk about freedom and justice, these damned Democrats. They have tied us hand and foot so we cannot move. They have muzzled us so we can offer no resistance while they plunder our country left and right,

dismantle and carry off our factories piece by piece, cut down our forests, take our oil, our iron, our steel, all that we have, and into the bargain make people believe that we were to blame for the war, these confounded liars. He lusted for revenge. He longed for the day when the last allies ran for their lives to escape Germany, when Paris would lay in ruins at its next German occupation, next time he would show neither mercy nor good humor. Savitri Devi felt a sense of mounting excitement as his mood became ever uglier and he began

to describe in a raised voice how he would kill his enemies. This was the spirit she sought, the rolling eyes of a wounded animal, a war god of the Stone Age, thirsting for blood, barbaric magnificence. It was a perfect meeting of minds, the violent resentful German and the airy and profitous of revenge. The day of reckoning seemed already nearer." Okay. She has a fun trip to Germany. the Aryan prophetess of revenge. The day of reckoning seemed already nearer. So. Okay.

She has a fun trip to Germany. I mean, you know, she had me at the beginning with the, you know, feeling plundered and betrayed by the democratic party. Sure. Yes. That's a strong start. She was not talking about the democratic party though.

I know, I know. I just, they're, Robert. I was away from the mic at that point. What else can I do? I can confirm you were not away from the mic as I think everyone will lead you right up on, this is revisionist, this is absurd. This is Savitri Devi levels of revisionist from you.

You are the Savitri Devi of this podcast. Of this, that's so mean. At least make me the Elizabeth Holmes of this podcast. Geez. You have not earned that yet, Jamie. Make me a fun one. Make me a fun one. Make me a fun bastard, come on.

Make me a fun, tragic one with a ponytail, at least. Yeah, there's nothing tragic about Savitri. No. So she returned to France in December of 1948 and immediately began to write a book, Golden the Furnace, about her experiences and her growing conception of Hitlerism as something beyond what the old national socialists

had really believed. In February of 1949, three chapters into her book, Savitri Devi was arrested by French authorities. She spent a total of six months in pretrial detention 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 a 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 wardress from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a quote beautiful looking woman, a blonde of about my age, in Devi'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. Yeah, the language is so, yeah. Yeah. And Savitri writes about like how cruel this woman's imprisonment was and how nice the concentration camps was. Like she's trash, she's trash.

Oh, she's absolute trash, okay. I'm not gonna like spend a lot of time debunking her was. Like she's trash. She's trash. She's absolute trash. Okay. I'm not gonna like spend a lot of time debunking her shit. Like she's garbage. Yeah. And it's crazy. I mean, it's like she is the one that is like providing all of this information too. She is the source.

Yeah, she is the source. And again, I can't say it enough. She never had the chutzpah to actually go to Nazi Germany while it existed I think because Number one she would have been disappointed because like none of this this weird religious shit She attached to it was an actual part of nazism in Nazi Germany like she would have like she would have been like a

Just like she might have gotten knocked up by some, like at the orders of Heinrich Himmler, but she wouldn't have, um, she wouldn't have been anything special in Nazi Germany. The odds are good. Like maybe they would've tried to use her to like, propagandize because she knew a bunch of languages. I don't know. They might've like had her try to reach out to India, but probably she would've 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. This place she claimed ruled. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So, well, in late 1949, 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, Debbie became a prolific author, writing up every significant event in her life through a mixture of supposedly non-fiction works as well as fanciful tales. For example, she retold the story of her first trip back to Europe in the children's fable,

Long Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, whose heroine is a cat-loving Nazi named Heliodora. No, that can't be real. Yeah, yeah, it's a real book. That sounds like random words selected from a, oh. Well, it all makes sense. Like Heliodora's clearly a self-insert character. Based on everything we know about her. Helio, Savitri W's obsessed with sun gods and goddesses.

Like it's all. Oh, God. How embarrassing for her. What's embarrassing is that Savitri writes that her self-insert fantasy character has, quote, no human feelings in the ordinary sense of the word. She had been from her very childhood, much too profoundly shocked at the behavior

of man towards animals, to have any sympathy for people suffering on account of their being Jews. Okay. The Holocaust isn't bad. Have you seen what happened to cats when I was a kid? But here's the thing. Quite a take. Quite a take. I mean, that is a wild take to be like, you know how we resolve

violence towards cats also cause violence towards people. Yeah. Surely it'll. The Holocaust is cool because cats have been mistreated. Is Butri Devi is watching? She just goes to a whole other place. She's like, did you know, like when you're having, like when you're having an argument with someone

who doesn't want to have a good faith argument with you and you're just like, well, what about this? And they're like, well, what about cats in France? What about that? Huh? And you're like, well, what about cats in France? What about that, huh? And you're like, I don't, I've been stunned like a Pokemon. Yeah, it's amazing. I don't know. Interesting.

Over the next few years, Savitri wrote and conversed with increasingly aged Nazis and gradually refined her theories about the world until in 1958, she published what would prove to be her magnum opus, The Lightning in the Sun. In this work, the ideas Savitri had been rattling around in her head all finally came together. Hitler, she concluded, was a man against time, fighting to uphold Aryan virtues and blood against the corruption of modernity. She placed him

at the center of her own trinity, one that replaced the decadent Christian one she'd grown up despising. And her trinity, I dare you to make less sense than the trinity she picks. They're okay. Yeah. No. Who do you think's first? Hitler. Well, no, Hitler's the most important, but he's not the first. Oh, he's not the first. What? No, it goes in order of like time period. So these are all historical figures.

First one is definitely someone ancient Greek. No, ancient Egyptian, Akhenaten, the first monotheist he's generally called. He was like this pharaoh who declared himself the sun god and tried to institute monotheism and then he died and everything he did was burned by the people who came after him because they thought he was an asshole. And it's weird because she hates monotheism so much, but he's one of the people she loves. I think just because he's the sun god and she's got a weird thing about sun gods.

She'll make an exception. She'll give any sun god a pass, basically. It's fucking weird. Second in her holy trinity is Genghis Khan. What? Does she give like, and here's why? Why? It wouldn't make sense. I mean, basically the why is that he's history's greatest conqueror. He's a great conqueror, and he's not Christian or Jewish or anything, you know?

Okay. He's a great conqueror and he's not Christian or Jewish or anything, you know? Okay. Um, yeah. So Akhenaten is the sun and the Khan is the lightning and Hitler, she believes, combines the best attributes of both. The Pharaoh's wisdom with the strategic mind of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan succeeded in invading Russia during the winter. So I don't know where you're coming from, Savitri.

So any questions? This woman is, okay, okay. One of these two knew how to invade Russia and it was not Hitler. And then is the third one Hitler or is there? Yeah, the third is Hitler because he combines the best parts of Aconaut. This sounds like a terrible cartoon.

She's fucking wild. Yeah, it's so dumb. Yeah, so there's probably a couple of reasons for her obsession with Akhenaten. For one thing, Akhenaten was deeply revered by the Theosophical Society, which you will remember from our episodes on anthroposophy. And the Theosophical Society had a lot of ties also to the Tula Society and all the

other weird little occult groups who'd supported the Nazis early on. Akhenaten had been a utopian thinker who'd tried and failed to establish a perfect city. Goodrich Clark, Savitri's biographer, writes that she saw his sun-worshipping cult as, quote, rejection of all politics that promotes man's interest at a cost to the beauty and abundance of nature, which is just invented by her. Like she's. 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 what she is talking about. Yeah. Okay. Akhenaten is her Jack Skellington. Yeah, that is okay. Okay. Now I'm like her Jax Skellington. Yeah, that is, okay, okay.

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 both products and services are. Wow. Yeah, they add up to three. Products. I'm Scott Weinberger, journalist and former deputy sheriff. In my new podcast series, Cold-Blooded, the Apollo Gym Murders, I'm embedded in the cold case investigation into the death of firefighter Billy Halpert.

It's just a little shame, you know, that they took him from us. Experience this investigation in a truly unique way. Knocking on doors, uncovering new evidence, including the DNA of a potential killer. My name is Danny Smith. I'm detective. Uh, minimum police department. This is Scott Weinberger. We're actually reopening an old case and your name came up untangling secrets that may reveal the answers to not only one murder, but almost a dozen. I thought they were going to kill me. So I kept my mouth shut and I didn't say anything all these years. I didn't say,

listen to cold blooded the apologyders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Elliott Connie and this is Family Therapy. In my best hopes, I guess, identify the life that I want and work towards it. I never seen a man take care of my mother the way she needed to be taken care of. I get the impression that you don't feel like you've done everything right as a father. Is that true?

That's true, and I'm not offended by that. Thank you for going through those things and thank you for overcoming them. Oh, thank God for the limits. Every time I have one of our sessions, our sessions be positive. It just keeps me going. I feel like my focus is redirected in a different aspect of my life now. So how'd we do today? We did good. The Black Effect presents Family Therapy. Listen now on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get emotional with me, Radhita Vlukya, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry. We're going to talk about and go through all the things that are sometimes difficult to process alone. We're going to go over how to regulate your emotions, diving deep into holistic personal development and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life. We're gonna be talking with some of my best friends.

I didn't know we were gonna go there on this. I mean, don't let this get you. People that I admire. When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right? And basically have conversations that can help us

get through this crazy thing we call life. I already believe in myself. I already see myself. And so when people give me an opportunity, I'm just like, oh great, you see me too. We'll laugh together, we'll cry together and find a way through all of our emotions. Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Rali Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! So, um, God, there's so much to get through with this woman's fucking stupid, stupid fucking beliefs, but they're very important. They're stupid and they're also kind of scattered.

They're so dumb and complicated. They're kind of scattered. They're so dumb and complicated. You get a feeling that she went through a lot of phases. She's a phases gal. They all make sense. She's a phases gal. I'll say that.

They don't make sense in the fact that they're true, but like based on her history and like the things that she imbibes, they all make, I can see why she came to these conclusions, but they're super dumb. They're really dumb. So the core of her Nazism is a love of nature, which was a big part of actual original Nazism too. They were very into like, like natural life and shit and like taking care of the land and animal welfare. 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 Nazism and these books, like the impeachment of man is still kind of popular among chunks of the new age and environmentalist movements today, Savitri Devi's passionate writing on animal rights is actually one of the many little roads that exist between the Green movement and the neo-Nazi movement. And it's really fucked up. Devi herself famously railed against the allied forces purging Germany of its fascist organizations saying that, quote, you cannot denazify nature.

She believed that nature was fundamentally nationalist, national socialist. That's a bad take. I'm going to read a quote from impeachment of man now. And I want to remind you, there are people who are like environmentalists who are not Nazis who read this book today and don't really realize what's going on. Quote, 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, intolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses in the fur industry, infliction and pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause, does not deserve to live.

Out with it. Bless the day it will destroy itself so that a healthy, hard, frank, and brave nature-loving and truth-loving elite of supermen with a life-centered faith and natural human aristocracy is beautiful on its own higher level as the four-legged kings of the jungle might again rise and rule upon its remains forever." So again, you see how because of the kind of stuff she's written, she's there's this, there's these bridges. She's a big part of why there's bridges between the eco movement and the Nazi movement. And they're very much are on like the hard edge of the, of the, of the eco movement of the anti climate change movement.

There are Nazis and left-wing activists who kind of increasingly seem like Nazis in a lot of cases, which is not to say that like even supporting radical environmental action makes you a Nazi. It's to say that like part of what Savitri achieved is building inroads between these little groups and the Nazi movement. So now there's a lot of people that get into Nazism through environmentalism and Savitri Devi's a part of that. And that's kind of the story we're telling today.

So. Nazism really knows how to ruin a good thing. It wasn't as good at it before Savitri Devi. It's always been a ruiner, but she really took it to new levels. Oh good, as long as she elevated how bad it was. Yeah. Yeah. So the lightning and the sun, her opus,

posits a cyclical view of history. She believed that time began with a golden age in which it was dominated by the perfect Aryans. Like a sun god age? Like a sun god age, yeah. And this degraded slowly into a silver age and then a bronze age. And both of these worse ages featured increased racial mixing that weakened the Aryans. They also featured pernicious Jewish influence. The next age is the Kali Yuga, or Dark Age, which Savitri believed the world had already

entered into. She also called this Dark Age the Reign of the Jew. No. Yeah, the only way out of this Dark Age was for the man against time, Hitler, to gather up the terrible weapons of the dark age and use them to bring about the return of the golden age, presumably through genocidal purging of non-Aryans and 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, Adolf Hitler, as a tribute of unfailing loyalty and love forever

and ever. God. You know, there's been a lot said about fan culture. I don't agree with all of it, but you know, this is a real argument against fan culture. This is the worst fan culture has ever gone. I feel comfortable saying that. This is bad. This is the worst fan culture has ever gone. I feel comfortable saying that. This is bad. This is, this is, this is bad.

This is the worst it can go. This is bad stan culture. It's bad, bad, bad. And even the way that she writes and structures these things, it kind of, you can hear that like interest in like ancient history in there, because it just sounds like she's kind of connecting these lines that don't actually exist to make it sound like, to, I mean, kind

of like the way she like arguably maybe lifted some of her own like self-mythologizing from Mein Kampf, like she's just like putting something she wants to say into a familiar framework. Yeah, it's called syncretism, well, this is part of syncretism, is like taking these other things that you like and sticking it onto this thing. And this is like the main thing she goes down in history for doing to Nazism. Now, I have a lot of debates with myself putting this together about how much detail 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 shit is dangerous. Um, it spreads a kind of ideological infection that grabs impressionable children primarily in a vice-like grip and turns them into something very dangerous. And a lot of people have died from this. And I am not going to, if you're very knowledgeable about this, you will notice there is a lot of things I'm leaving out just because like this is enough to understand it and I don't want to just like be spreading weird Nazi propaganda to an audience. Of as you said, a hundred thousand people. Robert, that is the most merciful thing you've ever done on this entire podcast.

Yeah, it's just too dangerous in my opinion. That's good, that's, yeah, I agree. And I don't even know what it is. It's fucking weird, stupid shit, but yeah. The last thing that's really important to understand about Savitri Devi's beliefs is that she decided Hitler was what she called, well, she was not the only person. Other people had the same idea,

but she's one of the more prominent ones. The Kali Yuga, the 10th incarnation of Vishnu. And she used several segments from August Kubasek's ill-advised book, The Young Hitler I Knew. Kubasek was Hitler's friend when they were like teenagers. That's like an HBO series. He wrote a terrible book. It's valuable because it's the only insight we have in Hitler at that period, but he clearly wrote it to make money. Is it like My Friend Dahmer? Is it like that? Yes. It's valuable because it's the only insight we have in Hitler at that period, but he's clearly wrote it to make money. Like my friend Dahmer. Is it like that?

Yes. It's like that same level of like this horrible person. Yeah. I knew you're like, we were buddies. Cool. Yeah. But you also get the feeling that Kubizek didn't really think he was horrible until he, like he was writing it initially to be an biography that was published under the Nazi regime as like a pro-hitler piece of Propaganda oh, so 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 allies

Fucking sinister. Oh my god. I mean there people There's a lot of debates to have about k Kubizek, but most historians will agree, well, you have to read Kubizek, you have to take him with like a lot of salt. Yeah, he's trying to sell books. And Savitri Devi takes him with no salt at all. And she pulls several passages from his book as like evidence that Hitler was the Kali Yuga and was like channeling fucking Vishnu. Uh. Um. What? I, oh.

Yeah, it's, it is bizarre. This woman does not understand shades of gray even remotely. No. She's just such a. No, no. Okay, okay. She would have written shades of gray though if she had been around the water.

I wish she had. Like if, again. That's the better world, yeah. As with literally every single person you've ever told me about on this cursed show, Robert, everything would have been better off if people had just channeled their horny energy into fan fiction instead of brutal hate and murder

every single time. The masturbating to fan fiction is the only thing that will save us from the next Hitler. It will, absolutely. And that's where the Kylo Ren stance come in. If you know an angry person who spends too much time writing fan fiction for under no circumstances stop them.

The lives that will be saved. Yeah, the lives that will be saved because of Ray Lo fanfic I can't even begin to tell you. Yeah. It's good. Okay, so this can't even begin to tell you. It's good. Okay, so this is horrible. Back to what you were saying that was horrible. So she reads Kubizek and she becomes convinced

that a couple chunks of that book are evidence that Hitler is channeling Vishnu, is the avatar of Vishnu. God, sci-fi. So yeah, there's these moments in the book where Hitler will like, that Kubizek writes very like purple prosy, where Hitler will like suddenly like in the middle of a conversation, like make some sort of like grand statement about the future.

And it's like, maybe it's true, cause he was Hitler. Like it wouldn't be the weirdest thing if Hitler had always been that guy, right? Sure. But also Kubizek wrote this well after Hitler, you know, was done with, and it's entirely possible he was like, people are going to expect him to make grand speeches

that are like dark and crazy about the future because he was Hitler. And he threw them in there because that's what people were, like we don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So decades later, Savitri Devi would claim that her initial inspiration for the idea

that Hitler was the Kala Yuga had come from a conversation she'd had in 1936 with Satyananda Swami, the founder and head of the Hindu mission where she'd worked. She claims that Satyananda used to say, and I'm clued in 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 go on against time. Time is destruction. You have to destroy in order to create again. But there are forces that try to postpone destruction. And he said Hitler was the reincarnation of that force. And he was, he was. But it's a nice thing to hear, a very refreshing thing to hear from a Hindu sage. 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 Adolf Hitler. He said, good, good, Adolf Hitler, he's as much a Hindu as any of our Hindus. He's an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Probably never happened, but might have.

I mean, that's a very articulate, yeah. It is, but one of the things that Hindu scholars, who again are generally very critical of a lot, all of these claims of Savitri's will point out, some, like one of the kind of downsides of sort of this very open aspect of Hindu mythology, where it kind of 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, oh, 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, this thing that matters to you. Like, yeah, again, who knows? You'll get different opinions on this, depending on who you go to. So, yeah, we don't know what's true. What is important is that after Savitri Devi

starts writing about all this shit, a lot of Nazis come to believe it. In fact, the reeling and wounded remaining Nazis of the West felt like Savitri's occult musings were basically a breath of fresh air. And she spent her middle and later years traveling around and meeting fascists all over the world. In 1961, she made her first direct connection with the English neo-Nazis

of the British national party or BNP. As the war years receded further and further away, an international agglomeration of fascist inclined folks began to link up and plan together for a resurgence of Nazism. Savitri Devi was at the center of it, as this paragraph from Hitler's priestess illustrates, quote, She lost no time in contacting Andrew Fontaine, the president of the BNP. A spring camp attended by 20 delegates from European nationalist groups was held on Fontaine's estate at Norfolk in May of 1961. Those present included Robert Lyon, a young leader in the American National States rights party, which violently opposed to segregation

in the South, representatives from German neo-Nazi groups and Savitri Devi. Another key figure was ex-SS Lieutenant Friedrich Borth. Born in 1928, this blue-eyed, blonde Austrian Nazi had served in the Luftwaffe and the Waffen SS. As a teenage officer, he had commanded an assault group and won the Iron Cross. After serving a three-year jail sentence in post-war Vienna, he published an SS veteran magazine, Das Kamerad, 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 HeimertTuerd-Eugend until its banning in 1959 and then ran the Legion Europa, the Austrian section of Thierarzt-Gion-Europe, another international grouping inspired by the French OAS in Algeria and Belgian Rancor 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 tangents of traditional ale around the campfire. So you see what's happening here. Savitri Debbie gets pulled into not just neo-Nazi groups and not just old Nazis. She's meeting with the American states rights party.

She's meeting with like these Belgians who are angry that they've lost control of the Congo and she's meeting with all these old neo-Nazis and 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, I did. No, no, no.

I think, Oh, you're saying you didn't blow your nose on the mic, but you did. No, no, no. She's not out of her depth at all. Okay. 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 desegregated fought against the Nazis. She is a part of all these different, like very far right groups, including Nazis coming together. And in a lot of cases starting to embrace these weird this weird Nazi religion. She's She's invented as something to unify all of them That's what starts to happen in this period and that's what's really unique about this period is like these are all groups like the Belgian Like pro Congolese control of like the Belgian like the Belgians weren't pro Nazi But like right these Belgians start to get pro-Nazi now because like they realize there's like this white identity thing, but also this weird religion

that is more attractive to them than actual national socialism would have been. It's interesting. I mean, it seems like part of her effectiveness lies in like having so many little bits of things for people to latch onto so that even if you don't agree with the the larger ideology there's a worm on a hook that'll 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. So like yeah that's what we start to see happening in the early 1960s. Um, in 1962, Savitri was in England again for a gathering of worldwide Nazis that

included bastard pod main character, George Lincoln Rockwell. Oh, I know this name. Yeah. I know this name. The founder of the American Nazi party. Our old buddy George. That's like any time he comes up, things are about to American Nazi Party, R.O. Bloody George. Yeah, fucking GLR is in now. Things are about to get way worse.

Not great. Okay. Savitri Devi was one of the signatories for the World Union of National Socialists, a proposed organization to form a, quote, combat-efficient international apparatus to facilitate a return to Nazi values and the extermination of non-whites from Western nations. Now, ones wound up being a bust for several reasons, including the fact that Rockwell was almost immediately kicked out of the United Kingdom. But he and Savitri developed a friendly

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

The Lightning in the Sun, it should be said, could be a YA book that like is out right now. It might be, to be entirely honest. And that YA book might actually be Nazi propaganda hidden as young adult fiction. Which, oh, you can't put it past, yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Much like, for example, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, 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. But we have to blaze past that right now. I found a book called Lightning on the Sun. That's pretty close. That's probably Nazi shit. It's about a guy named Glenn who owns a store. Yeah, Glenn Schmittler who- Might be Nazi.

A moon god. Yep, that's some Nazi shit. There it is. Or anti-Nazi since not Savitri was all about the sun god. It could be either really. Hmm, well. So Savitri Devi would go on to spend the bulk of her remaining years in India,

traveling irregularly when the demands of her national socialist beliefs took her around the world. She remained convinced all her life that Hitler would return either in a new incarnation or after revealing that he had somehow survived the war and lead a resurgent Nazism to global victory. She retired in 1970, living for a time at the home of her friend, Francois Dior in England. That's the Dior you're thinking of. Really? Yeah, it's like the daughter, I think, of the woman who created the line.

Yeah, maybe granddaughter. Oh, good. She was a big Nazi backer before the war, yeah. Wow, okay, learning more. I love fashion knowledge. Savitri Devi was kicked out of Dior's house eventually for her twin habits of refusing to bathe ever and chewing on garlic constantly.

Can we? Pfft. Disgusting. Come on, girl. Okay. That's what gets the reaction, Sophie. She's terrible. She is awful.

So gnarly. I was chewing on garlic a lot over the summer. It helps preserve your voice. I don't think that's why she was doing it though. It does. But you have to bathe while 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 20 cats that she left to go to Nazi Germany with? I was just about to say, she spent most of her remaining years living alone in India with dozens sometimes of pet cats, and at least one cobra. She always had a fuckload of cats. This woman couldn't get away from her cats.

The one thing about her that wasn't awful. You would think that cats live long enough that the original 20 cats she left behind would still be alive, but then I guess- I think a lot of them were. I think a lot of them were. Oh, she was taking them with. I don't know precisely, but my assumption,

based on everything I know of Savitri Devi, is that she would have absolutely tried to get back her original cats if it was possible. She was very into cats. Yeah. Okay, well. She would not have abandoned the cats, I don't think. She was real consistent about that part.

Yeah. As she grew older, Debbie became more and more convinced that the United States represented the most fertile ground for the growth of the esoteric Nazi religion she had spent her life helping to construct. In 1982, 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 on the way, while staying at a friend's house in Great Britain. Her ashes, however, finally made it across the pond to the United States of America, and American Nazis laid her to

rest by sprinkling her on their hero's grave, George Lincoln Rockwell. So Rockwell and Savitri Devi share a grave, yeah. Wow, okay, so she's like, okay. Yeah, you know who doesn't share a grave with George Lincoln Rockwell and Savitri Devi? The products and services we're about to hawk? Yes.

For now, you never know. For now. For now. I'm Scott Weinberger, journalist and former deputy sheriff. In my new podcast series, Cold-Blooded, the Apollo Gym Murders, I'm embedded in the cold case investigation into the death of firefighter, Billy Halpert. It's just a little shame, you know, that they took him for a month. Experience this investigation in a truly unique way, knocking on doors, uncovering new evidence,

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Never forget. It's OK to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Rali Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. So Savitri Devi is dead. Finally. But this is not the end for her. Not really because starting in the late 1970s, a famous Holocaust-denier and publisher Ernst Zündel had found her old work and started pushing it back into circulation. Now, it had only developed a limited audience in those early post-war days,

but now, nearly 20 years later, people were ready for esoteric Hitlerism. The book Hitler's Priestess notes, by the late 1970s, 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 and given new meanings. By publishing the work of Savitri Devi, Zündel 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 Orient. See, she was just saying that by saying it's plastic, because 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 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.

Sure. But Zündel is like, this is a fucking opportunity because kids are growing up reading about these cool, evil, bad guy Nazis. And for the same reason that kids love dressing up as Imperial stormtroopers from Star Wars, kids get interested in the Nazis from this. And he sees Savitri Devi's work as like,

I can fucking get a shitload of kids interested in Nazism by pushing this stuff back out there. Oh boy, okay. And he's fucking right. Yeah. Now. right. Yeah. Now. Yeah. Yeah. Another important architect of this whole thing, and 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. And it's from Miguel that we actually get the term esoteric Hitlerism. Serrano and Devi seem to have reached essentially the same conclusion about Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu through slightly different intellectual roots. Miguel was a student of Jung and a Mithraist, which we just don't have enough time to get into. I was like, not, not, not reading any of those. Once again, the Theosophical Society. He was also an early avid Western practitioner of yoga. Miguel corresponded with Devi during her lifetime. Before he died in 2009, he gave interviews to Nazi magazines with names like

Black Sun, where he said this about Savitri Devi, quote, Savitri Devi is the greatest warrior after Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and Joseph Goebbels. Moreover, she was the first to discover the ancient and spiritual power behind Hitlerism. She envisioned a new religion and inaugurated a sanctuary for Hitler in India. She was, as I myself am, anti-Christian. She initiated completely on her own all that I have developed up until now.

It is not mere coincidence that the Spanish Catholics published an attack against Savitri Devi, Otto Rahn, 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 priests of esoteric Hitlerism, the priests of Wotan." And he's like wearing a male feminist t-shirt while he does this. He's like, I don't hate women. I like this, I like the worst woman I've ever heard of.

women I like this I like the worst woman I've ever heard of love he would not have worn a man I will say that much but uh you're getting the spirit of the guy right he's a real gigantic piece of shit we're not getting into it up but he gives her credit as like the real motive force behind the religion that Hitlerism becomes even though he's also like kind of independently coming to a lot of the same conclusions and even earlier in some cases, like she's the popularizer in a lot of ways. She has a big role in that. Um, and yeah, he's, we'll talk about him more later.

Today, Savitri Devi's fingerprints can be found all over the radical and murderous chunks of the fascist right. The Fuerkrieg division, an accelerationist neo-Nazi organization that's very similar to Adam Waffen Division, similar enough to talk about for the purposes of this podcast. Both of them seek to bring about the violent destruction of the current world order through destabilizing attacks. The Fuerkrieg Division directly cites Devi as an inspiration. The group's Gab bio includes this Devi 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 too, and the members of the base who weren't FBI agents, anti-fascists or journalists, which is basically those seven guys who got arrested. I was going to say, that's a familiar, yeah. Yeah. I know this right, Ted Crew. And it's in these groups like the base that we can see some hint of what makes Savitri Devi so dangerous.

The leader of the Michigan cell of Adam Waffen division, who was doxed a few days before I wrote this episode, reached his position in charge of the Michigan cell when he was 15 years old. The three members of the base who were arrested in Georgia in the process of trying to spark a race war were ages 19, 21, and 25 respectively. These accelerationist, esoteric Hitlerists 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 500 current and former cult members, suggests an average age of 19 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 offer them a sense of purpose and belonging. It's one of the reasons the same age group is the ideal recruitment population for soldiers, but esoteric Hitlerism doesn't just suck these kids in because they're young. And to explain this new part, I'm going to have to talk a little bit about kekism.

And I am very sorry for this, Jane. No, do we have, do we have, do we absolutely, is it absolutely necessary? Yeah, we really do. Kekism started out as a joking parody of religion invented by the shit posters of 4chan and 8chan during Gamergate. It's very dumb and talking about it makes me feel very silly. But the short of it is Keckism 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 shitposting and spreading memes, but as the Trump campaign

ramped up and this weird internet movement started to have an impact on the real world, some particularly unhinged anons started to take cacism more seriously, while 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 Keckism with Savitri Devi's philosophy into something he called Esoteric Keckism. He started shitting out memes that replaced Hitler with Pepe as an avatar of Vishnu, stuff like that. It's very dumb. When 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 seriously, which led them to the work of

more serious fascist thinkers, people like Savitri Devi, and led some of them into accelerationist groups like At Waffen and the base. It is not a coincidence that Anders Breivik, the Utoian Norway shooter who massacred dozens of children at a left-wing summer camp, directly praised Hindu nationalism in his manifesto. It is also not a total coincidence that both Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter, claim 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 Keckism, written by a gamergator, describes it as a red-pilled ideology originating from the true

Knights Templar. And again, all of this is joking, all of this is not joking. It's both at once. It's the contradiction of modern fucking, yeah. Well, that's, yeah, the greatest trick the devil ever played was irony poisoning because you just can't, you can't argue with it. Or, yeah. Some people will say, and it's possible there is, are some central figures behind this spread of syncretism,

like sinister individuals who have 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 amorphous and asephalous. It happened without a head, without much intention on its own. There may have been bits of intention here and there,

like esoteric cacchism, but a lot of it just happened because of the sort of structure Savitri Devi built. 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 Cacchism wind up in there too? Why can't the Knights Templar 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 exterminationist Nazi beliefs, the more young men will kind of accidentally fall in and get caught in this net. It's like a tunnel spider's web. And at the end, the great innovations of E.T. Every brought,

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

Syncretism. Yeah. one more time of the- Syncretism. Syncretism, yeah. I mean, and if you are able to, you know, find a way to get a group of people who are looking for something to believe in, who are maybe a little bit, okay, you know what, you're right. I was, but yeah, just like finding a group of vulnerable people, ideologically, that need something to believe in,

and put a delicious chocolate coating on the outside of it. It seems to work. It works. It works. Yeah. Oh. So, how do you feel about Savitri? You a fan?

You gonna check out her books? I can't say I'm a fan. I don't think that we would've. Not a stan,. I don't think that we would have been friends in junior high and I don't think we would have been friends now. Yeah, no, I mean, I truly, and it is interesting that we don't talk about her. I had no idea this person existed. Why do you think that is?

There's a degree to which I think a lot of people who know 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. Sure. It's kind of like I didn't really write about 8chan much until the Christchurch shooting when it was like, okay, well now we gotta. It's too big to ignore. And like after the base, now it's gotten to this point where it's like, all right, we

gotta fucking talk about Savitri Dev, Devi and esoteric Hitlerism. We gotta get some of this out there. I do think it's also just like not super well known. I think she was seen, like really, to be entirely honest, I think most of her efforts would have looked like a failure to most observers, observers up until maybe at the earliest a decade ago.

Okay. 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 provides this with the last ingredient

it needs to take off. Oh yeah, she like pioneered the red pill mentality. Like it's, yeah, she's a red pill pioneer. Yeah, she was a big part of that. Yeah, and we're not like Julius Evola is a big part of this, who Steve Bannon fucking loves. There's a lot of Savitri Devi and Steve Bannon's ideology. Let's not take away any credit

from any of the red pill pioneers. Everyone deserves to take up space. We'll get them all on the show. We will. They deserve it. Well, Robert, as usual, this was absolutely horrifying and you've ruined my day. Thank you. Good. That's the goal. Okay, good. Well, Anderson's here for you though. Oh, Andy. I've got some pluggables to plug. You can listen to my podcast, My Year in Mensa. It's online now. There's only four episodes.

It's real quick. I'm on Twitter at JamieLoftusHelp, Instagram at JamieKirschSuperstar, on tour for the next month or so. JamieLoftusIsInnocent.com. And that's what I have to say. I love when we talk about the worst shit in the entire world. And at the end, you're like, so what's your Twitter handle?

This is normal. Where's you on the Twits? If you really want to learn more about esoteric Hitlerism, follow Sophie's Twitter account. Why underscore Sophie underscore why. Absolutely violent, Robert. You cannot shut Sophie up about Hitler. Robert don't make me fire you.

No I. Oh my gosh. You know what. So much Hitler. You know what. Has been on Twitter for less than 48 hours already getting accused of crimes. Robert's gonna be canceled by the time this came up

because he blew his nose on the mic no less than four times in the past several hours. I am ill. You're ill? Robert's gonna be canceled by the time this came out because he blew his nose on the mic no less than four times Oh, that's completely fair. I am, I am ill. You're ill? I know, but you know, but I mean now you're just, now you're just bragging about it. Follow our podcast at BassersPod on Instagram. Don't tell me what to do. So, oh, sorry. You're telling our listeners what to do. Robert, for fuck's sake, get it together.

I know. I didn't sleep last night. End the episode. Nobody. I mean, I hear it. You know what ends an episode well. I know we've had this. Nazis.

Damn it. You didn't sleep last night. Does that excuse the nose blowing? My friend having trouble sleeping. Does it excuse the nose blowing? No. No. No. Robert.

Sophie. Robert. It's gonna be okay. Yes. It is not. Robert's getting mad. End the episode my friend and go take a nap. The episode is over.

Yay! Go hug a cat. Or a dog. Can you stop Nazis? Hug my huge cat. Hug a 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.

All right, episode's over. Bye. Bye. I'm Scott Weinberger, journalist and former deputy sheriff. In my new podcast series, Cold-Blooded, I'm embedded in the cold case investigation into the death of firefighter Billy Halpern. Experience this investigation in a truly unique way, untangling secrets that may reveal the answers to not only one case, but almost a dozen.

Listen to Cold-Blooded, the Apollo Gym Murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect presents Family Therapy, and I'm your host, Elliott Connick. Jay is the woman in this dynamic who is currently co-parenting two young boys with her former partner, David. David, he is a leader. He just don't wanna leave me. Well, how do you lead a woman?

How do you lead in a relationship? Like, what's the blue part? David, you just asked the most important question. Listen to Family Therapy on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. really tune into what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right? Never forget, it's okay to cry

as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Rali Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.