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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram con­tin­ues our FTR series on Hin­dut­va fas­cism (Hin­du nation­al­ist fas­cism). In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we high­light­ed key fea­tures of the gov­er­nance of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, whose BJP is a polit­i­cal front for the RSS. Formed along the lines of Mus­solin­i’s Black­shirts in 1925, the RSS was the orga­ni­za­tion that assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi. (We have dis­cussed Modi, the RSS and the BJP in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing FTR #‘s 795, 889, 441, 442, 445, 988 and 989, as well as 990.)

In past dis­cus­sions of the RSS and BJP, we have not­ed the fol­low­ing:

1. Mod­i’s polit­i­cal for­tunes were boost­ed with sup­port and appar­ent financ­ing from Pierre Omid­yar, who also helped finance the rise of the OUN/B fas­cist suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tios in Ukraine.
2. Modi and his BJP are viewed with great favor by Bre­it­bart king­pin, for­mer Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and advis­er Steve Ban­non. A num­ber of Trump’s busi­ness asso­ciates in India are asso­ci­at­ed with the BJP.
3. Bernie Sanders’ prospec­tive Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange the details for Mod­i’s Amer­i­can vis­it and is net­worked with the RSS.
4. Under Modi, anti-Mus­lim vio­lence has dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed, jour­nal­is­tic and civ­il free speech has been atten­u­at­ed, oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment have faced var­i­ous forms of retal­i­a­tion and oppres­sion, jour­nal­ists and activists crit­i­cal of Modi/BJP/RSS have been mur­dered, a vir­u­lent­ly anti-Mus­lim cler­ic has been appoint­ed head of Uttar Pradesh (Indi­a’s largest province), vot­ing machines have appar­ent­ly been tam­pered with, and Indi­ans have expressed pos­i­tive feel­ings about mar­tial law. BJP mem­bers have cel­e­brat­ed Gand­hi’s mur­der.

In this broad­cast, we explore the phi­los­o­phy of the Hare Krish­na cult at greater length. The above-men­tioned Tul­si Gab­bard is a mem­ber of this cult, as are:

1. Her hus­band.
2. Her in-laws.
3. Her par­ents.
4. Her con­gres­sion­al staff.

Gab­bard is high­ly regard­ed by Modi admir­er Steve Ban­non as well.

This pro­gram fur­ther details the Aryan/Hindu phi­los­o­phy that inspired ele­ments of eso­teric Nazism.

Key points of interest/analysis include:

1. Hare Krish­na founder and chief guru Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi Prab­hu­pa­da pro­vid­ed com­men­tary on Hin­du reli­gious text “. . . . and often sug­gest­ed that they had not actu­al­ly been writ­ten by him­self, but that God, Krish­na, had revealed them to him. . . .” This was in order to “ . . . .under­line the absolute posi­tion, super­hu­man qual­i­ties, and over­all impor­tance of the guru. [Basi­cal­ly, “guru” as “fuhrer”–D.E.] . . . .”
2.  Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi was fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to democ­ra­cy. “So monar­chy or dic­ta­tor­ship is wel­come. . . . Per­son­al­ly, I like this posi­tion, dic­ta­tor­ship. Per­son­al­ly, I like this.”
3. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi felt that Hin­duism was in a “fall­en state” and that only his discipline/teachings could restore it to its prop­er place. In our dis­cus­sions with Peter Lev­en­da, we have not­ed that fas­cism man­i­fests a long­ing for a bygone time–one that nev­er real­ly exist­ed.
4. Fas­cist philoso­phies fre­quent­ly invoke a by-gone, myth­i­cal “gold­en age,” which the fas­cist cadre in ques­tion will restore, after the cor­rupt­ing forces have been neu­tral­ized. ” . . . . He too believed that in bygone ages a divine and sci­en­tif­ic social sys­tem had exist­ed in India, and like Bhak­tisid­dhan­ta Saraswati, he too found­ed a move­ment whose express mis­sion was to reestab­lish what he often referred to as the “per­fec­tion­al form of human civ­i­liza­tion,” var­nashram dhar­ma. . . .” Note that “for­eign­ers” or what would be termed in our soci­ety today “immi­grants,” “migrants,” “Mex­i­cans,”  or “Mus­lims” are blamed for this degen­er­a­tion. ” . . . . . . . . Indi­an civ­i­liza­tion on the basis of the four varnas and ashrams dete­ri­o­rat­ed because of her depen­den­cy on for­eign­ers, or those who did not fol­low the civ­i­liza­tion of var­nasham. . . .”
5. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi val­ued the tra­di­tion­al posi­tion of the Ksha­triya war­rior caste, to which the Nazi SS con­sid­ered them­selves as suc­ces­sors, accord­ing to Kevin Coogan’s bril­liant analy­sis (in Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al.) “. . . . the ksha­triyas should be taught how to fight also. There will be mil­i­tary train­ing. There will be  train­ing how to kill. Ksha­triya stu­dents in the ISKCON var­nashram col­lege were to prac­tice killing: ‘Just like Ksha­triyas, they have to learn how to kill.’ . . . . There is no sin­gle instance where Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi speaks about ksha­triya train­ing with­out men­tion­ing killing. . . . ‘Learn to kill. No non­vi­o­lence. Learn to kill. Here also, as soon you’ll find, the Ksha­triya, a thief, a rogue, unwant­ed ele­ment in the soci­ety, kill him. That’s all. Fin­ish. Kill him. Bas. Fin­ished. . . .” It is not that because the Ksha­triyas were killing by bows and arrows for­mer­ly you have to con­tin­ue that. That is anoth­er fool­ish­ness. If you have got . . . If you can kill eas­i­ly by guns, take that gun. All the roy­al princes were trained up how to kill. . . . A Ksha­triya, he is expert in the mil­i­tary sci­ence, how to kill. So the killing art is there. You can­not make it null and void by advo­cat­ing non­vi­o­lence. No, That is required. Vio­lence is also a part of the soci­ety. . . .”
6. Tul­si Gab­bard’s polit­i­cal vec­tor may be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s prog­nos­ti­ca­tion that the Hare Krish­na cult could infil­trate and take over a key polit­i­cal par­ty and/or gov­ern­ment in a democ­ra­cy. Recall that he viewed democ­ra­cy with utmost con­tempt. ” . . . . Bhak­tivedan­ta also thought that he and his move­ment could take over some gov­ern­ment and rule some part of the world: ‘How­ev­er in Kali-yuga, demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment can be cap­tured by Krish­na con­scious peo­ple. If this can be done, the gen­er­al pop­u­lace can be made very hap­py.’ . . . .”
7. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s teach­ings dove­tail superbly with Nazi occult phi­los­o­phy. ” . . . . Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi, how­ev­er, speaks exten­sive­ly about ‘the Aryans’–at least twen­ty-five of his pur­ports and over a hun­dred lec­tures and con­ver­sa­tions con­tain lengthy elab­o­ra­tions on the top­ic. He places all those whom he calls ‘non-Aryan’ in a cat­e­go­ry sim­i­lar to his ‘unwant­ed pop­u­la­tion,’ thus divid­ing humans into two groups: a large group of var­na sankara  and non-Aryans on one side, and a small group of Aryans,  ie those who fol­low var­nashram, on the oth­er: ‘Those who tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­low these prin­ci­ples are called Aryans, or pro­gres­sive human beings.’ ‘The Vedic way of life,’ he writes, ‘is the pro­gres­sive march of civ­i­liza­tion of the Aryans.’ ‘In the his­to­ry of the human race, the Aryan fam­i­ly is con­sid­ered to be the most ele­vat­ed com­mu­ni­ty in the world.’ . . . . In more than one fifth of his state­ments he clear­ly describes or defines them in racial terms: The Aryan fam­i­ly is dis­trib­uted all over the world and is known as Indo-Aryan. The Aryans are white. But here, this side, due to cli­mat­ic influ­ence, they are a lit­tle tan. Indi­ans are tan but they are not black. But Aryans are all white. And the non-Aryans, they are called black. Yes . . .”
8. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s phi­los­o­phy saw Euro­peans and Amer­i­cans as part of, and exten­sions of, the Aryan race: ” . . . . So we all belong to the Aryan fam­i­ly. His­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence is there, Indo-Euro­pean fam­i­ly. So Aryan stock was on the cen­tral Asia. Some of them migrat­ed to India. Some of them migrat­ed to Europe. And from Europe you have come. So we belong to the Aryan fam­i­ly, but we have lost our knowl­edge. So we have become non-Aryan, prac­ti­cal­ly. You French peo­ple, you are also Aryan fam­i­ly, but the cul­ture is lost now. So this Krish­na con­scious­ness move­ment is actu­al­ly reviv­ing the orig­i­nal Aryan cul­ture. Bhara­ta. We are all inhab­i­tants of Bharatavar­sha, but as we lost our cul­ture, it became divid­ed.  So on the whole, the con­clu­sion is that the Aryans spread in Europe also, and the Amer­i­cans, they also spread from Europe. So the intel­li­gent class of human being, they belong to the Aryans. Aryan fam­i­ly. Just like Hitler claimed that he belonged to the Aryan fam­i­ly. Of course, they belonged to the Aryan fam­i­lies. . . .”
9. It should  come as  no sur­prise that Bhak­tivedan­ta was pro-Hitler, view­ing the Fuehrer as “a gen­tle­man,” who had to kill the Jews because they were “financ­ing” against him. “. . . . So these Eng­lish peo­ple, they were very expert in mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da. They killed Hitler by pro­pa­gan­da. I don’t think Hitler was so bad [a] man. Hitler knew it [the atom­ic bomb] . . . .  He was gen­tle­man. He said that ‘I can smash the whole world, but I do not use that weapon.’ The Ger­mans already dis­cov­ered. But out of human­i­ty they did not use it. . . . The activ­i­ties of such men are cer­tain­ly very great . . . There­fore Hitler killed these Jews. They were financ­ing against Ger­many. Oth­er­wise he had no enmi­ty with the Jews. . . . There­fore Hitler decid­ed, ‘Kill all the Jews.’ . . . .”
10.  An in-depth view of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s view of “shu­dras” reveals the deep racist/fascistic views of social class/caste. Described var­i­ous­ly as “black” or “com­mon,” shu­dras are the focus of deep ide­o­log­i­cal con­tempt. This should be seen against the back­ground of the Aryan racial phi­los­o­phy of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi. “. . . . ordi­nary peo­ple; the labor­er class; once-born; the low­est class of men; non-Aryan; work­er; the black man; he must find out a mas­ter; one who has no edu­ca­tion; almost ani­mal; just like a dog; he becomes dis­turbed; one who is depen­dent on oth­ers; they are igno­rant ras­cals; unclean; equal to the ani­mal; no train­ing; fools, ras­cals. . .  Accord­ing to his under­stand­ing, peo­ple of black or dark skin col­or, as well as native Amer­i­cans, are shu­dras, are third-class, degrad­ed, and less intel­li­gent: ‘Shu­dras have no brain. In Amer­i­ca also, the whole Amer­i­ca once belonged to the Red  Indi­ans. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these for­eign­ers, the Euro­peans, came and improved? So Shu­dras can­not do this. They can­not make any cor­rec­tion. . . . A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sit­ting there? A third class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and Amer­i­ca. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. . . .”
11. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi did not feel that the black Amer­i­can slaves should be freed. ” . . . . Just like in Amer­i­ca. The blacks were slaves. They were under con­trol. And since you have giv­en them equal rights they are dis­turb­ing, most dis­turb­ing, always cre­at­ing a fear­ful sit­u­a­tion, uncul­tured  and drunk­ards. What train­ing they have got? . . .  That is best, to keep them under con­trol as slaves but give them suf­fi­cient food, suf­fi­cient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be sat­is­fied. . . . ‘So the Kiratas, they  were always slaves of the Aryans. The Aryan peo­ple used to keep slaves, but they were treat­ing slaves very nice­ly.’ And that the Kiratas were Africans, he had explained many times: ‘Kira­ta means the black, the Africans.’ . . . .”
12. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi had some “choice” things to say about women: ” . . . . Gen­er­al­ly all women desire mate­r­i­al enjoy­ment.Women in gen­er­al should not be trust­ed. Women are gen­er­al­ly not very intel­li­gent. It appears that women is a stum­bling block [sic] for self-real­iza­tion. . . . Although rape is not legal­ly allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape. When a hus­band­less woman is attacked by an aggres­sive man, she takes his action to be mer­cy. Gen­er­al­ly when a woman is attacked by a man—whether her hus­band or some oth­er man—she enjoys the attack, being too lusty. . . .”

We con­clude with review Tul­si Gab­bard’s net­work­ing with Modi, the BJP and the RSS:

• Gab­bard is also a big fan of Naren­dra Modi, hav­ing been involved with the plan­ning of Mod­i’s U.S. vis­it and net­work­ing with BJP mem­bers: ” . . . . Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She had spo­ken to Modi after his vic­to­ry in the Indi­an gen­er­al elec­tions and con­grat­u­lat­ed him and the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP). She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
• On a trip to India, Gab­bard net­worked with both the BJP and the RSS, the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty for which Mod­i’s BJP is a cat’s paw. (All of Mod­i’s cab­i­net appoint­ments were drawn from the RSS. Mod­eled on the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty and Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts, the RSS killed Gand­hi.): “. . . . Speak­ing at a fundrais­ing event for the BJP in August 2014 . . . Gab­bard said that Modi’s elec­tion vic­to­ry was only pos­si­ble because ‘peo­ple stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.’ . . . Gab­bard was treat­ed as roy­al­ty on her vis­it to India last year. As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her ‘the Sangh’s mas­cot’ in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

• Review of the links between “eso­teric Nazism,” the Hindu/Aryan myth.
• Review of Sav­it­ri Devi, a key expo­nent of the Hin­du Aryan myth.
• Review of RSS founder V.D. Savarkar’s embrace of the “Aryan/Hindu” myth as it applied to the British colo­nial mas­ters of India.

1a. Ini­tial­ly a rev­o­lu­tion­ary oppo­nent of the British colo­nial author­i­ty, V.D. Savarkar under­went a meta­mor­pho­sis, in which he came to “ . . . . hope for an Indo-British alliance based on a shared racial back­ground that would trans­form the British Empire into the ‘Aryan Empire.’ . . . . he and oth­er rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers were now ready and will­ing to be friends of the British Empire if it equipped India with a form of gov­ern­ment vital for her free­dom. . . .”

Gand­hi and the Unspeak­able by James Dou­glass; Copy­right 2012 by James Dou­glass; Orbis Books [HC]; ISBN 978–1‑57075–963‑5; p. 48.

. . . . Dur­ing his soli­tary con­fine­ment at Port Blair, Savarkar’s ide­ol­o­gy turned away from rebel­lion against the empire. In Sep­tem­ber 1914, he wrote a let­ter to the British gov­ern­ment in India express­ing his hope for an Indo-British alliance based on a shared racial back­ground that would trans­form the British Empire into the “Aryan Empire.” He wrote that he and oth­er rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers were now ready and will­ing to be friends of the British Empire if it equipped India with a form of gov­ern­ment vital for her free­dom. . . .

1b. The essence and gen­er­a­tion of the Nazi/Hindu/“Aryan” mytho­log­i­cal dynam­ic is beyond the scope of the present pro­gram. We have cov­ered it in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #172, deal­ing with Sav­it­ri Devi, the focal point of a recent BBC pod­cast. From the descrip­tion to FTR #172:

From BBC Mag­a­zine, attached to the above-named pod­cast:

“Sav­it­ri Devi: the Mys­ti­cal Fas­cist Being Res­ur­rect­ed by the Alt-Right” by Maria Mar­ga­ro­nis; BBC Mag­a­zine; 10/29/2017.

Sav­it­ri Devi, a mys­ti­cal admir­er of Hitler and a cat-lov­ing devo­tee of the Aryan myth, seemed des­tined to fade into obscu­ri­ty after her death 25 years ago. But thanks to the rise of the extreme right, her name and her image now crop up online more and more, writes Maria Mar­ga­ro­nis.

In 2012, brows­ing the web­site of Greece’s Gold­en Dawn par­ty for an arti­cle I was writ­ing, I stum­bled on a pic­ture of a woman in a blue silk sari gaz­ing at a bust of Hitler against a blaz­ing sun­set sky.

What was this appar­ent­ly Hin­du woman doing on the site of an open­ly racist par­ty devot­ed to expelling all for­eign­ers from Greece? I filed her as a curios­i­ty at the back of my mind, until the ris­ing tide of extreme-right pol­i­tics in Europe and Amer­i­ca threw up the name “Sav­it­ri Devi” once again.

It isn’t hard these days to find dis­cus­sions of Sav­it­ri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, espe­cial­ly The Light­ning and the Sun, which expounds the the­o­ry that Hitler was an avatar — an incar­na­tion — of the Hin­du god Vish­nu, and Gold in the Fur­nace, which urges true believ­ers to trust that Nation­al Social­ism will rise again. The Amer­i­can extreme-right web­site Counter-Cur­rents hosts an exten­sive online archive of her life and work.

Her views are reach­ing a wider pub­lic, too, thanks to Amer­i­can alt-right lead­ers such as Richard Spencer and Steve Ban­non, for­mer Trump chief strate­gist and chair of Bre­it­bart News, who have tak­en up the account of his­to­ry as a cycli­cal bat­tle between good and evil — a the­o­ry she shared with oth­er 20th Cen­tu­ry mys­ti­cal fas­cists.

Dark met­al bands and Amer­i­can right-wing radio sta­tions also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hin­du mythol­o­gy, which Sav­it­ri Devi believed that Hitler was once des­tined to bring to an end.

Who was Sav­it­ri Devi, and why are her ideas being res­ur­rect­ed now? Despite the sari and the name she was a Euro­pean, born Max­imi­ani Por­tas to an Eng­lish moth­er and Greek-Ital­ian father in Lyon in 1905.

From an ear­ly age, she despised all forms of egal­i­tar­i­an­ism. “A beau­ti­ful girl is not equal to an ugly girl,” she told an inter­view­er sent by the Holo­caust denier Ernst Zun­del in 1978.

Swept up by Greek nation­al­ism, she arrived in Athens in 1923 at the same time as thou­sands of refugees dis­placed after Greece’s dis­as­trous mil­i­tary cam­paign in Asia Minor at the end of World War One.

She blamed the West­ern allies for Greece’s humil­i­a­tion, and for what she saw as the unjust­ly puni­tive terms imposed on Ger­many by the Treaty of Ver­sailles. In Sav­it­ri’s mind, Greece and Ger­many were both vic­tims, denied the legit­i­mate aspi­ra­tion of unit­ing all their peo­ple in one ter­ri­to­ry. That view, com­bined with a pas­sion­ate anti-Semi­tism which she claimed she learned from the Bible, led her to iden­ti­fy her­self ear­ly on as a Nation­al Social­ist.

Hitler was Ger­many’s cham­pi­on but, she said, his desire to erad­i­cate Europe’s Jews and restore the “Aryan race” to its right­ful posi­tion of pow­er made him her “Fuhrer” too.

In com­mon with anti-Semit­ic thinkers since the 18th cen­tu­ry, Sav­it­ri blamed Judeo-Chris­tian­i­ty for destroy­ing the glo­ry that was Greece and the Aryans’ myth­i­cal ancient utopia. In the ear­ly 1930s she sailed for India in search of a liv­ing ver­sion of Europe’s pagan past, con­vinced that the caste sys­tem, by for­bid­ding inter­mar­riage, had pre­served pure Aryans there. (For­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who vis­it­ed India in the 1970s, shared her mis­con­cep­tion.)

So unusu­al was the sight of a Euro­pean woman trav­el­ling fourth class by train that she was placed under sur­veil­lance by the British colo­nial author­i­ties. But Sav­it­ri had lit­tle to do with the British in India until World War Two, when she passed infor­ma­tion she gleaned from them to the Japan­ese. She learned Indi­an lan­guages, mar­ried a Brah­min (whom she believed to be an Aryan like her­self), and forged an elab­o­rate syn­the­sis of Nazism and Hin­du myth, in which Hitler was a “man against time” des­tined to bring about the end of the Kali Yuga and ush­er in a new gold­en age of Aryan suprema­cy.

In Kolkata in the 1930s, Sav­it­ri worked for the Hin­du Mis­sion, now a qui­et neigh­bour­hood shrine but in those days a cen­tre for Hin­du nation­al­ist cam­paign­ing and mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty. The politi­ci­sa­tion of Indi­a’s reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties under the British had helped to fos­ter the growth of the Hin­dut­va move­ment, which argued that the Hin­dus were the true heirs of the Aryans and that India was an essen­tial­ly Hin­du nation.

Sav­it­ri offered her ser­vices to the Mis­sion’s direc­tor, Swa­mi Satyanan­da, who (like many Indi­ans before inde­pen­dence) shared her admi­ra­tion for Hitler and allowed her to mix Nazi pro­pa­gan­da with her talks on Hin­du iden­ti­ty. She trav­elled the coun­try lec­tur­ing in Hin­di and Ben­gali, salt­ing her talks about Aryan val­ues with quo­ta­tions from Mein Kampf.

In 1945, dev­as­tat­ed by the fall of the Third Reich, she returned to Europe to work for its restora­tion. Her arrival in Eng­land is described in her book Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged God­dess, a chil­dren’s fable whose hero­ine is a cat-lov­ing Nazi like her­self.

The hero­ine, Heliodo­ra, “had no ‘human feel­ings’ in the ordi­nary sense of the word,” she wrote. “She had been, from her very child­hood, much too pro­found­ly shocked at the behav­iour of man towards ani­mals... to have any sym­pa­thy for peo­ple suf­fer­ing on account of their being Jews.”

Sav­it­ri was always clear that she pre­ferred ani­mals to humans. Like Hitler, she was a veg­e­tar­i­an. She viewed the world as if from a great dis­tance, car­ing more for what she saw as the deep pat­terns of nature than for human lives. Vis­it­ing Ice­land, she spent two nights on the slopes of Mount Hekla as it erupt­ed. “The orig­i­nal sound of cre­ation is ‘Aum’,” she wrote. “The vol­cano says every two or three sec­onds, ‘AUM! AUM! AUM!’ And the Earth is trem­bling under your feet all the time.”

In 1948, Sav­it­ri man­aged to enter occu­pied Ger­many, where she dis­trib­uted thou­sands of pro-Nazi leaflets, bear­ing the words: “One day we shall rise and tri­umph again! Hope and wait! Heil Hitler!”

She said years lat­er that she was glad to be arrest­ed by the British occu­pa­tion author­i­ties because it brought her clos­er to her jailed Nazi “com­rades”. Dur­ing her impris­on­ment, which was cut short by her hus­band’s inter­ven­tion through the Indi­an gov­ern­ment, she grew close to a for­mer Belsen wardress con­demned as a war crim­i­nal, “a beau­ti­ful-look­ing woman, a blonde of about my age.” Sav­it­ri’s sex­u­al­i­ty has been the sub­ject of some spec­u­la­tion. Her mar­riage to Asit Mukher­jee was alleged­ly celi­bate because they were not of the same caste; the Nazi financier Fran­coise Dior, niece of the fash­ion design­er, claimed to have been her lover.

In her lat­er years, Sav­it­ri Devi returned to India, where she seemed to feel most at home. Liv­ing in a flat above a garage on a qui­et Del­hi street she devot­ed her­self to the neigh­bour­hood cats, going out every morn­ing to feed them bread and milk bedecked in the gold jew­ellery tra­di­tion­al­ly worn by mar­ried Hin­du women.

She died at a friend’s house in Eng­land in 1982. Her ash­es were laid to rest with full fas­cist hon­ours, pur­port­ed­ly next to those of Amer­i­can Nazi leader George Lin­coln Rock­well.

Sav­it­ri Devi her­self is almost for­got­ten in India now, but the Hin­du nation­al­ism she espoused and helped to pro­mote is in the ascen­dant, much to the con­cern of her nephew, the vet­er­an left-wing jour­nal­ist Suman­ta Baner­jee.

“In her book A Warn­ing to the Hin­dus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hin­dus to cul­ti­vate a ‘spir­it of organ­ised resis­tance through­out Hin­du­dom,’ ” he says. “The tar­gets of this resis­tance were the Mus­lims, who were a threat, accord­ing to her, to the Hin­dus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.”

Hin­dut­va is the offi­cial ide­ol­o­gy of Prime Min­ster Naren­dra Mod­i’s rul­ing Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty, which claims that Mus­lims and sec­u­lar­ists have under­mined the strength of the Hin­du nation. Though the par­ty’s offi­cial spokes­men con­demn vio­lence, the riots that led to the tear­ing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayo­d­hya in 1992 and the cur­rent waves of attacks — some­times fatal — by vig­i­lante groups on Mus­lims and dis­senters tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

In the US, racism, anti-com­mu­nism and Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist notions about the impend­ing apoc­a­lypse have togeth­er pre­pared the ground for the far right’s flir­ta­tion with occult Nazism and Hin­du prophe­cies.

And as in India, the tra­di­tion­al rul­ing major­i­ty’s fear of los­ing pow­er has been an effec­tive recruit­ing tool.

“Since the mid­dle of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in the minds of peo­ple who joined the Tea Par­ty was the idea that white peo­ple were being shoved aside,” says researcher and writer Chip Berlet. “The far right and organ­ised white suprema­cist groups have both been buoyed up by fear among many white cit­i­zens in the Unit­ed States that they’re being dis­placed and humil­i­at­ed.”

Sav­it­ri Devi’s work forms part of the his­to­ry of both Indi­a’s Hin­du nation­al­ists and the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can extreme right. Her flam­boy­ant, eccen­tric writ­ings con­tain — unvar­nished and uncen­sored — all their key ideas: that human beings can be divid­ed into “races” which should be kept sep­a­rate; that cer­tain groups are supe­ri­or to and more enti­tled than oth­ers; that these groups are under threat; and that the dark times in which we live will only end when they again take pow­er, return­ing us to a myth­i­cal gold­en age.

2. Prab­hu­pa­da (Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi) pro­vid­ed com­men­tary on Hin­du reli­gious text “. . . . and often sug­gest­ed that they had not actu­al­ly been writ­ten by him­self, but that God, Krish­na, had revealed them to him. . . .” This was in order to “ . . . .under­line the absolute posi­tion, super­hu­man qual­i­ties, and over­all impor­tance of the guru. [Basi­cal­ly, “guru” as “fuhrer”–D.E.] . . . .”

This posi­tion­ing is ide­al from a fas­cist schemat­ic per­spec­tive and will under­score the fas­cist nature of much of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s pro­nounce­ments.

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp.113–114.

. . . . It appears that in order to for­mu­late his own com­men­tary on a giv­en stan­za of the Bha­ga­va­ta Purana, he would first glance at the notes of two or three of the ear­li­er com­men­ta­tors, para­phrase frag­ments of their gloss­es, and then add his own elab­o­ra­tions.  He called his com­men­taries “Bhak­tivedan­ta pur­ports” and often sug­gest­ed that they had not actu­al­ly been writ­ten by him­self, but that God, Krish­na, had revealed them to him. . . .

. . . . Not every­thing in the pur­ports builds upon the ear­li­er com­men­taries. There are many pas­sages where­in Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi clear­ly presents his own views—for exam­ple, when he dis­miss­es the reports of the Moon land­ing in 1969, debates sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries like Dar­win’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion, or con­demns con­tem­po­rary cul­ture and morals when dis­cussing the miniskirt fash­ion. . . .

. . . . While the ear­li­er com­men­taries also occa­sion­al­ly quote these apho­risms, Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi employs them sig­nif­i­cant­ly more often, espe­cial­ly to under­line the absolute posi­tion, super­hu­man qual­i­ties, and over­all impor­tance of the guru. [Basi­cal­ly, “guru” as “fuhrer”–D.E.] . . . .

 3a. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi was fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to democ­ra­cy. “So monar­chy or dic­ta­tor­ship is wel­come. . . . Per­son­al­ly, I like this posi­tion, dic­ta­tor­ship. Per­son­al­ly, I like this.”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 367–369.

 “. . . .  The so-called democ­ra­cy under par­ty pol­i­tics is non­sense. Monar­chy . . . . I have said. That day I was in remark­ing that ‘This democ­ra­cy is the gov­ern­ment of the ass­es,’ because  the pop­u­la­tion are ass­es and they vote anoth­er ass to be head of the gov­ern­ment.”

On some occa­sions, Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi would denounce democ­ra­cy as “demon­cra­cy” or “demon-crazy.” Refer­ring to Indi­ra and Rajiv Gand­hi, he asks ‘She and her son are the des­tiny of India? A woman and a debauch? They can do what­ev­er they like. [Both Indi­ara and Rajiv Gand­hi were even­tu­al­ly assassinated‑D.E.] It’s a farce con­di­tion. That so-called democ­ra­cy is non­sense ‘demon­cra­cy.” Two months lat­er he asserts that democ­ra­cy had not yet arrived in India:

This democ­ra­cy is a demon-crazy. It has no val­ue. It is sim­ply waste of time and effort and no feel­ing, demon-crazy. I do not know who intro­duced this. . . . Every­one is tak­ing part in pol­i­tics. What is this non­sense? It is meant for the Ksha­triyas. They can fight and defend.” . . . .

. . . . In numer­ous pur­ports in his Shri­mad Bha­ga­vatam he describes the advan­tages a var­nashram-based monar­chy would have over demo­c­ra­t­ic goven­ments:

“ . . . . Monar­chy is bet­ter than democ­ra­cy because if the monar­chy is very strong the reg­u­la­tive prin­ci­ples with­in the king­dom are upheld very nice­ly.

In such deal­ings, a respon­si­ble monar­chy is bet­ter than a so-called demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment in which no one is respon­si­ble to mit­i­gate the griev­ances of the cit­i­zens, who are unable to per­son­al­ly meet the supreme exec­u­tive head. . . .

. . . . The mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem can­not be exalt­ed in this way because the lead­ers elect­ed strive only for pow­er and have no sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty. . . .

. . . . Grad­u­al­ly the demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment is becom­ing unfit for the needs of the peo­ple, and there­fore some par­ties are try­ing to elect a dic­ta­tor. A dic­ta­tor­ship is the same as a  monar­chy, but with­out a trained leader. Actu­al­ly peo­ple will be hap­py when a trained leader, whether a monarch or a dic­ta­tor, takes con­trol of the gov­ern­ment and rules the peo­ple accord­ing to the stan­dard reg­u­la­tions of the autho­rized scrip­tures.”

State­ments like the last one, in which Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi declares that he favors even a dic­ta­tor­ship above democ­ra­cy, are by no means rare:

“So monar­chy or dic­ta­tor­ship is wel­come. . . . Per­son­al­ly, I like this posi­tion, dic­ta­tor­ship. Per­son­al­ly, I like this.”

3b. Bhak­tivedan­ta’s views dove­tail with those of the John Birch Soci­ety and the Amer­i­can far right.  “. . . . Robert Welch had been the vice pres­i­dent in charge of sales for his broth­er’s com­pa­ny until 1956, when he left the busi­ness ‘to put his whole life into the fight against Com­mun­sm.’ He found­ed the John Birch Soci­ety in 1958. Like H.L. Hunt, Welch despised democ­ra­cy and decried it as ‘mere­ly a decep­tive phrase, a weapon of dem­a­goguery, and a peren­ni­al fraud,’ and claimed that it was ‘the worst of all forms of gov­ern­ment.’ . . . .

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 by Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN 13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 525–526.

 . . . . Robert Welch had been the vice pres­i­dent in charge of sales for his broth­er’s com­pa­ny until 1956, when he left the busi­ness “to put his whole life into the fight against Com­mun­sm.” He found­ed the John Birch Soci­ety in 1958. Like H.L. Hunt, Welch despised democ­ra­cy and decried it as “mere­ly a decep­tive phrase, a weapon of dem­a­goguery, and a peren­ni­al fraud,” and claimed that it was “the worst of all forms of gov­ern­ment.” . . . .

4. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi felt that Hin­duism was in a “fall­en state” and that only his discipline/teachings could restore it to its prop­er place. In our dis­cus­sions with Peter Lev­en­da, we have not­ed that fas­cism man­i­fests a long­ing for a bygone time–one that nev­er real­ly exist­ed.

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; p. 359.

 . . . . In “The Low­est of Mankind” he declares that 99.9 per­cent of all humans are moral­ly despi­ca­ble . . . because they do not fol­low the reg­u­la­tions of var­nashram dhar­ma. . . .

. . . . he argues in “Puri­ty of Con­duct” that Hin­duism lost its spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance since var­nashram dhar­ma is no longer fol­lowed.

The Garb­had­han Sam­skara is also a check­ing method for restrict­ing bas­tard chil­dren.

We do not wish to go into the details of the Garb­had­han Sam­skara or any such refor­ma­to­ry process­es but if need be we can def­i­nite­ly prove that since we have stopped observ­ing these refor­ma­to­ry processes—the whole Hin­du soci­ety has lost its spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance in the mat­ter of social and reli­gious deal­ings. . .

5. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s teach­ings dove­tail superbly with Nazi occult phi­los­o­phy. ” . . . . Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi, how­ev­er, speaks exten­sive­ly about ‘the Aryans’–at least twen­ty-five of his pur­ports and over a hun­dred lec­tures and con­ver­sa­tions con­tain lengthy elab­o­ra­tions on the top­ic. He places all those whom he calls ‘non-Aryan’ in a cat­e­go­ry sim­i­lar to his ‘unwant­ed pop­u­la­tion,’ thus divid­ing humans into two groups: a large group of var­na sankara  and non-Aryans on one side, and a small group of Aryans,  ie those who fol­low var­nashram, on the oth­er: ‘Those who tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­low these prin­ci­ples are called Aryans, or pro­gres­sive human beings.’ ‘The Vedic way of life,’ he writes, ‘is the pro­gres­sive march of civ­i­liza­tion of the Aryans.’ ‘In the his­to­ry of the human race, the Aryan fam­i­ly is con­sid­ered to be the most ele­vat­ed com­mu­ni­ty in the world.’ . . . . In more than one fifth of his state­ments he clear­ly describes or defines them in racial terms: The Aryan fam­i­ly is dis­trib­uted all over the world and is known as Indo-Aryan. The Aryans are white. But here, this side, due to cli­mat­ic influ­ence, they are a lit­tle tan. Indi­ans are tan but they are not black. But Aryans are all white. And the non-Aryans, they are called black. Yes . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 361–362.

 . . . . The san­skrit word aryah is not uncom­mon in the stan­zas of the Bhaga­va­ta Purana

It is main­ly used in the sense of “noble” or “respectable,” but nev­er as a racial des­ig­na­tion. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi, how­ev­er, speaks exten­sive­ly about “the Aryans”–at least twen­ty-five of his pur­ports and over a hun­dred lec­tures and con­ver­sa­tions con­tain lengthy elab­o­ra­tions on the top­ic. He places all those whom he calls “non-Aryan” in a cat­e­go­ry sim­i­lar to his “unwant­ed pop­u­la­tion,” thus divid­ing humans into two groups: a large group of var­na sankara  and non-Aryans on one side, and a small group of Aryans,  ie those who fol­low var­nashram, on the oth­er: “Those who tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­low these prin­ci­ples are called Aryans, or pro­gres­sive human beings.” “The Vedic way of life,” he writes, “is the pro­gres­sive march of civ­i­liza­tion of the Aryans.” “In the his­to­ry of the human race, the Aryan fam­i­ly is con­sid­ered to be the most ele­vat­ed com­mu­ni­ty in the world.”

. . . . In more than one fifth of his state­ments he clear­ly describes or defines them in racial terms:

      The Aryan fam­i­ly is dis­trib­uted all over the world and is known as Indo-Aryan.

The Aryans are white. But here, this side, due to cli­mat­ic influ­ence, they are a lit­tle tan. Indi­ans are tan but they are not black. But Aryans are all white. And the non-Aryans, they are called black. Yes

Dra­vid­i­an cul­ture, Dravi­da. They are non-Aryans. Just like these Africans, they are not Aryans . . . . Shu­dras, black. So if a Brah­min becomes black, then he’s not accept­ed as Brah­min.

On oth­er occa­sions Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi presents a mix­ture of both racial and socio­cul­tur­al views regard­ing Aryans, such as when he appealed to his young west­ern audi­ences:

 So we all belong to the Aryan fam­i­ly. His­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence is there, Indo-Euro­pean fam­i­ly. So Aryan stock was on the cen­tral Asia. Some of them migrat­ed to India. Some of them migrat­ed to Europe. And from Europe you have come. So we belong to the Aryan fam­i­ly, but we have lost our knowl­edge. So we have become non-Aryan, prac­ti­cal­ly.

 You French peo­ple, you are also Aryan fam­i­ly, but the cul­ture is lost now. So this Krish­na con­scious­ness move­ment is actu­al­ly reviv­ing the orig­i­nal Aryan cul­ture. Bhara­ta. We are all inhab­i­tants of Bharatavar­sha, but as we lost our cul­ture, it became divid­ed.

 So on the whole, the con­clu­sion is that the Aryans spread in Europe also, and the Amer­i­cans, they also spread from Europe. So the intel­li­gent class of human being, they belong to the Aryans. Aryan fam­i­ly. Just like Hitler claimed that he belonged to the Aryan fam­i­ly. Of course, they belonged to the Aryan fam­i­lies. . . .

6. Fas­cist philoso­phies fre­quent­ly invoke a by-gone, myth­i­cal “gold­en age,” which the fas­cist cadre in ques­tion will restore, after the cor­rupt­ing forces have been neu­tral­ized. ” . . . . He too believed that in bygone ages a divine and sci­en­tif­ic social sys­tem had exist­ed in India, and like Bhak­tisid­dhan­ta Saraswati, he too found­ed a move­ment whose express mis­sion was to reestab­lish what he often referred to as the “per­fec­tion­al form of human civ­i­liza­tion,” var­nashram dhar­ma. . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 362–363.

 . . . . Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi used the expres­sions “Vedic  civ­i­lizaion,” “Aryan civ­i­liza­tion,” and “var­nashram dhar­ma” as prac­ti­cal­ly syn­ony­mous, and said that the pur­pose of his move­ment was “to make the peo­ple Aryan.” . . . .

 . . . . He too believed that in bygone ages a divine and sci­en­tif­ic social sys­tem had exist­ed in India, and like Bhak­tisid­dhan­ta Saraswati, he too found­ed a move­ment whose express mis­sion was to reestab­lish what he often referred to as the “per­fec­tion­al form of human civ­i­liza­tion,” var­nashram dhar­ma. . . .

 7. More on the “degen­er­a­tion” or “degra­da­tion” of Hin­du soci­ety and the need to return to a mytho­log­i­cal past. Note that “for­eign­ers” or what would be termed in our soci­ety today “immi­grants,” “migrants,” “Mex­i­cans,”  or “Mus­lims” are blamed for this degen­er­a­tion. ” . . . . . . . . Indi­an civ­i­liza­tion on the basis of the four varnas and ashrams dete­ri­o­rat­ed because of her depen­den­cy on for­eign­ers, or those who did not fol­low the civ­i­liza­tion of var­nasham. . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; p. 365.

 . . . . Indi­an civ­i­liza­tion on the basis of the four varnas and ashrams dete­ri­o­rat­ed because of her depen­den­cy on for­eign­ers, or those who did not fol­low the civ­i­liza­tion of var­nasham. Thus the var­nasharam sys­tem has now been degrad­ed into the caste sys­tem. . . .

8. Like SS chief Himm­ler, occult fas­cist Evola saw the SS as the suc­ces­sors to the Ksha­triya class (the Hin­du war­rior caste.) See­ing Ger­many and Europe as suc­cumb­ing to “bar­bar­ian inva­sion,” Evola saw a pagan, anti-Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cism as nec­es­sar­i­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the Judeo-Chris­t­ian cul­ture which, he felt, had led the West to decline before the “Bol­she­vik hordes” of the Sovi­et Union and the “chew­ing gum impe­ri­al­ism” of the Unit­ed States.

Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and The Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al by Kevin Coogan; Autono­me­dia [SC]; copy­right 1999; ISBN I‑57027–039‑2; pp. 320–321.

. . . . For years, Evola had been fas­ci­nat­ed by knight­ly orders as expres­sions of the Ksha­triya caste of war­rior aris­to­crats. In the for­mal struc­ture of the SS, he saw the pre­cur­sor to a new Orden­staat, a State ruled by an Order. He also under­stood the great advan­tages pro­vid­ed by medieval orders of chival­ry due to their transna­tion­al com­po­si­tion. Cru­sad­ing orders, like the Knights Tem­plar and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, were pan-Euro­pean, with sep­a­rate ‘nation­al’ sec­tions (‘langues,’ or tongues) uni­fied through a Coun­cil presided over by a Grand Mas­ter. After the col­lapse of fas­cist state pow­er, a new Order, an ‘invis­i­ble col­lege’ of sorts, was need­ed not only to manip­u­late bank accounts and trav­el sched­ules but to have pol­i­cy-mak­ing func­tions. Nor could it sim­ply be run under the aus­pices of the Vat­i­can, since Evola believed that Rome’s down­fall had been caused by the accep­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty by the dom­i­nant fac­tion of the Roman elite. The Emper­or Constantine’s offi­cial embrace of the ‘gen­tle Nazarene’ in 313 A.D. had cul­mi­nat­ed, a hun­dred years lat­er, in Alaric’s sack of Rome. With the Amer­i­can chew­ing-gum impe­ri­al­ists threat­en­ing in the West, and the new Huns sweep­ing in from the East, was the sit­u­a­tion in1945 real­ly so dif­fer­ent? The Order was a ves­sel for those ‘Her­met­ic’ ele­ments of the con­ser­v­a­tive Rev­o­lu­tion, old rul­ing class, and new Nazi elite not entire­ly behold­en to the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and reli­gious ‘Guelf’ wing of the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cy which remained ide­o­log­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted to the con­tin­ued prop­a­ga­tion of the rul­ing Chris­t­ian mythol­o­gy.

9. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi val­ued the tra­di­tion­al posi­tion of the Ksha­triya war­rior caste, to which the Nazi SS con­sid­ered them­selves as suc­ces­sors, accord­ing to Kevin Coogan’s bril­liant analy­sis (in Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al.)

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 366–367.

. . . . When asked by a dis­ci­ple how the ksha­triya train­ing in the planned var­nasharam col­lege was to be orga­nized, he replied:

“. . . . the ksha­triyas should be taught how to fight also. There will be mil­i­tary train­ing. There will be  train­ing how to kill.”

Ksha­triya stu­dents in the ISKCON var­nashram col­lege were to prac­tice killing:

“Just like Ksha­triyas, they have to learn how to kill. So prac­ti­cal­ly, they should go to the for­est and kill some ani­mal. And if he likes, he can eat also.”

There is no sin­gle instance where Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi speaks about ksha­triya train­ing with­out men­tion­ing killing. While he might not have con­sid­ered it to be the most impor­tant aspect of that edu­ca­tion, he does stress this aspect:.

“ . . . . Some dis­turb­ing ele­ments you can kill you can kill some tiger. Like that. Learn to kill. No non­vi­o­lence. Learn to kill. Here also, as soon you’ll find, the Ksha­triya, a thief, a rogue, unwant­ed ele­ment in the soci­ety, kill him. That’s all. Fin­ish. Kill him. Bas. Fin­ished.

 It is not that because the Ksha­triyas were killing by bows and arrows for­mer­ly you have to con­tin­ue that. That is anoth­er fool­ish­ness. If you have got . . . If you can kill eas­i­ly by guns, take that gun.

 All the roy­al princes were trained up how to kill.

 The killing is there, but the Brah­min is not going to kill per­son­al­ly. . . .

Only the Ksha­triyas. The Ksha­triyas should be so trained up.

 A Ksha­triya, he is expert in the mil­i­tary sci­ence, how to kill. So the killing art is there. You can­not make it null and void by advo­cat­ing non­vi­o­lence. No That is required. Vio­lence is also a part of the soci­ety. . . .”

10. Tul­si Gab­bard’s polit­i­cal vec­tor may be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s prog­nos­ti­ca­tion that the Hare Krish­na cult could infil­trate and take over a key polit­i­cal par­ty and/or gov­ern­ment in a democ­ra­cy. Recall that he viewed democ­ra­cy with utmost con­tempt. ” . . . . Bhak­tivedan­ta also thought that he and his move­ment could take over some gov­ern­ment and rule some part of the world: ‘How­ev­er in Kali-yuga, demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment can be cap­tured by Krish­na con­scious peo­ple. If this can be done, the gen­er­al pop­u­lace can be made very hap­py.’ . . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; p. 373.

Bhak­tivedan­ta also thought that he and his move­ment could take over some gov­ern­ment and rule some part of the world: “How­ev­er in Kali-yuga, demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment can be cap­tured by Krish­na con­scious peo­ple. If this can be done, the gen­er­al pop­u­lace can be made very hap­py.” . . . .

11. It should  come as  no sur­prise that Bhak­tivedan­ta was pro-Hitler, view­ing the Fuehrer as “a gen­tle­man,” who had to kill the Jews because they were “financ­ing” against him. “. . . . So these Eng­lish peo­ple, they were very expert in mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da. They killed Hitler by pro­pa­gan­da. I don’t think Hitler was so bad [a] man. Hitler knew it [the atom­ic bomb] . . . .  He was gen­tle­man. He said that ‘I can smash the whole world, but I do not use that weapon.’ The Ger­mans already dis­cov­ered. But out of human­i­ty they did not use it. . . . The activ­i­ties of such men are cer­tain­ly very great . . . There­fore Hitler killed these Jews. They were financ­ing against Ger­many. Oth­er­wise he had no enmi­ty with the Jews. . . . There­fore Hitler decid­ed, ‘Kill all the Jews.’ . . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 369–370.

“. . . . So these Eng­lish peo­ple, they were very expert in mak­ing pro­pa­gan­da. They killed Hitler by pro­pa­gan­da. I don’t think Hitler was so bad [a] man.

 Hitler knew it [the atom­ic bomb] . . . . every­thing, but he did not like to do it. . . . He was gen­tle­man. But these peo­ple are not gen­tle­men. He knew it per­fect­ly well. He said that ‘I can smash the whole world, but I do not use that weapon.’ The Ger­mans already dis­cov­ered. But out of human­i­ty they did not use it.

 Some­times he becomes a great hero—just like Hiranyaka­shipu and Kam­sa, or, in the mod­ern age, Napoleon or Hitler. The activ­i­ties of such men are cer­tain­ly very great . . .

There­fore Hitler killed these Jews. They were financ­ing against Ger­many. Oth­er­wise he had no enmi­ty with the Jews. . . . And they were sup­ply­ing. They want inter­est money–”Never mind against our coun­try.” There­fore Hitler decid­ed, “Kill all the Jews.” . . . .

12. An in-depth view of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s view of “shu­dras” reveals the deep racist/fascistic views of social class/caste. Described var­i­ous­ly as “black” or “com­mon,” shu­dras are the focus of deep ide­o­log­i­cal con­tempt. This should be seen against the back­ground of the Aryan racial phi­los­o­phy of Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi. “. . . . ordi­nary peo­ple; the labor­er class; once-born; the low­est class of men; non-Aryan; work­er; the black man; he must find out a mas­ter; one who has no edu­ca­tion; almost ani­mal; just like a dog; he becomes dis­turbed; one who is depen­dent on oth­ers; they are igno­rant ras­cals; unclean; equal to the ani­mal; no train­ing; fools, ras­cals. . .  Accord­ing to his under­stand­ing, peo­ple of black or dark skin col­or, as well as native Amer­i­cans, are shu­dras, are third-class, degrad­ed, and less intel­li­gent: ‘Shu­dras have no brain. In Amer­i­ca also, the whole Amer­i­ca once belonged to the Red  Indi­ans. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these for­eign­ers, the Euro­peans, came and improved? So Shu­dras can­not do this. They can­not make any cor­rec­tion. . . . A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sit­ting there? A third class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and Amer­i­ca. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. . . .”

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; pp. 371–373.

 . . . . On the whole, Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s atti­tude toward shu­dras appears to be rather negataive. While he depicts the oth­er three var­nas in pos­i­tive or at least neu­tral terms. His descrip­tion of shu­dras sounds harsh, spite­ful, and con­de­scend­ing. Most of his remarks begin with the words “Shudra(s) means,” typ­i­cal­ly fol­lowed by:

“. . . . ordi­nary peo­ple; the labor­er class; once-born; the low­est class of men; non-Aryan; work­er; the black man; he must find out a mas­ter; one who has no edu­ca­tion; almost ani­mal; just like a dog; he becomes dis­turbed; one who is depen­dent on oth­ers; they are igno­rant ras­cals; unclean; equal to the ani­mal; no train­ing; fools, ras­cals. . . .”

. . . . Accord­ing to his under­stand­ing, peo­ple of black or dark skin col­or, as well as native Amer­i­cans, are shu­dras, are third-class, degrad­ed, and less intel­li­gent:

 “Shu­dras have no brain. In Amer­i­ca also, the whole Amer­i­ca once belonged to the Red  Indi­ans. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these for­eign­ers, the Euro­peans, came and improved? So Shu­dras can­not do this. They can­not make any cor­rec­tion.

A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sit­ting there? A third class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and Amer­i­ca. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. That’s all.

But his bod­i­ly fea­ture, he was a black man. The black man means Shu­dra. The Brah­min, Ksha­triya, Vaishya, they were not black. But the Shu­dras are black. . . .

. . . . It looks like Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi con­sid­ered hav­ing black skin col­or and being evil to be close­ly relat­ed fea­tures. He cer­tain­ly con­sid­ered black peo­ple to be ugly: “Such action of the cupid is going on even on the negroes and beast­ly soci­eties  who are ugly look­ing in the esti­ma­tion of the civ­i­lized nations.”

In a Feb­ru­ary 1977, less than a year before his death, Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi expressed regret about the fact that Amer­i­ca had abol­ished slav­ery. In a room con­ver­sa­tion, which lat­er received the title “Var­nashram Sys­tem Must Be Intro­duced,” he referred to African Amer­i­cans as fol­lows:

“Shu­dra is to be con­trolled only. They are nev­er giv­en to be free­dom [sic!]. Just like in Amer­i­ca. The blacks were slaves. They were under con­trol. And since you have giv­en them equal rights they are dis­turb­ing, most dis­turb­ing, always cre­at­ing a fear­ful sit­u­a­tion, uncul­tured  and drunk­ards. What train­ing they have got? They have got equal right? That is best, to keep them under con­trol as slaves but give them suf­fi­cient food, suf­fi­cient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be sat­is­fied.” . . . .

It was prob­a­bly not at all unusu­al for Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi to rea­son in these ways, for, as he had once  told his dis­ci­ples: “So the Kiratas, they  were always slaves of the Aryans. The Aryan peo­ple used to keep slaves, but they were treat­ing slaves very nice­ly.” And that the Kiratas were Africans, he had explained many times: “Kira­ta means the black, the Africans.” . . . .

13. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi had some “choice” things to say about women:

The Hare Krish­na Move­ment: The Postcharis­mat­ic Fate of A Reli­gious Trans­plant edit­ed by Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand; Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–231-12256‑X; p. 123.

. . . . While Bhakivedan­ta Swa­mi often made gen­er­al­iz­ing state­ments regard­ing Mayavadins, he issued even more such broad gen­er­al­iza­tions about women:

Gen­er­al­ly all women desire mate­r­i­al enjoy­ment.Women in gen­er­al should not be trust­ed.

Women are gen­er­al­ly not very intel­li­gent.

It appears that women is a stum­bling block [sic] for self-real­iza­tion.

Oth­er state­ments that are not sup­port­ed by the ear­li­er com­men­ta­tors are Bhak­tivedan­ta Swami’s views on rape:

Although rape is not legal­ly allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape.

When a hus­band­less woman is attacked by an aggres­sive man, she takes his action to be mer­cy.

 Gen­er­al­ly when a woman is attacked by a man—whether her hus­band or some oth­er man—she enjoys the attack, being too lusty. . . .

14. As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 941 and 942, for­mer Deputy Chair of the DNC, Bernie Sanders backer and prospec­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Tul­si Gab­bard, her par­ents, her hus­band, her inlaws and her con­gres­sion­al staff are mem­bers of this cult! Here is her fawn­ing trib­ute to Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi, the ripe piece of fruit whose phi­los­o­phy we detailed above.

Tul­si Gab­bard, Cult Born And Raised.

15. The pro­gram reviews net­work­ing between the milieux of Don­ald Trump, Tul­si Gab­bard and Naren­dra Modi:

• Trump’s Indi­an part­ners in his real estate projects over­lap the milieu of Mod­i’s BJP (a cat’s paw for the Hin­du nation­al­ist and fas­cist par­ty the RSS.) ” . . . . Mr. Trump’s part­ner in the Trump Tow­er Mum­bai is the Lod­ha Group, found­ed by Man­gal Prab­hat Lod­ha, vice pres­i­dent of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty — cur­rent­ly the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Par­lia­ment — in Maha­rash­tra State. The Lod­ha Group has already nego­ti­at­ed with the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment; it announced a land­mark pur­chase of a prop­er­ty, known as the Wash­ing­ton House, on tony Alta­mount Road, from the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment for 3.75 bil­lion rupees, almost $70 mil­lion. His part­ner in an office com­plex in Gur­gaon, near New Del­hi, is IREO, whose man­ag­ing direc­tor, Lalit Goy­al, is the broth­er-in-law of a Bharatiya Jana­ta mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Sud­han­shu Mit­tal. Mr. Mit­tal, in an inter­view, has denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion with the real estate com­pa­ny. . . .”
• Trump Con­sid­ered Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion: “. . . . Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard, a high-pro­file Bernie Sanders sup­port­er dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, is “under seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion” for var­i­ous Cab­i­net posi­tions in Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to a senior offi­cial on the tran­si­tion team. Accord­ing to the offi­cial, the 35-year-old Hawaii con­gress­woman is being looked as a can­di­date for sec­re­tary of state, sec­re­tary of defense or Unit­ed Nations ambas­sador. If select­ed, Gab­bard will be the first woman as well as the youngest pick for Trump’s Cab­i­net. . . .”
• Trump’s “alt-right” advi­sor Steve Ban­non is a fan of Gab­bard’s: ” . . . .  Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, report­ed­ly likes Gab­bard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islam­ic extrem­ism along with her abil­i­ty to invoke strong anti-estab­lish­ment pop­ulist sen­ti­ment on the left. . . .”
• Ban­non is also a fan of Naren­dra Modi and has fol­lowed his polit­i­cal rise close­ly: ” . . . . Mr. Trump may be large­ly indif­fer­ent to the rea­sons behind his Hin­du loy­al­ists’ fer­vor, but his most senior advis­ers are not. The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”
• Gab­bard is also a big fan of Naren­dra Modi, hav­ing been involved with the plan­ning of Mod­i’s U.S. vis­it and net­work­ing with BJP mem­bers: ” . . . . Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She had spo­ken to Modi after his vic­to­ry in the Indi­an gen­er­al elec­tions and con­grat­u­lat­ed him and the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP). She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
• On a trip to India, Gab­bard net­worked with both the BJP and the RSS, the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty for which Mod­i’s BJP is a cat’s paw. (All of Mod­i’s cab­i­net appoint­ments were drawn from the RSS. Mod­eled on the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty and Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts, the RSS killed Gand­hi.): “. . . . Speak­ing at a fundrais­ing event for the BJP in August 2014 . . . Gab­bard said that Modi’s elec­tion vic­to­ry was only pos­si­ble because ‘peo­ple stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.’ . . . Gab­bard was treat­ed as roy­al­ty on her vis­it to India last year. As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her ‘the Sangh’s mas­cot’ in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”