Supplement to the “Socialists for Trump and Hitler (The ‘Assistance’)” Series: Walkin’ the Cobra in India

In a recent series, we have not­ed the many appar­ent intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and fas­cist con­nec­tions to the self-brand­ed social­ists who have emerged in the left-wing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party–Indian fas­cists in par­tic­u­lar. We updat­ed that series in FTR #1069, not­ing the revi­sion­ist move­ment focused on AOC chief-of-staff Chakrabar­ti’s polit­i­cal idol Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, pic­tured at right, as well as the stun­ning, con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Deutsche-Indis­che Gesellschaft. With Adolf Hitler achiev­ing con­sid­er­able pop­u­lar­i­ty in India, the pos­si­ble merg­ing of Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cism with a “Boseian” fas­cism in that impor­tant coun­try is one to con­tem­plate. India is: the sec­ond most pop­u­lous coun­try on earth; a huge econ­o­my; a nuclear pow­er; geopo­lit­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ed in an impor­tant way. If it becomes Nazi/fascist, the impor­tance of that event could not be exag­ger­at­ed.

FTR #1069 Socialists for Trump and Hitler, (The “Assistance”), Part 9: Walkin’ the Snake in India

In the con­clu­sion to FTR #1068, we rumi­nat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a post-World War II “Boseian” or “Boseist” under­ground in India. We also spec­u­lat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario, in which revi­sion­ist his­tor­i­cal claims about Sub­has Chan­dra Bose being the real lib­er­a­tor of India–not Mahat­ma Gand­hi, would be a point of entry for the re-brand­ing of fas­cism as “anti-impe­ri­al­ist” or “anti-colo­nial­ist.” (An arti­cle in the peri­od­i­cal of the Lib­er­ty Lob­by’s Holo­caust revi­sion­ist Insti­tute of His­tor­i­cal Review makes that claim.)

In Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the Nazi SS go under­ground, buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, after a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents involv­ing WMD’s dev­as­tate the U.S., mar­tial law is declared and the SS descen­dants take over. The Third Reich and the Axis go down in his­to­ry as the “good guys.”

In this pro­gram, we high­light the ongo­ing, oper­a­tional lega­cy of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, its links to con­tem­po­rary India and Ger­many, its pres­ence in the Ger­man com­mer­cial land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, and the net­work­ing between this Boseian under­ground and Japan­ese ele­ments.

Key aspects of this milieu include:

1.–Narendra Mod­i’s net­work­ing with Surya Kumar Bose, Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s grand­nephew, promis­ing to declas­si­fy files on Bose.
2.–Surya Bose’s pres­i­den­cy of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion. ” . . . . Surya, who has a soft­ware con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in Ham­burg and is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion . . . .”
3.–The gen­e­sis of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion in Ger­many dur­ing World War II: ” . . . . ‘The DIG was set up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1942, by Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose at Hotel Atlanta in Ham­burg.’ . . . . Bose recounts, adding that the DIG today is the largest bilat­er­al organ­i­sa­tion in Ger­many, with 27 branch­es. As a con­sul­tant he often guides Ger­mans keen on work­ing in the boom­ing Indi­an IT sec­tor. He is also a founder-mem­ber of the Ger­man-Indi­an Round Table, an infor­mal gath­er­ing that seeks to fur­ther mutu­al busi­ness inter­ests. . . .”
4.–Surya Kuma Bose’s net­work­ing with Alexan­der Werth, the Ger­man trans­la­tor for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Ger­man forces, which were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS at the end of World War II. ” . . . . Back in the day, Netaji’s stay in Ger­many had proved instru­men­tal in shap­ing his strug­gle. Decades lat­er, that lega­cy would play a piv­otal role in shap­ing his grandnephew’s career. Bose came to Ger­many on the advice of Alexan­der Werth, Netaji’s Ger­man inter­preter in the Indi­an Legion. . . .”
5.–The col­lab­o­ra­tion of Surya Kumar Bose, Alexan­der Werth and World War II asso­ciates of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in both Ger­many and Japan in the com­pi­la­tion of a biog­ra­phy that fun­da­men­tal­ly revis­es the his­to­ry of “the Neta­ji.” ” . . . . Its six parts deal with his expe­ri­ences in India, Ger­many and Japan and have been co-authored by peo­ple who either worked with, or were close asso­ciates of, his dur­ing his stay in their respec­tive coun­tries. The aim of the biog­ra­phy is to place Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in a cor­rect his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive with regard to his much pub­li­cized rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ties, and to pro­vide an under­stand­ing of an extreme­ly com­plex man, much maligned by Britain and great­ly mis­un­der­stood by her allies. . . .”
6.–The Nehru gov­ern­men­t’s sur­veil­lance of Aniya Nath Bose–very close to Sub­has Chan­dra Bose–while Aniya was in Japan, an epi­cen­ter of the Sub­has Chan­dra’s World War II oper­a­tions. ” . . . . Doc­u­ments accessed by author Anuj Dhar for his book ‘India’s Biggest Cov­er-up’ show that Nehru, in a let­ter dat­ed Novem­ber 26, 1957 to the then for­eign sec­re­tary Subi­mal Dutt sought to know what Bose’s nephew Amiya Nath Bose was doing in Tokyo. . . . Amiya Bose, son of Subhas’s broth­er Sarat Chan­dra Bose, was known to be close to Neta­ji. . . .”
7.–An arti­cle in the Holo­caust revi­sion­ist peri­od­i­cal of the Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal review that attrib­ut­es the lib­er­a­tion of India to–you guessed it–Subhas Chan­dra Bose, not Gand­hi: ” . . . . When the new ver­sion of the his­to­ry of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry India, and espe­cial­ly the episode of the coun­try’s unique strug­gle for inde­pen­dence comes to be writ­ten, it will no doubt sin­gle out but one per­son who made the most sig­nif­i­cant and out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion among all his com­pa­tri­ots toward the eman­ci­pa­tion of his moth­er­land from the shack­les of an alien bondage. Dur­ing World War II this man strode across two con­ti­nents like a colos­sus, and the foot­steps of his army of lib­er­a­tion rever­ber­at­ed through the forests and plains of Europe and the jun­gles and moun­tains of Asia. His armed assaults shook the very foun­da­tions of the British Empire. His name was Sub­has Chan­dra Bose. . . .”

As dis­cussed in the first eight pro­grams of this series, Saikat Chakrabar­ti is the pow­er behind throne, so to speak, for AOC. Both of the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees he found­ed are fun­da­men­tal to the polit­i­cal ascent of AOC. Those PAC’s–Justice Democ­rats and Brand New Congress–contributed $900,000.00 on AOC’s behalf to a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm also head­ed by Chakrabar­ti. Chakrabar­ti is AOC’s chief of staff and was her cam­paign man­ag­er. Saikat Chakrabar­ti idol­izes Sub­has Chan­dra Bose!

Fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the crit­i­cism Mr. Emory has expressed of the Bernie Sanders and AOC phe­nom­e­na is the strate­gic use of anti-Com­mu­nism by the Under­ground Reich and relat­ed ele­ments.

In the ear­ly 1960’s, there was a plot afoot on the part of Nazi ele­ments to use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca. Might some of the ele­ments we have seen in this series have coa­lesced in such a con­text? One can­not use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca with­out Com­mu­nists. Is this why we see far-right and explic­it­ly fas­cist ele­ments grouped around Bernie Sanders and AOC?

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 86–87.

. . . . Gar­ri­son did not pro­vide an expla­na­tion for all of the [David Fer­rie] note’s sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, he did know the mean­ing of “fly­ing Barag­o­na in the Beech.” “Beech” refers to the mod­el of Fer­rie’s air­plane, a Beechcraft. Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . .

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.” The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

The true char­ac­ter of Saikat Chakrabar­ti’s appar­ent idol Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics is to be found in his 1935 net­work­ing with Mus­soli­ni: “. . . . Neta­ji Bose, by his own admis­sion in his book, ‘Indi­an Strug­gle’ (pub­lished in 1935 in Lon­don), believed India need­ed a polit­i­cal sys­tem that was a mix of fas­cism and com­mu­nism — some­thing that he called samyavad. Neta­ji made a spe­cial trip to Rome in 1935 to present a copy of his book to Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, whom he great­ly admired and whose ideals he would fol­low for the rest of his life. . . .”

Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics were the antithe­sis of what we would expect from the AOC camp: “. . . . In a speech the same year in Sin­ga­pore, Bose spoke about India need­ing a ruth­less dic­ta­tor for 20 years after lib­er­a­tion. Then Sin­ga­pore dai­ly, Sun­day Express (now defunct), print­ed his speech where he said, ‘So long as there is a third par­ty, ie the British, these dis­sen­sions will not end. These will go on grow­ing. They will dis­ap­pear only when an iron dic­ta­tor rules over India for 20 years. For a few years at least, after the end of British rule in India, there must be a dictatorship…No oth­er con­sti­tu­tion can flour­ish in this coun­try and it is so to India’s good that she shall be ruled by a dic­ta­tor, to begin with . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties, with which Sub­has Chan­dra Bose net­worked; dis­cus­sion of the con­trast between Gand­hi’s asceti­cism and Bose’s per­son­al extrav­a­gance and self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion; sum­ma­ry review of the fas­cist antecedents of the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, the RSS and the BJP.

FTR #‘s 1061, 1062, 1063, 1064, 1065, 1066, 1067 and 1068: Socialists for Trump and Hitler (The “Assistance”), Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8

We have won­dered about the ascent of Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez as a polit­i­cal ani­mal. We won­dered whether she might be a “ringer,” ele­vat­ed and pro­mot­ed by the far right and, per­haps, ele­ments of the CIA, because she is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT from their stand­point. In fact, she is straight from the Ama­zon (ahem) mail order cat­a­log: an out­spo­ken Lati­na who fits neat­ly into the anti-Latin big­otry insti­tu­tion­al­ized in Trump’s GOP, brands as a social­ist (per­fect for the Karl Roves and Trumps of this world), has stat­ed her inten­tion to work against Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents with whose pol­i­cy posi­tions she dis­agrees, and demon­strat­ed a lack of eco­nom­ic sophis­ti­ca­tion in her com­ments about Ama­zon’s failed New York City Deal and in the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Green New Deal.

The ascent of AOC was effect­ed in large mea­sure by two over­lap­ping organizations–Justice Democ­rats and Brand New Congress–both co-found­ed by Saikat Chakrabar­ti, and Indi­an-Amer­i­can, Har­vard-edu­cat­ed, Wall Street and Sil­i­con Val­ley mul­ti-mil­lion­aire, and fan of major Axis col­lab­o­ra­tor Sub­has Chan­dra Bose. Brand New Con­gress was co-found­ed by a Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia-edu­cat­ed Turk­ish Amer­i­can, Cenk Uygur, who has a his­to­ry of deny­ing the Turk­ish geno­cide against the Arme­ni­ans, as we shall see. (Like Har­vard, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia is an Ivy League School.)

The rad­i­cal Demo­c­ra­t­ic new­com­ers are pre­cip­i­tat­ing a war with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, ignor­ing the fact that the Democ­rats retook Con­gress as a result of vic­to­ries by mod­er­ate can­di­dates in dis­tricts tak­en by Trump in 2016.

Chakrabar­ti is fun­da­men­tal to the rise of Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez. Chakrabar­ti was AOC’s cam­paign man­ag­er and is her cur­rent chief of staff. Both Jus­tice Democ­rats and Brand New Con­gress donat­ed a total of $900,000 to a con­sult­ing firm also head­ed by Chakrabar­ti. Until recent­ly, AOC sat on the board of one of them.

In a recent twit­ter video post defend­ing AOC’s mer­cu­r­ial social media activ­i­ty, Chakrabar­ti appeared with a T‑Shirt fea­tur­ing a pic­ture of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, an Indi­an nation­al­ist who allied him­self with both Nazi Ger­many and Impe­r­i­al Japan. He has a habit of wear­ing Sub­has Chan­dra Bose garb.

Some of Bose’s many pro­found rela­tion­ships and oper­a­tional deeds in con­nec­tion with the Axis and the Sec­ond World War:

1.–In addi­tion to net­work­ing with Hein­rich Himm­ler, as pic­tured above, left, he met with Adolf Hitler and was praised by Der Fuhrer. ” . . . . You are for­tu­nate hav­ing been born in a coun­try of glo­ri­ous cul­tur­al tra­di­tions and a colos­sal man­pow­er. I am impressed by the burn­ing pas­sion with which you and your Neta­ji [Bose] seek to lib­er­ate your coun­try from for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Your Neta­ji’s sta­tus is even greater than mine. While I am the leader of 80 mil­lion Ger­mans, he is the leader of 400 mil­lion Indi­ans. In all respects he is a greater leader and a greater gen­er­al than myself. I salute him, and Ger­many salutes him. It is the duty of all Indi­ans to accept him as their führer and obey him implic­it­ly. I have no doubt that if you do this, his guid­ance will lead India very soon to free­dom.”
2.–Bose net­worked with SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler and, ulti­mate­ly, his Euro­pean fight­ing forces were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS: ” . . . . The Indi­an Legion (Ger­man: Indis­che Legion), offi­cial­ly the Free India Legion (Ger­man: Legion Freies Indi­en) or Infantry Reg­i­ment 950 (Indi­an) (Ger­man: Infan­terie-Reg­i­ment 950 (indis­ches), I.R. 950) and lat­er the Indi­an Vol­un­teer Legion of the Waf­fen-SS (Ger­man: Indis­che Frei­willi­gen Legion der Waf­fen-SS), was a mil­i­tary unit raised dur­ing the Sec­ond World War in Nazi Ger­many. Intend­ed to serve as a lib­er­a­tion force for British-ruled India, it was made up of Indi­an pris­on­ers of war and expa­tri­ates in Europe. Because of its ori­gins in the Indi­an inde­pen­dence move­ment, it was known also as the “Tiger Legion”, and the “Azad Hind Fauj”. Ini­tial­ly raised as part of the Ger­man Army, it was part of the Waf­fen-SS from August 1944. Indi­an inde­pen­dence leader Sub­has Chan­dra Bose ini­ti­at­ed the legion’s for­ma­tion, as part of his efforts to win Indi­a’s inde­pen­dence by wag­ing war against Britain, when he came to Berlin in 1941 seek­ing Ger­man aid. . . .”
3.–Bose net­worked with Mus­soli­ni, Prime Min­is­ter Hide­ki Tojo and even Emper­or Hiro­hi­to him­self dur­ing the course of his align­ment with the Axis: ” . . . . Hav­ing met with Hitler, Ital­ian Fas­cist Duce Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, and Japan­ese Pre­mier Gen­er­al Hide­ki Tojo, Bose was, at one time or anoth­er, backed by all three of the major Axis pow­ers. . . . Like Il Duce and the Führer before him, Bose now claimed the mul­ti­ple titles and offices of head of state, prime min­is­ter, min­is­ter of war, and head of the for­eign office. On the 23rd, the new chief exec­u­tive offi­cer made a state vis­it to Japan’s Emper­or Hiro­hi­to dur­ing the Greater East Asia Con­fer­ence in Tokyo . . . .”
4.–Bose also wrote for the jour­nal of pan-Ger­man­ist philoso­pher Karl Haushofer. Kevin Coogan notes the phi­los­o­phy of Karl Haushofer, an ear­ly influ­ence on Hitler and Third Reich geo-pol­i­tics, exem­pli­fy­ing some of the his­tor­i­cal gen­e­sis of the Nazi/Hindu nation­al­ist link. ” . . . . In the 1930’s, Indi­an nation­al­ist leader Sub­has Chan­dra Bose [whose Indi­an nation­al Army lat­er received mil­i­tary sup­port in World War II from both Ger­many and Japan] was a cor­re­spon­dent for the Zeitschrift fur Geopoli­tik. [Haushofer­’s pub­li­ca­tion.] . . . .”
5.–In addi­tion to Haushofer,  Bose net­worked with oth­er the­o­ret­i­cal lumi­nar­ies of fas­cism and insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als involved with clan­des­tine oper­a­tions and intel­li­gence mat­ters, includ­ing: The Japan­ese Black Drag­on Soci­ety and its patri­arch Mit­su­ru Toya­ma, Abwehr head Wil­helm Canaris, Haj Amin El-Hus­sei­ni (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Major Gen­er­al in the Waf­fen SS, the fore­most orga­niz­er of Mus­lim com­bat units for the Nazis and the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian Nation­al Move­ment) and Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels.
6.–In con­nec­tion with his work for Goebbels, it is worth not­ing that Bose’s Axis pro­pa­gan­da broad­casts were coun­tered with George Orwell’s broad­casts for the Allies: ” . . . . . Bose set up the Free India Cen­ter in Berlin and began radio broad­casts from Nauen, Ger­many, to his far-off home­land on Feb­ru­ary 19, 1942. Bose’s British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion rival and coun­ter­part, author Eric Blair (aka George Orwell of Ani­mal Farm and 1984 fame), led the Allied pro­pa­gan­da team that fought Bose over the radio. . . . ”

It should be not­ed that Bose was not one of the Hin­dut­va fas­cists, who belonged to the RSS and the close­ly-allied Hin­du Mahasab­ha. He was, how­ev­er, an Axis-allied fas­cist mil­i­tary leader, like some oth­er nation­al­ists in colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries, who sought alliance with the armies of Nazi Ger­many, Impe­r­i­al Japan and, to a less­er extent, fas­cist Italy as vehi­cles for oust­ing their colo­nial mas­ters.

Bose appears to have faked his 1945 death in a plane crash. If so, the prob­a­bil­i­ty is high that he con­tin­ued his polit­i­cal work under­ground, very pos­si­bly in con­nec­tion with some of the Axis ele­ments with which he was asso­ci­at­ed dur­ing the war, and/or ele­ments of CIA or oth­er intel­li­gence ser­vices. ” . . . . Although Neta­ji (Great Leader) Bose was report­ed killed in an air crash in August 1945 . . . . many believed then and con­tin­ue to believe now that, helped by his Japan­ese allies, he faked his death . . . . and returned to India many years lat­er . . . . In his inquiry report, com­plet­ed in 2006, Jus­tice Mukher­jee was cat­e­goric. He con­clud­ed: ‘Neta­ji Bose is dead [a safe bet as he would have been 109]. He did not die in the plane crash as alleged and the ash­es in the Japan­ese tem­ple in Tokyo [main­tained by the Indi­an gov­ern­ment since 1945] are not of Neta­ji.’ . . .”

Cenk Uygur–the Ivy-League edu­cat­ed co-founder (with Chakrabar­ti) of Brand New Con­gress, has a his­to­ry of deny­ing the Turk­ish geno­cide of Arme­ni­ans dur­ing World War I: ” . . . . . . . . Hence, once you real­ly exam­ine the his­to­ry of the time it becomes appar­ent that the alle­ga­tions of an Armen­ian Geno­cide are unfound­ed. So the ques­tion aris­es of why the Arme­ni­ans would both­er to con­jure up such sto­ries . . . . . . . every non-Armen­ian schol­ar in the field believes it is an open ques­tion whether this event was a geno­cide. Is it the claim of the arti­cle that all of these peo­ple are taint­ed by the ten­ta­cles of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment? If not, then why is it not point­ed out that no one out­side of the ‘Armen­ian posi­tion’ believes it is a geno­cide? . . . ”

We note that, in addi­tion to man­i­fest­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port­ive of the World War II Axis and deny­ing geno­cide, the Chakrabarti/Uygur team has engi­neered much that fits neat­ly into the GOP strat­e­gy. The “war” they plan on “lean­ing into” with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty ben­e­fits Trump/GOP/Karl Rove and might just as well have been script­ed by them. ” . . . . it is the Jus­tice Democ­rats who see Oca­sio-Cortez as just the open­ing act in an aston­ish­ing­ly ambi­tious plan to do noth­ing less than re-imag­ine lib­er­al pol­i­tics in America—and do it by what­ev­er means nec­es­sary. . . . If that requires knock­ing out well-known elect­ed offi­cials and replac­ing them with more rad­i­cal new­com­ers, so be it. And if it ends up rip­ping apart the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in the process—well, that might be the idea.  ‘There is going to be a war with­in the par­ty. We are going to lean into it,’ said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman. . . .” 

With “Sub­has Chan­dra” Chakrabar­ti and “What Armen­ian Geno­cide?” Uygur pro­mot­ing her polit­i­cal ascent, we should note how much of what she says is per­fect for Team Trump. AOC has intoned that jobs should be pro­vid­ed for peo­ple “unwill­ing to work,” that cap­i­tal­ism was “irre­deemable” and adorned the fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant con­cept of a “Green New Deal” with a pro­gres­sive wish list that pro­vid­ed pro­pa­gan­da fod­der for Team Trump.

Brad Parscale is head­ing Trump’s 2020 reelec­tion team and, in so doing, has reassem­bled the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca team from 2016. AOC has long been pro­lif­ic in her use of social media and online com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We won­der if AOC may have been iden­ti­fied, pro­filed and data-based by an AI-assist­ed data min­ing oper­a­tion along the lines of what Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca engi­neered on behalf of Trump dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign?

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Bernie Sanders’ chief 2016 cam­paign strate­gist Tad Devine’s net­work­ing with Trump’s 2016 cam­paign man­ag­er and prob­a­ble spook Paul Man­afort on the ear­ly stages of the Maid­an “op;” the promi­nent role in the Sanders Insti­tute and AOC’s advi­so­ry team of Jef­frey Sachs, whose HIID team of advis­ers (with gov­ern­ment fund­ing) sent Rus­sia back to the Stone Age, eco­nom­i­cal­ly; the “hand­off” to Jef­frey Sachs and his HIID of Rus­sia and oth­er for­mer Sovi­et Republics by the Gehlen/GOP Nazis man­i­fest­ing through the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion; Sachs’ role in craft­ing the oli­garch sys­tem that bedev­ils the for­mer Sovi­et mem­ber states to this day; review of Sanders Insti­tute mem­ber Tul­si Gab­bard’s links to Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the Hare Krish­na fas­cist mind con­trol cult; Tul­si Gab­bard’s fund­ing from a group seen by crit­ics as a Hin­dut­va-sup­port­ing enti­ty in the U.S.; Tul­si Gab­bard’s posi­tion on the advi­so­ry board of Koch-Broth­ers fund­ed think tank that over­laps the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment; GOP’s strat­e­gy of using “oppor­tu­ni­ty zones” des­ig­nat­ed in the Trump Tax Bill as a cam­paign strat­e­gy; AOC’s pos­si­ble use in the GOP cam­paign strat­e­gy using “oppor­tu­ni­ty zones;” AOC’s clum­sy use of “Sub­has Chan­dra” Chakrabar­ti and “What Armen­ian Geno­cide? “Uygur’s PACs, as well as a con­sult­ing firm run by Chakrabar­ti; review of the Anan­da Mar­ga cult, found­ed and run by Bose’s nephew, room­mate and polit­i­cal pro­tege Sarkar; Ama­zon’s Jeff Bezos’ fam­i­ly her­itage with DARPA and the CIA’s Oper­a­tion Peter Pan; dis­cus­sion of H.L. Hunt Grand­daugh­ter Leah Hunt-Hen­drix’s sig­nif­i­cant role in fund­ing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s left; Hunt-Hen­drix’s asso­ci­a­tion with Glo­ria Steinem, whose CIA her­itage we have dis­cussed in the past; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Chakrabar­ti may be man­i­fest­ing Sub­has Chan­dra Bose garb as part of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, por­tray­ing the Axis as anti-colo­nial lib­er­a­tors; rumi­na­tion about the ele­va­tion of Bernie Sanders, AOC et al as part of an Under­ground Reich gam­bit to use anti-com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca.

Update on the Murder of Gauri Lankesh

In FTR #990, we high­light­ed the assas­si­na­tion of inves­tiga­tive reporter Gau­ri Lankesh. We also not­ed the irony in Pierre Omid­yar evolv­ing into an icon of inves­tiga­tive report­ing by virtue of his launch­ing of “The Inter­cept,” when he helped elect Naren­dra Modi and helped to install the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine. Both regimes have man­i­fest­ed lethal hos­til­i­ty to inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal activists. In an update on Lankesh’s killing, we note that her mur­der occurs in the con­text of unprece­dent­ed pres­sure on, and itim­i­da­tion of, the media by the Hin­dut­va fas­cist regime of Naren­dra Modi. ” . . . . Since he took office in 2014, Modi has not held a sin­gle news con­fer­ence in India. Among B.J.P. politi­cians, a pop­u­lar term for jour­nal­ists is “pressti­tutes.’ A dis­patch on Indi­an jour­nal­ism last year by the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists described an unprece­dent­ed cli­mate of self-cen­sor­ship and fear, report­ing, ‘The media is in the worst state India has ever seen.’ . . . . In these cir­cum­stances, Lankesh’s audac­i­ty and integri­ty were all the more notable. And her mur­der has deep­ened the chill. . . . Jig­nesh Mevani, a leg­is­la­tor and an activist from Gujarat, fears that if the B.J.P. is re-elect­ed, its extrem­ist sup­port­ers will be embold­ened. ‘Every year they will kill 10 to 15 of our kind of peo­ple and put 10 to 15 of our kind of peo­ple in jail,’ he told me at a July meet­ing in Ban­ga­lore in Lankesh’s hon­or. ‘So by the time they are in pow­er for a decade, the major faces of the pro­gres­sive civ­il rights move­ments of this coun­try will be gone.’ Lankesh’s mur­der seemed to fit what was by then an unmis­tak­able pat­tern of assas­si­na­tions of intel­lec­tu­als who opposed the fun­da­men­tal­ist-Hin­du ide­ol­o­gy that ani­mates the B.J.P., all of which remained unsolved. Between 2013 and 2015, three reli­gious­ly free­think­ing Indi­an writ­ers and activists were shot dead near their homes by assailants who escaped on motor­cy­cles: the doc­tor Naren­dra Dab­holkar, in Pune; the politi­cian Govind Pansare, in Kol­ha­pur; and the schol­ar M.M. Kalbur­gi, in Dhar­wad. After Kalburgi’s mur­der, scores of Indi­an writ­ers returned their awards from the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Let­ters to protest both the lack of progress in the mur­der inves­ti­ga­tions and the B.J.P.’s silence over ris­ing intol­er­ance, to no effect. There was much anx­ious spec­u­la­tion over who might be the next writer to die. . . .” After much delay, Hin­dut­va fas­cists have been arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with Lankesh’s killing: ” . . . . in May, the Kar­nata­ka Police’s spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tion team filed a charge sheet against a Hin­dut­va activist named K.T. Naveen Kumar, run­ning to some 650 pages and accus­ing him of crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, among oth­er things. Fif­teen more sus­pects have been arrest­ed and charged in the months since then . . . . Accord­ing to the police, foren­sics indi­cat­ed that the gun that killed Lankesh was poten­tial­ly also used in two of the three oth­er unsolved assas­si­na­tions that seemed to fit the same pat­tern. The police sus­pect that the accused are part of an appar­ent­ly name­less, mul­ti­state right-wing assas­si­na­tion net­work with at least 60 mem­bers. Many of the accused have con­nec­tions with a small, secre­tive Hin­dut­va group called the Sanatan Sanstha, mem­bers of which have pre­vi­ous­ly been arrest­ed as sus­pects in four sep­a­rate bomb­ings of pub­lic places. . . . Per­haps the most extra­or­di­nary dis­cov­ery the police have made in their inves­ti­ga­tion of Lankesh’s mur­der is a detailed diary recov­ered from the home of a lead­ing sus­pect. In it were two lists, osten­si­bly of peo­ple the con­spir­a­tors want­ed dead, report­ed­ly includ­ing Veer­ab­hadra Chen­na­mal­la, a lib­er­al-mind­ed Hin­du priest, and K.S. Bha­ga­van, an out­spo­ken­ly athe­ist Shake­speare schol­ar. First on one of the lists was Girish Kar­nad, who is per­haps the great­est liv­ing Kan­na­da play­wright. All have been par­tic­u­lar­ly forth­right in their crit­i­cism of Hin­dut­va. Sec­ond on one list was Lankesh. In the months since she was shot, some of her friends and col­leagues have grown more cau­tious about what they write and say and post to social media, even as this year’s unusu­al­ly fraught and uncer­tain Elec­tion Day approach­es. . . . .”

More About Hindutva Fascism

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have chron­i­cled the rise of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va Fas­cist RSS for which it is a front. We also have not­ed that the RSS assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi. Hin­dut­va fas­cists are attack­ing a [non-Jew­ish] pro­fes­sor at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty who has writ­ten of the Mus­lim dynas­ties that ruled much of what is now mod­ern-day India, express­ing vio­lent­ly anti-Semit­ic sen­ti­ments and ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Hin­dut­va fas­cism, like ele­ments of the SS and Third Reich, are infus­ing sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry with mythol­o­gy (in this case Hin­du mythol­o­gy), attempt­ing to refute “Jew­ish sci­ence.”

FTR #1028 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing pre­vi­ous paths of inquiry, as well as intro­duc­ing new ones, the pro­gram begins with a bit of both–discussion of the mur­der of Sau­di jour­nal­ist and pos­si­ble Sau­di and U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Jamal Khashog­gi. A devel­op­ment which res­onates strong­ly with pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring”), the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics of Ibn Khal­dun and the Broth­er­hood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute (which fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the post‑9/11 Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Qae­da and ter­ror­ist financ­ing), Khashog­gi’s death has occa­sioned howls of out­rage, much beat­ing of breasts and tear­ing of hair in nor­mal­ly Sau­di-friend­ly con­fines both inside, and out­side of the U.S.

Khashog­gi’s many con­nec­tions and per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships are impor­tant and piv­otal in a num­ber of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-stand­ing advo­ca­cy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note the main­stream medi­a’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “demo­c­ra­t­ic.” In FTR #‘s 787, 1025 and 1026, we not­ed how fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic the Broth­er­hood is: ” . . . . In his penul­ti­mate col­umn, Mr. Khashog­gi said democ­ra­cy in the Mid­dle East couldn’t hap­pen with­out the inclu­sion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ‘The erad­i­ca­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is noth­ing less than an abo­li­tion of democ­ra­cy and a guar­an­tee that Arabs will con­tin­ue liv­ing under author­i­tar­i­an and cor­rupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashog­gi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no polit­i­cal reform and democ­ra­cy in any Arab coun­try with­out accept­ing that polit­i­cal­Is­lam is a part of it.’. . . .”  
2.–Allegedly actu­al mem­ber­ship in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: ” . . . .  Sev­er­al of his friends say that ear­ly on Mr. Khashog­gi also joined the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. . . .”
3.–A work­ing pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Khaled Saf­fu­ri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute. This insti­tu­tion was, in effect, an Amer­i­can nexus for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, as well as being a cen­tral ele­ment in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. We cov­ered Oper­a­tion Green Quest at length in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashog­gi, a pro­lif­ic writer and com­men­ta­tor, was work­ing qui­et­ly with intel­lec­tu­als, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democ­ra­cy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashog­gi had incor­po­rat­ed his democ­ra­cy advo­ca­cy group, DAWN, in Jan­u­ary in Delaware, said Khaled Saf­fu­ri, anoth­er friend. The group was still in the plan­ning stages, and Khashog­gi was work­ing on it qui­et­ly, like­ly con­cerned it could cause trou­ble for asso­ciates, includ­ing activists in the Gulf, Saf­fu­ri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdo­gan, who might be described as a fas­cist wish­bone, with one foot in the Islam­ic fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the oth­er in the sec­u­lar Pan-Turk­ist fas­cism of the Nation­al Action Par­ty and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashog­gi was close to the gov­ern­ment of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whose ties with Sau­di Ara­bia had become increas­ing­ly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplo­mat­ic spat with Sau­di Ara­bia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also dif­fers with Sau­di Ara­bia over its view of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Mr. Khashog­gi knew Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan per­son­al­ly and was a friend to some of his clos­est advis­ers, say peo­ple who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, the head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, who, as dis­cussed in numer­ous shows, includ­ing FTR #‘s 347 and 358, basi­cal­ly ran Osama bin Laden. Khashog­gi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the sec­ond largest stock­hold­er in News­corp (behind the Mur­dochs) and some­one “20th hijack­er” Zacarias Mous­saoui named as one of the promi­nent Saud­is who financed al-Qae­da. Imme­di­ate­ly after being named by Mous­saoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donat­ing all of his bil­lions to char­i­ty. ” . . . . Through it all, he main­tained close ties to some of Sau­di Arabia’s most pow­er­ful princes. In the ear­ly 2000s, he served as an advis­er to Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, a for­mer head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, dur­ing the prince’s time as ambas­sador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the bil­lion­aire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and sup­port for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, who mor­phed into al-Qae­da. ” . . . . He trav­eled to Afghanistan as a jour­nal­ist, where he became the first Arab jour­nal­ist to inter­view Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and aca­d­e­m­ic who knew Mr. Khashog­gi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Sau­di weapons deal­er Adnan Khashog­gi, who was piv­otal­ly involved with the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, the sup­port effort for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, Al-Qae­da and the so-called “Truther” move­ment. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashog­gi, a famous arms deal­er. . . .”
8.– His rela­tion­ship with Sau­di intel­li­gence chief Prince Tur­ki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war cov­er­ing bin Laden and the Muja­hadeen and his work for the CIA-con­nect­ed Wash­ing­ton Post sug­gest the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the late Jamal Khashog­gi was a spook-jour­nal­ist, work­ing for both the Saud­is and ele­ments of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we not­ed the issu­ing of school text­books glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism while Naren­dra Modi head­ed the Indi­an state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among oth­er pro­grams, we not­ed John Cony­ers’ active oppo­si­tion to the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo move­ment, which dis­plays symp­to­matic fea­tures of an “op.” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the appar­ent role of Far right blog­ger Mike “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid” Cer­novich. An inter­est­ing per­son to sig­nal the destruc­tion of one of the few active­ly anti-fas­cist law­mak­ers by on osten­si­bly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal move­ment.

It is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that Cony­ers also co-spon­sored a House Res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Mod­i’s sup­port for Nazi racism and ide­ol­o­gy.

” . . . . The spon­sor, Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) said the State Depart­ment ‘has dis­cussed the role of Modi and his gov­ern­ment in pro­mot­ing atti­tudes of racial suprema­cy, racial hatred, and the lega­cy of Nazism through his government’s sup­port of school text­books in which Nazism is glo­ri­fied.’ The res­o­lu­tion said Modi revised school text­books, which men­tioned the ‘charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty of Hitler the Supre­mo’ and failed to acknowl­edge the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. . . .”

Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Pierre Omid­yar active­ly assist­ed the rise of both the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine and Mod­i’s BJP/RSS fas­cists in India, as dis­cussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion of eugen­ics, white suprema­cy and anti-immi­gra­tion fer­vor, This will be exam­ined at greater length in our next pro­gram.
Key points of analy­sis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS post­ing and the 14 words slo­gan mint­ed by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The res­ig­na­tion of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white suprema­cists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Fed­er­a­tion of Immi­gra­tion Reform.
4.–A pos­si­ble mind con­trol link to the mur­der of Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the pol­ka dot dress.”

John Conyers Co-Sponsored House Resolution Condemning Narendra Modi for Promoting Nazi Ideology in Textbooks

In FTR #1015, we not­ed the issu­ing of school text­books glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism while Naren­dra Modi head­ed the Indi­an state of Gujarat. In FTR #998, among oth­er pro­grams, we not­ed John Cony­ers’ active oppo­si­tion to the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo move­ment, which dis­plays symp­to­matic fea­tures of an “op.” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the appar­ent role of far right blog­ger Mike “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid” Cernovich–an inter­est­ing per­son to sig­nal the destruc­tion of one of the few active­ly anti-fas­cist law­mak­ers by on osten­si­bly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal move­ment. It is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that Modi also co-spon­sored a House Res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Mod­i’s sup­port for Nazi racism and ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . . The spon­sor, Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) said the State Depart­ment ‘has dis­cussed the role of Modi and his gov­ern­ment in pro­mot­ing atti­tudes of racial suprema­cy, racial hatred, and the lega­cy of Nazism through his government’s sup­port of school text­books in which Nazism is glo­ri­fied.’ The res­o­lu­tion said Modi revised school text­books, which men­tioned the ‘charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty of Hitler the Supre­mo’ and failed to acknowl­edge the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. . . .” Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Pierre Omid­yar active­ly assist­ed the rise of both the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine and Mod­i’s BJP/RSS fas­cists in India, as dis­cussed in FTR #889.

FTR #1020 Baba Ramdev, Hindutva Fascism and Geopolitics

The pri­ma­ry “jump­ing off point” of this pro­gram and the foun­da­tion of the pre­vi­ous two broad­casts is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
2.–The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
3.–Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune.
More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS. In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: ‘There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in.’ . . .”
5.–The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism. ” . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing: ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

We review of a miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . . As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing Yoga’s well-doc­u­ment­ed fit­ness ben­e­fits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehi­cle for recon­nect­ing Indi­ans with their myth­ic past. In fact, the dis­ci­pline is root­ed in more recent and Euro­pean-import­ed cul­ture: “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . .”

In fact, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary Yoga dis­ci­pline was made by a Dan­ish Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. . . .”

More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .”

Yoga’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Weimar Ger­many trans­lat­ed into an affin­i­ty for the dis­ci­pline expressed by Nazi SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler, who also saw the phys­i­cal reg­i­men as an exten­sion of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That myth­i­cal Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavis­tic occult ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .”

More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”

This dove­tails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embod­i­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “Aryan” race.

Next, we review of the sweet­heart land deals giv­en to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen school in Japan by the Abe gov­ern­ment and com­par­isons between that arrange­ment and the bar­gain-base­ment land pur­chas­es afford­ed the Ramdev oper­a­tion by the Modi gov­ern­ment.

We then “dol­ly out,” so to speak, and begin to exam­ine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broad­er polit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tul­si Gab­bard, the left-cov­er Hin­dut­va fas­cist who nom­i­nat­ed Bernie Sanders for Pres­i­dent in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as con­nec­tions between “Team Trump” and Gab­bard.

We also review Pierre Omid­yar’s sig­nif­i­cant role in both India and Ukraine:

Omid­yar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an appar­ent asset of U.S. intel­li­gence and (per­haps) the Under­ground Reich–are best viewed in the con­text of the Earth Island and a flank­ing maneu­ver on Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

With the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion fas­cists in pow­er via the Maid­an coup and a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Petro Poroshenko, pres­sure is being put direct­ly on Rus­si­a’s flank. With the Hin­dut­va fas­cists of Naren­dra Modi/BJP/RSS in pow­er in India, pres­sure is being put on Chi­na’s flank: “U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects “the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,” as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous. Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . .On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States. Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .”

Of sig­nif­i­cance for us in the con­text of anti-Chi­na/Earth Island geopo­lit­i­cals are the anti-com­mu­nist util­i­ty of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dove­tail­ing of a Ramdev/Patanjali instal­la­tion in Assam with the needs of the Indi­an Air Force for a base in that area:

1.–Ramdev and the B.J.P. appear to have util­i­ty as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
2.–Also of sig­nif­i­cance is the dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force: “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with review of a Hin­dut­va chant used by Baba Ramdev and Naren­dra Modi.

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have spo­ken of Ramde­v’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invo­ca­tion, high­light­ing Ramde­v’s work­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”

Naren­dra Modi echoed this in his Sep­tem­ber 2015 speech at the SAP Cen­ter in San Jose. (As men­tioned above, Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange Mod­i’s tour.) An audio excerpt con­cludes this pro­gram. For con­ve­nience, we have includ­ed a por­tion of text from Mod­i’s speech.

“Com­plete Text and Video of Naren­dra Modi’s Speech at SAP Cen­ter: Watch;” India West Online; 9/29/2015.

. . . . Please repeat after me “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Say it loud­ly; I want the voice to boom all the way to India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats), Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats) . . . .

FTR #‘s 1018, 1019 Baba Ramdev and Hindutva Fascism, Parts 1 and 2

The pri­ma­ry focal point of these two pro­grams and sup­ple­men­tal dis­cus­sion in the pro­gram to fol­low is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

This will be dis­cussed at greater length in FTR #1020.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of Ramdev and his polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial under­tak­ings include:

1.–Ramdev’s ide­o­log­i­cal res­o­nance with the Hin­dut­va fas­cist invo­ca­tion of an ide­al­ized mys­ti­cal past: ” . . . . [BJP head and mur­der sus­pect] Amit Shah told the crowd that the B.J.P. want­ed Ramdev to join them in reform­ing the Indi­an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. One of the party’s new pri­or­i­ties is an ambi­tious effort to rewrite Indi­an school text­books to assert Hin­du pri­ma­cy. Mahesh Shar­ma, India’s cul­ture min­is­ter and an avowed fol­low­er of the RSS, has said he hopes to rewrite the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive about India as a mul­ti­cul­tur­al tapes­try, and to incul­cate the belief that the ancient Hin­du scrip­tures are his­tor­i­cal facts, not leg­ends. ‘There is a lot of work to be done in edu­ca­tion,’ Shah said on the sta­di­um floor, just after the pre­miere of Ramdev’s biopic. ‘Because of our saints and our heroes — all this needs to be brought into our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem.’ . . . Ramdev walked to the lectern, smil­ing gra­cious­ly at the gag­gle of B.J.P. lumi­nar­ies onstage. He pledged his sup­port to Modi and Shah, and their efforts to trans­form India. . . . ‘I ded­i­cate my time and ener­gy to the cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al edu­ca­tion of the coun­try, to bring our coun­try the great knowl­edge of the Vedas.’ . . .  ‘We will see an Indi­an edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy in this coun­try . . .  Before step­ping down, he pumped his fist once again in a chant of ‘India my moth­er­land is great.’ The crowd roared. . . .”
2.–Ramdev’s fre­quent invok­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes and his work­ing of the crowd in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”
3.–The fus­ing of Ramde­v’s polit­i­cal endeav­ors on behalf of Modi and the RSS with his com­mer­cial activ­i­ties: ” . . . . Ramdev has been a promi­nent voice on the Hin­du right, and his tac­it endorse­ment dur­ing the land­mark 2014 cam­paign helped bring Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi to pow­er. He appeared along­side Modi on sev­er­al occa­sions, singing the leader’s prais­es and urg­ing Indi­ans to turn out for him. Ramdev has called Modi ‘a close friend,’ and the prime min­is­ter pub­licly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic prod­ucts — med­i­cines, cos­met­ics and food­stuffs. . . . ”
4.–The favored treat­ment afford­ed Ramdev and his Patan­jali busi­ness by the Modi regime: ” . . . . One thing is cer­tain: Ramdev has received extra­or­di­nary favors from the Indi­an gov­ern­ment since Modi was elect­ed. Soon after the 2014 elec­tion, B.J.P.-led state gov­ern­ments across India began facil­i­tat­ing steep dis­counts on land pur­chas­es for Patan­jali. . . . In the largest of these deals, Patan­jali was giv­en a 1,200-acre par­cel of land in the east­ern state of Assam at no cost. Accord­ing to state leg­is­la­ture doc­u­ments I was shown by a local aca­d­e­m­ic, the deal was made by an agency con­trolled by the Bodoland People’s Front, a par­ty aligned with the B.J.P. Last year a Reuters inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ment­ed sev­er­al dis­count­ed land sales and leas­es in three oth­er Indi­an states that saved the com­pa­ny a total of $46 mil­lion. . . .”
5.–Ramdev, the  B.J.P. as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
6.–The dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force:  “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”
7.–Evident sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ramde­v’s “swadeshi”–“economic nationalism”–with Mus­solin­i’s con­cept of the Cor­po­rate State and Hitler’s Nation­al Social­ism: ” . . . . Ramdev has led vast­ly pop­u­lar cam­paigns against cor­rup­tion, don­ning the man­tle of swadeshi, or Indi­an eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism, to cast for­eign com­pa­nies as neo­colo­nial vil­lains. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. . . .”
8.–Evident sim­i­lar­i­ties between the “eco­nom­ic xeno­pho­bia” pro­pelling Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs and trade wars and the swadeshi/economic nation­al­ism of Ramdev and com­pa­ny: ” . . . . When it comes to mar­ket­ing against for­eign com­peti­tors, they wield their holi­ness like a club. One Patan­jali ad runs: ‘As East India Com­pa­ny plun­dered our coun­try for 200 years like­wise these multi­na­tion­als are exploit­ing our coun­try by sell­ing their harm­ful and dan­ger­ous chem­i­cal prod­ucts. Beware!’ . . . .”
9.–Ramdev’s seam­less meld­ing with the anti-Mus­lim ide­ol­o­gy of the RSS, man­i­fest­ing the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal demo­niza­tion of the “malev­o­lent oth­er” that char­ac­ter­izes so many iter­a­tions of fas­cism: ” . . . . Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. His blend of patri­ot­ic fer­vor, health and reli­gious piety flows seam­less­ly into the hard­er ver­sions of Hin­du nation­al­ism, which are often open­ly hos­tile to India’s 172 mil­lion Mus­lims. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indi­an sol­i­dar­i­ty, his B.J.P. allies rou­tine­ly invoke an Islam­ic threat and ral­ly crowds with vows to build tem­ples on the sites of medieval mosques. . . . .”
10.–Ramdev’s atavis­tic pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the myth­i­cal­ly ide­al­ized past anti-Mus­lim fer­vor at times bor­ders on incite­ment to vio­lence: ” . . . . And the nation, in Ramdev’s telling, is sub­tly twinned with a his­to­ry and cul­ture that is dis­tinct­ly Hin­du: yoga, ayurvedic med­i­cine and the ancient Vedic scrip­tures from which they are said to have emerged. Some­times the hints are not so sub­tle. Two years ago, when a Mus­lim politi­cian refused to chant a nation­al­ist slo­gan, Ramdev laid into him at a right-wing ral­ly, say­ing that were it not for his respect for the law, “we would behead hun­dreds of thou­sands” of such peo­ple. A court lat­er issued a war­rant for Ramdev’s arrest, though the mat­ter appears to have been dropped. . . .”
11.–Similarities between Ramdev and Trump: ” . . . . In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Don­ald Trump, and there is much spec­u­la­tion that he may run for prime min­is­ter him­self. Like Trump, he heads a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar empire. And like Trump, he is a bom­bas­tic TV per­son­al­i­ty whose rela­tion­ship with truth is elas­tic; he can­not resist a brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty — his name and face are every­where in India. . . .”
12.–Ramdev’s manip­u­la­tion of the actu­al his­to­ry of Yoga to fit into his “Ancient Vedic” the­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics: ” . . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders. . . . The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. [The asso­ci­a­tion between Nazism and yoga will be high­light­ed lat­er on in the discussion–D.E.] . . .”
13.–A miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . .  As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”
14.–Ramdev has been accused of some dark acts, includ­ing foul play: ” . . . . One for­mer high-lev­el exec­u­tive at Patan­jali, who worked at the com­pa­ny for sev­er­al years, spoke to me on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say­ing he feared retal­i­a­tion. When I asked him why he left, he said of Ramdev: ‘Because he’s a crook. Because he’s a hyp­ocrite.’ He rat­tled off a sheaf of shock­ing claims about fraud and employ­ee abuse. . . . . One sto­ry involved Ramdev’s broth­er, Ram Bharat, who was arrest­ed in 2013 and accused of kid­nap­ping and impris­on­ing a work­er sus­pect­ed of theft (the charges were lat­er dropped). Anoth­er for­mer Patan­jali exec­u­tive told me sim­i­lar sto­ries and added that he began receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls after he refused to facil­i­tate what he saw as kick­back schemes. He com­plained to Balkr­ish­na, he said, but the calls con­tin­ued and — feel­ing his life might be in dan­ger — he resigned. . . .”
15.–Ramdev’s grav­i­tas has spawned fear in crit­ics: ” . . . . One Assamese uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, who asked not to be named because he feared for his safe­ty, told me that Ramdev had abet­ted the RSS’s efforts to ‘ques­tion all oth­er reli­gions here, any­thing non-Hin­du.’ He also said Patan­jali — embold­ened by its ties to the Modi gov­ern­ment — had run roughshod over laws reg­u­lat­ing the har­vest of med­i­c­i­nal plants. . . .”
16.–Ramdev has been sus­pect­ed of foul play: ” . . . . In 2007, Ramdev’s own guru, a man named Shankar Dev, dis­ap­peared with­out a trace after falling into pover­ty and ill­ness, and ques­tions were raised about Ramdev’s neglect of him. (Because Dev ini­ti­at­ed Ramdev into monk­hood, Ramdev would have been expect­ed to treat him like a par­ent.) In 2010, Rajeev Dix­it, one of Ramdev’s clos­est advis­ers, who taught him about swadeshi eco­nom­ics and helped make Patan­jali a nation­al brand, died sud­den­ly. Some of his friends believe that Ramdev resent­ed Dixit’s own ris­ing celebri­ty, and they pub­licly spec­u­lat­ed about foul play. . . .”
17.–Similarities between the RSS/Ramdev polit­i­cal agen­da and ide­ol­o­gy and Hitler’s hail­ing of Nation­al Social­ism as cre­at­ing a “new man.” ” . . . . Patan­jali ran more than 380 work­shops for prospec­tive employ­ees, where it taught a ‘val­ue sys­tem.’ Assam’s peo­ple, he explained, had ‘bad habits,’ includ­ing eat­ing non­veg­e­tar­i­an food and a lack of prop­er respect for the nation. ‘They’ve been lis­ten­ing to cor­rupt pol­i­tics from cor­rupt peo­ple for too long,’ he said. ‘We take what our sages said thou­sands of years ago and put it to use. We didn’t invent it. We took what’s avail­able in our scrip­tures and put it in a mod­ern for­mat.’ In oth­er words, they incul­cate Hin­dut­va. . . .”

The Yoga–Nazi Connection

In FTR #1015, among oth­er pro­grams, we high­light­ed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and its par­ent RSS, the fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that mur­dered Mahat­ma Gand­hi and which was mod­eled on Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts. Hin­dut­va fas­cist Baba Ramdev is a pil­lar of Mod­i’s sup­port and sees yoga as embody­ing ancient vedic val­ues. “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders . . . have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. The Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . . . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. [pic­tured above, right] . . .” Bukh saw his yoga exer­cis­es as a way to real­ize Aryan suprema­cy: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .” The Nazi SS adopt­ed yoga: ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .” More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”