Questions answered, or, "Why are you writing so much about a crazy dead Nazi?"
Or, "Here's where I antagonize everyone."
I've been asked privately by one or two folks as to just why I'm writing so much about this woman Savitri Devi and her 'grand cause' of preaching Hitler-worship to the world. After all, it's all over, isn't it? Nazism isn't a menace anywhere outside of Hollywood movies and superhero comics; it's no more than an ugly piece of the past that deserves to be forgotten.
I would say something here about those who forget the past being condemned to etc., but I'm sure everyone reading this knows that line already. The problem is, Devi's writings and ideals live on -- in some very strange places.
Note again that this entry will be extensively referencing Goodrick-Clarke's HITLER'S PRIESTESS, published 1998. I don't agree with every single one of his conclusions, but it disturbs me that he makes as much sense as he does in the last chapter, covering Devi's death and legacy.
The very eccentricity of Devi's thought -- combining Aryanism and anti-semitism with animal rights, Hinduism, paganism, and a biocentric* view of life -- has ensured she has something to appeal to almost anyone who dislikes modern civilization. For instance, she still has a big following in alternative spirituality circles, due both to her uncompromising paganism and her esoteric writings on Akhnaton (A SON OF GOD, Savitri Devi, 1946), in which she called him an Aryan Prophet of the revived Golden Age (which will arrive as soon as democracy, Christianity, and world Jewry are all destroyed).
However, and more ominously, she has a large following in Deep Green circles, the most antihumanist of all ecological movements. She seems to have influenced the more extreme Greens of the 1970's, like The Environmental Fund (who discouraged sending food aid to starving Third Worlders because "It only encourages them to breed."). Other groups like Zero Population Growth and Planned Parenthood/World Population chimed in on a similar tone. Paul Ehrlich's bestselling book, The Population Bomb, suggtested tax penalites for child-bearing and breaking off relations with a Vatican that opposed birth control. His book was little more than pure rhetoric, filled with inflammatory terms of violence ("bomb" "explosion") and matched by a searing contempt for humans, referring to them as "plague" and "people pollute". Many ecologists identified the teeming colored races of Africa, Asia, and South America as the root cause of the world population problem.
As Goodrick-Clarke notes (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 227): "Once human beings are stigmatized as a threat to Mother Nature, Christian and Enlightenment notions of human equality and the sanctity of human life start to retreat. Nazi modes of thought concerning "unfit life" (the old, sick, and indigent), hierarchies of human value, and eugenic programs find ready acceptance among those who despair of mankind."
G-C especially warns about groups like the American movement of Deep Ecology, combining as it does romantic irrationalism and the assertion that all nature is equal. Reform Ecologists mourn the loss of the clouded leopard; Deep Greens mourn the loss of the smallpox virus. Deep Ecology views humans as a degenerate and artificial species in painful opposition in wild, untamed nature. Man must subordinate himself to nature and accept his position as just one more life form, no more valuable or worthy than any other.
The Deep Greens are big on Malthusianism, while blaming humanism, rationalism, and the Enlightenment for all man's ecological destruction. It seeks sources in mysticism of various sorts ranging from Eastern religions to the Christianity of Saint Francis of Assisi to Native American spirituality. Dave Foreman, founder of the radical group "Earth First!", couches his initial arguments in terms reminiscient of the most sappy and sickly-sweet Disney songs -- "Dream the bison back, sing the swan hither, back to the Pleistocene," -- but then goes right into genocidal recommendations that would have warmed Devi's heart: "If the Ethopians are starving, let them die. There are too many people anyway; the Earth's population should be reduced to 100 million."* Another contributor to his magazine** refers to the AIDS virus as a "Gift from Gaia" and calls for an 80% reduction in the human population. One German Green leader even echoed Devi's call for atomic destruction, saying that because only Westerners are amenable to birth control programs, then we might as well use nuclear weapons to 'cleanse Gaia' of the teeming Third World hordes.
"In the end, by denying the special status given to humans by the anthropocentric traditions of Judaism, Christianity, socialism, and humanism can society be softened up enough to accept the mass extermination of Third World populations and the euthanasia of the elderly, sickly, poor, and 'redundant' in the First World. In the end, the exploitation of humans as raw materials for new industries based on genetic engineering, embryo farming, and cloning, will be seen as perfectly normal and right." (Goodrick-Clarke, HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pages 228-229, paraphrased)
One ultraright press in California, Noontide Press, has noticed the appeal Devi's ideas could have to the Greens and reprinted her book Impeachment of Man in 1991 especially for them. Animals and plants -- the lithe felines, the noble tiger, the great banyan tree -- are worthy, but most 'two-legged mammals' are scum. Only the noble Aryan is fit to survive in the redeemed natural order.
The author then makes some telling points about the modern environmental movement which I fully agree with. Bluntly, the more passionate someone is about nature and animals and anti-hunting and all that, the less they know about actual nature or the people who live there. Anti-hunting and animal rights activists, at least the extreme ones, are based in cities and large towns, not the rural countryside. Their sentimental and sappy views of animals are based on TV shows and "wildlife parks", not real experience with the genuine countryside, where farming, animal husbandry, hunting, and practical conservation schemes are a way of life. "Shrill and often violent demands for the protection of animals from human exploitation typically come from social groups with no living connection to the land." (Goodrick-Clarke, HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 230) He also comments that the increasing urge towards veganism and vegetarianism comes from a populace filled with sentimental and squeamish sensibilities. Food is no longer rural produce; livestock, slaughterhouses, and butcher shops are no longer where you get your meat from. Once urban people are reminded of the bloodstained background to meat production, their terrified flight into vegetarianism only reinforced their retreat from nature.
He also comments about the search for "old time religion" in an idealized pre-Christian European past filled with warrior kings and enlightened druids and Goddess-priestess rather than seemingly endless dirt farmers scratching out a living, who really did form the largest proportion of the populace in Europe for thousands of years. I myself have seen new editions of books by Nazi occultists Julius Evola and Otto Rahn selling on the New Age racks. I doubt most of the buyers are committed Nazis, or even right-wingers -- but nostalgia for a lost 'Golden Age' and its renewal by an apocalyptic destruction of Western culture were also found among the groups that inspired Nazism in pre-Hitler Germany.
And that's why I feel a little concerned at times. And am I the only one who's seen an awful lot of what Devi loved in furry fandom? No, not all furs are Nazis, or even some, but still -- hatred of humanity, contempt for democracy ("It gave us Dubya!"), loathing of Christianity and humanist ideals, and an extreme love of animals -- it's all there in certain people. And that's the line that's going to daw the hate mail, I think, if nothing else does.
Best all!
* -- And why do I feel that none of Mister Foremen's loved ones will be among the "redundant humans" who can be killed?
** -- Earth First!, 1 May 1987, page 32, by 'Miss Ann Thropy' (Okay, that has to be a joke.)
I've been asked privately by one or two folks as to just why I'm writing so much about this woman Savitri Devi and her 'grand cause' of preaching Hitler-worship to the world. After all, it's all over, isn't it? Nazism isn't a menace anywhere outside of Hollywood movies and superhero comics; it's no more than an ugly piece of the past that deserves to be forgotten.
I would say something here about those who forget the past being condemned to etc., but I'm sure everyone reading this knows that line already. The problem is, Devi's writings and ideals live on -- in some very strange places.
Note again that this entry will be extensively referencing Goodrick-Clarke's HITLER'S PRIESTESS, published 1998. I don't agree with every single one of his conclusions, but it disturbs me that he makes as much sense as he does in the last chapter, covering Devi's death and legacy.
The very eccentricity of Devi's thought -- combining Aryanism and anti-semitism with animal rights, Hinduism, paganism, and a biocentric* view of life -- has ensured she has something to appeal to almost anyone who dislikes modern civilization. For instance, she still has a big following in alternative spirituality circles, due both to her uncompromising paganism and her esoteric writings on Akhnaton (A SON OF GOD, Savitri Devi, 1946), in which she called him an Aryan Prophet of the revived Golden Age (which will arrive as soon as democracy, Christianity, and world Jewry are all destroyed).
However, and more ominously, she has a large following in Deep Green circles, the most antihumanist of all ecological movements. She seems to have influenced the more extreme Greens of the 1970's, like The Environmental Fund (who discouraged sending food aid to starving Third Worlders because "It only encourages them to breed."). Other groups like Zero Population Growth and Planned Parenthood/World Population chimed in on a similar tone. Paul Ehrlich's bestselling book, The Population Bomb, suggtested tax penalites for child-bearing and breaking off relations with a Vatican that opposed birth control. His book was little more than pure rhetoric, filled with inflammatory terms of violence ("bomb" "explosion") and matched by a searing contempt for humans, referring to them as "plague" and "people pollute". Many ecologists identified the teeming colored races of Africa, Asia, and South America as the root cause of the world population problem.
As Goodrick-Clarke notes (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 227): "Once human beings are stigmatized as a threat to Mother Nature, Christian and Enlightenment notions of human equality and the sanctity of human life start to retreat. Nazi modes of thought concerning "unfit life" (the old, sick, and indigent), hierarchies of human value, and eugenic programs find ready acceptance among those who despair of mankind."
G-C especially warns about groups like the American movement of Deep Ecology, combining as it does romantic irrationalism and the assertion that all nature is equal. Reform Ecologists mourn the loss of the clouded leopard; Deep Greens mourn the loss of the smallpox virus. Deep Ecology views humans as a degenerate and artificial species in painful opposition in wild, untamed nature. Man must subordinate himself to nature and accept his position as just one more life form, no more valuable or worthy than any other.
The Deep Greens are big on Malthusianism, while blaming humanism, rationalism, and the Enlightenment for all man's ecological destruction. It seeks sources in mysticism of various sorts ranging from Eastern religions to the Christianity of Saint Francis of Assisi to Native American spirituality. Dave Foreman, founder of the radical group "Earth First!", couches his initial arguments in terms reminiscient of the most sappy and sickly-sweet Disney songs -- "Dream the bison back, sing the swan hither, back to the Pleistocene," -- but then goes right into genocidal recommendations that would have warmed Devi's heart: "If the Ethopians are starving, let them die. There are too many people anyway; the Earth's population should be reduced to 100 million."* Another contributor to his magazine** refers to the AIDS virus as a "Gift from Gaia" and calls for an 80% reduction in the human population. One German Green leader even echoed Devi's call for atomic destruction, saying that because only Westerners are amenable to birth control programs, then we might as well use nuclear weapons to 'cleanse Gaia' of the teeming Third World hordes.
"In the end, by denying the special status given to humans by the anthropocentric traditions of Judaism, Christianity, socialism, and humanism can society be softened up enough to accept the mass extermination of Third World populations and the euthanasia of the elderly, sickly, poor, and 'redundant' in the First World. In the end, the exploitation of humans as raw materials for new industries based on genetic engineering, embryo farming, and cloning, will be seen as perfectly normal and right." (Goodrick-Clarke, HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pages 228-229, paraphrased)
One ultraright press in California, Noontide Press, has noticed the appeal Devi's ideas could have to the Greens and reprinted her book Impeachment of Man in 1991 especially for them. Animals and plants -- the lithe felines, the noble tiger, the great banyan tree -- are worthy, but most 'two-legged mammals' are scum. Only the noble Aryan is fit to survive in the redeemed natural order.
The author then makes some telling points about the modern environmental movement which I fully agree with. Bluntly, the more passionate someone is about nature and animals and anti-hunting and all that, the less they know about actual nature or the people who live there. Anti-hunting and animal rights activists, at least the extreme ones, are based in cities and large towns, not the rural countryside. Their sentimental and sappy views of animals are based on TV shows and "wildlife parks", not real experience with the genuine countryside, where farming, animal husbandry, hunting, and practical conservation schemes are a way of life. "Shrill and often violent demands for the protection of animals from human exploitation typically come from social groups with no living connection to the land." (Goodrick-Clarke, HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 230) He also comments that the increasing urge towards veganism and vegetarianism comes from a populace filled with sentimental and squeamish sensibilities. Food is no longer rural produce; livestock, slaughterhouses, and butcher shops are no longer where you get your meat from. Once urban people are reminded of the bloodstained background to meat production, their terrified flight into vegetarianism only reinforced their retreat from nature.
He also comments about the search for "old time religion" in an idealized pre-Christian European past filled with warrior kings and enlightened druids and Goddess-priestess rather than seemingly endless dirt farmers scratching out a living, who really did form the largest proportion of the populace in Europe for thousands of years. I myself have seen new editions of books by Nazi occultists Julius Evola and Otto Rahn selling on the New Age racks. I doubt most of the buyers are committed Nazis, or even right-wingers -- but nostalgia for a lost 'Golden Age' and its renewal by an apocalyptic destruction of Western culture were also found among the groups that inspired Nazism in pre-Hitler Germany.
And that's why I feel a little concerned at times. And am I the only one who's seen an awful lot of what Devi loved in furry fandom? No, not all furs are Nazis, or even some, but still -- hatred of humanity, contempt for democracy ("It gave us Dubya!"), loathing of Christianity and humanist ideals, and an extreme love of animals -- it's all there in certain people. And that's the line that's going to daw the hate mail, I think, if nothing else does.
Best all!
* -- And why do I feel that none of Mister Foremen's loved ones will be among the "redundant humans" who can be killed?
** -- Earth First!, 1 May 1987, page 32, by 'Miss Ann Thropy' (Okay, that has to be a joke.)