Fascist Yoga
Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
OUR BEST-REVIEWED BOOK OF THE YEAR!
"Namaste, fascists! An original and entertaining analysis of the dubious origins of the Western middle class’s favourite postural exercise" - The Times
"A hilarious grenade thrown at platitudes & the knit-your-own yoghurt brigade. Home lifts the magic carpet to reveal the tasteless chicanery." - The Scotsman
"Western yoga existed in uncomfortably close proximity to various strands of extreme right-wing thought ... [Home's] writing about yoga is intended less as an academic study than as an attempt to educate practitioners about the influence of fascism on their culture" - New York Review of Books
"A serious treatise on a zeitgeisty topic. To the man who may be Britain’s most avant-garde writer and artist, yoga is a swindle that dupes the well-meaning middle classes. It’s also a breeding ground for fascists. It isn’t even particularly good for you." - The Telegraph
"A riveting work for readers interested in yoga and right-wing movements." - Library Journal
The practice of yoga promises peace, self-realisation and release, thanks to the power of its 'mystic' Indian origins. But what if this is just hype? In Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of the world's first modern yogi – a Californian escapologist who added some Hindu fairy dust to gym and circus exercises.
Ever since, the world of yoga has been full of grifters, occultists and white supremacists, all out to exploit and recruit via the medium of exercise. From cult leaders and brainwashed followers to TV celebrities and fake gurus, the story of yoga has involved some of the strangest currents of humanity.
In this new exposé, Stewart Home shows that nothing is sacred.
Stewart Home is a legend of counterculture. He is an artist, filmmaker, pamphleteer, art historian and activist, and the author of countless pulp fictions, including most recently Art School Orgy and She’s My Witch. He regularly performs to audiences across the world.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part i happy baby: a grubby guru takes us all to the cleaners
- 1 Did Pierre Bernard Invent Yoga in California at the Start of the Twentieth Century?
- The great oom and white power
- Part ii warrior one, two and three: fascism + yoga = fascist yoga (the 1920s to the 1940s)
- 3 Guido keller and the rijeka yoga group
- 4 Military theorist major j. f. c. fuller, whose concept of blitzkrieg became standard practice in nazi warfare
- 5 Bengal lancer and hitler aficionado francis yeats-brown
- 6 Jakob wilhelm hauer and his influence on the architect of the nazi holocaust heinrich himmler
- 7 Mircea eliade, julius evola, savitri devi – national socialism as a religion and the yoga of power
- Part iii downward dog: occult madness and yogic televangelism (modern postural practice in the post-war era)
- 8 Paul dukes, francis yeats-brown (again) and theos bernard, spreading the great oom’s gospel in the post-war years
- 9 Indra devi and her editors at prentice hall
- 10 Harvey day, a hack who found success with books on yoga
- 11 Desmond dunne aka occultist james lee richardson and his mail order yoga course
- 12 Richard hittleman and yogic televangelism
- 13 Pull the wool over your own eyes with frank rudolph young, the ‘einstein’ of occult yoga
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index