Hindu Mysticism and the Alt-RightBy David LawerenceThe alt-right- which attracts rascist cranks from a variety of far-right philosophies- has revived a number of esoteric thinkers and fascist gurus of the 20th centuryA glance at the comments section of any alt-right website will confront the viewer with crude racism towards people of non-white ethnicities, not least people of Indian origin, who are variously degraded as “Pajeets”, “street-sh*tters”, or stereotyped as sexual harassers. Of course, this is unsurprising from a movement steeped in white supremacy.
However, the alt-right – which attracts racist cranks from a variety of far-right philosophies – has, in its search for pseudo-academic and mystical underpinnings, revived a number of esoteric thinkers and fascist gurus of the 20th century, the ideas of whom have gained an unprecedented reach through alt-right publishing houses and websites.
Through these thinkers the broad alt-right has appropriated elements of Hindu philosophy and developed a lore that shares certain ideological commonalities with Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) today. The movement commonly invokes, often semi-ironically, an almost-New Age mythos that stretches from the semi-divine origins of “Aryans” to the end of the world itself. Such sweeping narratives elevate the gutter prejudice of the alt-right to a belief in a sacred mission to preserve ancient, superior bloodlines, and casts the movement’s followers as warriors, engaged in a transcendent spiritual battle.
Alt-right ideologue Greg Johnson, editor-in-chief of Counter-Currents Publishing – one of the two major publishing houses of the alt-right – wrote in a review of Farnahm O’Reilly’s “racial nationalist fantasy” Hyperborean Home that “Facts are not enough” to inspire a white nationalist movement.
“We need a myth, meaning a concrete vision, a story of who we are and who we wish to become. Since myths are stories, they can be understood and appreciated by virtually anyone. And myths, unlike science and policy studies, resonate deeply in the soul and reach the wellsprings of action. Myths can inspire collective action to change the world.”
The Aryan HomelandThe opening paragraph of Richard Spencer’s “meta-political manifesto for the Alt-Right” – released by his AltRight Corporation the day before the disastrous Charlottesville rally – reads:
“Race is real. Race matters. Race is the foundation of identity. “White” is shorthand for a worldwide constellation of peoples, each of which is derived from the Indo-European race, often called Aryan. “European” refers to a core stock […] from which related cultures and a shared civilisation sprang.”
The central motivating issue for the alt-right is the preservation of a white “Aryan” race, held to share common ancestry with ancient northern Indians. Indeed, the phrase “Indo-European” is repeated so frequently by the movement’s intellectuals that it has become its own meme.
According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s impressive work Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, the Aryan mythology of the far right originated with Enlightenment philologists. Drawing on apparent similarities between northern European and Indian languages, Friedrich Schlegel (1772 – 1829) posited that an ancient superior race originating in northern India – the Aryans – had swept across the West, founding the world’s great civilisations. The narrative of an Indian-originating super race provided a non-Biblical (and therefore non-“Semitic”) origin story for Europeans, and subsequent antisemites held the heroic Indo-European Aryans in a dualism with their supposed counter-image, the lowly Jews.
Myths around a prehistoric Aryan homeland were developed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 – 1920), known as the “father of Indian unrest” for his militant Indian nationalism. Tilak believed the Hindu holy texts – the Vedas – had been authored by the descendants of ancient Aryans. Tilak claimed that his studies of the Vedas suggested that some 10,000 years ago the Aryans had existed in a spiritually superior civilisation in the Arctic, which was lost in an exodus to the south with the onset of the Ice Age. For Tilak, the “vitality and superiority” of the Aryans, as proved by “their conquest, by extermination or assimilation, of the non-Aryan races with whom they came into contact”, could only be explained by the “high degree of civilisation in their original Arctic home.”
Tilak’s Arctic Aryan homeland theory was adopted by far-right Western thinkers, including the Italian fascist mystic Julius Evola (1898-1974), who referred to this mythic Indo-European homeland as “Hyperborea”. Evola believed the Aryans were sapped of their godlike powers as they travelled south, becoming further estranged from Hyperborean traditions of the Arctic north. We shall return to Evola later in this article.
Amongst Evola’s admirers is Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian fascist philosopher credited with being an influential ideologue within the Kremlin, who has further deepened this mythology. Dugin holds that Hyperboreans had access to divine knowledge and were engaged in a war with their supposed ancient enemies of the earthly civilisation of Atlantis. This war has parallels today in the struggle between the Atlantean North America and Hyperborean cultures such as Russia, Iran and India, who have maintained their spiritual traditions (although the original Hyperboreans have lost their power through interbreeding with dark-skinned southern peoples).
The first English language translation of Dugin’s work was published in 2012 by Arktos Media, the premier publisher of the European New Right (ENR) and alt-right, to which Dugin has ties. Arktos was founded in 2009 by Swede Daniel Friberg and American John Morgan, and was based in Goa, India, for the first three years of its existence.
CEO of Artkos Media Daniel Friberg (left) and Aleksandr Dugin (right) in New Delhi, India, 2012Arktos claims to have published over 150 titles in 14 languages since its founding. Whilst the majority of the works stocked by Arktos are by Western far-right figures like Evola and ENR authors such Guillaume Faye, the outlet also publishes titles by a number of Indian authors, such as the Hindu spiritual leader Ravi Shankar. Arktos also stocks including Tilak’s The Arctic Home In The Vedas. Carol Schaeffer, in her thorough piece for The Caravan magazine, quotes Morgan who stated that the publisher was so-named in order to invoke a “European tradition and ‘northerness’”.
Tilak’s work is also sold on Greg Johnson’s Counter-Currents Publishing, where it is described as being based in a “painstakingly detailed analysis” that makes “a compelling case which is not easily refuted.”
By indulging in myths that recast whiteness as the indicator of superior or semi-divine origins, the young men of the alt-right can vicariously credit themselves, through their imagined ancestors, as architects of the world’s great civilisations, from ancient Egypt to Rome to Persia. They also place themselves above other races, who are portrayed as incapable of achievement.
The myth of a utopian and racially pure lost civilisation also provides an image of a glorious Golden Age, the essence of which the alt-right wishes to recapture. The aims of Counter-Currents are open: to “lay the intellectual groundwork for a white ethnostate in North America.”