The rarely told story of Savitri Devi—a Frenchwoman and one of Hitler's most powerful advocates In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds. Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuous since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought—combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinism, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life—and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology. As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar—a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age—Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy. Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.
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A biography of Savitri Devi (1905-1982), the unusual woman who believed Hitler was an avatar and attempted to combine Hinduism and anti-Semitism. The author discusses Devi's denial of the Holocaust, her appeal to neo-Nazis, and the relationship of her beliefs to animal rights, social Darwinism, and
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"An engrossing, disturbing, and important book. Well-researched and evocatively told, the strange story of Savitri Devi is a mirror of the twentieth century's dark undercurrents and deserves to be widely read and pondered."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780814731109
Publisert
1998-05-01
Utgiver
Vendor
New York University Press
Vekt
540 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

Biographical note

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is the author of several books on ideology and the Western esoteric tradition, including Hitler’s Priestess and Occult Roots of Nazism, which has remained in print since its publication in 1985 and has been translated into eight languages.