Skip to main content

White supremacy, Hinduism, and extremist violence

(Singing and dancing at the Hare Krishna tent, from Stuff)

Amidst the collection of vaccine deniers, Q-Anon-inspired conspiracy theorists, Alt-Right supporters, and misogynist white nationalists and white supremacists at the Parliament protests in Wellington in February 2022, a Hare Krishna tent, devotees, singing and dancing to rhythms of the tambourine, offered a curious spectacle. From offering yoga and meditation to serving vegetarian curries and samosas, the Hare Krishnas formed an important part of the protest architecture. 

For observers, the spectacle disrupted the widely held perception in the West of Hare Krishnas as peace-loving people. 

How did Hare Krishnas fall into the disinformation campaign propelled by white supremacists? What do Hare Krishnas, an apparent peace-loving community, have in common with an ideology driven by the Alt-Right the universe of white supremacy?

The symbiotic relationship between Hare Krishnas and the Alt-Right however has a deep-seated history.

The central node in the organizing of the Alt-Right is the publisher Arktos Media, producing fascist and proto-fascist texts that form the pedagogic architecture of white supremacy. Operating across print and digital platforms, Arktos Media offers an alternative vision of modernity, both creating and speaking to a market of traditionalists, white nationalists, and conservatives that seek to re-establish the glory of a traditional white European society. For a part of its trajectory in growing into the central pedagogic node of the Alt-Right universe, Arktos Media operated out of a Hare Krishna base in India. Arktos published the book, "Hare Krishnas in the modern world" in 2013.

An important figure in the Arktos pedagogic universe is the proto-fascist Julius Evola (1898-1974), whose book, "Metaphysics of War" is one of the most popular Arktos titles. The traditionalist-nationalist writings of Evola, a collaborator with the Nazi fascist movement, bring together a mixture of European paganism, mysticism, and occultism to craft a white supremacist utopia. 




Evola drew from Hinduism to espouse that we are currently living in "Kali Yuga" (a dark age) that is ruled by the lower castes, envisioning a return to a Golden Age ruled by the upper castes. 





White supremacy, the belief that white people are genetically superior to other races, converges ideologically with Hindutva, the belief that upper-caste Hindus are inherently superior to lower castes and to others outside the race. The racist hierarchy crystallized by Hindutva 

Popular posts from this blog

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

  The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...
Read more

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

  The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist  at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...
Read more