Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

Also influential was a woman named Savitri Devi, who in 1962 joined Rockwell and others in founding the World Union of National Socialists. Devi was born Maximiani Portas in 1905, into a well-to-do family of Greek, French, British, and Italian heritage. A passionate supporter of the Third Reich, she took the name Savitri Devi after moving to India, believed by some racist thinkers to be the birthplace of the so-called Aryan race that migrated to Europe and established Western civilization. Devi was a vocal proponent of India’s caste system because she believed it preserved racial purity. Devi fancied herself a philosopher. She wrote a number of essays and books outlining what became known as esoteric Hitlerism, a bizarre ideology that fuses Hinduism, paganism, environmentalism, and national socialism. The key points are that Hitler was divine—an avatar of Vishnu—and appeared in the world at a critical time. Hindus call it the Kali Yuga, a period of some 432,000 years characterized by disease, depravity, and despair. Hitler was a “man against time,” Devi claimed, who fought to end the Kali Yuga and usher in a golden age, only to be derailed by the forces of evil, selfishness, and multiculturalism.