Fascist Yoga
Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order in Wellness
About ten years ago, I got yelled at in a hot yoga class. Though my misdemeanor—giggling with a friend over our attempted postures—didn’t seem serious, the instructor separated us and made us do our poses in secluded corners. Afterward, we laughed loudly, but the experience was unsettling. I’d signed up for an invigorating physical workout but gotten a flashback to the authoritarian, far-right religious leaders from my teen years.
Today, many in holistic living circles who practice yoga and eat organic have made common cause with the far-right MAGA movement. As a former eco-grower who grew up largely off the grid, I have spent years trying to understand what is often called the wellness-to-fascism pipeline, having seen it happen in real time. In the United States today, fascism is often found among White Christian nationalists, who are less likely to practice yoga than to demonize it. Yet in Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home—who has observed strands of fascism in the British radical arts counterculture—provides insight on how it connects with Western yoga trends.
The practice of postural yoga, according to Home, is mostly a modern invention, despite some yogis’ claims to tap into ancient Eastern wisdom. Yoga as we know it in Western culture got its start in the early 20th century, a time of widespread fascination with all things “oriental,” as well as of cultural elites turning to secret societies like the Theosophical Society or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as an escape from fin de siècle ennui. Often this involved indulging in unrestrained hedonism in the guise of spiritual enlightenment.
