Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu? WTF!?

Understanding this cosmos will be quite a challenge for me.

That realization did not result from any Sunday morning meditation.  Instead, it was from reading.  Let me explain--after all, you want to know whether the title of this post was merely to catch your attention or whether there is real content about it, right?

One of the sites in my newsfeed is "Secular Right."  Yes, it is exactly what it means--that site features news and commentaries from the right side of the political spectrum but without (and often against) religion.  The report did not interest me.  But, boy am I glad that scrolled down to read the comment that sounded sarcastic:

Good to know. As I worship Adolf Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu, I look forward to prosecuting those who blaspheme my lord and fuhrer.

A hyperlink in the comment.  I moved the mouse over the link to see what the URL was--often trolls leave comments with links that are nothing but malware and virus.  Not in this case--it was a redirect to Wikipedia. So, of course, I clicked on it, which is when I was shocked to read about Savitri Devi:

Born as Maximiani Julia Portas in 1905,^[4] Savitri Devi was the daughter of Maxim Portas, a French citizen of Greek and Italian ancestry and an Englishwoman, Julia Portas (née Nash).

Say what?  Something new every single day; I don't know how people can ever feel like they are bored!

And that was merely the beginning of the path down the rabbit hole.

n 1932, she travelled to India in search of a living pagan Aryan culture. Formally adhering to Hinduism, she took the name Savitri Devi ("Sun-rays Goddess" in Sanskrit). She volunteered at the Hindu Mission as an advocate against Judeo-Christianity,^[7] and wrote A Warning to the Hindus to offer her support for Hindu nationalism and independence, and to rally resistance to the spread of Christianity and Islam in India.^[2] During the 1930s she distributed pro-Axis propaganda and engaged in intelligence gathering on the British in India.^[4]In the late 1930s, through her personal contacts, she enabled Subhas Chandra Bose (leader during World War II of the Axis-affiliated Indian National Army), to make contact with representatives of the Empire of Japan.^[11]

Are you kidding me?  What a crazy story!  And then she marries "Asit Krishna Mukherji, a Bengali Brahmin with National Socialist views who edited the pro-German newspaper New Mercury."  Truth is certainly stranger than fiction!

Of course, I wondered whether Wikipedia might have been hijacked in this by some troll.  So, the Doubting Thomas that I am, I Googled, which led me to this:

Regardless of the tenuous link between the ancient Indians and the Germans (and the pseudo-science related to the study of the Aryans), Maximiani bought the dubious theories wholeheartedly. She viewed Hinduism and Nazism as one in the same, with no inherent contradictions.
Indeed, like Hitler (and the ancient Hindus), she espoused the beauty and values of the natural world, championing ecology, vegetarianism, animal rights and (above all) pagan mysticism.

And then another reference.

A recently released biography, Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, reveals how the lady adopted India as her home. Till her death in 1982, she used this base to propagate a Neo-Nazi cult and keep the torch of Nazism burning in Europe and the USA. She was even hailed as 'Hitler's guru' by neo-Nazi publishers, Samisdat.

Holy shit!

She left for India in 1932 to search for the roots of the Aryan civilisation. She regarded Hinduism as the only living Aryan heritage in the modern world and was convinced that only Hinduism could take on and oppose the Judaeo-Christian heritage. Soon, she adopted the name Savitri Devi which would make her famous in neo-Nazi circles.
... By the late 1930s, she was involved with Hindu nationalist movements like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - then growing rapidly to counter Muslim ascendancy. 

OMG!  How did I not know about this bizarre story all these years?

I have noted before the creepy fascination in India for Hitler even after WW II--from books being sold on sidewalks, to politicians drawing inspiration from the mad man.  There is even Hitler ice cream in India!

Source

Another article adds this:

This love of Hitler is further reinforced by a resistance to social progression. "There's the aspiring middle class, the bourgeoisie, the petit bourgeoisie," Ghosh explained, of which she estimates there are approximately 250 million. "And that group doesn't like the chaotic facets of Indian society. Things like lower [Hindu] castes demanding rights, gay parades, women campaigning for gender equality, things that are upsetting the traditional order of things." Indians resisting these changes have a profound desire for strong leadership, particularly of a kind which centers around conformity.

If even this small part of human behavior is so difficult to comprehend, forget understanding the cosmos!

Ganesh v. Hitler. Fight canceled, already?

Have we forgotten how to have a good laugh? (ht)

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is yet to open at the Melbourne Festival, but news of its storyline has caused consternation among the Indian community.

In the play, which has been described by its producers as rambunctious fable brimming with humour, the elephant-headed Hindu god rampages through Germany on a quest to reclaim the ancient Hindu symbol of goodwill from the Nazis.

What is the big deal?  Laugh it off, folks.

BTW, there is a difference between the Hindu and Nazi swastikas:

Can there be a good Commie?

In an op-ed in the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby writes that there is no "good" Communist.  He writes it in the context of the death of Portuguese writer--Nobel laureate--Jose Saramago, and the stream of obituaries that noted his Communist affiliation:

not just a nominal communist, as his obituaries pointed out, but an “unabashed’’(Washington Post), “unflinching’’ (AP),“unfaltering’’ (New York Times) true believer. A member since 1969 of Portugal’s hardline Communist Party, Saramago called himself a “hormonal communist’’ who in all the years since had “found nothing better.’’ Yet far from rendering him a pariah, Saramago’s communist loyalties have been treated as little more than a roguish idiosyncrasy. Without a hint of irony, AP’s obituary quoted a comment Saramago made in 1998: “People used to say about me, ‘He’s good but he’s a communist.’ Now they say, ‘He’s a communist but he’s good.’ ’’

But the idea that good people can be devoted communists is grotesque. The two categories are mutually exclusive. There was a time, perhaps, when dedication to communism could be absolved as misplaced idealism or naiveté, but that day is long past. After Auschwitz and Babi Yar, only a moral cripple could be a committed Nazi. By the same token, there are no good and decent communists — not after the Gulag Archipelago and the Cambodian killing fields and Mao’s“Great Leap Forward.’’ Not after the testimonies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn andArmando Valladares and Dith Pran.

In the decades since 1917, communism has led to more slaughter and suffering than any other cause in human history. Communist regimes on four continents sent an estimated 100 million men, women, and children to their deaths — not out of misplaced zeal in pursuit of a fundamentally beautiful theory, but out of utopian fanaticism and an unquenchable lust for power.

Reason, which was the link to this op-ed, has quite a collection here
Jacoby notes:

Communism is not, as its champions like to claim, an appealing doctrine that has been perverted by monstrous regimes. It is a monstrous doctrine that hides behind appealing rhetoric. It is mass crime embodied in government. Nothing devised by human beings has caused more misery or proven more brutal.

Hitler's ball(s)

Hitler — has only got one ball,
Göring — has two, but very small;
Himmler is very sim'lar,
And Göbbels has no balls at all

Funny, eh :)
Here is the rest of the story .... (ht)

The Nazi Swastika: In Eugene and in Lebanon

About a year ago, in an op-ed in the Register Guard, I wrote about seeing a Nazi swatika on a lamp-post by the river/bike path. I was shocked to see that. Of course, I called the city personnel right away, and it was wiped clean.

I was reminded of that when I read this piece by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is simply an amazing scholar/journalist/intellectual. Not many of his kind around, unfortunately. He is no arm-chair academic mouthing off from the comforts of the ivy-covered college buildings, but ventures out to the problem areas, like Lebanon (near Israel, not the one here in Oregon!) that he writes about here. He does something though that I know I would not have had the guts to do; Hitchens writes:

Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only—to be defaced. Telling my two companions to hold on for a second, I flourish my trusty felt-tip and begin to write some offensive words on the offending poster. I say “begin” because I have barely gotten to the letter k in a well-known transitive verb when I am grabbed by my shirt collar by a venomous little thug, his face glittering with hysterical malice. With his other hand, he is speed-dialing for backup on his cell phone. As always with episodes of violence, things seem to slow down and quicken up at the same time: the eruption of mayhem in broad daylight happening with the speed of lightning yet somehow held in freeze-frame. It becomes evident, as the backup arrives, that this gang wants to take me away.

I am as determined as I can be that I am not going to be stuffed into the trunk of some car and borne off to a private dungeon (as has happened to friends of mine in Beirut in the past). With my two staunch comrades I approach a policeman whose indifference seems well-nigh perfect. We hail a cab and start to get in, but one of our assailants gets in also, and the driver seems to know intimidation only too well when he sees it. We retreat to a stretch of sidewalk outside a Costa café, and suddenly I am sprawled on the ground, having been hit from behind, and someone is putting the leather into my legs and flanks. At this point the crowd in the café begins to shout at the hoodlums, which unnerves them long enough for us to stop another cab and pull away. My shirt is spattered with blood, but I’m in no pain yet: the nastiest moment is just ahead of me. As the taxi accelerates, a face looms at the open window and a fist crashes through and connects with my cheekbone. The blow isn’t so hard, but the contorted, glaring, fanatical face is a horror show, a vision from hell. It’s like looking down a wobbling gun barrel, or into the eyes of a torturer. I can see it still.