A brief Iran-centred review of 'Fascist Yoga', written by Stewart Home, Published by Pluto Press, 2025.
- Dario Fo Jnr. داریو فوی پسر
- Aug 8
- 6 min read
I am a rather marvellous footballer, a uniquely talented ping-ponger and a rapidly improving tennis wizard. Thankfully my body is too rigidly muscular for yoga. Even in my youth, I was not flexible enough to do Downward-Facing Dog or Warrior One. On several occasions, I refused overtures by friends and gurus to stand on my head. Having just read Stewart Home’s wonderful exposé of fascist and white supremacist currents within some branches of yoga, I feel completely vindicated in my hostility. Since two distinct forms of postural practice (the ancient Pahlavani gym and the modern westernised version of Yoga) are fast gaining adherents within Iran, I offer this brief review as a cautionary note to my lovely compatriots.
Stewart Home narrates the stories of some of the grifters, charlatans, hucksters, pickup artists and occultists who laid the foundation of Western yoga in the twentieth century. Their political ideologies are also laid bare, and we gradually come to know them as precursors of the alt-Right. Yoga takes root in an environment that is anti-scientific and anti-empirical; a worldview grounded in essentialism and metaphysics (p. 2). Home views yoga as an invented tradition akin to Wicca and witchcraft (p. 4). He also compares the movement with cults where sexual abuse by gurus and jockeying-for power, position and prestige is rife (p. 6). He describes all this as follows: “… modern yoga can be considered, at least partly, a twentieth century occidental confabulation with some orientalist fairy dust sprinkled on top, in a desperate attempt to justify the frequently made claim it can be traced back thousands of years to the Indus Valley” (p. 24).
One key figure in the establishment of yoga was Pierre Bernard (c. 1875-1955). Bernard was a racist who promoted Aryan supremacy. The Aryan race was supposedly in possession of mysterious high knowledge which they were not willing to share with just anyone, especially not with lower class people (p. 27). The infamous poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) reinforced the alliance of yoga and fascist activism (p. 33). Aleister Crowley (not a full-fledged fascist but one with fascist leanings) was a prominent promoter of yoga in England. All this matters in an Iranian context where many intellectuals have promoted Aryanism as a pathetic attempt to imbue their lineage with an aura of superiority. I wish I could say this trend was confined to right wing Iranians, but the truth is even leftists have occasionally expressed self-deluding narratives about pan-Aryanism.
As Home correctly observes, one of the major problems with yoga is its “obsession with personal transformation at the expense of genuine social change” (p. 39). This explains its popularity with fascists who cosplay at being revolutionaries but are in fact, deeply conservative at heart. In this regard the book looks at the relationships between Italian fascism, the Futurist movement and yoga (p. 40), and how a revolving door policy between these three institutions enhanced career prospects and created a fascist ‘counterculture’.
The narrative soon moves from an Italian landscape onto a British one, where during the inter-war period at least two major British fascists wrote seminal books on yoga. Major J. F. C. Fuller (1878-1966) who developed the military tactic of ‘blitzkrieg’ was one of them. In return the Nazis invited him as guest of honour to their first armed manoeuvres since gaining power (p. 47). Home observes, “the hierarchical caste and structures of Hinduism - and in particular the authoritarian nature of the relationship between gurus and their students – clearly appealed to full-blown mystical fascists like Fuller” (p. 52). The other contribution to Yoga in these years came from Major Francis Yeats-Brown (1886-1944). He was a British army officer and a Nazi sympathiser (p. 54). His unreliable yogic memoir, Bengal Lancer, was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper. Yeats-Brown became less popular as a writer as his fascist inclinations became better known.
There were also German Nazis who were embedded in the yogic movement. Himmler, for instance, was a firm advocate of yoga and “was obsessed with Hinduism as an Aryan religion”. Home narrates the story that Himmler recommended yoga to death camp guards as a good way to ‘de-stress’ (p. 66). This, as I understand it, remains an unverified claim. Hitler himself was not into practicing yoga, although there are (again unverified) rumours that his partner, Eva Braun, was a yogini (p. 70).
The famed academic Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), who is considered a reliable source by many Iranian scholars, represents a well-documented connection between yoga and fascism. Eliade received his PhD in 1933 on yoga practices. His right-wing views can be discerned in his desire to “… purify the Romanian race of Jewish and Hungarian influences” (p. 74). Eliade was associated with the Romanian fascist movement, the Iron Guard (p. 72-3). Yoga was for Eliade the ‘sacred face’ of mystical fascism and he used it to call for a feudal theocracy in Romania.
Eliade and the unrepentant fascist Julius Evola (1898-1974) with whom he retained a close correspondence, even after WWII, are today studied by alt-Rights such as Steve Bannon (p. 76). In fact, one strength of the book is in showing how the anti-vax and anti-mask tendencies in the alt-Right were promoted by right wing practitioners of yoga during the Covid pandemic. Yoga sometimes splits its teachings to ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ circles (p. 122), as does Sufi versions of Islam, and this is another factor Iranians need to be wary of. It is easy to laugh at some of the wild claims made on behalf of yoga, such as levitation, bringing back the dead and telepathy, but as usual it is the more refined versions of a reactionary movement that enjoy longevity. The split between outer and inner allows the gurus of yoga to remain hidden from close scrutiny.
One other fact worth noting is the common sales tactics used by yogic televangelism and fundamentalist religions (p. 134). Home is very good at drawing out these similarities. He shows how anti-scientific and anti-communist worldviews mingle with occultism and yogic irrationalism to create a toxic environment ideal for promoting capitalism, patriarchy and hierarchy.
Fascist Yoga is a wonderful exemplar of investigative journalism. It is written with a mix of seriousness and irreverence. It is succinct and politically nuanced. Home is to be congratulated on exposing the overlapping murky worlds of yogis, fascists, incels, and the alt-Right. The author's pro-working class and autonomous communist perspective add a certain gravitas to his critique.
However, there are also three issues that need to be addressed:
First, Home's book focuses on Western yoga and as such it is not always relevant to the Iranian scene. For example, in recent years Iranian yoga has been used by both the working and middle classes to cast off rigid public roles. This is true of yoga as imported from neighbouring India, as well as the related native practice of Pahlavani rituals in Zurkhaneh (literally 'house of strength'). In places these ancient and modern forms of Iranian yoga can be viewed as a form of resistance to the puritanical Islamic ideology; and a countercultural practice against imposed bourgeois categories of temporality, spatiality and embodiment. So the fascist tendencies in Western yoga may not be an adequate framework for understanding Iranian yoga. In fact, I am certain most Iranian yogic practitioners see themselves as anti-fascist. Nevertheless, the warnings in this book about unequal power relations between gurus and students, and the fluffy pan-Aryanism lurking in the background suggest Iranian yoga can easily take a wrong turn in the future.
Second, in his desire to illustrate the irrational and pseudo-scientific beliefs at the core of Western Yoga, Home has painted too rosy a picture of Western science. This is a false duality. Surely working class communists can do better than oscillating between Eastern irrationalism and Western scientism. What is required are forms of postural practice and science that emerge from the bottom-up and continuously evolve.
Third, the book finishes off as abruptly as the final season of Game of Thrones. I would have preferred more solid associations between the fascist roots of Western yoga and the currently fashionable wellbeing ideology of the 'happiness' industry.
In conclusion, Home's contribution has helped me think more deeply about both the benefits of exercising and the potential right wing ideologies in the pathway of the unsuspecting practitioner. I think Fascist Yoga (and many of his other non-fiction contributions such as The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War and What is Situationism?) should be translated into Farsi. I am certain they will find an appreciative audience.
This was a review of: Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness. Stewart Home, Pluto Press, 2025.
Bibliography:
On Iranian yoga see:
On Pahlavani rituals see:
Gender anxieties in the Iranian Zurhkaneh, by H. E. Chehabi, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 395 - 421,
DOI: ttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743819000345
On Aryan discourse within Iranian politics see:
Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the “Aryan” Discourse in Iran, Iranian Studies, 2011, 44:4, 445-472, DOI: 10.1080/00210862.2011.569326 and
A. M. Ansari, (2017). Iranian nationalism and the question of race. In M. Litvak (Ed.), Constructing nationalism in Iran: From the Qajars to the Islamic Republic (pp. 101-116). (Routledge studies in modern history). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315448800/chapters/10.4324/9781315448800-8
On a post-publication interview with Stewart Home see:
Miles Ellingham, Why do fascists love yoga? at https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/why-do-fascists-love-yoga
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