Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness

by Stewart Home

The practice of yoga promises peace, self-realisation and release thanks to the power of its 'mystic' Indian origins. But what if this is just hype?

In Fascist Yoga Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of the world’s first modern yogi—a Californian escapologist who added some Hindu fairy dust to gym and circus exercises. Ever since, the world of yoga has been full of grifters, occultists and white supremacists, all out to exploit and recruit via the medium of exercise. From cult leaders to brainwashed followers, TV celebrities and fake gurus, the story of yoga has involved some of the strangest currents of humanity.

Today the COVID-19 pandemic has activated elements within the modern yoga movement to espouse far-right conspiracies. QAnon’s fascist political programmes mirror some of yoga’s key early proponents. In this new exposé Home shows that nothing is sacred.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Politics, Health, Self Help, Sociology

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2025

About the author

Stewart Home (born London 1963) is an English writer, satirist and artist. He is best known for novels such as the non-narrative "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (2002), his re-imagining of the 1960s in "Tainted Love" (2005), and more recent books such as "She's My Witch" (2020) that use pulp and avant-garde tropes to parody conventional literature.

Home's unusual approach to writing is reflected in the readings he gives from his novels: he recites from memory, utilises ventriloquism, stands on his head and declaims his work and even shreds his own books.

Home's first book "The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War" (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is an underground art history sketching continuations of dadist and surrealist influences on post-World War II fringe radical art.

Home's first novel "Pure Mania" was published 1989 (Polygon Books), and details a violent neo-punk subculture. Unmistakenly postmodern but nfluenced by surrealism and the nouveau roman, it pushes the appropriation of pulp tropes and use of repetition found within historical avant-garde fiction to such an extreme that some critics mistook it for a piece of low-brow writing.

Home continued in much the same vein with his next four novels, starting with "Defiant Pose" (Peter Owen, 1991) and continuing with "Red London" (AK Press 1994), "Blow Job" (published in 1997 but written in 1994) and Slow Death (Serpent's Tail 1996).

All Home’s early fiction collages in large amounts of prose from a wide variety of sources – and while it is often close in spirit to the work of ‘postmodern extremists’ such as Kathy Acker, the appropriated material is much more heavily reworked than in the latter’s books.

The novels Home wrote after the mid-nineties featured less subcultural material than his earlier books and focus more obviously on issues of form and aesthetics. Home’s sixth novel "Come Before Christ And Murder Love" (Serpent's Tail 1997) featured a schizophrenic narrator whose personality changed every time he had an orgasm. This was the first novel Home wrote in the first person, and much of the fiction he wrote after this utilised the device of an unreliable first-person narrator.

"Cunt" (Do Not Press 1999) is a postmodern take on the picaresque novel. "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (Canongate 2002) mixes porn with capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in "Down and Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton" (Do Not Press 2004) every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. "Tainted Love" (Virgin Books) is based on the life of the author's mother, who was part of the London subcultural scene in the 1960s. "Memphis Underground" (Snow Books 2007) has a long conventional literary opening that is slowly unravelled.

Home’s 2010 novel "Blood Rites of the Bourgeois" (Book Works) is to date his only work written in the second person. The plot – as far as there is one - concerns an artist hacking the computers of London’s cultural elite to infect them with modified penis enlargement spam. Reviewing Home’s incredibly weird campus novel "Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane" (Penny-Ante Editions 2013) for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard observes: “I think one of the great virtues of Home's work is the way it forces us to address our own complacency.”

"The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones" (Test Centre 2014) is a fictional exploration of the life of one of the author's more infamous criminal relatives. "She's My Witch" (London Books 2020), is a love story exploring an unlikely relationship between a fitness instructor and a heroin addicted witch. "Art School Orgy" (New Reality Records, 2023) is a 'BDSM extravaganza'. Before this Home published his collected poems "SEND CA$H" (Morbid Books 2018) and a book about martial arts films "Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation & The Sleazy Joys of Lowbrow Cinema" (Ledatape 2018).

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not about the modern wellness movement. This is a history of maybe how the early figures laid the foundation, but even that needs a slight caveat because the historical work is rather sporadic- often using calls to the present as supporting evidence instead of historical narrative or context. Hard to have a neutral perspective because this is not at all the tone, style, approach that I expected or has been marketed.
(I just deleted a longer review because I’m just going to try not talking about what I hated and just tell you whether or not this is a work for you: if you want a deep dive into the history of western yoga, this *might* be okay for you. If you’re drawn in because of the “grifter” narratives about the modern new age/wellness movements that have become popular in recent years, I really doubt this is going to be the experience you’re hoping for)

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be prepared: this is definitely a history book more than it’s a journalistic look at the current state of yoga. As someone who reads a lot of historical books, this was absolutely my jam, but I don’t think it’s quite what some people are expecting based on the cover. This book looks at the formation of Western postural yoga and the way some yogis throughout the twentieth century were intertwined with fascist movements. It’s not enough to turn me against yoga as a whole—I will probably continue my very occasional yoga practice—but it’s definitely a fascinating glimpse into the dark side of modern yoga history.

[Jim Beatty · Rating 3 out of 5]

crazy, fun book.
The author seems angry.
maybe spark one up and a little stretching.

[Cerys Minty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating premise. Shit execution

[Joe Hunter · Rating 1 out of 5]

kind of a shockingly bad book?? It’s written in this hectoring, pedantic style you get in the worst left wing writing and full of insane non sequiturs like … in fascist organisations absolute deference to the supreme leader is demanded, just like modern yoga organisations!!

The grey area between the far right, reactionary anti-rationalism and wellness, new age, the esoteric etc. is super interesting to me and something I want to know more about but this was just 150 pages of dull biographies of people involved in yoga and sometimes unsavoury right wing causes too, and it never comes to any interesting conclusions or insights.

I don’t know, I don’t care about yoga much one way of the other but it seems probably like a healthy, harmless thing to do for your body and mind. Such a weird book.

[Sian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really know what Home was trying to do here. I think we all know that there are right wing links in yoga especially during COVID and the crunchy to alt right pipeline antivax maha etc etc.
This is less about that though (which conspirituality do better anyway and in a more informed way) and more about yoga from about 100 years ago in the west and the dodgy UK/USA mainly white men that practiced and shared it.
I know that modern postural yoga is a more recent thing (that's pretty well established) but it still does link to older practices in India and still has benefits to mind and body and relaxation but I think Home is mainly about the headstands.
He ends this pretty boring diatribe (which heavily relies on quotes) by saying no one should practice postural yoga.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extracted from Home’s blog on the topic, this quotation-heavy book on the originators of yoga’s fascist tendencies is a strangely bland and uninspired read. An abundance of research went into the history (a quarter of the book is notes and citations), so it is a shame Home sank into a kind of self-indulgent esotericism where little effort is made to engage the reader through the style or form (the author’s fiction is experimental and exuberant), or to explain Home’s particular fixation on the subject. Too much précis, points of pedantry, excerpts from obscure texts, and digression into arcana for the general reader. Avoid.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I expected. The publisher’s description and the introduction stated that the premise was to expose “new age figures jumping aboard the antivax, anti-masking, [anti science], far-right bandwagon.” I expected a contemporary review of theory and practice, not obscure historical figures with questionable correlations to fascist origins of the present state of practice. Only in the introduction which included John Friend’s demise and a few times in the final 50 or so pages did the author address the current industry making false health claims of poses as treatments for medical conditions and promoting quackery like coffee enemas and bogus dietary supplements as yoga. His assertion that ridiculous claims that yoga as an elixir for all ailments was the forerunner to antivax and anti mask stances was tenuous. The author included multiple citations but he was too inflammatory in his tone to be objective (that he thinks a woman’s yoga accessories are ugly is irrelevant). His assumptions and assertions overstated the evidence he presented. He really just confirmed with confidence that physical yoga practice is a product of the west and was not imported from the Indian subcontinent but that was already well established.

[William]

Stewart Home: try Pilates instead.

[Igo Lubczański · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, an elongated version of a substack rant about something, that happened 100 years ago.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

For someone who hates yoga, Home sure loves stretching!

[Niamh · Rating 1 out of 5]

if i never read the words “modern postural practice” again it will be too soon

[Ciara Bridgeman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very much the authors opinion using selective pieces of information to push his agenda. I don’t like what he says and would argue it is attempting to frame itself as a piece of history rather than a confused ramble. However given I hate the argument I am more likely to be critical

[john callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard of this book in a review I read of it and Conspirituality. The author, a prominent British radical, argues that modern postural yoga is not an ancient Indian creation, but a product of European and American bodybuilding and physical culture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An early chapter is called "Did Pierre Bernard Invent Yoga in California at the Start of the Twentieth Century?" The answer, in short, is "yeah, he did." Bernard would go on to found a yoga school in Nyack, New York.

The practice of postural yoga was taken up by a number fascists in the first half of the 20th century Britain, the USA, and Europe. Some of them created myths about postural yoga's history extending back to "Aryan" peoples who wandered around Asia and who conquered the Indian subcontinent thousands of years ago.

Home devotes chapters to many postwar promoters of yoga, some of whom were also occultists and most of whom wove baseless claims about the practice's history and potential physical and mental benefits, most of which was a confusing jumble of important-sounding words. Some of these promoters were in it for the loot: they published book after book and correspondence course after correspondence course on mental, psychic, and physical development through yoga. (Curiously, it seems that in the UK, the publisher Prentice Hall published reams of these works. It is curious because by the 1980s Prentice Hall was a major publisher of college textbooks, at least in the USA.)

Particularly interesting to me is his discussion of Richard Hittleman, a yoga huckster who in the 1960s created and hosted the television program Yoga for Health, which is where I first heard of yoga. The program featured Hittleman's voice and a woman who demonstrated the various poses Hittleman taught. For some reason, she had given up speaking, said Hittleman. At the age of 6 I accepted Hittleman's eplanation that it was part of her spiritual quest or something.

Home ends his discussion in the 1970s, because, he says, new technology increased the amount of media devoted to yoga. We do find that some prominent yoga promoters turned to anti-vaxx and anti-mask positions, as well as conspiracy theory, in the age of Covid.

The book blows the lid off the conventional story of yoga's history. The falsehood of the conventional origin story of postural yoga has, I should note, been addressed by a number of other scholars in recent years.

I would recommend the book to people who practice yoga and to anyone interested in fascism outside of Germany and/or in the intellectual bilge of the 20th century.

[Marshele B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating concept but I think this book fell short on its execution. The book was clearly painstakingly researched, but I felt that it was hard to follow at times. I also think Home went more into detail than necessary in each of his profiles. He stated that his goal for writing this book was to dissuade people from falling into the "cult" of modern postural yoga. However, I think he spent too much time on the foundational figures in the movement and not enough time linking their problematic philosophies/actions to modern practices.

This is a pretty quick read so I encourage folks to give it a shot, if you're interested in the subject.

[Nathaniel Flakin · Rating 2 out of 5]

With so many leftists practicing yoga, I wanted to understand the overlap between yoga and far-right politics. But I found this book both too detailed and too vague. It offers numerous deep dives into early 20th-century yoga pioneers in the English-speaking world, showing how many of them were racist grifters. However, the book does not really explain where yoga comes from: What were the antecedents in South Asia? How were these morphed into the postural practice we know today? Is modern yoga inherently right-wing, or are there useful exercises that can be separated from the grift? This book left me wondering.

[Vanessa]

was kinda giving me bad, boring, and off-topic vibes in like the first 30 pages. According to the other reviews I was right :^)

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it a little hard to keep up with all the names without seeing them in print. I didn’t like the reader; I wish the author had read it himself because I felt like the tone was kind of false.

Content-wise, I’m kind of on the fence. As someone who listens to Conspirituality podcast, I want to be all about exposing dark underpinnings of stuff. Learning how yoga’s origins are steeped in bullshit and fascism (as in, kind of a big deal in 1920s Italy) is eye-opening, but I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

I’ve taken yoga classes on and off for twenty years and I’ve liked how it made me feel physically. I’m uncomfortable with the prevalence white women instructors and practitioners appropriating an idea of “eastern religions”. I’ve rolled my eyes when said instructors have talked about “toxins.” Maybe the point is that we shouldn’t be able to cherry pick what elements we want and shut out context, because every time we show up for a class at our gym or give views to the YouTube lady, we’re still playing a part in perpetuating a myth of some kind of exotic “pure” ancient wisdom.

But also…. Sometimes I just want relief from tech neck. And I don’t know what to do with this contradiction.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

A short book that feels like an overlong rant—poorly written, empty of substance, and astonishingly boring for something so small that skimming it still felt like a waste of time.

[Dorak · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hopefully people planning to read this book will have the common sense to check the reviews first. I didn’t, so I spent a day reading Stewart Home’s very long blog post on why he doesn’t like yoga.

The main message of the book is that the early promoters of yoga in the USA and UK were fascist con artists who advertised racists ideologies and pseudoscience, and the influence of these bad actors is still strong today.

It’s true that the yoga world has always had many teachers who promised that the practice would bring unrealistic health benefits, often ignoring scientific evidence. It is also true that there are many “yogis” who knowingly or unknowingly spread far-right ideology. But is there evidence that these teachers got their ideas from the fake yogis Home lists in his book? I don’t know because Home never took the effort to explain why he believes that today’s yoga teachers got their right-wing and unscientific ideas from the fascists of the early 1900’s, and not from modern-day politicians and influencer spreading harmful messages.

Another issue with this book is that it forgets the fact that yoga is not the only field that was strongly influenced my fascist thinkers and writers in the 20th century. Look at any field of science, culture or history, and you will find influential figures who were heavily involved with fascist organisations and ideologies. Unfortunately, that was the reality of the early 1900s. If we wanted to distance ourselves from every field that was touched by fascism, we would have to give up our job and all our hobbies.

But I think my biggest problem with this book is Home’s lack of self-awareness. He complains a lot about how early Western yoga teachers had no real knowledge of yoga, India, religion or physiology, and yet they had the confidence to teach and spread their ideas. But Home does the exact same thing in this book. He is not an expert on yoga, religion or science, and yet here we are reading about his opinion on the matter. This book is basically a nonexpert’s commentary on other nonexperts.

I think this book would have been a lot more interesting and useful if it was written by someone who actually has a deep knowledge of yoga, its past and present, and its connection to religion.

[Ciara Begley · Rating 3 out of 5]

was hoping for a bit more exploration into the popularity of yoga in the 20th century and the sociopolitical landscape of today, but still some interesting stories and food for thought!

[Grave Yard · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is hate mail for robert love. it feels like walking into a phd student mid rant about the sources theyve found, and whilst interesting, i wish the book spent a bit more time exploring the ideological implications that it brings up rather than tacking them on at the end. still a fun read though

[J.T. Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty much by his own admission, whatever Home was originally intending for this book was gazumped by the rise of the Conspirituality podcast, which joins the dots between wellness, conspiracy mindsets and cults and, of course, can react quicker than a book can. The idea of yoga studios being a gateway to body fascism and right wing thinking is also covered in Naomi Klein’s ‘Doppelganger’, perhaps influenced by (her acknowledged favourite) Conspirituality. But then Home says he hasn’t been in a yoga studio since 2019; perhaps this would have changed if he’d approached this in a journalistic way, but you get the impression he wouldn’t; the genesis of the book seems to be grudge rather than curiosity.

Anyway, the book we get goes back to the dawn of “modern postural practice”, which we learn was often propagated by white guys who also had interests in the occult generally and often in white supremacy. This might be new information to the reader, but hardly startling given the era was the early 1900s. White supremacy was integral to the colonialist mindset (because it justified subjugating the other races), and Theosophy’s grab bag of pseudo-Eastern mysticism was popular among the same group of people: Jiddhu Krishnamurthi became prominent in the same era, for example. Having plundered the land and the artefacts, we busied ourselves snatching their culture too; in Home’s view, people would assign themselves fictitious gurus (a Blavatskian move, of course), and dress their exercise routines in quasi-Indian mumbo jumbo to make a quick buck from Westerners uninspired by occidental exercise.

Yet even a cursory glance at Wikipedia hardly holds this up to scrutiny given there were also actual Hindus promoting the same stuff in the west at the same time. And, while you might get an article from the argument that lots of early practitioners and promoters of yoga were both fraudsters and unabashed fascists, unfortunately for Home he’s under contract to write a full book. What we essentially get is a literature review of some of the main culprits’ books, with some biographical detail; in a book effectively comprised of character studies of a bunch of weird charlatans, Home fails to make any of them interesting to the reader. And when he chides the authors for padding their books with case studies or other junk to fill the commission, only to himself submit a 200-page book where bibliography, notes and index make up 25% of the pages, you wonder if the author fretting most about not being able to make the word count is Home himself.

[Numayr · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok and?

[Janis Maudlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

entertaining but absurdly contrived and of almost zero actual historical benefit. really strains to make whatever point in any sort of substantiated way. mostly full of content with nothing to do with, or very loosely connected to fascism, while leaving unexplored barely touching in actually interesting connections between fascists and north Indian culture and histories and the origins of how yoga was brought to the west outside of the tiny sample of weird authors he chooses to look at. also doesn't explore connections between fascism and the "new order of wellness"! this book is just a humorous glance at some weirdo occultist grifters of the 20th century and might have been entertaining if it posited itself as such but it unfortunately aspires to be so much more and falls very short. it also throws the baby out with the bathwater to incredible extents, seems completely naive about actual benefits of postural exercise systems, and concludes that doing yoga is horrible and noone should ever do it just because some scammers in the 30's-70's used It as one component of the many scams they were running?

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a long form essay that didn't need to be a book

[Evan Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

claiming that the neo folk musicians needed a gimmick to sell their "piss poor" second-rate post punk music = massive respect

[Elizabeth Schaefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s enjoyable and well written! The first half is really strong and informational in an engaging way. Genuinely learned a great deal! The second half kind of lost the plot a bit in terms of the point he’d so clearly made in the first half. His research really was missing the fascist aspect in the second half. In addition given how short a book it was the quotes from other sources (which often proved his point except when they were really missing relevancy) were far too long. It reminded me a bit of the paper on the benefits of walking I had to write for physical education credit in high school (or I wouldn’t have graduated) where I copy and pasted huge chunks of articles on the benefits of walking put them in quotes and added 3 sentences to show my opinion and called it a day. It was a fun and fascinating read particularly the historical context pre WWII, but again the later part was a bit of a mess

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 What did I just read?! I’d say a one-of-a-kind sociological skewering of yoga—of all things. Stewart traces the history of yoga through the many books and cultural texts that have defined it for us, and it turns out the practice may not have retained the peaceful, spiritual tradition from ancient India that we’ve always been led to believe. Instead, its evolution got far more complicated, questionable, and even insidious once it left its barn doors and went West.

The book is certainly well researched, tackling something I’d never thought to question, and that in itself is its real value. Have we been conned? What even makes someone an “accomplished yogi,” and who gets to decide? Honestly, most of the finer details flew over my head, but a bigger takeaway stuck: if yoga isn’t what we thought, what other seemingly perfect things might not be either? What’s next—cream-colored ponies? Warm woolen mittens??

Listened on audiobook-it’s short at around 5 hours, but print would probably work better as there is a lot of detail. I fear i may have missed much of its nuance.

[Mervin Hellville · Rating 2 out of 5]

This really should have a been blog post catering to a niche group of postural yoga devotees. It claims to take aim at the "New Order in Wellness" but its just a hit peice on very select people within the history of western yoga. If you adhere to the extremely obscure list of people named in this book - give it a read. If your looking for an intelligent critique of New Age beliefs, there is nothing really in here for you.