Synopses & Reviews
In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds.
Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuos since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought - combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinisn, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life - and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology.
As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar-- a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age - Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy.
Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.
Review
"[A] provoking volume." -Bulletin of the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research, No. 10,
Review
"An admirably cool-headed history of an inflammatory subject. . . . It is likely to stand as the definitive study of a subject that a lesser author would have exploited for maximum sensationalism." -Gnosis,
Review
"An engrossing, disturbing, and important book. Well-researched and evocatively told, the strange story of Savitri Devi is a mirror of the twentieth century's dark undercurrents and deserves to be widely read and pondered." -Robert S. Ellwood,University of Southern California
Review
"[A] superb study. . . . Goodrick-Clarke has done a service to sanity, even if the gullible will go on swallowing [Devi's] recycled poison rather than his antidote."
"An excellent, thought-provoking volume. . . . We may readily accept that Devi was a revolting creature. But it is as well that we realise that such demons in human form existed and still do exist."
"An admirably cool-headed history of an inflammatory subject. . . . It is likely to stand as the definitive study of a subject that a lesser author would have exploited for maximum sensationalism."
"An engrossing, disturbing, and important book. Well-researched and evocatively told, the strange story of Savitri Devi is a mirror of the twentieth century's dark undercurrents and deserves to be widely read and pondered."
"[A] provoking volume."
Review
“Jenkins is one of us: a geek, a fan, a popcult packrat. He's also an incisive and unflinching critic. His affection for the subject and sharp eye for 'what it all means' are an unbeatable combination. This is fascinating, engrossing and enlightening reading.”
-Cory Doctorow,author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and co-editor of Boing Boing
Review
“Jenkins persuasively argues in favor of taking the fan's perspective in analyzing television-- and this is the cornerstone of the new turn in Cultural Studies.”
-Claremont Review of Books,
Synopsis
The rarely told story of Savitri Devi--a Frenchwoman and one of Hitler's most powerful advocates
In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds.
Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuous since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought--combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinism, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life--and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology.
As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar--a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age--Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy.
Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.
Synopsis
In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds.
Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuos since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought - combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinisn, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life - and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology.
As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar-- a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age - Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy.
Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.
Synopsis
Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video)
Henry Jenkins“s pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, media producers and advertisers, not to mention researchers and fans, take for granted the idea that the success of a media franchise depends on fan investments and participation.
Bringing together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers takes readers from Jenkins's progressive early work defending fan culture against those who would marginalize or stigmatize it, through to his more recent work, combating moral panic and defending Goths and gamers in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Starting with an interview on the current state of fan studies, this volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in Fan Studies. It goes on to chart the growth of participatory culture on the web, take up blogging as perhaps the most powerful illustration of how consumer participation impacts mainstream media, and debate the public policy implications surrounding participation and intellectual property.
About the Author
Henry Jenkins is Provost's Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He was previously the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and the Founder/Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. The author or editor of eleven books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Jenkins also writes a regular column for Technology Review.