The (Alt-)Right-Hand Path: The Biopolitics of Yoga and Fascism

Utilizing Foucault's conception of biopolitics and building on the work of scholars like Farah Godrej, this paper analyzes the susceptibility of modern yoga to fascism on micro and macro levels due to its functioning as an “instrumentalization of power” (Novetzke and Kalé 2024) and its common application as purificatory. This is relevant considering the increasingly fascist elements of the current political climate and the alignment of many yoga practitioners with these elements.

While there is no universally accepted definition of fascism, I employ Roger Griffin's palingenetic ultranationalism, which highlights the psycho-social desire for a renewal (palingenesis) of the subjects' core unifying identifier (the ultra-nation). A key component of generating this renewal is organicism, or the linking of individual bodies and selves with a larger national or cosmological body. Organicism is reflective of the neo-Vedantic and harmonial influences of modern yoga. The influences of nationalist physical culture, elitist esotericism, and a preoccupation with purity and discipline have all created entry points for fascist thinking within the development of modern yoga.

Echoes of early fascist yoga exist in the ‘conspiritual' nature of current yoga influencers who emphasize the power of mind-over-matter, a philosophical descendent of the New Thought movement. The epistemologies utilized by these practitioners are adjacent to conspiratorial thinking, a hallmark of alt-right and fascist political beliefs. This is a trend that yoga scholars and practitioners ought to treat seriously: when yoga is not actively wielded to combat fascist influences, it readily becomes a tool for increasing or perpetuating preexisting biopolitical inequities.