NYT calls H.P. Blavatsky an Anti-Semitic influence on Nazis

The New York Times profiles Tony Hovater, a white nationalist, and uses a poor source accusing H.P. Blavatsky of being an Anti-Semitic influence on the National Socialists.

In this last month’s New York Times profile article “I Interviewed a White Nationalist and Fascist, What Was I Left With?” its journalist, Richard Fausset claimed that Helena Blavatsky was an anti-semite, and this influenced Nazi thinking. He says this, as if it is an incontestable fact. Richard Fausset writes:

“Mr. Hovater was exceedingly candid with me — often shockingly so — but it seems as though his worldview was largely formed by the same recombinant stuff that influences our mainstream politics. There were exceptions, of course: I saw, on his bookshelf, two volumes of Helena Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine,” 19th-century work of esoteric spiritualism whose anti-Semitism influenced Nazi thinking.

But even if I had called Mr. Hovater yet again — even if we had discussed Blavatsky at length, the way we did his ideas about the Federal Reserve Bank — I’m not sure it would have answered the question. What makes a man start fires?”

“I Interviewed a White Nationalist and Fascist, What Was I Left With?”

The book he referenced readers to was Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1, which falsely claims H.P.B. used spirit guides called “Ascended Masters.” Mahatmas versus Ascended Masters (Quest, Summer 2011) by Pablo D. Sender should be read.

Historian, Ronald Hutton described Blavatsky as “one of the century’s truly international figures,” whose ideas gained “considerable popularity.” You can find the name of H.P.B. casually mentioned every once and a while, but have her ideas gained “considerable popularity?” No. We fail to find this considerable popularity, and misled readers are persuaded by a link to an outdated Jewish source to connect Theosophy to antisemitism and a “neo-Nazi” who keeps The Secret Doctrine on his shelf. So do I.