Kali Yuga

About

In Hinduism, Kali Yuga is the fourth and worst yuga in a Yuga Cycle, a cyclical age of humankind tied to Hindu cosmology that claims there are four repeating ages, with each full yuga cycle equating to 4.3 million years. According to Hinduism, we are currently in Kali Yuga, often described as a "dark age" full of sin and corruption. It is commonly believed that Kali Yuga will end in the year 428,899 CE, but some disagree. Around 2015, the idea of Kali Yuga was adopted by far-right extremists, including the French Dissent, a far-right political party that popularized the phrase "surf the Kali Yuga" on t-shirts, later sold by the far-right podcast "The Right Stuff." "Surf the Kali Yuga" essentially means embracing being the bad guy and riding the wave of the dark age and what it might bring.

Origin

The idea of Kali Yuga and Yuga Cycles is described in numerous ancient Hindu texts.^[7] Yuga Cycles are linked to Hindu cosmology. The four yugas are the Satya Yuga, seen as a sort of golden age where the world is fully virtuous, the Treta Yuga, where the world loses a quarter of the virtue to sinfulness, the Dvapara Yuga where the world is half virtuous and finally the Kali Yuga, where the world succumbs to sin and enters a dark age.^[8] In 2019, a Redditor^[9] posted a chart of the Yuga Cycle to /r/indianews, illustrating the circular pattern and showing us as in the Kali Yuga (shown below).

YouTuber Jacob Gregory posted a documentary about the yugas in July 2020, gaining over 165,000 views in just over a year (shown below).

Spread

Connection To The Alt-Right

Surf The Kali Yuga

The earliest known use of the phrase "surf the Kali Yuga" was posted by an anonymous user of 4chan's /tg/^[1] board on September 11th, 2014, in response to a comment string on a thread about Gamergate, complaining about SJWs, writing, "I know it is dark at times but you gotta learn to enjoy it, man. Embrace being the bad guy. Surf the Kali Yuga" (shown below).

On June 17th, 2015, Vincent Vauclin, the founder of La Dissidence française, or French Dissent, an extreme-right political party in France active from 2011 to 2021, posted "Keep calm and surf the Kali Yuga," to Twitter^[2] along with a photo of a t-shirt showing a man surfing a wave over the phrase and a link to the party's now-inactive website, suggesting the party produced these shirts (shown below).

In 2016, t-shirts with the phrase spread, often adorned with a skull wearing sunglasses (shown below). One of the earliest posts sharing the shirt was posted to 4chan's /pol/^[6] board in May of that year in a post reading, "Surf the Kali Yuga senpai." Far-right podcast and blog "The Right Stuff" began selling shirts with the quote on them.^[5]

In July 2019, a Telegram group called the "Kali Yuga Surfing Club" opened, featuring alt-right, anti-SJW and Nazi-centric memes^[16] along with posts about Kali Yuga.^[15] The group is currently inactive.

Joe Rogan's "We Are In Kali Yuga" Post

On November 16th, 2021, Joe Rogan went on Tim Pool's podcast on YouTube^[4] with Alex Jones and Blaire White where he claimed we are in Kali Yuga (shown below).

On November 27th, 2021, Rogan posted a political compass meme on Instagram^[3] showing a cycle claiming hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, and weak men make hard times. In the caption, Rogan writes: "We are in Kali Yuga. The age of conflict. All of the chaos we’re seeing right now was predicted in Hinduism thousands of years ago." He then claims we are in the lower-left corner, "weak men" (shown below).

Some users found issues with the post. On November 28th, Twitter^[12] user @benFranklin2018 posted a Twitter thread claiming Rogan's post will inevitable lead people down a "rabbit hole" where they discover the far right ties to Kali Yuga.

Yuga Labs "Bored Ape Yacht Club" Controversy

In January 2022, members of the Cryptocurrency community began accusing Bored Ape Yacht Club of having racist origins and ties to far-right extremism and nazism. The main criticism is aimed at the name of the creator of the collection, Yuga Labs, due to Kali Yuga's ties to the right. On January 2nd, Twitter^[10] user and CryptoPunks founder @ryder_ripps tweeted an image of several "surf the Kali Yuga" shirts and memes, writing, "'surf the kali yuga' is an alt right racist meme. there are lots of "kali yuga surf club" shirts and ones with the SS scull.. u guys still dont get it?"

Ryder posted a number of other images claiming to show evidence of BAYC's racist founder and origins, including memes and other imagery referencing Kali Yuga (examples shown below). Yuga Labs defended themselves in a tweet on January 3rd, claiming different origins for BAYC related to gaming.^[11]

Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi was a Nazi sympathiser and spy for the Axis powers. She believed that the Jews were responsible for the world being in Kali Yuga and that Hitler was an avatar of Vishnu fighting against the forces of Kali Yuga.^[13] She is considered one of the main figures in esoteric Hitlerism.^[14] Her belief and teachings in Kali Yuga have had influence on modern far-right beliefs .

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References