The Neo-Völkisch Reconfiguration of Psychedelic Discourse: A Case Study in Epistemic Authoritarianism, Apologetic Mimicry, and Racialised Polemic in Chris Bennett

 

 

One is not progressive simply for getting high. Recent events surrounding Chris Bennett’s online publications provide a revealing case study in the contemporary reconfiguration of neo-völkisch white nationalist discourses within psychedelic subcultures. While Bennett’s interventions present themselves as countercultural, left-coded, and ostensibly neutral, a closer examination of his rhetorical strategies, epistemic posture, and racialised attack patterns indicates structural affinities with the neo-völkisch ideological constellation. This essay provides a concise scholarly analysis of these affinities, highlighting their resonance with both the wider history of volkisch white nationalist thought and the epistemic techniques associated with CESNUR-style apologetics.

What makes this convergence particularly significant is the way psychedelic subcultures have, over the past two decades, become fertile terrain for the laundering of ethnonationalist ideas under the guise of “ancestral wisdom,” “authentic spirituality,” and an ostensibly anti-establishment stance. In these milieus, where scepticism toward institutional authority is high and romanticised narratives of pre-modern pasts circulate freely, neo-völkisch discourse can adopt progressive aesthetics while retaining an underlying hierarchical and exclusionary logic. Bennett’s behaviour exemplifies this pattern: his self-fashioning as a countercultural critic masks a discursive architecture shaped by racialised hierarchies, mythic-romantic constructions of antiquity, and epistemic absolutism. His inability to engage substantively with the sources he critiques, coupled with his reliance on procedural delegitimisation and Orientalist tropes, reveals not merely personal animus but the ideological grammar of a broader movement that cloaks reactionary content in psychedelic or spiritual vocabulary. It is in this light that his correspondence with and praise from CESNUR figures becomes particularly troubling, suggesting a cross-pollination between apologetic authority structures and volkisch-inflected counterculture rhetoric that warrants serious scholarly and institutional scrutiny.

Cannabis subcultures in the West emerged historically as countercultural spaces defined by anti-authoritarianism, communalism, and an ethos of resistance to the state. Yet these very attributes have rendered them unusually permeable to ideological infiltration by actors who operate through ambiguity, affective resonance, and symbolic appropriation. Neo-völkisch individuals are particularly adept at exploiting the cultural fluidity of cannabis communities, which tend to privilege personal experience, intuitive knowledge, and alternative spiritualities over formal scholarship or institutional authority. This epistemic openness allows volkisch narratives—coded in appeals to “natural living,” “ancestral practices,” or “authentic roots”—to circulate with minimal scrutiny. Cannabis discourse’s romanticisation of pre-modern wisdom traditions provides a ready scaffold upon which ethnocentric narratives can be appended without triggering immediate resistance, especially as these narratives are often framed as ecological, anti-corporate, or anti-imperialist.

Moreover, the aesthetic and cultural flexibility of cannabis subcultures allows neo-völkisch actors to embed themselves as charismatic mediators between “ancient plant knowledge” and contemporary users. These figures often present themselves as guardians of forgotten traditions or interpreters of “original” spiritual practices involving cannabis, constructing mythic histories of Indo-European plant cults or ethnically delineated rites. Such mythopoetic reconstructions resonate with communities predisposed to anti-establishment worldviews and suspicious of academic or governmental narratives about drugs. The danger lies in the way these pseudo-histories subtly link cannabis use to imagined ethnocultural lineages, thereby tethering an ostensibly universalist practice to exclusionary identity politics. Once these associations are established, neo-völkisch narratives can be smuggled into discussions about cultural revival, environmentalism, or spiritual authenticity, transforming cannabis discourse into a vehicle for coded ethnonationalism.

Digital cannabis spaces further accelerate this infiltration by functioning as unmoderated or loosely moderated environments where experiential authority is often weighted more heavily than expertise. In online forums, podcasts, and influencer cultures around cannabis, individuals who skillfully blend countercultural rhetoric with volkisch tropes can quickly gain followings. They exploit grievances against the state’s historical criminalisation of cannabis to introduce broader narratives about “cultural decline,” “civilisational decay,” or the need to return to primordial values—classic volkisch themes recast in a psychedelic idiom. The result is a hybrid ideological formation in which cannabis becomes symbolically aligned with racialised or ancestral imaginaries, often without users recognising the underlying political valence. This dynamic suggests a broader structural vulnerability: Western cannabis culture’s self-image as inherently progressive has masked the extent to which it can be co-opted into discursive architectures that reproduce, rather than subvert, the exclusionary logics it once opposed.

 

Libertarian Politics as a Gateway to Neo-Völkisch Fascist Configurations

A central paradox of Western cannabis advocacy is that its libertarian political foundations—originally grounded in a critique of state overreach and the criminalisation of personal autonomy—can unintentionally create ideological openings for authoritarian or neo-völkisch narratives. Libertarian discourse emphasises individual sovereignty, anti-statism, and distrust of institutional authority. While these positions historically aligned with progressive drug-law reform, they can, in the absence of strong egalitarian commitments, drift into the broader anti-government ecosystems that the contemporary far-right strategically exploits. This drift is particularly pronounced when libertarian cannabis activists frame state regulation not simply as unjust but as evidence of systemic corruption, cultural decay, or conspiratorial design, thereby generating a worldview susceptible to the racialised civilisational narratives central to neo-völkisch ideology. Once the state is construed as illegitimate or decadent, the conceptual ground is prepared for appeals to “natural hierarchy,” “true tradition,” or “ancestral order,” which function as volkisch placeholders for ethnonationalism.

Furthermore, libertarian cannabis advocates often valorise self-reliance, homesteading, small-scale cultivation, and a return to “authentic” agrarian lifestyles. While these practices in themselves are politically neutral, they resonate deeply with the volkisch mythos of rural purity, organic community, and pre-industrial cultural rootedness. In such contexts, the libertarian rejection of regulatory oversight can inadvertently align with volkisch fantasies of an ethnically homogeneous, decentralised folk-community freed from the perceived contamination of cosmopolitan modernity. This alignment becomes especially dangerous when libertarian suspicion of state science and pharmaceutical authority merges with volkisch scepticism toward modernity as such. The result is a hybrid ideological field in which distrust of institutions, romanticisation of ancestral plant use, and the libertarian ethos of personal sovereignty reinforce one another, forming a conduit through which far-right narratives can circulate undetected beneath a countercultural veneer.

Digital cannabis spaces exacerbate these dynamics by providing discursive environments where libertarian rhetoric and volkisch themes are algorithmically intermingled. Online activism against drug laws commonly intersects with adjacent anti-government or anti-regulation communities that include far-right actors eager to recruit individuals through shared grievances. The ideological proximity between libertarian anti-statism and far-right anti-democratic sentiment allows for a gradual, almost imperceptible transition: critiques of the DEA or police militarisation can morph into wholesale rejections of democratic institutions, multiculturalism, or civil rights frameworks. Neo-völkisch actors exploit these openings by reframing cannabis freedom not as an issue of personal autonomy but as a symbol of a deeper cultural struggle against “degenerate” modernity. In this way, libertarian cannabis politics can, without deliberate intent, become an ideological bridge between left-coded counterculture and the affective, identity-driven narratives of contemporary volkisch far-right extremism.

 

Neo-Völkisch Ideology: Contemporary Characteristics and Mechanisms

The neo-völkisch framework, as attested in recent scholarship on far-right infiltration of alternative, spiritual, and ecological communities, represents a transmutation of classical völkisch motifs into contemporary cultural forms. While early 20th-century völkisch movements were overtly ethnonationalist, contemporary variants operate through ambiguity, mimicry, and syncretic appropriation. Key characteristics include:

1.     Left-coded aesthetic dissimulation — the adoption of progressive symbols (raised fist, “anti-fascist” rhetoric, ecological or psychedelic imagery) to gain cultural legitimacy.

2.     Spiritualised essentialism — framing identity, culture, and authenticity through quasi-mystical or ancestral narratives.

3.     Epistemic authoritarianism — positioning the self as the sole arbiter of interpretive legitimacy while delegitimising competing hermeneutics.

4.     Racialised discourse — deploying subtle or overt racial tropes, particularly when authority is challenged by non-Western interlocutors.

These mechanisms enable the circulation of authoritarian and exclusionary logics within milieus that imagine themselves fundamentally progressive.

What distinguishes the contemporary neo-völkisch formation from its historical antecedents is its capacity to exploit precisely those discursive spaces that present themselves as emancipatory, egalitarian, or counter-hegemonic. Rather than advancing explicit doctrines of racial hierarchy, these movements insinuate themselves through symbolic ambiguity and affective resonance—appeals to “authenticity,” “heritage,” “rootedness,” or “ancestral knowledge” that appear innocuous or even liberatory to participants within psychedelic or ecological subcultures. Yet beneath these tropes lies a reactivation of exclusionary logics: authenticity becomes conflated with ethnocultural purity, rootedness with racialised belonging, and tradition with the re-inscription of civilisational hierarchies. The epistemic authoritarianism characteristic of neo-völkisch discourse then emerges not as open dogmatism but as a managerial stance over meaning—where the self-appointed interpreter polices the boundaries of legitimate hermeneutics while casting non-Western critiques as inauthentic, irrational, or contaminated. In this way, neo-völkisch ideology survives not by confronting progressive spaces, but by infiltrating them, absorbing their lexicon, and reconfiguring their emancipatory vocabulary into a vehicle for soft authoritarianism.

 

Psychedelic Subcultures as Vectors for Neo-Völkisch Rearticulation

Contemporary psychedelic communities exhibit several structural vulnerabilities to far-right ideological entry:

• emphasis on “ancestral wisdom” and “authentic tradition”;
• romanticisation of pre-modern and mythic cultural forms;
• scepticism toward institutions and scholarly rigor;
• decentralised authority structures without epistemic safeguards.

This creates an environment in which volkisch narratives can be laundered through spiritual, ecological, or “countercultural” aesthetics. The intersection of psychedelic romanticism, ancestral mythopoesis, and anti-establishment rhetoric has been repeatedly identified as a site of far-right convergence.

Within these structurally porous environments, neo-völkisch actors do not typically enter as overt ideologues but as charismatic intermediaries who present themselves as custodians of forgotten traditions, interpreters of “ancient rites,” or champions of psycho-spiritual liberation. Their legitimacy is established not through scholarly competence but through affective authority—the ability to mobilise narratives of primordial wisdom, suppressed knowledge, or civilisational decline that resonate deeply with participants already suspicious of institutional epistemologies. Once embedded, these actors subtly recalibrate psychedelic discourse, shifting it from a universalist or emancipatory frame to one centred on ethnocultural authenticity, Indo-European mythic revivalism, or romanticised notions of “tribal” purity. Such reframing is rarely perceived as ideological infiltration; rather, it feels like the recovery of something “lost” or “real,” precisely because the community’s epistemic openness functions as its primary vulnerability. In this way, psychedelic spaces inadvertently become incubators for soft authoritarianism, where volkisch tropes circulate under the banner of spiritual depth, cultural reclamation, or anti-modern critique.

 

Bennett’s Discursive Patterns: Left-coded Performance, Volkisch Structure

Although Bennett’s persona is marked by countercultural, left-coded symbols, the structure of his rhetoric displays several hallmark traits of volkisch epistemics:

A. Epistemic Absolutism

His claims of interpretive authority over materials—Islamic jurisprudence, Middle Eastern religious history, manuscript traditions—beyond his linguistic or scholarly competence mirror the volkisch pattern of self-authorised “authentic interpretation.”

B. Mythopoetic Romanticism

His writings frequently rely on speculative reconstructions of ancient cannabis cults, Indo-European spiritualities, and perennialist mythologies. Such mythic-romantic gestures are consistent with neo-völkisch attempts to sacralise imagined pasts.

C. Racialised Delegitimisation

When confronted by non-Western scholarly critique, Bennett resorts to racially-coded dismissals. This constitutes a significant diagnostic marker, revealing the underlying civilisational hierarchy organising his discourse beneath its countercultural surface.

What becomes particularly visible in Bennett’s case is how epistemic absolutism functions not merely as a stylistic choice but as an identity performance—one that serves to conceal the absence of linguistic, historical, and methodological competence. His insistence on adjudicating Islamic jurisprudence and Middle Eastern religious history, despite lacking any training in Arabic, Persian, manuscript studies, or Islamic legal theory, mirrors the neo-völkisch pattern of self-authorised interpretation, where authenticity is claimed through charisma rather than expertise. In this structure, the self becomes the guarantor of truth, and dissenting readings—especially those grounded in philology or jurisprudence—are dismissed not because they are wrong, but because they interrupt the authority of the volkisch-style interpreter. Bennett’s repeated fixation on “provenance,” “official translations,” and “document legitimacy” functions less as methodological rigour and more as a procedural tactic to reassert dominance in discursive spaces where he possesses no substantive literacy.

This epistemic posture is reinforced by Bennett’s mythopoetic romanticism, which offers a compensatory mythic framework that obscures the lack of scholarly grounding. His long-standing attempts to reconstruct “ancient cannabis religions,” to posit Indo-European psycho-spiritual cults, or to weave perennialist narratives linking psychedelia to a supposedly universal mystical past are not neutral scholarly propositions; they are consonant with the volkisch impulse to sacralise imagined ancestral lineages. These speculative claims derive their force not from evidence but from their affective resonance within psychedelic subcultures predisposed to romantic notions of “ancient wisdom.” Bennett’s move from textual history to mythic history whenever confronted with concrete evidence illustrates how volkisch thinking substitutes myth for knowledge, and affect for analysis, thereby creating a discursive environment where the interpreter’s imagined intuition supersedes documented fact.

The most decisive disclosure of Bennett’s ideological structure, however, emerges in his racialised delegitimisation of non-Western critique. When challenged by Middle Eastern or Islamic intellectual perspectives—particularly when his errors in jurisprudential reasoning or manuscript interpretation were exposed—he abandoned the language of neutrality and adopted racialised tropes to reassert hierarchy. His insinuations that a Western psychedelic writer possesses superior interpretive clarity compared to a Persian scholar steeped in the primary languages and traditions he purports to analyse is not a simple personal failing; it is structurally identical to the volkisch logic in which civilisational hierarchy is activated when the authority of the self-appointed interpreter is threatened. The recourse to Orientalist caricature, the framing of critique as culturally suspect, and the insinuation that Western intuition trumps non-Western knowledge are diagnostic markers of neo-völkisch discourse operating beneath a left-coded countercultural surface. In Bennett’s case, the mask did not simply slip—it dissolved the moment his authority was substantively challenged.

 

Apologetic Mimicry: CESNUR’s Epistemic Techniques and Volkisch Authoritarianism

Bennett’s recent writings exhibit methodological similarities to CESNUR-associated apologetics, including:

• burden-shifting (“prove your provenance,” “prove the authenticity”);
• procedural delegitimisation (attacking translation fidelity rather than argumentation);
• pseudo-neutrality (“I’m just asking questions”).

These techniques, while not volkisch in origin, share the volkisch epistemic architecture of centralised interpretive authority, suspicion of dissent, and the pathologisation of alternative readings. Bennett’s own public admission of correspondence and praise from CESNUR’s co-founder exacerbates these resonances.

What is particularly striking about Bennett’s adoption of CESNUR-style apologetic techniques is that he deploys them not as isolated rhetorical moves but as part of a coherent epistemic posture that mirrors the authoritarian logic of volkisch interpretation. The burden-shifting strategy—demanding exhaustive provenance, forensic authentication, or “official” translations—allows him to avoid engaging with the argument’s substance while positioning himself as the arbiter of what counts as legitimate knowledge. This tactic is structurally identical to the apologetic manoeuvre in which critique is neutralised not by counter-argument but by questioning the critic’s right to speak. In Bennett’s case, the insistence on procedural hurdles functions as a means of reasserting interpretive dominance in domains where he has neither linguistic grounding nor scholarly standing. The effect is to transform a conversation about texts, jurisprudence, or history into a conversation about whether the interlocutor has the “right” to interpret them—a hallmark of both volkisch epistemics and CESNUR’s defensive rhetorical style.

The procedural delegitimisation evident in Bennett’s responses serves a similar function. When confronted with translations or manuscript-based arguments he cannot evaluate, he shifts the discourse away from content and toward imagined deficiencies in the process of interpretation. Rather than engaging with the arguments or the textual tradition, he invokes vague concerns about “nuance,” “accuracy,” or “misinterpretation,” echoing apologetic patterns long used to insulate institutional narratives from critique. This strategy is particularly revealing when directed at individuals who actually possess the linguistic competencies he lacks. In such moments, the epistemic gatekeeping becomes indistinguishable from ideological policing: the critic is positioned not as a legitimate interpreter but as someone whose access to meaning must be scrutinised, filtered, or controlled. This is where the overlap between CESNUR-style apologetics and volkisch authoritarianism becomes most apparent, for both operate by centralising hermeneutic authority within a closed circle of self-appointed arbiters.

The situation becomes even more analytically consequential in light of Bennett’s public admission that he not only corresponded with but received enthusiastic endorsement from CESNUR’s co-founder. This disclosure collapses the boundary between mimicry and influence, suggesting that Bennett’s adoption of apologetic techniques may not be merely incidental but reinforced—perhaps even validated—by a figure whose scholarly persona is predicated on controlling religious narratives. While no claim need be made about direct ideological alignment, the epistemic resonances are unmistakable. Bennett’s reliance on burden-shifting, pseudo-neutrality, and procedural suspicion mirrors the broader apologetic architecture in which interpretive authority is consolidated and dissent is pathologised. His admission therefore raises important questions about how apologetic authority structures and volkisch-style epistemic absolutism can converge within countercultural spaces, creating hybrid forms of soft authoritarianism that operate under the guise of neutrality, scholarship, or spiritual authenticity.

 

The Racialised Attack as Disclosure of Ideological Structure

The clearest moment of structural revelation arises in Bennett’s racialised attack against me. Such escalations are not incidental lapses but hallmark expressions of volkisch logic: when epistemic authority is challenged, the discourse reasserts itself through racial hierarchy. In this moment, the left-coded performance collapses and the underlying ideological architecture becomes visible.

The racialised dimension of Bennett’s escalation is analytically decisive because it reveals the final layer of the epistemic structure animating his interventions. When a critic relies on procedural suspicion, pseudo-neutrality, or mythic-romantic claims, the discourse can still be misinterpreted as a clash of personalities or as a misunderstanding of scholarly method. But when the fallback position becomes racialisation—when a non-Western intellectual interlocutor is framed as irrational, untrustworthy, or culturally suspect—the architecture of hierarchy that has been implicit throughout becomes explicit. This racialisation does not merely accompany his loss of argumentative control; it is the mechanism through which control is reasserted. It restores the interpretive hierarchy by positioning the Western commentator as the bearer of clarity and objectivity, and the non-Western critic as epistemically deficient. In this way, Bennett’s attack aligns with the volkisch logic in which the legitimacy of interpretation is ultimately grounded in racialised identity rather than in competence, argumentation, or evidence.

Such moments of racialised reassertion function as diagnostic markers in the study of covert extremist or authoritarian discourse. Scholars of contemporary far-right formations have long noted that when the ideological softening strategies—syncretism, aesthetic borrowing, spiritualisation, or claims to neutrality—are exhausted, what remains is the primordial hierarchy that underpins the entire edifice. Bennett’s move to racialised defamation is therefore not simply a personal failure but a structural one: it reveals that his interpretive persona is sustained by an unspoken civilisational framework that can only stabilise itself by subordinating non-Western voices. His earlier claims to neutrality or progressive alignment collapse under the weight of this disclosure, demonstrating that his discursive posture is not anchored in universalist commitments but in the maintenance of an ethnocentric interpretive order. This is precisely what distinguishes neo-völkisch discourse from more conventional reactionary forms: its reliance on ambiguity dissolves the moment its authority is threatened.

Moreover, the racialised attack catalyses a broader interpretive shift in how Bennett’s behaviour must be read. It transforms his earlier epistemic manoeuvres—burden-shifting, procedural delegitimisation, mythopoetic speculation—from isolated rhetorical strategies into components of a coherent ideological pattern. What appeared initially as countercultural affect or contrarianism now emerges as part of a system in which racialised hierarchy, volkisch romanticism, and apologetic authority structures converge. The veneer of left-coded symbolism no longer functions as plausible camouflage; instead, it highlights the asymmetry between the stated identity and the operative logic. In this sense, Bennett’s escalation serves as a case study in how ostensibly progressive or psychedelic spaces can harbour discursive practices that reproduce, rather than dismantle, the civilisational hierarchies they claim to resist. It is precisely at the flashpoint of racialised aggression that the underlying continuity with volkisch ideology becomes most visible to the scholarly eye.

 

 

Conclusion

The Bennett case exemplifies the contemporary neo-völkisch infiltration of alternative cultural and psychedelic environments. His synthesis of countercultural aesthetics, romantic mythopoesis, apologetic-style epistemic absolutism, and racialised polemic situates his behaviour within a recognisable volkisch framework. It also demonstrates how authoritarian epistemic regimes—whether volkisch or apologetic—can permeate discursive spaces that consider themselves resistant to such influence. This case therefore underscores the need for systematic scholarly attention to the covert circulation of ethnocentric and authoritarian logics within seemingly progressive cultural domains.

The implications of this case extend beyond the behaviour of any one individual and gesture toward a broader structural vulnerability within psychedelic and countercultural milieus. These communities often define themselves in opposition to institutional authority, conventional hierarchies, and exclusionary ideologies. Yet this self-conception can mask the extent to which they lack the epistemic safeguards necessary to prevent the infiltration of covertly authoritarian logics. The very features that make such spaces appealing—decentralisation, experiential epistemologies, openness to alternative narratives—also make them uniquely susceptible to actors who deploy spiritualised essentialism, pseudo-scholarly authority, or mythic ancestry narratives as vehicles for ideological influence. Bennett’s trajectory demonstrates how easily these vulnerabilities can be activated and how quickly a seemingly progressive discourse can be realigned around ethnocentric hierarchies once interpretive authority is contested.

Moreover, the Bennett case invites scholars of contemporary religious movements, esotericism, and digital subcultures to revisit assumptions about the ideological neutrality of “alternative” spaces. The persistence of volkisch motifs within psychedelic discourse shows that the boundary between progressive aesthetics and reactionary structures is more permeable than is often acknowledged. The convergence of psychedelic romanticism with apologetic-style epistemic policing suggests that hybridised forms of soft authoritarianism can flourish precisely where ideological critique is weakest. This convergence also warrants further comparative research into how New Age, neo-shamanic, and entheogenic communities may inadvertently reproduce the same racialised hierarchies and civilisational narratives that they claim to transcend. The Bennett episode thus serves as an empirical anchor for theorising how subcultural formations can become conduits for ethnonationalist and volkisch imaginaries even in the absence of explicit far-right identification.

Finally, this case underscores the necessity of developing more robust analytical frameworks for mapping ideological influence in online spiritual and psychedelic ecosystems. Scholars and practitioners alike must recognise that the contemporary far-right often eschews explicit slogans in favour of aesthetic borrowing, narrative softening, and identity mimicry. It is precisely through such techniques that volkisch discourse now circulates: in coded appeals to ancestral authenticity, in subtle reinscriptions of civilisational hierarchy, and in performative claims to neutrality that dissolve under the pressure of racialised confrontation. Bennett’s synthesis of these elements demonstrates how such logics can become operational through the actions of individuals who do not self-identify with extremist ideologies but nonetheless reproduce their epistemic structures. Understanding these dynamics is crucial not only for academic inquiry but for safeguarding the integrity of countercultural, psychedelic, and alternative knowledge communities in an era of increasingly diffuse ideological infiltration.

 

 

 

 

Selected Bibliography

Gardell, Mattias. Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

Lewis, James R., and Olav Hammer (eds.). Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Sedgwick, Mark. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.