The NFT Community Could Forgive BAYC Founders’ Esoteric Interests

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs has dismissed the provocative claims made by artist Ryder Ripps as a preposterous “conspiracy theory,” calling them “slanderous” and vowing to fight back (albeit with a lawsuit premised on trademark infringement rather than slander). Many of the dominant voices in the struggling cryptocurrency industry have accepted this line, believing it absurd that a company supported by hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital could actually have been intended as an ideological troll.

But what if Ripps’ allegations contained some truth?

Todd Fine is a PhD candidate in history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the editor of «The Book of Khalid: A Critical Edition» by Ameen Rihani.

As an intellectual historian of 20th century political thought, who is familiar with the writings of Julius Evola and the fascist ideology of “traditionalism,” I believe that Ripps’ charges are not only plausible but, in fact, quite persuasive. Indeed, they resonate with elements of internet culture that are much more widespread than many assume.

See also: Bored Apes, a Troll and a Conspiracy Walk Into a Courtroom | Opinion

The non-fungible token (NFT) collection has long been controversial, criticized by individuals such as record executive Damon Dash because of its racial imagery of simians wearing prison uniforms, bone necklaces and jewelry grills.

However, nowhere is a conceivable alt-right connection most evident as in the company’s name, Yuga Labs, a possible reference to the “Kali Yuga,” a core concept in historical fascism, and one that has become even more central for the contemporary alt-right. Serious students of philosophy, history and literature – as the two founders of Yuga Labs, Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano, certainly are – should be at least somewhat familiar with it.

In the early 20th century, inspired by Eastern religions, French writer René Guénon seized upon the Hindu cycles of time as a foundational element of his philosophical criticism of modernity. Evoking extreme anti-Semitism, he expressed a bizarre idea: that the supposed decadence and extreme rationalism of the modern age were predicted in the temporal cycle of the Kali Yuga.

Guénon’s philosophy became known as traditionalism, not because it followed “conservative” or “traditional” values, but because it argued that the world’s religious traditions contained powerful truths that were fundamentally anti-democratic.

One of Guénon’s most prolific students, the Italian philosopher Julius Evola, took Guenon’s thinking further, constructing a vast cosmology with its own ethics, political theory and ancient history. He wrote dozens of works on esoteric topics including magic, alchemy, yoga, tantric sex and psychedelic drug use.

Evola was undeniably a genocidal fascist. Not only did he advise Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists but he went even further, arguing that Italy should follow Heinrich Himmler’s SS.

Unlike much of fascist political theory, which ceased with the war, Evola barely survived a bombing in Vienna and continued to write volubly; in effect, diagnosing what went wrong and giving future fascists the intellectual tools they would need for life in societies they hated.

His most didactic book was entitled “Ride the Tiger,” which outlines a posture of “going with the flow” and waiting to strike, rather than fighting impossibly strong forces head on.

Under modern “meme magic” on the chatroom 4chan, “Ride the Tiger” became “Surf the Kali Yuga,” a maritime meme of waves and surfing matched with SS iconography of the Death’s Head or Black Sun. With Evola receiving further attention when it was revealed in 2017 that Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon was a fan, his ideas were promulgated further on a Telegram group called the “Kali Yuga Surfing Club,” contemporaneous with the creation of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which minted in April 2021.

In response to speculation that the company’s name was linked to the alt-right Kali Yuga concept, in early 2022, Yuga Labs offered a complete denial, asserting that “Yuga” was a reference to an obscure character from a Nintendo “Zelda” video game on the Gameboy.

Months later, in July 2021, in response to persistent questions by BAYC critics, Wylie Aronow offered another source of inspiration – his own former practice of Hinduism through Transcendental Meditation – which hadn’t been disclosed because, he told gonzo journalist Wave Ninja, “it’s no one’s business.” Though Aronow credited Solano with the idea to call the company Yuga after the Zelda character “and the fact that it just sounds cool and mysterious.”

These confusing explanations have largely satisfied self-interested NFT holders, providing enough justification to ignore Ripps’ absurd “conspiracy theory.”

However, Aronow’s assertions are further put into doubt by allegations that his now-deleted Twitter account had “Kali Yuga” listed as its physical location, that he discussed alt-right and radical politics on Twitter, and that he and Solano had extensive connections to a Miami publishing house named “Expat Press” that prints controversial, and rather shocking, work mentioning the “Kali Yuga” concept.

As a historian, I am also concerned by the extensive visual symbolism of monarchy, spiritual sacrifice, imperialism and militarism within the Bored Ape collection, set in contrast to a possible theme of degeneracy into apes who match Black-American cultural tropes. Evola’s “Kali Yuga” seems much more plausible as a symbolic starting point than the variously claimed references to crypto whales, an Andy Warhol party or a streetwear brand.

See also: Ryder Ripps, Bored Apes and ‘Owning’ an NFT | Opinion

Nevertheless, I believe that it is going too far to assert that anyone interested or captivated by Evola’s thought should be assumed to be a “Neo-Nazi” per se. His readers, in some cases maybe sincere spiritual seekers, perverted by their deep alienation from contemporary society and politics. They may be willing to tolerate Evola’s anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism because of other provocative and exciting aspects of his thought.

If Ryder Ripps’ allegations prove to be valid, some level of forgiveness for founders Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow (who is stepping down for health reasons) may be possible, but first Yuga Labs’ new CEO Daniel Alegre must come clean.

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