Fashwave (432 hz): How Audio Frequencies Take on Meaning in Neofascist Communities

A YouTube channel called VRIL features electronic music videos with titles including “Camp of the Saints,” “Right Wing Youth,” “Future Fash,” “Revolt Against the Modern World.” The videos all feature imagery and a musical style associated with “fashwave,” an aesthetic subgenre that incorporates an extreme fascist political ideology into both its music and artwork. The channel also links to fundraising efforts for the controversial Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian paramilitary group with an undeniably neofascist origin.^[1] One of the more popular fashwave channels remaining on YouTube, VRIL’s videos are notable because each song title contains a parenthetical that identifies the auditory frequency of the song. For example, a song title might read “Xurious -  Future Fash (432 hz).” 

Frequency, the periodic vibration of a sound wave, is the property of sound that determines the pitch that we hear, with a lower frequency yielding a lower pitch and a higher frequency yielding a higher pitch. Measured in hertz (abbreviated hz), audio or audible frequency refers to the frequencies audible to the human ear. Music contains many different frequencies, with bass notes lying in the 60-250 hz range and the highest notes hitting between 6000-16,000 hz. The frequency of 440 hz is widely used as the tuning standard for the A note above middle C, which allows musicians to tune their instruments to the same pitch. 

Auditory frequency labels, though not particularly common on fashwave pages, are extremely common in some other parts of the internet, including within wellness and spirituality practices, which are often associated with liberals and the left. The communities believe that certain frequencies have healing abilities, affect sleep, or even alter DNA. Some even believe that frequencies can help them to move between overlapping universes, voluntarily shifting their experienced reality, or powering other-worldly medical technology that can heal any ailment. 

This research note seeks to understand what elements of these frequency beliefs might attract and resonate with the neofascist fashwave community, and what this can tell us about the relationship between extremist beliefs, wellness, and spirituality. To do so, the note will review some of the most commonly held audio frequency-related beliefs, ranging from the healing benefits of particular frequencies to conspiracy theories that certain auditory frequencies have been manipulated by malevolent forces to harm or control humans who hear them.^[2]

Perceived benefits of frequencies

Health

Perhaps the most widespread belief about auditory frequencies is that certain frequencies possess healing properties. The origin of these beliefs is contested, with some claiming that the use of sound bowls or “Tibetan singing bowls,” to generate a particular auditory frequency for its healing properties dates back to 560-480 BC. Others argue the phenomenon is a modern invention, popularized by western tourists and wellness practitioners. Regardless of their origins, “sound healing,” “sound baths,” and listening to “healing frequencies,” have become increasingly common wellness and spirituality practices, all alleged to convey a wide variety of benefits to participants. 

Particular frequencies are believed to hold such distinct properties that a shift of a few hz can cause highly distinct results. One TikTok video, with over 4.4 million views and 659k likes, describes the purported properties of various healing frequencies, including 417 hz which is associated with relieving fear and anxiety, 432 hz which centers and calms, as well as 528 hz which is associated with transformation and miracles, even “DNA repair.” The latter two frequencies are particularly popular; on TikTok alone, the hashtag #432hz has over 38.8k tagged videos while #528hz has 30.7k. For comparison, the somewhat more intelligible #soundbathmeditation has 11.5k tagged TikTok videos. Other videos about the most popular frequencies allege that listening to 432 hz “can improve mental clarity, unite the body and consciousness with nature, release serotonin and endorphins, keep blood pressure and heart rate stable, help in releasing the negative energy blockages.” Some believers claim that the universe itself vibrates at 432 hz such that aligning one’s own vibration with this universal frequency through meditation and emotional control can lead to both personal and collective enlightenment. 

Most videos allege that listening to the constant tone of one of these beneficial frequencies, which sounds like a single note played for minutes at a time, provides these benefits. Some also claim that music in which the instruments are tuned using 432 hz as the fourth A note, rather than using 440 hz, provides the same benefits. As a result, some content creators and YouTube channels, such as VRIL, feature content digitally converted to 432 hz from the standard 440 hz, some specialize in providing 432 hz versions of popular music.

Reality shifting

Frequencies also play a role in an emergent online trend called reality shifting. Reality shifting, according to practitioners, describes the experience of transcending one’s physical confines “to visit alternative, mostly fictional, universes.” Commonly employed by young adults who feel drained or depressed by everyday life, reality shifting promises practitioners a way to escape their lives and inhabit different worlds, sometimes a beloved fictional one such as Hogwarts or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or an entirely self-created reality of the “shifter’s” own making. 

Many shifters believe that certain auditory frequencies can assist the mind’s relaxation into the state required for shifting realities. Users on the subreddit r/shiftingrealities, which boasts 125,000 members, provide many different explanations for why 6 hz is conducive to shifting, most of which suggest that it encourages a meditative state from which one can remain relaxed as well as focused on their desired reality. 

Though in large part harmless and reminiscent of other modes of escapism popular among young adults, such as fanfiction or cosplaying, reality shifting can sometimes lead practitioners to engage in harmful or dangerous behavior. Some shifters become so engaged in their “desired reality” and so detached from their lives that they dissociate and, according to medical professionals, may endanger their mental well-being. Some of the most intense shifting communities suggest that death in their real lives could cause them to “respawn” in their desired reality, possibly encouraging suicidal thinking or behavior.

Conspiracy Theories 

Musical manipulation

Many frequency-related conspiracies revolve around the idea that the nearly universal tuning standard was intentionally changed from a more beneficial frequency, such as 432 hz, to the current 440 hz, in order to harm the general public. The first comment on a popular TikTok espousing the healing benefits of 432 hz, for example, is “note A was changed from 432hz to 440hz by the Rothschilds. [T]he frequency of the universe is 432hz. our music is wrong.” Like most invocations of the Rothschilds, the comment suggests powerful Jewish elites are at the heart of a conspiracy to harm the public. Another video with 4.4 million views begins with “Did you know? In 1953 a worldwide agreement was made based on an idea by the Rockefeller Foundation to change the frequency of music. They changed it from it’s [sic] natural harmonic resonance 432hz to the current consciousness suppressing 440hz.” Four hundred-forty hz music, according to these beliefs, dulls humans’ thoughts and feelings, allowing the population to be more easily controlled, or by some accounts, making them nervous, aggressive, or anxious. Other popular memes claim that music tuned to 440 hz causes the “brain to become agitated.” Some allege “the Nazis in WW2 used this frequency against their enemies to make them feel and think a certain way.” Such claims are not limited to niche corners of the internet; Kanye West contributed to the conspiracy discourse regarding audio frequencies in 2023, seeming to claim that the 808 drum, a sound produced by a common synth drum machine used in the production of modern hip-hop music, produces a harmful frequency that produces only “killer or sexual” content and “is fucking up your entire frequency.” There is no evidence to support these claims, which are addressed in more detail here and here, but these beliefs provide additional explanation for some of the content creators who specialize in providing 432 hz music.  

Weather and atmospheric control 

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), housed in a remote research facility near Gakona, Alaska, previously operated by the U.S. Air Force and Navy, has long drawn conspiracy theories. Now part of the University of Alaska, HAARP transmits extremely high-frequency radio waves into the highest level of the atmosphere to study, among other things, how the atmosphere affects civilian and military communication and surveillance systems. 

Given its military connections, history of secrecy, remote location, strange appearance, and obscure research focus, it’s unsurprising that HAARP has drawn significant scrutiny from conspiracist communities. HAARP’s research involves complex processes with opaque outcomes, all with the goal of expanding U.S. military capabilities. These factors play on conspiracy theorists’ preexisting paranoia about government surveillance and invisible, global manipulation of our environment. Conspiracy theorists allege that HAARP conducts research into mind control, extraterrestrial communication, and the creation of earthquakes and artificial auroras. Most recently, the conspiracist community has alleged that HAARP has been used to manipulate the weather, including the creation and/or targeting of Hurricanes Helene and Milton against Republican areas to limit their voter turnout during the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. 

Medbeds

At its extreme, the belief in the healing benefits of frequencies manifests in the so-called “medbed” conspiracy theory. Derived from portrayals in science fiction literature and movies, Medbeds are bogus medical devices thought to diagnose and treat any physical or psychological ailment in astonishingly short amounts of time. Medbeds are thought to use different healing frequencies to precisely target different medical conditions.

Several companies in the US now manufacture and sell medbeds, charging between $599 and $90,000 for a single piece of equipment. One such company, Tesla BioHealing, claims its medbed combines “light frequency, sound frequency, and intermittent electrical stimulation” to achieve miraculous results. Several makeshift medbed clinics have been set up in motels, charging patients hundreds of dollars to lie within large metal cylinders that vaguely resemble MRI machines or on beds next to “medbed cannisters.” Medbed believers claim that almost anything can be healed this way; “[a]s long as you believe, and your mind and body are in alignment with the right frequencies.” Though medbed manufacturers and distributors are careful to state that their products are not meant to replace traditional medical care, they also regularly make specific claims about ailments their products treat and provide ample customer testimonials citing outlandishly positive results. The promotional video for LifeForce Med Beds claims their products come with “one thousand preset frequencies that are used to kill, for example, bacteria, viruses, parasites, cancer, and stuff like that.” As a result of such claims, believers in medbeds may put off, delay, or desist needed medical care in favor of waiting for such treatments. Though in August of 2023, the Food and Drug Administration sent Tesla Biohealing a “warning letter” regarding its misleading claims, the FDA has yet to take any actions against other medbed manufacturers.

Most medbed believers think that national governments and other nefarious international actors have had access to medbed technology for years and deny their existence to prevent the public from accessing such powerful technology. Like other wellness-related conspiracies, this theory assumes that the government wants to keep the public sick because a sick populace is easier to control and manipulate to its whims. Many individuals who espouse QAnon-related beliefs also believe that former President Trump knows about medbed technology and will make them accessible to the public should he be re-elected. Romana Didulo, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Canada,” also promises her followers access to medbeds. 

Esoteric undercurrents in extremism, wellness, and spirituality 

How then, should we understand fashwave’s adoption of auditory frequency labels or the MAGA movement’s obsession with frequency-powered medbeds? The answer lies, at least in part, in the shared current of esotericism underlying each of these overlapping subcultures. 

A precise definition of esotericism is highly debated and evolving, but most scholars agree that the concept denotes a loose set of beliefs in a secret, or otherwise-rejected, knowledge base to which only a select few have access that, when accessed, promises the possibility of sloughing off the restraints of modernity. 

Esotericism has long played a role in extremist and conspiracism cultures. Much has been made of the influence of various esoteric traditions on the development of Nazism. But other far-right movements contain esoteric strands, and contemporary far-right groups and individuals show deep and persistent connections with esoteric currents. Back on our fashwave YouTube channel, VRIL’s videos evoke esoteric imagery and symbolism common in neo-Nazi aesthetics, some explicitly referencing foundational esoteric works including Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. For the far-right, esotericism provides an alternative worldview that legitimizes a perception of struggle against an established mainstream, in search of an ancient and superior identity. 

Contemporary wellness and spirituality also feature significant aspects of esotericism, claiming to provide practitioners and customers with alternative knowledge, rejected by the mainstream, that will mediate their current physical, emotional, or spiritual ailments. Like esotericism’s manifestation in radical politics, esoteric wellness practices are framed as a rejection of, or at minimum, in tension with, mainstream cultural belief systems. Practitioners position themselves and their practices, however accurately, as outside the dominant socio-cultural tradition. Instead, these practitioners claim to offer a secret knowledge that can not only empower recipients but may also allow them to step outside of the boundaries of their material reality. Esotericism resonates with spiritualists and wellness practitioners who have experienced failings with, feel disempowered by, or generally distrust the mainstream medical tradition. 

In this way, extremism, conspiracy theories, spirituality, and wellness all align in addressing a yearning for greater self-efficacy and a deeply held conviction that secret, empowering knowledge exists and can set one free from one’s experienced constraints.^[3] Frequency beliefs are just one example in which the esoteric undercurrents in each of these communities have drawn them together, including three key esoteric elements these communities share.

First, audio frequency beliefs provide a greater sense of agency for spiritualists and fashwave listeners who enjoy non-standard tuning frequency music, teenagers who use 6 hz meditations to reality shift, and members of the MAGA movement who seek to heal their medical conditions with medbeds. In one of the only existing studies on reality shifters, researchers concluded that reality shifting likely “increase[s] practitioners’ sense of self-efficacy.”  Shifting“may in part be a way of trying to feel more sense of control in a world that feels more and more dangerous.” For individuals who rely on the healing power of frequencies, the possibility of healing frequencies enables them to take control over health conditions that have stunted their lives or push back against a medical system that has failed to help them. 

Second, frequency beliefs also promise the empowerment of secret knowledge that has been rejected or concealed by the cultural or scientific establishment. This countercultural impulse runs deep in the far-right. The 440 hz conspiracy, for example, closely mirrors other far-right conspiracies that allege an immense plot to harm or subdue the public. These plots, these communities claim, are relics of modernity, and underneath them lie greater and deeper truths waiting to be revealed. The fascist right tends to “see fascism as something esoteric, hidden and ever-present,” a deeper truth that can be unlocked if given the right key. Wellness and spirituality believers similarly reject what they view as the corrupted knowledge of the establishment and instead claim to possess and disseminate access to “ancient wisdoms” like fetishized Tibetan singing bowls. 

Both promise to reveal hidden and underlying knowledge that can bring believers closer to these deeper “truths.” Esoteric practices often discard notions of truth based on reason, logic, or scientific accuracy and instead revolve around “dimensions of truth inaccessible to rational experience.” Esotericism scholars refer to this as gnosis, a form of private and individualistic truth that drives myriad esoteric practices and can be seen in devoted users of non-standard tuning frequency music, in medbed patients who testify to the healing of their medical ailments, or in young people who deeply believe in their reality shifting experiences. It can also be seen in crucial defenses of fascism and, more recently, informing the neoreactionary accelerationism of Nick Land. 

Finally, frequency beliefs offer the possibility of transcending one’s material circumstances, shedding the burdens of modernity. Of the communities examined above, reality shifters make this desire the most explicit, but each demonstrates a yearning for a transcendent escape: if the international conspiracy would stop oppressing the public via a harmful tuning standard, if the governments would release medbed technology to the public, or more personally, if one can perfect one’s reality shifting technique, the oppressive nature of modernity could be escaped or transformed. Explaining the appeal of reality shifting, a psychologist writes:

There’s such an existential crisis that … younger generations are dealing with, not knowing if our planet is going to be around to sustain human life and future generations. Then the covid pandemic has interrupted childhood, youth, young adult rites of passage as well as normal life … . So, it isn’t surprising “that people are trying to figure out how to cope or how to maybe induce for themselves a, quote, ‘reality’ that’s more pleasant.

The neofascist right ultimately seeks a form of transcendence, often in the form of palingenetic rebirth of a nation. In the case of the militant accelerationist milieu with which our fashwave channel VRIL is loosely associated, this transcendence involves an Evolian “revolt against the modern world,” an idea that has inspired violence on more than one occasion. 

What, in the end, does this tell us about the connection between extremism and wellness? Each seeks an alternative, esoteric explanation of the ills of mainstream society, and attempts to reassert self-efficacy that will allow believers to transcend these ills. Put differently, wellness and right-wing politics are, somewhat surprisingly, meeting the same needs. The need to know, to feel capable of altering one’s circumstances, and to believe that there is more to this world than what one can see, if one can only be told where to look, or listen.

^[1] The extent of Azov Brigade’s current neofascist leanings are disputed, but likely underestimated by western media.

^[2] Though not addressed in this note, it should be noted that there exists a body of scientific research on various negative effects of some auditory frequencies, including the harmful effects of inaudible ultrasonic frequencies. Most recently discussed as a possible explanation for so-called “Havana syndrome” experienced by U.S. diplomats in Cuba and Russia, ultrasonic frequencies do have the ability to harm humans. This topic is highly contested, still being researched, and would require its own research note to fully investigate. 

^[3] Right wing movements, wellness, and spirituality practitioners share other esoteric undercurrents not present in the subject of this article, including search of an authentic manner of living and homeland, which can and should be explored in further research.