A six-part Netflix documentary series entitled Wild Wild West follows a story about religion, guns, militias, cults, wiretapping, fraud, murder and individual and communal sovereignty, writes The Daily Beast. Wild Wild West is assembled from hundreds of hours of archival footage. It focuses on the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru in flowing robes who created a movement founded on ideas of peace, compassion and sexual inhibition. His followers were known as “sannyasins” and came from the “cream of the cultural crop,” wore red clothes and took part in meditation and other therapies. The goal was to spread this spirituality around the globe and be easily marketable to consumers via retail books and international centers. In 1981, it ran afoul of Indian authorities and relocated to a 60,000-acre ranch in Wasco County, Oregon. But the neighboring town of Antelope, made up of elderly Christian retirees, was not happy, and a battle soon began brewing with ranchers and farmers on one side, and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s second-in-command, “secretary” Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Silverman), on the other. Watch the trailer for Wild Wild West below.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
