HELP: looking for sources on fascist aesthetics. Why fascists (Nazi Germany, other fascist countries, and current fascist movements) like minimalism, Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture, and “elegant” beauty.
@mariyadelano I assume you've already read Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto", yes? (Futurism started as an artistic movement, but a couple of years later he founded a Futurist Party and then a year later merged it with Mussolini's Fascist Party, so that's certainly a sign of something …)
@mariyadelano this could also have to do with the simplification of narratives and mostly the individualist buddhist-style proclaim yourself as your own entity within the boundaries of the tools we give you to do so.
It's all a bit of a mess at this point taking into account how many things have gone wild lately.
Anyways, really interested on this, and a bit sad I can't remember any book in english language ("Tu y yo, Objetos de lujo" has some stuff about this if i remember). Good luck.
@mariyadelano yeah it's been a while, that along stoicism that seem to fuel the "natural intelligent ultrapowerful prototype of what masculine supremacy" looks like.
Sometimes they're just chill people, but a lot of economists like to talk about those kind of behaviours -and- thow some anti-poor anti-community propaganda with it. Not direct fascists, quite a bit on the favourite reads of a bit too many fascists, or flat earthers.
Nothing new under the sun, just a more asiatic Übermensch.
@mariyadelano The fascists weren't into minimalism the first time around. Art Deco, sure, but Art Deco has flourishes and decoration and stylized statues. I would equate minimalism with modernism which arose as a reaction to fasc and so would be anti-fasc in the initial context
The fasc liked elaborate blackletter typefaces, so the minimalist Helvetica was the anti-fascist, humanist reaction. Similarly, minimalist rectangles of modernist architecture were anti-fascist in the 1950s
@mariyadelano Tangent from your core subject here, but as someone whose body and life have never, ever fit within minimalist aesthetics, I've always felt excluded from spaces/events/companies that exude that feeling. I'm never going to be sleek and skinny. I'm never going to be pure and clean. I'm an overgrown hydrangea, not a single succulent in a white ceramic pot. And that makes me afraid I'm going to be uprooted and composted if I dare venture past my own messy garden into that sterility.
@textualdeviance that’s not really a tangent. Fascist aesthetics are literally meant to exclude people they view as “undesirable”. Which happen to be… most people.
@mariyadelano I kind of wonder sometimes if the recent maximalist trend is a response to that. Younger generations seem to be considerably more tolerant and welcoming of diversity and imperfection, so it makes sense that they would reject the rigid conformity of minimalism.
@textualdeviance I swear I’ve read an essay that argued that but I don’t remember where. Also seen tiktoks arguing it but those were considerably less researched (as expected)
@thrilway a very particular kind of it. They were very picky with what art they liked. That’s partially why it’s worth studying - how they decided what to include and exclude
@mariyadelano When I moved to DC, the first exhibit I saw at the Smithsonian was the degenerate art exhibit. The got as much of the nazi version as they could and showed what Germany feared.
We discussed it a lot in college too, when I took rhetoric. Spent a couple of weeks on Triumph of the Will and what the Nazis loved and hated.
Worth mentioning that by-and-large fascists aren't pining for ancient Greece/Rome, but their view of it. Nobody ever mentions the garishly painted statues, for example.
The imaginary past of fascists is largely (and I'm speaking here as someone who doesn't have focus on ancient world nor fascism) affected by the traditional great-man reading of history, which under-reports (or drops completely) the civil society and cultural practices.
Also worth mentioning that both Italy and Germany (and Greece, Spain) that had fascist juntas saw themselves as part/inheritors or Rome.
Would also be worth clarifying do fascist juntas outside the former Roman Empire look to the ancient world of Mediterranean as inspiration, or did the named juntas look to it as it was "their" history?
@mariyadelano I know a bit about the art they banned (because it ruled) and there are interesting similarities across totalitarian governments. Less about why modern day fascists are split between fetishizing (an inaccurate idea of) Classical art and just being tacky af.
@youseeatortoise the art they banned is exactly part of what I'm looking for! I remember studying that they banned art they viewed as "immoral" and "degenerate" and then imposed one ideal of "good art” And that those value judgments were not far removed from why they wanted to kill misfits / people they thought didn't fit the ideal.
@mariyadelano@youseeatortoise Somewhat related: the CIA funded abstract expressionists and jazz musicians, among others, as a cultural counter to the USSR, as they were seen to represent freedom and individualism, in contrast to socialist realism.
@mariyadelano@philmoscovitch Hahah you may have hit on one of my special interests; apologies if I'm stating things you already knew. :) Anyway I love talking about this stuff.
@youseeatortoise@philmoscovitch no no this is exactly what I needed. My brain is a jumble of things I learned about this over many years in very different contexts. A class here, a reading there, a video somewhere else.
These summaries are exactly what I need right now to remember what I’m even looking for
@mariyadelano Germany, Italy, and Russia all had avant-garde movements that involved expressionism, abstraction, and breaking with the past. In Germany, Dada was anarchist/left-communist, in Italy it was anarchist before it went fascist, and in Russia it was left-communist and sometimes anarchist. It's interesting to me that the former was explicitly anti-government while the latter two were more aligned with an ascendant regime. 1/
@mariyadelano It's obvious why the Nazis hated Dada; it was all about the absurdity of war, it was anti-fascism (many Dadaists fled or took up arms against the Nazis), many of the folks involved were queer and/or Jewish. Expressionism and Dadaism were most of what made up the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937. 2/
while it is full of secret-society conspiracy theories, IIRC the first couple of chapters of the book "The Messianic Legacy" discuss the use of ritual and accompanying visuals the Nazis used to reinforce their vision to participants and onlookers.
if the book is citing sources, those might have good info.
(I haven't read the full book, and the bits I did read were decades ago.)
@mariyadelano I might have a few books on this topic or at least tangential to it in my library. I'll go dig into that when I get home this evening. It's a pretty interesting topic in terms of cultural anthropology.
@mariyadelano@skinnylatte
I think you’re looking for Walter Benjamin, maybe Theodor Adorno (the original “cultural marxists”) and Guy Debord and the Situationists.
If y’all are curious why I’m looking this up… I have a theory that we’ve been falling for fascist ideology in certain minimalist and privacy-coded movements in tech recently.
Trying out the new Arc Search app very suddenly felt familiar in a horrifying way.
Chasing homogenous ideals of “elegant” and “perfect” aesthetic leads to fascism whether it’s sculpture or app UI.
@justin I've been so desensitized to that because I always logged into Chrome to sync my bookmarks 😅 but admittedly... it is weird. Why is it required?
I am feeling all kinds of weird about my Arc browser on desktop now. Might switch back to Safari at the end of this whole saga… Sigh.
@mariyadelano See, I don’t use Google products either for the same reason. It just seems like too much. I trust Apple’s work in on-device privacy. Maybe it’s all marketing, but I know the settings work for my privacy needs.
@justin Apple is pretty good about it all. Firefox is very good from what I've heard. But also.... I'm now getting very skeptical about internet privacy as a concept hence the whole fascism question. I feel like the ideal of privacy has been used to sell us on visions of things that lead…. somewhere not great.
Trying to untangle this whole mess for myself before I write about it publicly hence the research. There's something so insidious about certain ideals of "protecting" people.
@justin like how different is trusting a tech company to protect your data and your internet experience from malicious parties trying to steal / abuse it vs trusting a "benevolent" dictator to protect you / your family from evil foreigners, dissidents, and criminals?
Something is off in a weird way here and I can't fully put my finger on it.
I'm not expert on this particular subject and eagerly wait what you're coming up with.
But to clarify your hypothesis: are you planning on separating for-profit organisations (Google, telegram) from common-good organisations (mozilla, signal)? Fearmongering and demagogues from basic caution and politicking?
Also may I suggest comparing to cues of fascism: pining for imaginary past, non-importance of facts.
@iju@justin trying to establish a framework for analyzing examples before seeing where they fall. So, more specifically: trying to figure out relevant cues and characteristics of fascism and fascist aesthetics first and then looking at specific companies / products within that analytical framework.
We're probably approaching from different scientific traditions. Please disregard anything coming up from me in your notices that you're not finding helpful.
And to repeat what I said earlier: I'm eagerly waiting for any results! And all results are interesting, so please say few words even if your base hypothesis fails :)
@mariyadelano@justin This feels related to the cybersecurity "cult", and the actual authority cult in these two fields.
Like, in the way where it's not even appropiate to evaluate security or privacy measures as an individual, you're either following the Blessed Good Practice or you're an idiot that's putting their life at risk and a baby that can't think and make your own decisions, with absolutely no middle ground.
@mariyadelano@justin stay in our tidy walled garden. Don't go out there into the darkness, there may be dragons!
Never install software we haven't vetted for you, bad people might have done bad things to it! Don't worry, we'd never do bad things to you, despite the fact that we'll never show you how any of the things we build for you works. We don't need to, because we're trustworthy, and you trust us!
@justin@mariyadelano while I used to trust Google and no longer do, Apple has always struck me as the least trustworthy and most user-hostile of the big tech corporations. What is it that makes you feel positive about them?
@mariyadelano that's an interesting thesis and it wouldn't surprise me at all if there was truth in it. I also wonder to what extent it relates to mind/body and/or soul/body dualism – to the idea that the flesh is dirty and mortal and faintly disgusting, while the mind-spirit-soul-whatever is somehow perfect (or perfectible) and pure and (implausibly) immortal.
There is, in my opinion, something deeply unhealthy about this concept, but western culture is riddled with it.
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