Recently I’m seeing more and more fashy people hailing AI “art”, and while I might have made a Twitter thread on the subject a year ago, I want to dig deeper in what lies behind the scenes, besides of “woke mind virus”, “the transes were mean to my VTuber oshi for plaing the wizard game, billions must die”, “artists are not REAL workers, thus they must learn to weld” (which itself can be an art), etc. I want to write an article about the subject.
I personally see and even experience fascistic work ethics on a daily basis (I live in Hungary), however I still need to see the underlying workings, also I can point the readers to further investigate such things. Also I need more context for fascism’s relationship to art besides futurism (will be very relevant to geek gatekeeping), marble pillars, and “returning to tradition by honoring the great masters”.
Fascism is more about control and there’s a lot of pivoting to maintain the appearance of authority. So there is a lot of hypocrisy on topics that are often claimed that they are just totally against. Fascist leaders work with highly regarded artists that will have them or that are forced to work with them. Fascists want to look cool and well put together, so art is crucial to them. Meanwhile they will say art is not a real career and will hate art that doesn’t support the latest narrative.
There’s not a strict black and white on the fringes of their ideologies, it’s more what they can use to increase power.