#2: know yr enemy

on being familiar with fascist aesthetics and propaganda as both self-preservation and public responsibility

This week, a bunch of what appear to be astroturf accounts claiming to be various regional groups in the arts “against woke ideology” appeared out of nowhere, with the same template and the same kind of language. Lots of people in my orbit were drawn into interacting with them. I briefly tweeted a thread about how astroturf-y they looked and then deleted; honestly, the less time spent even talking about this extremely obvious attempt at trolling the better. But one aspect of the language they use leapt out to me as something worthy of exploration in this newsletter—its “positivity” and “rationality.” 

The far right has a long history with this tactic. It’s an attempt to get their ideas and positions reflected in mainstream spaces, which shifts the Overton window. Instructive here is the story of the purposefully blandly named Institute for Historical Review, a propaganda vehicle for Holocaust denial founded in 1978 by notable US white supremacist Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby and British National Front member David McCalden. Over and over, the IHR has tried to lure respectable historians into its orbit, dangling invitations with big cash attached to “reasonable debate” over subjects beyond litigation, like the physical existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. While the IHR may remain a marginal organization, one can easily see how well this tactic has worked overall in the US, particularly within but not exclusive to the last four years. The rightward shift in US politics since the ‘80s certainly owes not just to rightward provocation but to the prominence of the the Democratic Leadership Council/New Democrat crew within the Democratic Party, but it can’t be forgotten that the DLC’s “Third Way”—that is, the firm pro-business centrism that has defined the last several decades of Democratic Party leadership—was in and of itself a response to Reaganism. (While not as far right as the IHR and its assorted neo-Nazi associates, Reagan was certainly the most prominent representative of the hard, evangelical right in the political mainstream since Goldwater.)

Why am I talking about all of this in a newsletter about culture media and its intersection with politics? Because it’s clear as day to me right now that if you’re in culture media, or even media at all, you need to be paying attention explicitly to what’s going on on the far right. 

I’ve been paying attention to the far right for a long time. I grew up in a punk scene in which there were definitely skinheads, racist ones as well as SHARPs, and I sure as shit got fucked with for being a tiny queer Jew now and again. I started paying attention for my own survival. I’ve written before about the long-standing political tension within punk—provocation cuts both ways—and it’s worth noting that neo-Nazis specifically took advantage of this, of the power of music to move a person, and of the strong bonds that youth subcultures can build, in the ‘80s. The reason that there aren’t as many actively racist punk bands these days as there are metal bands is that the scene in general made an active effort to eject them; say what you will of crews like FSU (who like, weren’t exactly friendly to me either) but they would absolutely kick the shit out of any racist skin who showed up.

I’m hesitant to exceptionalize the Trump presidency—I very much think of him as America’s id, and that one of the largest differences between him and any other president is that he’s too self-involved to care about propriety. But he definitely has white nationalists working for him, and that cannot be ignored. He’s clearly always paid attention to the far right on the internet (he loves those memes!), and while they often appear to be angry at him for not being super effective or for not being quite as explicitly racist as they’d like him to be, it’s clear that he’s given them a new level of legitimacy in public discourse. 

This requires journalists—including arts and culture journalists, because what the IHR and Rock Against Communism stories above should illustrate is that the far right is constantly trying to get a foothold in mainstream culture and explicitly understands that the arts and scholarship are good vehicles—to be familiar with what the far right is saying. Looking through those astroturfed accounts that I mentioned up top, seeing all those appeals to positivity and rationality, I thought about the Harper’s letter, which I briefly touched on in the last issue of this newsletter—about how purposefully vague the text of the letter is, and how it only comes into clear focus once you know that it’s been signed by a group of notable transphobes and that it’s responding to some very distinct events in media. It might be tempting to see someone talking about “anti-woke” or “anti-idpol” politics as kicking back against liberal representational politics (a legitimate thing to critique! A thing I have many critiques of!), when they’re actually just mad about, like, the current Black uprising being covered, or trans people existing, or whatever. 

I highly recommend Leonard Zeskind’s Blood and Politics, a deeply comprehensive history of white nationalism from the ‘50s through the first decade of this century. I will probably never stop recommending this book to people. The podcast “I Don’t Speak German” has been an invaluable reference to me when it comes to the current moment. Both of these resources will lead you to more. (As a note, I am wary of the ADL as a source, because they are a Zionist organization who continue to conflate support of Palestine with anti-semitism.) I could have spent a lot of time listing sources here, but these are two good starting points.

When you’re covering an artist, it pays to do some background research—just in general, we could all stand to do more background research, as it makes for better pieces than the hastily thrown-up writeups and immediate reactions that are currently in vogue. I get that most publications are functioning on skeleton crews right now, and that the old ad-driven model relies on fast clicks and tons of fluffy content to offset more carefully researched longform work. But it also pays to spend some time reading old interviews with the artist if possible (including in sources that aren’t big-name), looking into the history of the label they’re on (if they are on one), and what other artists they chose to associate with and promote. What aesthetics and signifiers are they using? Are they parroting far-right talking points?

Let me be 100% clear that I’m not in any way advocating for a blacklist, because a) that’s weird and counter to my own ideas about press freedom and also the abilities of people to grow and change, and b) it’s not nuanced enough; there is a lot of depth and there are degrees of proximity to this kind of thing. (I’m as anti-fascist as they come, but by dint of having participated in underground culture for as long as I have I have had a number of sketchy acquaintances! You spin the web wide enough and it’ll catch everyone. Context is key.) It becomes pretty obvious once you’ve dug into these things for long enough who’s well-intentioned and ended up working with someone else who is explicitly steeped in far right ideology because they didn’t dig far enough themself, or because the knowledge wasn’t available to them at the time they made the decision, or because they didn’t think things through, and who is actively trying to push bigotry via art, advance an explicitly white nationalist agenda, or nod specifically to their far-right fanbase to let them know they’re welcome. I am advocating for careful and contextual decision-making. We choose to cover or not to cover artists all the time for any number of reasons, down to the extremely arbitrary “Do I like this, or can I hear the quality in it even if it doesn’t resonate with me.” Let this be one of many factors in your wheel of decision-making.

It’s not just the explicit far right either; careful, contextual decision-making and review could have stopped, say, that awful Billboard article attempting to rehab Ben from PWR BTTM (as a very conscious marketing tactic; it’s extremely clear from the article that Ben’s lawyer and management shaped the reporting therein). It matters whose stories we choose to tell, and how. Culture journalism may have varying ethical degrees of separation from its subjects, but it is always, even at the most DIY scale and done with the utmost genuine enthusiasm and love of music, marketing, simply because we live under a capitalist system in which culture and the arts are commoditized. Coverage sells records and makes careers possible—not always directly, as in the case of my own job, but most certainly indirectly. (Incidentally, there’s a lot of preciousness around music journalism as a craft that I will never understand; some of us work hard and do work we’re immensely proud of, and a well-written review or article that comes from the heart is a wonderful thing. It is possible to be critical of capitalism within the form. But it is not, and cannot be, a noble pursuit, not until we get free.)

At any rate, it’s super tempting to dunk on bigotry, and boy, does it get that ol’ engagement. But know that the people who create bait like the astroturf accounts I mentioned in the first paragraph—or the Harper’s letter—are counting on us to legitimate them by dunking on them (or by writing news blurbs about them), by bringing them into our spheres. They don’t operate rationally, despite the practiced veneer of rationality and the demands for debate, and they will not back down on their perspectives if you hit them with enough facts or appeals to humanity. They will always just keep shifting the goalposts, seeking to ensnare you and/or wear you out. You will always be dismissed as ridiculous, or a hater. You’re not going to get through. I’m not saying we ignore entirely that they exist; keep an eye on them, for sure. But there’s no reason to give them quarter. We cannot let them keep defining the playing field and figuring out the rules of engagement. If you’re an editor or writer who claims to be anti-racist and anti-fascist, knowing your enemy is part of the whole deal. 

Here’s some music that is good and to my knowledge un-sketchy, as I like the idea of ending with recommendations no matter what the subject is:

Accidente, Caníbal
Kamaal Williams, Wu Hen
Lauren Bousfield, Palimpsest
Demian Licht, Die Kraft
Katie Dey, mydata