I saw someone toot a largely-accurate but missing-important-subtlety toot about the nazi degenerate art exhibition and I feel like my special interest has been activated
anyway Long Live Woke Art
If art wasn’t powerful, fascist groups wouldn’t spend so much time banning it.
but don’t get it wrong! The Nazis didn’t put on their “Degenerate Art” show because they had bad taste. It was an important part of their growing soft power. They didn’t destroy those artworks: They stole them and displayed them (albeit surrounded by white supremacist graffiti). And it was a roaring success: The exhibition toured the “nation” to sellout crowds.
Those artists’ real crime was their refusal to support the nazis. The nazis couldn’t win over their blessing so they tried to steal it instead, with feigned disgust covering up their jealousy.
Just think of how many musicians have had to tell Donald Trump not to use their music in his campaigns.
Just look at OpenAI half-mocking half-loving the Ghibli style with all that stolen artwork. It’s no surprise that AI image generation has become the aesthetic of fascism.
The nazis supposedly destroyed most of the artwork that they confiscated… yet it kept turning up decades later. They couldn’t publicly admit that they liked it really.
On the other hand, it’s suggested that some nazis took a more opportunistic approach. You could ban your least favourite part of a musical genre if you could make the case that it didn’t align with white supremacist ideals.
Jazz was regulated. Jazz was regulated.
Yes art is powerful: Degenerate art even moreso: It’s so powerful that fascists don’t [just] want to ban it: They want to own it too.
Watch out: The AI technocrats don’t and won’t see live coding as something to be stopped, but something to be stolen: For profit and power, exactly the same as with those degenerate paintings.
In response to all of the above, artistic groups like Art & Liberty took defiantly international stands against persecution, with their opening manifesto released in both French and Arabic, inseparably side-by-side.
Their movement contributed to real change within Egypt while also transforming surrealism indefinitely.
Their slogan was: Long Live Degenerate Art (translated from both Arabic and French) (they reclaimed the “degenerate” label thrown at them).
In 2025 we’re seeing queer-centered art like drag getting banned. We’re seeing people getting locked up for expressing support for Palestinian people. And now the White House is seeking to confiscate woke art.
perhaps we need Long Live Degenerate art more than ever
back to the wikiblogardenite