Nazism & Wokeness — Part 1: The Anti-Art Dogma of Cultural Fascism

The strange new tyranny that’s subjugating our creator class.

“Our present political worldview, current in Germany, is based in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must indeed be attributed to the state.” — Adolf Hitler

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime closely monitored what artists living under their domination were creating, and established a strict set of rules regarding what constituted good, German art, and what constituted depraved, Jewish art. Those who were accused of dabbling in “degenerate” art were publicly humiliated, stripped of their jobs, and even jailed.

When looking at the monstrous rancor that lurks beneath Woke orthodoxy, you’ll realize that the times and tactics of absolutism haven’t changed much since the Third Reich.

I’ve previously written on my bitter blood feud with today’s Woke culture, especially when it comes to its treatment of creators who are considered “problematic” according to their rigid, hyper-progressive values, and I generally did it with the seriousness of a jester at work, along with whatever cheap hard liquor I had on hand.

However, I’ve noticed too many frightening parallels between the ways that the Nazis of the past handled artists who didn’t subscribe wholeheartedly to their hateful gospel, and the ways Woke Folk of the present handle artists who, well, don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to their hateful gospel, that I simply couldn’t let them slip by unnoticed by my meager audience.

It’s a sledgehammer shame when I realize that my typical brand of brutal sarcasm isn’t enough to properly highlight the Gestapo-enforcement of cultural cleanliness that’s displayed by Wokeness.

But let me be vodka-clear about the intentions of my writing this 8-part series:

I do this to sound the alarm about the future of our artistic class, and not merely to hurl loaded accusations at a creed that I’d merrily shove into oncoming traffic and dispose of in the Hudson River at my earliest convenience.

And so, it is with this first, painful installment that I examine the basic overarching traits that both Nazism and Wokeness share regarding their treatment of artists who don’t share their views.

Poisonous Doctrines

Under Nazi rule, only art that celebrated such towering ideas as racial purity, militarism, and obedience were allowed.

Woke Folk are working towards a cultural milieu in which only art that celebrates such towering ideas as diversity, inclusion, and feminism is allowed.

In one doctrine, only true German artistic expression could exist, with a vindictive disdain for anything remotely Jewish.

In the other, only artistic expression from the “oppressed” and the “marginalized” can exist, with a vindictive disdain for anything remotely straight, white, and male.

For the Nazis, it was “blood & soil”. For the Woke Folk, it’s intersectionality.

But really, at the heart of these dangerous ideologies, it’s identity politics, the tendency for people of particular groups — like religion, race, social background, etc. — to form exclusive alliances.

It’s the negation of the primacy of the individual, is what it is.

Both of these credos stress the importance of the tribe, of viewing the world through the simplistic, primal lens of “us and them”.

But the crux of art is that it’s a messy, personal, and unruly process, and can’t thrive when its practitioners aren’t allowed to communicate from the gut and the loins. There’s a raw, atavistic strain that courses through the veins of history’s greatest creators, something untamable that’s bound to sicken everyone despite the carnivorous urges we all keep shackled with social concepts like “propriety” and “sophistication”.

And one of the blunt trauma truths about art is that, in its purest form, it pledges no allegiance to any race, gender, political party, or other groups, and is an unadulterated representation of an artist’s unique vision, regardless of the comfort or revulsion it elicits in their audiences.

There was no room for individuality when it came to bringing about the Thousand-Year Reich, and there’s certainly no room for it in bringing about “Social Justice”.

A Culture Of Fear

Point 23 of Document №1708-PS: The program of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) stated: “We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.”

Artists under Nazi rule weren’t only discouraged from creating “un-German” art, they were severely punished for it, resulting in a creative class kept in check by terror. It didn’t take much more than a few misplaced musical notes or incorrect brush strokes to attract the wrath of a deranged regime.

Things are nowhere near as bad for artists now, but a similar kind of fear is spreading throughout our community of creators. That New Fear is that of offending a small yet strangely influential group of political correctness junkies whose 194-decibel opinions make a perfect couple with their hollow Social Justice philosophy.

In a Vanity Fair interview, Joker director Tod Phillips expressed his concern about the hypersensitive times we’re currently living in and their negative impact on those in the once-bulletproof field of comedy:

“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies — I think that what comedies in general all have in common — is they’re irreverent.”

Phillips isn’t the only comedy filmmaker to lament the death of emotional resilience in today’s audiences; Terry Gilliam, in an Independent interview, joins in the frustration of trying to entertain people when they’re so determined to be shocked and angered by pop culture:

“People work so hard to be offended now. I don’t know why I’m doing it. It’s not fun anymore.”

Many top comedians are now refusing to perform at colleges out of fear of aggrieving a few fragile students who know nothing about life.

More than anyone else, those who work in comedy should have the freedom to express out loud what the rest of us only think, with little more than a few ruffled feathers and occasional denunciations from obscure religious groups to fear.

We should all feel a little uneasy when our professional anarchists cower from the Tyranny of Offense.

Feelings Matter More Than Craft

The types of art not allowed in Nazi Germany were those considered by Hitler to be “an insult to German feeling.”

Dwell on that for a moment.

Because Hitler’s own personal tastes in the arts became a law, a standard by which all works were judged, if a piece of art insulted “German feeling”, it was in immediate danger of being seized and destroyed.

Because Hitler was disgusted by “Jewish” art, guilty works and their creators were criminalized.

Because Hitler was moved by heroic and romantic art, innocent works and their creators were lionized.

We’re lucky in that we don’t have a single all-powerful gatekeeper monitoring the trends and fads of our arts.

But we’re unlucky in that we’re subject to the views of many shrill gatekeepers with too many Twitter followers, doing their damnedest to nag the masses into sharing their pop culture appetites.

We’re living in an era when art is judged less on its craft, and more on how it offends.

Today, feelings are the Final Test that film, TV, music, books, and other creative mediums are subjected to before approval.

Instead of critiquing the quality of jokes in edgy comedians’ specials, critics focus on how “out of touch” they are.

Instead of critiquing the quality of storytelling in a new movie or TV show, critics focus on the “lack of representation” in the cast.

Instead of critiquing the quality of writing in the debut YA novel of a new author, critics focus on whether the author’s identity qualifies them to write about characters different from them.

We’re seeing less and less talk about the creative choices artists make, and more and more on whether they adhere to the progressive ideas that just happen to be in vogue.

Countless works of art from talented, renowned artists were destroyed in Nazi Germany because they were an “insult” to a certain “feeling”. This was a genuine horror that should’ve been a simple lesson to learn and retain, an eternal demonstration of what happens when a group appoints itself as the arbiter of a society’s esthetic tradition, an example that all who aim to promote the arts should have ingrained into their very bone marrow.

And yet.

Woke Folk are not Nazis.

But goddammit, I’m going to shove them against the wall and force them to deny it.

They’ve spent too much air time labeling those they disagree with “fascists” to realize that their own terror tactics were inherited from a movement they claim to be against.

The resemblance between the two is chilling.

When it comes to defining art & culture, both Nazis and Woke Folk drank from the same well, or at least from adjacent ones. And whatever they drank, it sure gave them a years-long crapulence that encouraged them to clumsily yet determinedly take a jackhammer to freedom of expression while strutting around like the Heroes of the Future they think they are.

The best villains are ones who truly believe that they’ve got morality on their side, but that only works in fiction.

In reality, these types of villains have destructive consequences, even when they claim that it’s for our own good, that all of the necessary damage they’ve caused was in service of bringing about a legitimate Arcadia that’s well within our grasp if we surrendered our thoughts to a new absolutism just a little bit more.

Those who’ve claimed to have cracked the code of achieving utopia, especially when it means silencing fugitive ideas and voices, should be met with fierce skepticism and avoidance.

If there’s one lesson that we should all learn from the atrocities of the 20th century, I vote for that one.

Stay tuned for future installments where I dive deeper into the sinister similarities between the anti-art dogmas of Nazism and Wokeness.