Nazism & Wokeness — Part 2: “Problematic” Is The New “Degenerate”

Woke Folks’ appropriation of existing words to describe offensive art is actually a Third Reich tactic.

Click here for the previous installment in this series.

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” — Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany

The term “degenerate art” was initially adopted by the Nazi party in the 1920s to describe modern art, but soon after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, was used to refer to works, many by internationally-acclaimed artists, that were considered to be un-German, Jewish, or Communist.

In fact, the use of “degenerate” as a slur for unacceptable art was so pervasive that there was even an art exhibition dedicated to these works called simply the “Degenerate Art Exhibition”, which featured 650 confiscated works from museums and art collections throughout the Reich.

“Degenerate” was the watchword created by a demented regime to signal to the hoi polloi the types of art that should be hated and ostracized from their collective consciousness.

However, this approach isn’t a cultural terror tactic that only exists in the confines of high school “required reading” textbooks. A similar anti-art ploy is still very much alive, reanimated by Wokeness’ own SS (“Soldiers of Sensitivity”) and utilized with an almost religious fanaticism.

Today, a different yet no less hateful ideology has weaponized a once-apolitical word to describe any form of entertainment that disturbs its porcelain progressive ideals, and deploys it with vomitous overkill.

That word?

“Problematic”.

That wretched buzzword that has not only dominated our national discourse around political and social issues, but has now infected culture criticism.

Everything is problematic these days.

Movies, TV shows, books, jokes, comedians, comic books, music — it’s all a “problem” that only the highest SJW virtues of feminism, intersectionality, and righteous shouting can solve.

While “problematic” isn’t the only hazy hyper-leftist lingo used by Woke Folk (there’s also “diversity”, “inclusion”, “rape culture”, “white privilege”, “toxic masculinity”, and many more), but this particular term’s (over)use to describe innocuous works of art is haunted by a dark past that we should have learned from but obviously haven’t.

Below are just a few of the seemingly infinite examples of “problematic” being used to describe art & culture of the last few years:

Film

• Hollywood Reporter Film Critics Debate: Does ‘Joker’ Have a Problematic Punchline?
• James Bond: 10 Most Problematic Moments, Ranked

Literature

• Problematic Classics: Four Questions to Ask When Beloved Books Haven’t Aged Well
• Social Media is Blowing Up Over Problematic Young Adult Novels

TV

• Visible Shows TV’s ‘Problematic Progress’ in LGBTQ Representation
• Why the Friends TV Series Is Problematic

Comic Books

• John Carpenter’s Joker Is WAY More Problematic Than Todd Phillips’
• Can you still like old, offensive, problematic comics? Industry pros discuss

Music

• A Less Problematic ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ Courtesy Of John Legend
• ‘So flawed and problematic’: why the term ‘world music’ is dead

It seems that every bit of entertainment we consume has the stain of problematic-ness on it. We should probably kill all art, just to reserve ourselves a seat on the right side of history.

(Here’s a depressing game: type in your favorite band, actor, or cartoon from your youth into Google along with the word “problematic” — there’s a good chance that Vox, Buzzfeed, or Jezebel has written an article on it.)

I have a psychotic animosity for this kind of partisan, red meat jargon; its shadowed, ever-changing definitions gives it too much power, and because it’s handed down from On High — hack academics, politicians, Hollywood celebrities, etc. — we’re just supposed to accept its application without question. These words are so nebulous and inconsistent, and yet are used so forcefully, that to question them is a surefire way to be slapped with some other kind of vague buzzword as punishment.

And the repetition. My God, the repetition!

Woke Folk really believe that if they throw these terms enough times at something that they think needs to be politicized, they’ll stick by sheer force of volume and reiteration.

In the case of “problematic”, the idea is that guilty art and artists can be assigned an absolute Scarlet Letter, that the accused harbors something questionable and should be avoided to preserve the delicate emotional balance of an audience that, it’s assumed, can’t determine its own threshold for offense.

Just keep calling everything “problematic” and hopefully the world will start to vote the same way you do.

It’s tempting to assert that “problematic” is just a progressive cliche uttered by blue check Twitter users and journalists too lazy to peruse a thesaurus.

But I have my doubts.

There’s something deeply sinister about appropriating an existing politically-neutral word to forward an unabashedly political set of ideas, and a dangerous one to boot.

“Problematic” is now tainted by an identitarian ethos that cares more about protecting feelings than protecting freedoms, all while dressing itself up in the principles of “fairness” and “equality”.

It’s a perverse mass-manipulation maneuver that would provoke Goebbels himself to shed tears of “why didn’t I think of that” envy.

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