I've been thinking about how critiques of fascism and imperialism are re-appropriated by the right, often unconsciously. Example, colonel Jessup in a few good men, he's obviously the bad guy but go to the comments section of a video on the scene of "you can't handle the truth" and you will see a bunch of people defending him. It's like in jarhead when they are watching the helicopter scene from apocalypse now, originally conceived as an anti war film, they are comparing the americans in vietnam to the nazis which is why they play wagner, but now its being celebrated uncritically as "america, fuck yeah" by a bunch of marines. Another example is starship troopers memes used by /pol/, clearly the movie is lampooning fascism and us imperialism.
What I think explains this is that fascism, as Walter Benjamin says, is the 'the aestheticization of politics'. The difference is revolutionary progressive politics makes art political while reaction makes politics "artistic".
>Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. (…) Mankind, which in Homer’s time was a spectacle for the Olympian gods, has become one for itself. (…) Communism responds by politicizing art.Because of this heavy emphasis on aesthetics anything which uses the aesthetics of fascism, even from a critical point of view, functionally sort of becomes fascist, because fascism is largely aesthetics to begin with. It's like pornography, yes its just a depiction of sex but that doesn't mean the actors aren't
actually having sex. This is why parodies of fascism can't work because the parody often indistinguishable from the real thing. The only critiques of reactionary politics I've seen that don't fall into this are both dramatic (not parodies or comedies) and incredibly hamfisted in that they spell out FASH BAD in bold, flashing capital letters, ex: "V for Vendetta"
the movie not comic book.
Why can't rightoids distinguish parody? Is it purposeful (ex: Banepos
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