Why Do Fascists Hate Good Art?
Short answer: because it fucks with them.
Fascists are profoundly uncomfortable with art that doesn’t behave. They don’t hate art in the abstract. On the contrary, they adore bad art. What they hate is art that won’t sit down, shut up, and reinforce the status quo.
Because at its core, fascism is an ideology for people who are scared of a complicated, nuanced world. They want clean lines, simple stories, and a clear list of good and evil.
Good art, on the other hand, is messy as hell. It asks annoying questions you don’t want to talk about, shouting instead of a cursory, soft whisper. Sometimes, good art contradicts itself or it’s just deeply goddamn weird. Good art refuses to explain itself neatly but leaves gaps. And that’s where the doubt seeps in.
What if none of this makes any goddamn sense, but that’s the entire point?
Absolute poison to fascists.
Good art rudely insists that humans are complicated and need nuance to understand. We’re flawed individuals with secret fears and desires, and maybe even internal monologues that don’t align with the approved, designated narrative.
That alone?
Unforgivable.
Fascism runs on myths. Big, dumb, emotional myths that aren’t rooted in history or economics. The Nation. Destiny. That kind of simple drivel. And good art? Well, that’s basically a high-powered myth-destroying machine that runs on empathy and the dangerous idea that we aren’t interchangeable Lego bricks.
Whereas fascism runs on certainty, good art suggests well…. Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe we’re both wrong and that’s okay?. Uncertainty feels like weakness to a fascist, and that might as well be death.
Empathy is an existential jump-scare to fascists. Nothing freaks them out more than accidentally empathizing with someone they were told to hate, whether it be immigrants, trans people, or librarians. You can’t dehumanize people once you’ve cried with their plight onscreen or felt your heart ache because of a poem. So obviously, now that poem or movie has to go.
Empathy is a loaded gun. And you can’t run a death cult effectively if your members stop to think what the actual hell are we doing?.
So fascists call good art degenerate. They always have. Doesn’t matter if they’re complaining about jazz, queer poetry, or literally anything else not made by someone less than. Fascists are deeply insecure weirdos with horrible taste and they can’t handle anything beyond the boring, accepted narrative.
Fascists need to believe there’s one true way to do art, because admitting that personal and artistic taste is subjective opens the door to admitting that power is arbitrary and maybe even fake. If beauty isn’t objective, then maybe hierarchies aren’t either. The whole ideological Jenga tower collapses.
Oops!
Good art makes fascists look fucking ridiculous.
The most dangerous thing art does, and this is the real killer, is remind people that their inner lives belong to them. Not to the country or dear leader. Them. You. That’s it.
Your grief, desire, and confusion aren’t resources to be mobilized. Fascism can’t tolerate this because it needs people flattened into one-dimensional symbols. Art insists that people stay human, even with the messy contradictions that come with our humanity.
Fascists burn books, smash sculptures, try to rewrite history, and ban music.
And in the end, it never lasts. The center is too rigid to hold. Good art keeps slipping through in jokes and songs, stories passed quietly from person to person.
You can’t kill the very human urge to make meaning out of chaos no matter how many flags you drape over it.