icelandlesbian:

postmarxed:

tchaikovskaya:

tchaikovskaya:

for real tho, how long are liberals gonna pretend that “scathing” award show speeches and op-eds count as real, tangible resistance to trump???

to me, that’s the equivalent of a general rallying the troops on the battlefield but then not telling them to actually charge at the enemy so they just go back to their tents and congratulate themselves over how psyched up they are

but art is? violent resistance? art gets people jailed. art is a direct threat to dominant viewpoints. why do you think trump racks on the late night shows? they’re making him look like a fool. that is threatening. 

the fact that you guys are legitimately bashing political art– an incredibly powerful thing that gets people jailed because it changes minds, because it changes viewpoints, because it is a threat to the dominant fascist viewpoints– just shows that you’ve probably. it’s why journalists are jailed. it’s why poets are jailed. they are just as much a threat as guns. go outside. 

Art can be threatening. Art can expose powerful truths. Art can inspire real physical resistance to oppressive powers. That potential is why artists are targets of political prosecution. 

But art can also enormously fail to do any of these things. 

When art focusses again and again on exposing what is already obvious and fails to recognize an opponent that isn’t hurt by fact-checking, when art presents problems but offers fake symbolic solutions, when art congratulates itself for ‘speaking truth to power’ but nothing actually changes, art fails at all it’s revolutionary potential.

 And not surprisingly, the artists that are capable of inspiring actions that create real change are artists that are actually out there on the streets doing activism and putting all their skills- not just their art – towards creating real change. They know what inspired them personally to do something real, to take risks, and so they can be effective at inspiring the same feeling in others. The best poets are rebel-poets. The best political art has always been made by activists. 

Hollywood celebrities whose only contribution to change is a ‘scathing speech’ and talkshow hosts who do nothing real beyond sitting in from of a camera and poking fun at a fascists mannerisms and speech patterns are incapable of producing meaningful political art. They have never themselves felt the call to truly do something, to take real risks, so how can they inspire that feeling in others? They’re lying to themselves and their circle of artist friends about how revolutionary their work is when the truth is they haven’t even convinced themselves to do more than their day job.