Go back to where you came from
"Fascists can't dance"
It is a universally acknowledged fact that Hitler was rejected from art school.
This is a joke in high school classrooms across the world: “Maybe if he’d been allowed into art school, he’d not go on to be the most evil man who ever lived, lol.”
I don’t need to explain to you why this is a problematic rhetoric.
What is interesting, however, is Hitler’s early interest in art. He was not really a creator (apart from some shitty watercolours of buildings), but a curator. He collected inspiration from artists to shape his view of the world. For example, he was obsessed with the Greeks and, specifically, the statue of Discobolus, a bronze statue of a muscular man leaning in preparation for throwing a discus.
Despite what we may have learned at school, Hitler did not love art. He loved imitation. He loved theft. He stole the swastika from ancient Indian texts.
Interestingly, Richard Wagner, an antisemitic composer of marches played at Nuremberg Rallies, among other military displays, employed legendary Jewish conductor Hermann Levi, and their work became inextricably linked.
What I am getting at here is that fascism, at its very core, is antithetical to creativity and art— two of the key drivers of empathy.
Fascists can hiijack a chorus. They can steal a symbol. They can march in time to someone else’s tune. But they will never write music themselves. They will never truly dance.
This is a quote from Irish music critic Stephen White, who hosts The Last Mixed Tape on YouTube this week. You can watch the full video here:
I’ve been percolating on this idea for a while, ever since I wrote ‘a brief history of musicians being political’.
Since then, we’ve seen 100,000 people take to the streets of London to show support for far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson and his cronies. A clip went viral of protestors singing We Are The Champions by Queen— the very same band whose frontman was both gay and a first-generation immigrant.
Protests were also soundtracked by renditions of Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond (a Jewish New Yorker descended from Russian and Polish immigrants), Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners (a Northern Soul band) and YMCA by Village People (no explanation needed).
Why don’t fascists have their own art?
Because music, like all art, needs a free flow of culture to germinate and grow. You cannot create good art in the sterile, exclusionary environment that these people march for.
Green Room (2015) is one of my favourite films of all time. It’s about a punk band who accept a gig in the middle of nowhere only to find out that they’re playing to a bunch of neonazis. This then turns into a pretty gory survival flick. Highly recommend it if you’ve not seen it before.
The Last Mixed Tape’s video got me thinking about the links between punk music and modern fascism—boots and braces, Doc Martens, Fred Perry, etc. At the risk of this newsletter being too long to send, here's a good write-up about why 20th-century neonazis appropriated punk music in particular.
It all comes down to revisionism and refusing to recognise where things come from. I believe that great art cannot be created in silos.
Artistic energy and the power that creates can only come when ideas are allowed to mix freely and organically. (Hitler knew this all too well, and that’s why he called all modern art “degenerate” and spent years stealing and hiding art from different cultures.)
There is also an element of counterculture here, and anger can be channeled to create great art. Finally, the lived experiences required to create something new—like how NWA sampled James Brown’s Funky President (People It’s Bad) in Fuck Tha Police or how the 12-bar blues, which was first written down by African American W.C. Handy in the early 1910s, remains prevalent in rock and pop music all over the world.
Maybe this is why the right loves their flags so much. It's the closest they'll get to making anything aesthetic.
So, perhaps if the horrendous potential of the world that the far right wants to turn into reality isn't enough to sway your views away from segregation, then a world without good music and art is?
Not all art or music is inherently political, but none would exist without the amalgamation of cultures that can only come in a staunchly anti-fascist world. You wouldn’t have even the most basic pop music without the pioneers who came before.
While writing this, I'm realising that there will probably need to be a sequel about how AI is essentially turbo-charging this appropriation of cultures and ideas to make something that will never be truly original.
If you want to read that, then let me know in the comments.
In this section, I summarise topics dominating the online discourse this week.
Trump announced that taking Tylenol (paracetamol) during pregnancy heightens the risk of autism for babies. This is obviously unfounded and has been disproven by experts across the world. In related news, his pals at iHerb are pushing leucovorin (folinic acid) as a treatment for autism (lol). Funny that.
Justin Tipping’s Him is getting abysmal reviews, which is probably infuriating producer Jordan Peele even more, given that he picked it up, allegedly firing reps for losing a bidding for Weapons.
KNEECAP’s Mo Chara is back in court on Friday, facing terrorism charges. The circus continues.
Photos from the set of Alien Earth show the Xenomorph wearing Adidas trainers and it has killed me off (Thanks to
for this one).
Other things worth reading this week:
on his rebrand: on her top recs for dystopian reading. with some absolutely excellent advice: Dutson is on fuckin’ Substack, babay! Read her first piece and subscribe here: 
I went to see Self-Esteem at Newcastle City Hall and, as per, she was fucking amazing.
A few other things I’ve enjoyed this week:
🎥 The Long Walk (Cinema) - Wild adaptation of the first novel Stephen King ever wrote (and released much later). This was chaotic and brutal.
🎥 Steve (Cinema) - Adaptation of Max Porter’s Shy starring Cillian Murphy. This was outstanding, truly one of the best films I’ve seen this year. I think it’ll be out on Netflix soon.
📚 Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell - Inhaled this in preparation for Chloe Zhao’s adaptation to come out later this year.
See you next week,
Ellen x
💌 About this email
I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.
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Thanks for mentioning my article. Doing my best to take my own advice this week 😅
Appreciate the shout out!