Kultur Klash
Trumping the Arts
By: Charles Giuliano - Feb 15, 2025
The statement “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, is variously misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring. It was a corrupted version of a line in a fascist play Schlageter by Hanns Johst.
It was appropriated for a photomontage by Barbara Kruger that was included in a Whitney Biennial. At the time it seemed clever and droll but now less so.
There was the delusion that we had defeated fascism and The Third Reich. Right wing attacks on culture were assumed to be a thing of the past and absurdly self evident.
Yet again the arts are regarded by the right, currently those in America that voted for Donald Trump, as subversively perverse and liberal. First Amendment protections are essential to a democratic society.
The arts are the canary in a coal mine. Any government sponsored attack on culture diminishes dissent. Autocracy enforces a mandate of disinformation. Serfs and slaves were denied literacy. Ideas are anathema to oligarchies and must be repressed. Nazis burned books. School boards and libraries ban them. The media is currently under attack with frivolous law suits. Judges demand transcripts of interviews. Reporters are pressured to reveal sources. The news organization, Associated Press (AP), is banned from White House briefings for refusing to accept the farcical name change of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
It’s a matter of time before Congress votes to add Trump to Mount Rushmore or Georgia’s Stone Mountain. His ego demands that scale.
The Nazis banned jazz as “too Negro.” German musicians were forbidden to rock to the beat. The arts they admired have been relegated to the dust bin of history. Significantly, Hitler was a failed artist.
Traditionally bipartisan, the Kennedy Center has sacked its “liberal” board and administration. They are replaced by Trump loyalists with a mandate to showcase patriotic programming. The high arts, opera, theatre and classical music, are banned.
Gone are black tie and champagne openings in favor of blue color and Bud Light events. As one congressman put it there is a mandate for programming concerts of country music and bluegrass or rock performances by Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.
It has been abhorrent to see pillars of freedom and progress like DEI initiatives knocked down like bowling pins. The post George Floyd movement never happened.
The macho Trump, a convicted felon, is phobic about gender. Decades of progress and change are swept away with a flourish of his felt pen.
In fear of losing funding, education and industry have gutted DEI initiatives. In a heart beat we have devolved back to an era when it was OK in America to be racist, ant- Semitic and rabidly homophobic.
Funding for the arts in America has long lagged behind that of other nations. Generations of Republicans have conspired to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. They aspire to gut PBS as an instrument of liberal propaganda. During Trump’s first term there was actually a modest increase in spending.
The NEA’s FY 2024 budget was $207 million, just 0.004% of the federal budget and 62 cents per capita. The Administration’s FY 2025 budget request for the NEA is $210 million and for the NEH is $200 million. Compare that to some 950 million Euros for the City of Berlin.
The guidelines for grants have been rewritten to deny funding for DEI. In order to qualify for support arts organizations have to, in effect, sign loyalty oaths. It’s a flashback to McCarthyism. In one swoop Trump has undermined decades of progress. In the fragile arts community that means either genuflection or obliteration.
An alternative is a mandate for increased private philanthropy. That’s a big ask and will take time. In the short run thousands of arts organizations and artists are facing immediate threats and an understanding that conditions for the arts in America will become far worse before they get better.
When he hears the word culture Trump reaches for his felt tipped pen.