Dear white women feminists who loved Wonder Woman–
Listen, I also loved Wonder Woman. But I also think that Diana would be the first to note that we are not free until we are all free. So if you posted a thousand times about how important WW was for little girls to see, then I hope you are also prepared to post a thousand times about how important the new Black Panther movie is for black kids- girls and boys- to see.
I saw Wonder Woman, and I teared up the first time she stormed the battlefield in her full regalia. But, as a black woman, I couldn’t not notice that the women who looked like me played supporting, and largely non-speaking, background parts. Black Panther is the chance for women who look like me to see ourselves as the heroes in our own story. To see ourselves as warriors, as epic royalty, as fully actualized superheroes. In a major studio blockbuster, no less. Never- not ever- has that happened before.
Celebrating someone’s death seems like a really macabre thing to do. Like I get that people don’t like him because of how his administration dealt with the AIDS epidemic, but promoting someone’s death as a good thing doesn’t sit well with me.
during his administration, we had a problem with abuse of patients in mental healthcare facilities (asylums, but don’t call them that), and his response to it was just to shut down the entire system. he closed all public mental healthcare facilities because a few of them were mistreating patients, and all those mentally ill people suddenly found themselves homeless without the skills necessary to survive in the general populous. he’s the reason why our healthcare system is so terrible, and he’s to blame for the homelessness epidemic (i’ll get into the next reason why he’s responsible for our high homeless population in a sec). millions of people lost everything because of reagan. thousands died.
he also completely restructured our economy. from 1776 until he became president, we had an economic system like no other (look up the American School), but he removed most of the rules and regulations we had to keep the system in place because our system at the time limited accumulation of wealth. we had a built-in buffer that kept most people middle class. when he restructured our economy so he and his friends could get richer, reagan removed the safeguards that kept us out of poverty (most of the time), so now the lower echelons of society were in freefall towards homelessness. people lost their homes and businesses because the rich could do basically whatever they wanted now. superstores like wal-mart rose to prominence and pushed out small businesses because of this. our government also greatly reduced its expenditure on infrastructure. ronald reagan’s greed is why we don’t have enough trains and all our roads are falling apart.
he also expanded our already bloated military while in power. one of his slogans was “peace in strength.” his goal for our country was to get an iron grip around the rest of the world and impose our own agendas on other countries at gunpoint.
One of the first things reagan did when he came to power was to ignore the supreme court’s earlier ruling, ignore the constitution, and try to enforce a mandatory daily christian prayer time in all schools. when government workers went on strike against him and his policies, he fired 11,345 people. he put 11,345 people out of a job because they didn’t like him.
he lowered taxes for the rich, but increased taxes on the poor, contributing to the aforementioned lack of infrastructure and homelessness crisis. he also began privatising the government, which put thousands of jobs at risk and made wealthy capitalists the men who run our country. reagan is responsible for trickle down economics.
after the great depression, our government put in social programs to help people stay afloat, like universal healthcare for the elderly and disabled, basic income (the government paid people to dig ditches if they couldn’t find any other jobs. the ditches didn’t serve any purpose, but those people needed money and the government was willing to give money to anyone who worked), and food stamps. ronald reagan slashed all these programs and more, like the EPA, which made sure we were a “green” country.
as a result of these slashes, people who had been secure on government assistance programs were now having to take out loans and get into debt, which jeopardised our economy. we had a stock market crash because people were becoming too poor to buy stocks, and our national debt increased by 3 times. we went from $997 billion in debt to $2.85 trillion in 1987.
he also pushed us further into the cold war. previously, our relations with russia were cooling down a bit, but during reagan’s second term, he began actively threatening russia again. ronald reagan brought us to the brink of a nuclear war that would have killed all humans on earth.
Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, the most hated prime minister in UK history, were close friends. he was also personal friends with Donald Trump.
Under reagan, we resumed a history of violent military imperialism in foreign countries, most notably lebanon, afghanistan, and pakistan. In lebanon, we tried to stop a revolution against an oppressive regime, and in afghanistan and pakistan, reagan ordered the CIA to train civilians and create a military force to fight russia for us. Reagan created the taliban, a militant group that even today publicly dismembers people for playing games in public. they cut off children’s hands. He also began dealing weapons with China, betraying our longstanding ally, Taiwan, destabilising politics in the pacific. Under his orders, we secretly aided african and south american military dictatorships in crushing their opposition. He assisted Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran who started the 1979 revolution, in purging political opposition from the government. in 1988 our military shot down an iranian commercial flight, killing 290 civilians.
Reagan was a Nazi sympathiser and referred to slain SS officers as “victims” of the war. just to make sure you read that right: Ronald Reagan supported the Nazis.
He declared the war on drugs, a movement that has greatly increased the disproportionate incarceration rates of african american and latino men in this country.
During Reagan’s second term, 115,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS and 70,000 died of it. Reagan did nothing to curb the spread, despite knowing that the AIDS epidemic almost exclusively affected black people and the LGBT community. when he learned how many people were dying and who they were, he laughed. he laughed at our suffering while we were dropping dead.
In short, Ronald Reagan was a wealthy, selfish, greedy, capitalistic, imperialist, racist, ableist, homophobic, genocidal, antisemitic, warmongering, backstabbing murderer. Ronald Reagan was a monster.
Unfortunately I can’t make gifs so I will just reblog all of those. If you’re wondering who all these people in the Black Panther trailer are (it goes by very quickly!). I have some canon for you:
tfw yet another of your favorite art blogs turns out to be run by an nrx/ethnonationalist/whatever.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT REPRESENTATIONAL ART AND NAZIS
Hypothesis: They gave good taste in art because unlike liberals they attach a high moral importance to aesthetics.
But why is the left wing better at internet memes?
“high moral importance to aesthetics”
it turns out you can just make words mean whatever you want!
Funny story about fascists, ‘moral aesthetics,’ and public appreciation for art:
In 1937, the Nazis decided to make an example of the artists they hated- work by Commies (or lefties in general), work by Jews, non-representational art, abstract art, art featuring Black people, art by gay people. Everything was cluttered together in a big exhibition, called Entartete Kunst, or ‘Degenerate Art.’ Entarte Kunst was meant to be a bad example, the Goofus to the Gallant of fascist heroic realism. Appropriately, across town, the Nazis set up an exhibition called Kunstausstellung, or ‘Great German Art Exhibition.’ The Kunstausstellung was full of acceptably Teutonic fare– Arno Breker and Josef Thorak, Albert Heinrich and Adolf Wissel. Big beefy nude dudes and wholesome Aryan peasant women, all free of imperfection. The ‘degenerate’ exhibit was set up to induce maximum discomfort in the viewers, and the ‘great German art’ exhibit was meant to inspire feelings of patriotism.
Entartete Kunst was so popular that it became a traveling exhibition– over 3 million people showed up. It had a higher attendance than any modern art show ever. Meanwhile, Germans derided Kunstausstellung as kitschy bullshit.
Now, you can argue for ‘trainwreck entertainment’– maybe jazz music, Kandinsky, Metzinger, and Grosz are so awful that they crossed the line into beguiling. Maybe they were ‘The Room’ before ‘The Room’ existed. But Germans at the time were not shy about heaping hatred on not-’’’’Aryan’’’’’ people. Expressing disgust would have been socially acceptable and even admirable. Whereas calling Oiled-Up War Hero Posing Goyishly With Innocent but Still Safely Sexy Wife and Blond Infant or whatever ‘kitschy bullshit’ was, you know, a sign you were a degenerate. So not only did Germans love degenerate art, they loved it and REJECTED ‘traditional’ art. You don’t go see ‘The Room’ but then fail to see your unironic favorite movie.
What I’m trying to say is that fascists, compared to their degenerate cuck counterparts, are not actually good at art (if public opinion is how we are defining ‘good’). They are, in fact, bad. Their aesthetics are tacky. There is historical precedent here.
If we’re going to play along with your post and associate moral rectitude with good aesthetics as determined by popular opinion and codified standards, I’ll say this and this only: Hitler failed the art school entrance exam. Twice.
I own a huge ass book on the Entartete Kunst. It is one of my prize possessions. Many of my favorite artists were included in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition. And if your art was in that show, it meant you needed to get the fuck out of Germany.
Self portrait by Elfriede Lohse Wächtler, who was forcibly sterilized and later murdered by Nazis.
Self portrait by Max Beckmann, who fled to Amsterdam. Nazis tried to draft him into the army even though he was in his 60s and had suffered a heart attack.
Max Ernst, arrested by the Gestapo on multiple occasions before escaping to America.
Self portrait as a soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nazis destroyed over 600 of his paintings, and he committed suicide.
Self portrait by Emil Nolde. Nolde supported the Nazis and was openly antisemitic, but his “degenerate artwork” led to him being banned from purchasing art supplies or creating new paintings.
Edgar Ende, banned from painting or purchasing art supplies. Conscripted to serve in the Luftwaffe.
Marc Chagall, he and his family fled occupied France with the help of American art dealers.
Vassily Kandinsky, taught at the Bauhaus before it was closed by the Nazis and he fled to France.
Cain, or Hitler in Hell, by George Grosz. Fiercely Anti-Nazi, Grosz and his family immigrated to America in 1933.
The Skat Players, by Otto Dix. A depictions of WWI veterans, forced to play cards in the backroom of a bar so that other patrons wouldn’t have to look at their injuries. Anti-war and anti-Nazi, Dix was forcibly drafted in WWI and WWII.
“It is not the function of art to wallow in dirt for dirt’s sake, never its task to paint the state of decomposition, to draw cretins as the symbol of motherhood, to picture hunchbacked idiots as representatives of manly strength”. – Adolf Hitler, speech at the Nazi Party Rally in Nürnberg in 1935.
Hitler liked simple, pretty pictures. He loathed modern art, “niche” art, art that was predicated on an understanding of art history and theory, “Jewish” art, art that critiqued social mores and/or the government.
Fuck the “moral importance of aesthetics,” fuck the fetishization of Nazi aesthetics, fuck fascism, fuck you.
Can we not celebrate without someone mentioning Bucky being in fucking Wakanda??? Bucky is still a frozen ice cube back at the ROYAL palace, no one’s looking for his ass right now
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