The Aestheticization of Politics: Subversive Affirmation in the Post-Truth Era

The Techno-Political Landscape of Post-Truth

This reality is starting to feel eerily familiar, with many artists, and writers taking on the absurdity that is post-modernity, nothing resonates, or feels as close to it as the prophesied narrative of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game, created by Hideo Kojima in 2001 hits like a blast from the past except it's almost an exact replica of the reality  we now experience in the techno-political landscape. In the game, the world is controlled by AI-driven propaganda, extreme surveillance and automated warfare followed by complete erasure of personal autonomy. How could a game from 2001 so accurately depict what was to inevitably happen in our concurrent reality? Its predictions perfectly describe a post truth era where objective facts hold significantly less influence on emotionally charged narratives or spectacles. Paving the way for consistent and pervasive propaganda rife in what the true king of Aura, Walter Benjamin calls the “Aestheticization of Politics” in his book The Mechanical Age of Production.

“Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.”

When looking at contemporary media one might find it has become increasingly harder to clock what is conveying truthful information in text _ images _ and videos which are easily fabricated or recontextualized. When the media becomes willingly confusing or deceitful it is a symptom of a much larger problem of control and apathetic individualism. Adam Curtis describes this phenomena of a highly individualist society:

This is the fundamental principle of Fascist Aesthetics, a confused and frightened populace, where the people have been convinced of their powerlessness _ their freedom handed over to an elitist power veiled in machinic secrecy. Individuals forced to live in a collision of intersecting reality bubbles and echo chambers that further isolate them from each other. 

The generations of Millenials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha who are now the emerging driving work force got the last taste of the internet which was built on the principle of decentralization. Digital aesthetics are the backbone of nostalgia, replacing the natural world outside. No one can deny the fantastical worldbuilding which replaced it. Memories of childhood were spent in majority exploring digital landscapes, talking to NPC characters and solving anything from small side-quests to uncovering massive potentially world-ending conspiracies. It gave us opportunities to become and take part in various worlds with varying degrees of power through escapism of the IRL.

I approach these themes as a diagnostic of the techno-political frustration. Encompassing both the aesthetic and the ideological as two equally important aspects of understanding the reality in which media is built on. Nothing exists in a vacuum and certainly not today. One could potentially argue that _ Everything is Connected _.

Mimetic Weapons: Strategies of Subversive Affirmation

Let’s decode what Fascist Aesthetics mean, and how subversive affirmation which was fundamental to my MA work represents itself.
Fascist Aesthetics or the Aestheticization of Politics, is a tool that communicates core fascist ideologies such as ultranationalism, militarism, suppression of opposition and hierarchical society, most frequently through symbols or a mythologized past. Its intended effect is to further a state of mindless, uncritical and perpetual consumption of its own ideology. How these authoritarian trends appear through time is in constant shift, often becoming increasingly hard to decipher. It’s seductive, authoritarian visual language embedded in design, propaganda, and modern technology. 
It is exactly this seductive and evolving nature of fascist aesthetics that begs for strategy beyond a stated opposition. Radical opposition in this current post-truth landscape of undecipherable symbols requires Subversive Affirmation as a means to highlight and undervalue its devouring agenda.

Subversive Affirmation (or over-identification) is an artistic performance and political tactic in lieu of rejecting the overarching aesthetic language, instead, mimics and exaggerates it in an effort to expose internal contradictions and mechanisms of power.

Logic of Speed and the Ethics of Grievability

To understand the velocity in which these crises operate and hybridize I have found it helpful to turn to Paul Virilio's concept Dromology, or the logic of speed (Virilio, 2006) . Speed is the form of violence itself in a “dromocratic state” (Virilio, 2006, p. 46) . No longer does the most powerful entity win by size of borders, or the best ideology, but by controlling the points of how fast information, perception and warfare flows. Just as the engine Curtis describes as fuelling the dynamic hysteria and the same reality Kojima prophesied, the world moves too fast for any critical reflection, and we get stuck in mindless, uncritical consumption, which again, is central to the aestheticization of politics and the fascist principle. I want to consider that in my own work I am attempting to capture these glimpses or snapshots of this technological acceleration. Pausing at the second, it reflects on the spectacle that is the techno-political hellscape.



During my research I recently came across Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When is Life Greivable? We now understand the subversion, the revolt or rebellion that is so essential in this tactic of undermining the existing power structure, but one cannot ignore the ethical dimensions involved. In the book we are presented with the question of which lives are considered valuable and which can be rendered as disposable. Butler presents the media and current political notions condition us to accept the deaths and violence faced by some as normative. The aesthetics of fascism consistently, deframes the “other”, as in essentially marking them as ungrievable bodies (Butler, 2010, p. 25) . This could be those who do not fit into the proposed mythology of fascism. The bodies in my works confront this logic, both empowered in their resistance but deeply violated. I am directly asking the viewer: Is this life grievable?





Ultimately, my work exists as a reluctant citizen of this post-truth world, constantly attempting to turn the system's own aesthetic language against itself. Using the tools of digital fabrication and ideological subversion, I build monstrous, vulnerable monuments to the bodies caught in these crosshairs. This is not really a plea for a return to primitive technologies or a Neo-Luddite revolution, but a speculation and action towards a future where the fusion of body and machine does not inherently facilitate violence, but could instead imagine a different, more grievable, form of life.