Return of the Nazi Aesthetic?

Aryan-looking athletes dispassionately staring into the glorious future, standing before sculptures commemorating past victories of the fatherland; in the background Albert Speer-inspired neo-classical architecture. Something out of Leni Riefenstahl?  Actually, these are posters seen in Moscow promoting the 2014 Winter Olympics:

"Without doubt the authors of this advertising were inspired by Nazi art," said Ekaterina Degot, a well-known art historian and former curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery.

When the billboards were put up, the Russian art collective Voina, itself known for its controversial painting of a 65-metre penis on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, tweeted: "On Pushkinskaya Square opposite Gap, there is a huge advertisement, openly fascist in style, for elite housing in Sochi."

Degot and others said the style and pose of the subjects in the images was heavily suggestive of Nazi art which stresses racial purity and superiority.

Somehow this is all very fitting for Putin's Russia.  But I have to hand it to the creators  - a design firm in St. Petersburg called Doping-Pong.  Their cool realism has more in common with Neo Rauch than with the bombast of the Nazis.

 

Comments

[Attie Schutte]

David, you might also enjoy this take on the same topic. http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/fascinating-fascism/

[John in Michigan, USA]

I've always thought it remarkable that the name of the pro-Putin "Nashi" youth movement was so similar to that other word. An accident of translation?

Happily, the Red Army, and the economy that supported it, is a shadow of its former self. Neo-liberal economic policies, FTW! (for the win, a gaming term)

[David]

"Наши" literally means "Ours!" - so in terms of meaning the Nashi movement is closer to "La Cosa Nostra".

[John in Michigan, USA]

Interesting. Thanks.

[emil]

Interesting how the US-American fascist hates every little thing that (seemingly) reminds him of his own nature.

Just so much: A Nazi is who does nazi things - wars of aggression, ultra-nationalism, firearms for citizens, support for capitalism, "anti-terror" security laws, support for racism, the list is longer still.

Those russian posters are actually tongue-in cheek satires of soviet propaganda - but nazis always lack a sense of humor.

[Strahler 70]

Emil, I take your comment with a smile, so it is safe for you to assume that I am no nazi. You are wrong to say 'a nazi is who supports capitalism'. Capitalism is based on the interaction of interests and property. Socialism prohibits personal property, fascism prohibits interests (25-points program of the NSDAP, point 11: Breaking of the interest bondage). Therefore, both socialism and fascism (and, for the rejection of interests, islamism, too) must fail economically unless territorial gains are achieved, resulting in the prospects of world revolution, blood and soil theory (and world wide jihad).

Emil, you are exaggerating your attitude of always being the most leftist person around.

Btw, have you ever heard of the 'Crikkit Wars'? Everybody who loves sports, nature and Paul McCartney is a Nazi, too!

[David]

Our little friend Emil is either a frustrated teenager or a 30-yr old bank teller who still live with his mum.

[John in Michigan, USA]

Emil's ignorant understanding of terms like 'Nazi' or 'fascist' remind me of trying to talk to certain (not all) anti-Zionist types. They believe and preach Zionism = Nazism = Racism = Apartheid...but somehow they can't actually define any of those terms or provide specific examples of how they apply to *uniquely* to Israel and only to Israel.

I actually had lunch with a friend, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, who works for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, MA. The NBER's responsibilities include declaring the beginning and end of US recessions. He insisted that Israel, and only Israel of all the countries in the world, practices full-scale, 100% pure Apartheid in the original, South African form. Not just in the occupied territories, but in Israel itself!

Not Saudi Arabia and all the other gender-apartheid Arab Muslim regimes, not Syria (minority rule by Alawite ethnic group), not Saddam's Iraq (minority rule by Sunni Arab Baathists), not India which is still dismantling her caste system, no, only Israel in all the world practices Apartheid.

I pointed out that Isreal, for all its faults, has full voting rights for all citizens, regardless of race, religion, etc; that there are no racial classifications on Israeli passports or internal ID documents; that intermarriage is unregulated; that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (!) have annual Gay Pride parades, that all these things are pretty incompatible with Apartheid as it was in S. Africa, it was like talking to a brick wall.

When I asked him to list which provisions of Israeli's Basic Law implemented Apartheid, changed the subject. When I asked him what was the defining characteristic of Israeli Apartheid, he said, "occupation", as if no country ever occupied some territory without it being Apartheid!

When Israel occupied Lebannon, it was Apartheid; when Syria did, it wasn't. When Israel occupies the West Bank, its Apartheid; when Jordan occupied it, it wasn't. Apartheid, the magic word that apparently can mean anything, or nothing!

Rather than debate the whole Israel question, which is complicated, I am writing to point out the utterly Orwellian banality (four legs good, two legs baaaaad) which sometimes passes for informed debate among credentialed people who really should know better. Not to mention the disservice done to all the people who genuinely suffered under the real Apartheid.

OK, end of rant.

[Clifford Vickrey]

To be honest, I've always kind of liked the socialist realist aesthetic seen in the above advertisement. Ugly, garish, anti-modernist kitsch has a charm of its own, as seen with: http://www.essential-architecture.com/STYLE/stalinist.jpg