The following is from an online Threads post from "CMK."
"Art an an Act of Rebellion in an Authoritarian Age"
by CMK
Authoritarianism begins in silence, first encouraged, then enforced. It begins with a narrowing of permissible emotions, a shrinking of the imagination, and a disciplining of thought. Before an authoritarian regime controls bodies, it seeks to control language, culture, and meaning. It seeks to dictate what is real, what is valuable, and what is acceptable to feel.
In a world like this, creating art becomes a major act of resistance. Authoritarianism thrives on
predictability. Art doesn’t comply.
Authoritarian ideologies rest on a belief that everything and everyone must serve a function. Art refuses to justify itself in those terms. A painting doesn’t explain its usefulness. A poem doesn’t argue its productivity. A sculpture doesn’t apologize for being “impractical.” Art’s refusal to be instrumental makes it politically subversive.
Freedom begins in a realm of activities that can’t be
rationalized by totalitarian logic.
Creativity occupies this space.
It’s an assertion that some parts of the human spirit can’t, and
shouldn’t be optimized, surveilled, or controlled.
To create art is to assert that meaning is not dictated from above, from a hierarchy. To linger in beauty is to claim time the state cannot monetize. Imagining beyond the world as it is represents a threat to those insisting there is no alternative.
Authoritarian rule requires the disciplining human behavior
and the colonization of interiority, one’s soul. It demands emotional conformity: the correct fears, loyalties, and
resentments. It punishes ambiguity,
irony, doubt, and longing. In essence,
it attempts to flatten human complexity into a single sanctioned
narrative. Art refuses that flattening.
It gives shape to private grief, desire, and rebellion. It nurtures an inner life that the state
can’t touch. Even when created quietly,
secretly, or anonymously, art is proof that the self has not surrendered. Everything we create becomes evidence of
human autonomy.
Also, authoritarian power depends on the public not looking
too closely. Not at suffering or
corruption or the small ways that dignity is shaved thin. Art disrupts a cultivated blindness. Art makes the invisible visible, and once
it’s seen, it can’t be unseen.
Authoritarians understand this deeply, which is why we see
movements banning books, censoring films, and an introduction of “good” police
aesthetics. They tell us that art is a
luxury, that it’s frivolous and ridiculous, when in reality, it’s
dangerous. Because art teaches people to
look, and looking is the first step toward refusing.
Authoritarian systems rely on the idea that individuals are
interchangeable and expendable.
Creativity, however, is inherently personal. No one else can make the exact mark you
make. No one else can produce your
precise shade of longing, or rage, or joy.
Art returns individuality to people whom the regime would prefer to
remain faceless. Art reclaims the agency
of the soul.
Perhaps the most radical thing art does is propose worlds
that exceed the present.
Authoritarianism depends on the idea that the current order is
inevitable and unchangeable. Art refutes
this. Every story, every image, every facet
of creation declares that alternatives are possible, that the human mind is
larger than any apparatus of control. In
this sense, art becomes a rehearsal for freedom. The totalitarian state fears artists because
imagination precedes revolution.
Authoritarian powers relay on abstractions: “the nation,”
“the enemy,” “the traitor.” These
categories erase individual histories and complexities. Art reverses that erasure. It focuses on particularity, on the lived
experience of a single person. It
returns humanity to those whom political systems reduce to symbols.
When you paint someone’s eyes, you restore personhood. When you write a character’s grief, you make
their suffering undeniable. When you
carve a shape from stone, you refuse to let the world remain shapeless. Art nourishes empathy, and empathy
destabilizes authoritarian control.
So, keep creating art.
--CKMCreates
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