Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt, The Aestheticisation of Late Capitalist Fascism: Notes for a Communist Art Theory. (2021) [PDF]

Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt, The Aestheticisation of Late Capitalist Fascism: Notes for a Communist Art Theory, Third Text, 35.3 (2021), 341–54

Picking up Walter Benjamin’s analysis of German Fascism as an aestheticisation of politics, the article develops the concept of late capitalist fascism for which aesthetics plays an important role. Today fascism is not primarily a political force but a cultural phenomenon that circulates as language, emblems and objects. Because of its history fascism does not dare name itself as such but fascism is fast becoming part of everyday life in a number of countries including Hungary, Italy and the United States, but also France and Denmark where the threat of fascism is used as a pretext for imposing fascist measures especially in relation to immigration and asylum policies.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.1916268