Times are tough for those of us who are both passionate about high culture and philosophically averse to political correctness. The pickings are pretty slim and we are generally what's on the menu. The Italian Marxist writer Antonio Gramsci exhorted his fellow communists to infiltrate Western culture and work to bring forth a socialist utopia from within. And infiltrate they have.

It is virtually impossible to patronize any art form in America today without being bombarded by cultural Marxism. Painting and sculpture have wandered into the wilds of the abstract. To the extent that one can discern a meaning at all, it is inevitably some sort of snide swipe at Western Civilization or some paean to victimology. Dittos with photography (see Robert Maplethorpe - http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/robert-maplethorpe.html).

The theater is a particularly hideous wasteland. It seems that every play produced in the past three decades is either about nothing too important...or revolves around some predictable theme of political correctness.

Television and movies are now thickly laced with overt and covert political ideology. The vilification of men, the trashing of Western Civilization, and the monotonous victimization of various non-Western groups is a given. Add a dash of mindless consumerism and decadent over-sexualization, and these forms of artistic expression are insulting to Western sensibilities at best (my own prize for the most viciously anti-Western movie is a tie between American Beauty and Dances with Wolves).

A quick stroll through the bookstore reveals that most contemporary novels are not much better. It seems as though men have largely dropped out of the fiction book target audience (thank God I prefer non-fiction), since the overwhelming majority of novels on display at the front of any major bookstore are either directed at women, children, or yet again, some politically correct victim group.

In my opinion, the purpose of art is twofold. First, is the minor goal of entertainment. While this may seem light-weight, one should not overlook the importance of giving the brain a little R&R. We live in a stressful world. It is a nice break to occasionally sit back and enjoy an artistic creation strictly for the momentary joy and beauty of it.

The more profound purpose of art is to inspire. Art should work on the soul of the individual to prompt him to strive for greater heights...to rise above his mundane existence and carry forward the work of his civilization. It should endeavor, by both positive and negative example, to stir the passions of the viewer and prompt a thirst for greatness.

By this measure, our culture has been functioning in reverse (i.e., its general purpose is to degrade and destroy).

So...what is one to do?

My preferred solution has been the opera.

The reason why I love opera is that the soul of opera, unlike almost any other current art form, resides in the 18th and 19th Century cultural zeitgeist. Modern performances tend to maintain fidelity to the original creation. The cultural milieu of that period was far better, from the perspective of the typical non-self-hating Westerner, than the fare produced today. The stories revolve around love, heroism, and comedy. The composers were, by and large, men who consciously or subconsciously loved their native culture and wished to celebrate it in music and stage.

Examples abound. William Tell fights to free his homeland from German domination. The Ring Cycle tells of the struggles of man and the Gods in Nordic mythology.

Opera allows me to relax, sit back, and soak in my culture.

At least until last summer, that is.

My first rude awakening that there was a weasel in the henhouse came when I decided to take in a late-season show at the Pittsburgh Opera. La Boheme was on the schedule, and I naïvely strolled in for my breath of cultural fresh air.

What followed was 2 1/2 hours of old fashioned Marxist critiques of capitalism and a variety of snide attacks on Western civilization. Now, assuming here for a moment that Puccini was not attempting to lampoon the Bohemian lifestyle (something which I still believe is possible), then this opera represents one of the earliest examples of anti-Western diatribes with which many of us have come to dread in modern art.

The characters are typical coffee house intellectuals who spend most of their time glorifying their superior, anti-materialistic credos and denouncing the greed and avarice of the bourgeoisie. I was having flash-backs of my Brown freshman orientation. The "heroes" bounce between biting verbal attacks on "the rich" and sarcastic jabs at "the system".

While the context was more "old Left" (i.e., 19th century labor union-style communism) instead of "new Left" (i.e. modern political correctness), the fundamental philosophical worldview was there for all to see.

But...I survived. I grinded my teeth for a few hours and whispered gripes to my wife (who gets quite annoyed with me when I go into "political mode").

I wrote La Boheme off as an aberration, figuring that it was a fluke.

Then I went to see HMS Pinafore.

This past July, I made my first pilgrimage to the Chautauqua Institute. For the uninitiated, the Institute is located on the wonderful Lake Chautauqua in upstate NY. It is a true gem of culture, spirituality, and learning which hosts a 9-week-long affair including orchestral performances, opera, theater, and various intellectual pursuits.

Upon arriving, I quickly scanned the schedule and saw that there was a performance of HMS Pinafore coinciding with my visit. I purchased tickets and eagerly went off to the opera hall.

Almost immediately after the show began, I began to get that queasy feeling. This opera was also drenched in Marxist philosophy. Once again, I sank into my chair while the characters went on harangues about class oppression and "the system." The whole opera revolved around the idea that class distinctions are unfair, immoral, and arbitrary. In essence, any person of higher rank, knowledge, or position must have attained it through caprice or nepotism. People in positions of authority are ignoramuses, hypocrites, or both. People in positions of low social esteem are likewise victims of circumstance. Their situation in no way reflects any shortcomings of their character or ethics.

Taken together, these two operas have forced me to re-evaluate my analysis of the decline of Western Culture. I was of the general opinion that the undeniable cesspool that has become our contemporary culture had its roots in the chaos of the 1960’s and counterculture/anti-Vietnam war movements of that era. At most, I considered the socialism of FDR’s New Deal to be the beginning of the end.

But La Boheme was first staged in 1896. HMS Pinafore’s inaugural performance was even before that (1878). The fact that the latter opera was created during the High Victorian Era in Britain is disheartening in the extreme.

Clearly, the rot had been eating at the roots of our culture for quite some time before the appearance of Abbie Hoffman and the Weathermen.

If this Nation is ever turn itself around, those of us on the libertarian/paleoconservative right are going to have to come to grips with these unpalatable realities. Things are pretty far gone...and they have been going that way for quite some time. We didn’t arrive here overnight, and we will not likely extricate ourselves anytime soon.

December 15, 2003

Steven LaTulippe is a physician currently practicing in Ohio. He was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years.

The following link presents the documentation on how the CIA supported and manipulated the Abstract Expressionist movement as a weapon of the Cold War of the 1950's.

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Newsletters/dec2003.htm

In the summer of 1938, Andre Breton (the founder of the Surrealist movement), published the "Manifesto Towards a Free Revolutionary Art" in collaboration with Russian Communist Leon Trotsky (then in exile) and the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera. This manifesto is one actual communist position regarding art (there are many such positions). However, the manifesto easily exposes the "cultural marxism" post for the reactionary clap trap it is. As the manifesto so clearly stated: "The independence of art - for the revolution! The revolution - for the complete liberation of art!"



MANIFESTO: TOWARDS A FREE REVOLUTIONARY ART
This manifesto was written by Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky in Mexico in the
late 1930s. Diego Rivera was a co-signatory.

We can say without exaggeration that never has civilization been menaced so
seriously as today. The Vandals, with instruments which were barbarous, and
so comparatively ineffective, blotted out the culture of antiquity in one
corner of Europe. But today we see world civilization, united in its
historic destiny, reeling under the blows of reactionary forces armed with
the entire arsenal of modern technology. We are by no means thinking only of
the world war that draws near. Even in times of "peace" the position of art
and science has become absolutely intolerable.

Insofar as it originates with an individual, insofar as it brings into play
subjective talents to create something which brings about an objective
enriching of culture, any philosophical, sociological, scientific or
artistic discovery seems to be the fruit of a precious chance, that is to
say, the manifestation, more or less spontaneous, of necessity. Such
creations cannot be slighted, whether from the standpoint of general
knowledge (which interprets the existing world), or of revolutionary
knowledge (which, the better to change the world, requires an exact analysis
of the laws which govern its movement). Specifically, we cannot remain
indifferent to the intellectual conditions under which creative activity
takes place, nor should we fail to pay all respect to those particular laws
which govern intellectual creation.

In the contemporary world we must recognize the ever more widespread
destruction of those conditions under which intellectual creation is
possible. From this follows of necessity an increasingly manifest
degradation not only of the work of art but also of the specifically
"artistic" personality. The regime of Hitler, now that it has rid Germany of
all those artists whose work expressed the slightest sympathy for liberty,
however superficial, has reduced those who still consent to take up pen or
brush to the status of domestic servants of the regime, whose task it is to
glorify it on order, according to the worst possible aesthetic conventions.
If reports may be believed, it is the same in the Soviet Union, where
Thermidorian reaction is now reaching its climax.

It goes without saying that we do not identify ourselves with the currently
fashionable catchword: "Neither fascism nor communism!", a shibboleth which
suits the temperament of the philistine, conservative and frightened,
clinging to the tattered remnants of the "democratic" past. True art, which
is not content to play variations on ready-made models but rather insists on
expressing the inner needs of man and of mankind in its time - true art is
unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a complete and radical
reconstruction of society. This it must do, were it only to deliver
intellectual creation from the chains which bind it, and to allow all
mankind to raise itself to those heights which only isolated geniuses have
achieved in the past. We recognize that only the social revolution can sweep
clean the path for a new culture. If, however, we reject all solidarity with
the bureaucracy now in control of the Soviet Union, it is precisely because,
in our eyes, it represents, not communism, but its most treacherous and
dangerous enemy.

The totalitarian regime of the USSR, working through the so-called cultural
organizations it controls in other countries, has spread over the entire
world a deep twilight hostile to every sort of spiritual value. A twilight
of filth and blood in which, disguised as intellectuals and artists, those
men steep themselves who have made of servility a career, of lying for pay a
custom, and of the palliation of crime a source of pleasure. The official
art of Stalinism mirrors with a blatancy unexampled in history their efforts
to put a good face on their mercenary profession.

The repugnance which this shameful negation of principles of art inspires in
the artistic world - a negation which even slave states have never dared to
carry so far - should give rise to an active, uncompromising condemnation.
The opposition of writers and artists is one of the forces which can
usefully contribute to the discrediting and overthrow of regimes which are
destroying, along with the right of the proletarian to aspire to a better
world, every sentiment of nobility and even of human dignity.

The communist revolution is not afraid of art. It realizes that the role of
the artist in a decadent capitalist society is determined by the conflict
between the individual and various social forms which are hostile to him.
This fact alone, insofar as he is conscious of it, makes the artist the
natural ally of revolution. The process of sublimation, which here comes
into play and which psychoanalysis has analyzed, tries to restore the broken
equilibrium between the integral "ego" and the outside elements it rejects.
This restoration works to the advantage of the "ideal of self", which
marshals against the unbearable present reality all those powers of the
interior world, of the "self", which are common to all men and which are
constantly flowering and developing. The need for emancipation felt by the
individual spirit has only to follow its natural course to be led to mingle
its stream with this primeval necessity - the need for the emancipation of
man.

The conception of the writer's function which the young Marx worked out is
worth recalling. "The writer", he declared, "naturally must make money in
order to live and write, but he should not under any circumstances live and
write in order to make money...The writer by no means looks on his work as a
means. It is an end in itself and so little a means in the eyes of himself
and of others that if necessary he sacrifices his existence to the existence
of his work...The first condition of the freedom of the press is that it is
not a business activity." It is more than ever fitting to use this statement
against those who would regiment intellectual activity in the direction of
ends foreign to itself, and prescribe, in the guise of so-called reasons of
state, the themes of art. The free choice of these themes and the absence of
all restrictions on the range of his exploitations - these are possessions
which the artist has a right to claim as inalienable. In the realm of
artistic creation, the imagination must escape from all constraint and must
under no pretext allow itself to be placed under bonds. To those who urge
us, whether for today or for tomorrow, to consent that art should submit to
a discipline which we hold to be radically incompatible with its nature, we
give a flat refusal and we repeat our deliberate intention of standing by
the formula complete freedom for art.

We recognize, of course, that the revolutionary state has the right to
defend itself against the counterattack of the bourgeoisie, even when this
drapes itself in the flag of science or art. But there is an abyss between
these enforced and temporary measures of revolutionary self-defense and the
pretension to lay commands on intellectual creation. If, for the better
development of the forces of material production, the revolution must build
a socialist regime with centralized control, to develop intellectual
creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty should from the first be
established. No authority, no dictation, not the least trace of orders from
above! Only on a base of friendly cooperation, without constraint from
outside, will it be possible for scholars and artists to carry out their
tasks, which will be more far-reaching than ever before in history.

It should be clear by now that in defending freedom of thought we have no
intention of justifying political indifference, and that it is far from our
wish to revive a so-called pure art which generally serves the extremely
impure ends of reaction. No, our conception of the role of art is too high
to refuse it an influence on the fate of society. We believe that the
supreme task of art in our epoch is to take part actively and consciously in
the preparation of the revolution. But the artist cannot serve the struggle
for freedom unless he subjectively assimilates its social content, unless he
feels in his very nerves its meaning and drama and freely seeks to give his
own inner world incarnation in his art.

In the present period of the death agony of capitalism, democratic as well
as fascist, the artist sees himself threatened with the loss of his right to
live and continue working. He sees all avenues of communication choked with
the debris of capitalist collapse. Only naturally, he turns to the Stalinist
organizations which hold out the possibility of escaping from his isolation.
But if he is to avoid complete demoralization, he cannot remain there,
because of the impossibility of delivering his own message and the degrading
servility which these organizations exact from him in exchange for certain
material advantages. He must understand that his place is elsewhere, not
among those who betray the cause of the revolution and mankind, but among
those who with unshaken fidelity bear witness to the revolution, among those
who, for this reason, are alone able to bring it to fruition, and along with
it the ultimate free expression of all forms of human genius.

The aim of this appeal is to find a common ground on which may be reunited
all revolutionary writers and artists, the better to serve the revolution by
their art and to defend the liberty of that art itself against the usurpers
of the revolution. We believe that aesthetic, philosophical and political
tendencies of the most varied sort can find here a common ground. Marxists
can march here hand in hand with anarchists, provided both parties
uncompromisingly reject the reactionary police patrol spirit represented by
Joseph Stalin and by his henchman Garcia Oliver.

We know very well that thousands on thousands of isolated thinkers and
artists are today scattered throughout the world, their voices drowned out
by the loud choruses of well-disciplined liars. Hundreds of small local
magazines are trying to gather youthful forces about them, seeking new paths
and not subsidies. Every progressive tendency in art is destroyed by fascism
as "degenerate". Every free creation is called "fascist" by the Stalinists.
Independent revolutionary art must now gather its forces for the struggle
against reactionary persecution. It must proclaim aloud the right to exist.
Such a union of forces is the aim of the International Federation of
Independent Revolutionary Art which we believe it is now necessary to form.

We by no means insist on every idea put forth in this manifesto, which we
ourselves consider only a first step in the new direction. We urge every
friend and defender of art, who cannot but realize the necessity for this
appeal, to make himself heard at once. We address the same appeal to all
those publications of the left wing which are ready to participate in the
creation of the International Federation and to consider its task and its
methods of action.

When a preliminary international contact has been established through the
press and by correspondence, we will proceed to the organization of local
and national congresses on a modest scale. The final step will be the
assembly of a world congress which will officially mark the foundation of
the International Federation.

Our aims:

The independence of art - for the revolution.

The revolution - for the complete liberation of art!

Is that shorthand for "raving fascist lunatic"?