Extremist messaging now woven into music and YouTube videos, with one expert saying: ‘You can be radicalised sitting on your couch’
The two men chop peppers, slice aubergines and giggle into the camera as they delve into the art of vegan cooking. Both are wearing ski masks and T-shirts bearing Nazi symbols.
The German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for violating its guidelines.
But it offered a glimpse of how far-right groups have seized on cultural production – from clothing brands to top 40 music – to normalise their ideas, in a process that researchers say has hit new heights in the age of social media.
I’m bewildered locally trying to get leftist to care about local issues. They see something online and get way more worked up and spend way more time thinking of that then the example of a homeless kid with destructive tendencies in pseudo-adoption by someone I know. Or all the people I bring up that are struggling to find work and pay rent. Everyone’s focused on what makes them angry online or what they imagine could be happening or could happen to them rather than what they can effect around them so local communities get no attention. No building. No camaraderie. The people that are in need now have very little concern from them in local or national politics. Not from highly verbal political types. Well actually if a conservative comes across them, they’ll try to speak with them and move them towards to right
Back to artists and why they aren’t good leaders
Artists inevitably make art for other artists. Go to a film festival with a filmmaker Q&A about a movie of some poorer background. It is time and time again very little interest on the films subject matter and when the filmmaker speaks of them, time and time again it sounds to me as someone very out of touch with the people they’re making art about. Even when based on real people, I always get annoyed at artistic liberty they profess to have made to make a more effective art or make it more appealing. Lots of talk about awards and career. Hearing stuff like they added something to add more drama and intrigue. Like people working at fast food restaurants have all sorts of stories of funny/wild nonsense they or patrons have done in the restaurant. Have great conversations with coworkers after some time when there’s time to talk. But that’s seemingly too boring and depressingly small ambition for many high brow art consumers
The difference between an artist saying, “I spoke to people and heard stuff like this and that and I was inspired to make this movie” compared to, “this is what happened to me. This is how I live. This is what I think of in bed, at the grocery store, at a mall, at work.” The first hand account is unsurprising far more visceral and inspiring than the filmmakers however many degrees of separation telling. A university professors interpretation of data/info collected.
Somehow we talk about the importance of lived experience and then put the ones with the lived experiences, the poorer people, at the back of the line in favor of the lefts most comfortable people - the gainfully employed and highly praised people of marketable careers