Art in a Technocratic Age

The advent of COVID-19 lockdown measures immeasurably hastened the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. The aim of the UN, the Trilateral Commission and numerous super-wealthy NGOs is to institute world governance, removing the ability of national governments and peoples to undertake action which benefits them. It is an authoritarian plan to provide for all at the cost of autonomy, tradition, nationhood and religion. It promises the yoke of austerity, population control (and reduction) and resource allocation for all, with no exceptions. Well, except for the elite, who will live in luxury, privacy and freedom. This is the origin of common comments on the Right about “bug-men” (that is, NGOs, scientists and the mass media promoting insect protein as an alternative to meat) and “living in pods” (the drive to get people to abandon conventional homes and live in uniform units strictly designed for efficiency). The people will be farmed under the sagacious aegis of the elite, as selected scientists identify and manage an unending series of emergencies – pandemics, climate, energy, population – who will instil fear and provide ever-more restrictive solutions. The plans are freely available to read.

Here in England, no sooner had an airborne virus been identified as a potential threat to health, then (illogically) some shops refused to accept cash. The push to eliminate cash has been a constant discussion point for decades; the pandemic gave shops, firms and authorities a chance to test the idea of a cashless society. Banks, governments, tax-collection agencies and police loathe cash. It is too mobile and untraceable and altogether too informal for authorities. Electronic currency allows for the elimination of the production of physical currency. It also allows for the removal of privacy. Authorities will have full access to all your transactions. They will be able to see everything you buy, know your personal contacts, infer your political sympathies, measure your resource consumption and trace your geographical location, allowing them access to your personal life in a way that has never been previously available. No Communist regime ever had such detailed information on its subjects. Even artists welcome it.

Paweł Król, No Title, Work done on a graphic tablet, 70x50cm

U.B.I.: The road to serfdom

A recent press release promoted poetry in inner cities, announcing four forthcoming events. They seemed to fall into the categories of socially-engaged or artivism (political activism through art). Three subjects were borders (opposition to), safe housing (housing subsidies) and feminism (related to Black Lives Matter protests). The fourth was Universal Basic Income (U.B.I.).

As billionaires jet off into space while child poverty and youth unemployment continue to rise, inequality is damaging the prospects of future generations. Bringing together the Repeat Beat Poet and Bea Bannister from UBI Labs Youth, this episode will explore Universal Basic Income and what it could mean for young people today. UBI Labs Network & UBI Labs Youth is a decentralised network of citizens, researchers and campaigners exploring the potential of Universal Basic Income. Bea Bannister is a student from North London currently studying for her A-levels. A long term supporter of a Universal Basic Income, Bea is a member of UBI Lab Youth and a co-founder of UBI Lab Women. She is passionate about exploring the vast range of effects a UBI could have on the lives of so many different people.[i]

Just as the population turned to the government to protect them from COVID-19 – or were at least content to abide by its recommendations – so those concerned about poverty turn to the benevolent state to protect them. This is becoming increasingly common. Early in 2021, the Design and Artists Copyright Society (which collects copyright payments for British artists) released a report recommending U.B.I. for artists.

DACS is proposing that the Government trials a pilot UBI scheme for recent art graduates to enable them to navigate the first two years post-graduation which are the most precarious and financially challenging, now made even more difficult by the effects of the pandemic.[ii]

(Overlooking that it was the government’s restrictions regarding COVID-19 – not the virus – that caused duress.) The logic is that since art is a social good and that artists are very lowly paid, that the state should pay subsistence-level income for artists. Except the vast majority of art is mediocre or poor. The prime reason producers of conceptual art, artivism and derivative paintings remain poor is because the market correctly discerns there is nothing there worth supporting. For the actually talented artists drowned in the dross, it can be frustrating. Many skilled artists never reach an audience in order to be judged because there are too many of them and too few collectors. The problem is not the state’s failure to support artists but the over-production of artists through subsidised art courses and provision of grants, causing too many artists in a competitive market leading to low artist income. In other words, the cause of artist poverty is government subsidy.

Artists in former-Communist countries will gaze in astonishment at the spectacle of supposedly free-thinking truthtellers seeking to enslave themselves to the state. The idea of government support, combined with a bio-security state (“Take your fifth booster jab to receive state payment, citizen”), a social-credit system and a transparent digital-currency bank account, and we have the perfected machine of state surveillance and control. All of this is championed by supposedly critical and independent creators. This is the most thoughtful section of the populace building its own gaol and gallows, cheerfully whistling as it does so. How could this be?

N.P.C.: The cruellest, truest meme

Perhaps the cruellest but most perspicacious meme (or widely circulated truism) is that of the average person as a non-player character (N.P.C.). The N.P.C. is a character in a video game that has a limited range of responses and therefore, whenever it encounters a character controlled by a person, it tends to repeat itself, get stuck, not interact fully and fail to absorb new situations or propositions. In encounters outside of set responses, it gets trapped in a loop.

Elite theory, a school of political analysis developed by Gaetano Mosca, Wilfredo Pareto and Julius Evola (drawing on thinkers such as Machiavelli), posits that power always resides in the hands of the elite, whether that elite be a king, nobles, the Church, army, merchants or foreign overlords. Democracy does not exist; it is a cover for the direction of society by oligarchs, who perform the charade of democracy in order to dupe and corral the population. There may be competing factions within these elite groups – or indeed rivalry between different groups – but when popular revolution comes, it is (if not instigated by) led by members of these elites. On the dissident Right and in the Neo-Reactionary movement, such thought is gaining ground. The opposition to Progressivist technocracy – with NGOs, mega-corporations and billionaire philanthropists pushing insect protein, pod living, atheism and a technological serfdom – must come from not education of the populace or the forming of a political party, but the formation of a rival elite. This rival elite will cultivate its own values, oppose the values of the incumbent elite and move towards power indirectly.

This maps well on to the meme of the general person as an N.P.C. Elite theory, psychological studies and the observations of behaviourists all show that most human responses are largely unthinking. It is a matter of reaction, which nudge theorists say is easy enough to guide by overseers. People rely on received opinions and are predominantly conformist. Most people do not have considered opinions but instilled prejudices. They are N.P.C.s awaiting updates distributed to them via mass and social media. Once they understand what the high status position is, they switch over.

Consider the Western feminist. For decades, when asked about the ethics of abortion, she has responded “My body, my choice”. It is the slogan for the pro-abortion lobby and is the credo of generations of women who wish to be able to curtail pregnancies. That was the high-status script for most Western Progressivist politicians, scientists, academics, journalists and opinion formers, so it was the high-status position that – regardless of merits of truth or ethics – could be taken up by women seeking to display their enlightened condition, modernity and independence. Only social conservatives and some Church figures took the contrary position (all humans are made in the image of God, thou shalt not kill) and they were firmly in the out-group elite.

Then, in 2020, the script flipped. When Western governments ignored the idea of treatment and instead put all their efforts into the vaccination field, the narrative reversed. No longer was the line “My body, my choice”, it was “Do your bit to save the vulnerable”. Virtually every card-carrying Western feminist is a die-hard supporter of high-status government-endorsed COVID “vaccination” – even “vaccination” passports and mandated “vaccination” – completely abandoning “My body, my choice”. They did this without a hesitation, demonstrating that they had no principles, only an adherence to the high-status position of conformity. In the early days of the pandemic, the British government’s early position was herd immunity through exposure, targeted protection of the vulnerable. Then, fearing it would be blamed for excess deaths, the government reversed its position to one of universal lockdown and universal “vaccination”. Its officials, politicians and mass-media supporters pivoted in unison, revealing that there was no understanding of either statistics or epidemiology. They would never be called to account by a media regulated and funded by the government, the most visible part of the ruling elite oligarchy.

The artist’s plight

What happens to an artist (or any creator) in an age beset by N.P.C. conformism, when the Progressivist state is set on making artists toe the official line for payment and when the mass media has revealed itself to be fully a tool of the elite? How can any artist by honest when facing such obstacles?

I have written before about the idea of building parallel groups and art scenes. Making spaces for art production and consumption that do not rely on official regulation or state funding is clearly vital. Despite the concerted opposition that this would face – for the controlling bureaucracy hates nothing more than the appearance in its field of influence a body that is immune to its control – this is something that must happen. With the accelerated authoritarianism of a state delimited into every area of one’s family life, one’s bodily autonomy and one’s most private thoughts, art becomes a vital refuge and a means of resistance. It could also become a means of survival, with dissident artists (excluded from digital transactions because they refuse ideological conformity or medical subservience) trading art for food and shelter. We would reach a pre-monetary state of barter and board, like days of the travelling pedlar or itinerant musician in Medieval times.

As the state artist receives governmental patronage, so the dissident artist lives on the fringes, supported by private persons. The state artist has no beliefs that are not paid for by his masters; the dissident artist is poor because he has beliefs. The state artist’s beliefs are empty words of conformity; the dissident artist is forced to confront, examine and reaffirm his beliefs ever time he meets rejection. The state artist believes because of money; the dissident artist believes despite money. The state artist services a quota in security; the dissident artist lives only because he excels under duress. The state artist becomes numb, while the dissident artist feels his successes and failures acutely. Should they emerge from this technocratic dark age, which type of art will the next generation of free people most appreciate? Will they celebrate the state artist or the dissident artist?

That is also why we should resist the idea of art transitioning to the virtual world. Physical art matters. The dissident artist faces the destruction of his art by the state, as non-conformist, anti-social, hate-spreading, subversive, unauthorised production. Obviously, physical art is in peril of confiscation and destruction but if we reach the stage when art cannot be hidden, to be looked at in private, then it seems humanity itself is on the brink of absolute control and at a point where it is beyond reasonable hope. If people own art that they love enough to cherish and preserve and hand on to later generations, that is the greatest guarantee of the survival of an artist’s output. The art that gathers in the storage facilities of state museums will be liable to censorship and destruction, as ever more subjects, treatments and artists become first “problematic” then forbidden.

As much discussed on the reactionary Right, the Benedictine retreat from the world, to gather scholars, knowledge and perpetuate skills, wisdom and belief to later generations is one appealing route. It is necessary, but any such monastery or cell faces persecution and dispersal by Progressivist authorities. The preservation of physical culture involves preventing the altering, demeaning and destruction of cathedrals, museums, statues, historical structures, city layouts, place names and so forth. While Benedictine cells can transmit verbal knowledge, they cannot preserve more than a fraction of the physical culture, which is so much harder to conceal and protect than words. Digitisation is only an indirect and incomplete preservation of physical culture.

What we can do

In the West, this plight is imminent. Museum curators are eagerly compiling lists of colonial-era objects to be repatriated to Africa. “Decolonisation” is encouraged by the British Museums Association, the body advising museum staff. Next on the list will be art that depicts non-white subjects in a negative manner, portraits of slave-owners, hunting art, art depicting sexual assault, portraits of aristocrats, still-lifes including game and fish and any other manner of outmoded subject matter deemed to be retrograde. Who count discount or laugh at such a prediction when art is already being shipped to Africa and labels humiliating slave-owner subjects are now commonplace in museums?

Organise now. Form strong bonds of co-operation and patronage, regionally, nationally and internationally. Collect art, books, sculpture, artistic and historical material in physical formats; visit your local and buy the books they deaccession. Copy material digitally and keep that data on physical hardware, do not rely on cloud storage or online services. When the World Economic Forum beatifically states, “You will own nothing and you will be happy”, they are giving us not a promise but a threat. Act accordingly.

Alexander Adams is a British artist, critic and poet. His art criticism has appeared in Apollo, British Art Journal, Burlington Magazine, The Critic and The Jackdaw. His art has been exhibited worldwide and his books of poems and drawings have been published in the UK, the USA and Malta. His book Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism is published in 2022 by Imprint Academic.