trump is having an art attack
why the arts terrify dictators
A certain regime in America - I refuse to call it a presidency, or a government - is taking cues from the playbooks of history’s most infamous dictators.
The MAGA regime has enacted egregious new policies this year (to name a few from the past week - leaving 13.7 million people without healthcare, revoking Harvard University’s authorization to enrol international students, and toying with the idea of a reality show where immigrants compete for citizenship.)
Idiocracy is truly upon us.
Yet the internet has picked a seemingly banal scandal to zoom in on - Trump’s latest Taylor Swift diss.
“Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday, 16th May.
(For context, back in September 2024, Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”, after T.Switty publicly shared her plans to vote for Harris in the US presidential election.)
Reading these pissy posts, one might simply observe Trump being his usual contrarian, unprofessional, misogynistic self, with no further agenda.
Yet he’s also recently come for Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Robert De Niro and Bono. And remember when he caused painter Sarah Boardman’s portrait of him to be removed from the Colorado State Capitol, implying its ‘purposeful distortion’ was politically motivated? Yeah. These are not unrelated occurrences.
Trump has continuously made insulting, lowbrow public comments about respected, talented artists who’ve dared oppose him - all while his regime has stripped public funding for the arts, increased censorship and content restriction of the arts, and enabled Trump to appoint himself President of Washington DC’s Kennedy Center Board of Trustees (one of America’s leading arts venues).
I posit that none of these events are coincidences.
Trump is not only aiming to devalue art, he’s aiming to censor artists - and to sway his supporters into shunning any artist who expresses concern about him.
Behold some of his latest textual vomit, if you can stomach it.
There is a pattern here. Trump’s childish badmouthing of artists is not a mere quirk of his personality. A key part of any authoritarian regime is crushing the arts, and he likely knows it - or is instinctively re-enacting it.
Throughout history, countless examples show fascists making identical moves - devaluing, censoring and destroying art - minus the sour social media posts, of course. (Still, I bet some of them would have been as bad as Trump if they’d had the chance - can you imagine Hitler’s X feed?)
Nazi Germany
Where better to start than with the reign of history’s most infamous rejected artist?
In 1933, the Nazis publicly burned thousands of books written by Jewish, pacifist, liberal, and socialist authors, solidifying their control over intellectual and cultural expression.
Many artists were banned from creating art altogether, and some were arrested, imprisoned or killed.
The Nazis destroyed or sold many confiscated works of visual art.*
(*I recently read a historical fiction novel about Nazi art theft by Australia’s own Natasha Lester. Recommended if you enjoy your light, cozy romances with a side of genocidal atrocities).
The Nazis created the ‘Reich Chamber of Culture’ to ensure that the production of art, music, film, theatre, radio, and writing in Germany was all ‘synchronized’. Shudder.
(Art handlers with Emil Nolde’s confiscated artwork, Das Leben Christi.) Russia
In 1932, Stalin's government introduced the policy of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union, which demanded that all art and media be ‘socialist in content and realist in form’. If it wasn’t, Stalinist officials criticized, banned, and arrested artists. Some artists were executed, others hanged themselves after interrogation.More recently, in 2012, musicians Pussy Riot were all convicted of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ and each sentenced to two years' imprisonment. They were arrested again during COVID.
An anti-war motivational quote from ballet icon Mikhail Baryshnikov was removed from the wall of a dance school in 2023.In 2024, Russian-Canadian artist Pyotr Verzilov was added to Russia’s list of ‘terrorists and extremists’ by Rosfinmonitoring (the country’s state watchdog).
Though restrictions on art are now looser than in the days of Stalin, dozens of journalists, human-rights defenders, and activists are still being labelled ‘foreign agents’ and living in self-imposed exile.
Those who remain in Russia’s public eye are vetted by a special ‘public council’ at the Ministry of Culture, which determines whether they meet state security standards.Yikes.
(Isaak Brodsky’s painting Stalin - in the style of ‘Socialist Realism’. Yawn.) Spain
Franco's regime (1936-1939) implemented a crackdown on artistic expression, particularly that which deviated from the regime's ideology. Artworks were seized and strict censorship laws were put into place.
Afghanistan
Upon the emergence of Taliban rule from 1996-2001, a ban on most forms of art and cultural expression was implemented. After the Taliban took power again in 2021, ‘illegal’ musical instruments were destroyed in a bonfire, and plenty of music and art is now criminalised.
China
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, censorship intensified - and has never really let up. It would be impossible to cover all of the incidents of censorship in China in a short article, but here’s Ai Weiwei’s story about his art exhibition on the Sichuan earthquake cover-up.
Here are some similar examples of crackdowns on art in America - circa now.
On the 27th of March, 2025, Trump issued an executive order instructing the removal of ‘divisive, race-centred ideology’ from Smithsonian museums, as well as from educational and research institutions and the National Zoo.
Many arts bodies rely on government grants for funding. Arts grants now have to ‘comply with all presidential executive orders’, Organizations that are linked to any DEI efforts or ‘gender ideology’ will not be considered for grants. So, basically, any art projects that do not project a ‘patriotic’ (pro-Trump) image will not be funded.
Trump has instituted a 100% tariff on any movies produced overseas.
Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse - but it might.
It seems laughable that people who just…make art…strike fear into the hearts of such ‘tough’ politicians, right?
Wrong. As you’re probably aware, if you’ve bothered to read this far, there is a great deal of power to art.
Art encourages independent thought. It can help people wade through institutional lies to reach truth. And, crucially, art is often about speaking truth to power. It is a discipline that encourages multiple viewpoints, diversity, empathy and inclusiveness.
It’s a dark era not just for America - we’ve witnessed the way Trumpism has spread globally of late. So we must press on. We must keep making art, and keep supporting artists who dare to express dissenting viewpoints
…I’ll let the legendary Robert De Niro take us out.