Sarah Manavis (New Statesman): How architecture-themed Twitter accounts became a magnet for white nationalism
Another account floating around in the architectural Twitter orbit is Wrath of Gnon. A self-described traditionalist, it is the account that was posting quotes from Leon Krier, Roger Scruton, and Theodore Dalrymple liked by ArchitectureRevival. These were posted alongside standard architecture tweets. Although the account functions as a yet another architecture Twitter account, those it follows include famed alt-righter Richard Spencer as well as a handful of accounts self-identifying as alt-right and posting Pepe the Frog memes.
Senior editor at CityLab, the Atlantic’s publication on urbanism, Amanda Kolson Hurley posted on Twitter that, although Gnon’s tweets on architecture can be unproblematic, the account is part of the same alt-right camp as ArchitecturalRevival.
Of course, you may be thinking, white nationalism on Twitter is rife in small, largely unknown alt-right accounts. But these architecture Twitterers are by no means small fry. Wrath of Gnon boasts over 28.8K followers and ArchitecturalRevival has accrued 32.8K. European Beauty, although not strictly an architecture account, is just shy of 40K. These accounts are not toiling in obscurity, but are leading voices in an ever-growing Twitter fandom.
Is 13th century urbanism the new gateway drug into Neo-Nazism??
It is time for a thread on traditional urbanism, or town planning 13th century style. I will dispel some myths of modern dis-urbanism. pic.twitter.com/wUbkEuGy9a
— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) July 7, 2017
In Rome, I once asked for directions to the nearest post office. I was told to go down the street for about half a kilometre and go around the the corner of the fascist building. While the building was indeed impressively fascist, the post office seemed to be run by communists in terms of efficiency.
That, or probability distributions:
https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/
Someday our descendants will marvel at the exquisite irony of progressives succeeding where fundamentalists failed: banning the teaching of evolution through selection.
The war on beauty continues.
Isn’t it about time The Unz Review had an architecture critic ? The Wrath of Gnon would be an interesting addition.
everything beautiful must be destroyed
– signed, the media
The other side is into ironic-not-ironic Brutalist Appreciation
There’s maybe some connection between people who say “everything new is bad, in the past was better”, and extreme political propagandists.
This is also with Marxism. Marx theorizes an original state of happiness and harmony, before division of labour, alienation, etc (and history is presented as a long arc of social and psychological decline, before final redemption once there is a sufficient surplus of value). This is kind of “extreme conservativism” is included in Marx, as a mechanism by which he was able attack contemporary society, and hack peoples’ brains, even with a futurist messianic orientation.
In reality, we all know past epochs were far worse than now, in almost every single way (you cannot romanticize any life before penicillin, for example). Life was completely shit for vast majority of people until recently.
Any contemporary political movement based in idealism of past epochs, and saying present epoch is terrible (when most people are much better than ever before) is a childish delusion at this history stage..
But in aesthetic realms, past often really is better. Novels were far better in the 19th century. So was classical music. And the architecture in epochs like 19th and 18th century, was a lot more stylish than today.
Although with a trade-off, that 100 years ago the vast majority of people could not afford to buy any of this stylish architecture for themselves – but this connected to the overall shit life of people in past epochs. And e.g. Rome was not for tourists appreciating the beauty when people were walking around with bubonic plague.
I rather think most of the other side doesn’t even express appreciation for buildings these days. That said:
https://pics.me.me/we-need-to-advocate-for-the-preservation-of-brutalist-buildings-32037703.png
(Is it a problem that I like both architectures? I just dislike importing people from huts and slums.)
Speaking of Pepe … … at the confirmation hearing of Trump’s USA Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, his former law clerk sat behind him, Ms Zina Bash – who is half Latina, half Jewish. And Zina at least THRICE gave the Euro-heritage-identity gestures, the OK hand signs & the Pepe the Frog hand-on-chin pose
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d9dc6901f7e93841838d9d36d6ec4dd290ecbe61f81a7fb707271f4278f6e78.jpg
That was discussed some time ago in the context of Doctor Eugene Gu go all panicky about this on Twitter instead of looking after his patient and that shop on the top left is really bad.
Um, everyone back then was living in what we call “traditional” architecture.
That “stylish” 18th century farmhouse that only the rich can afford today was standard back then.
A measure of what we’ve lost.
Don’t know anything about this, but on glance it seems like typical Jewish false-flagging to me.
And Theodore Dalrymple is a great writer. He might have been the first to open me to the fact that not all right-wing thought was neoliberal/ancap/neocon garbage.
They only seem that way because of survivor bias. Writers in the 19th Century not at the level of Balzac, Dickens or Tolstoy published plenty of garbage novels which deservedly dropped out of print.
Cities weren’t car storage facilities.
The world wasn’t covered in macadam.
There was no TV.
You could see the Milky Way at night.
You people know nothing.
If we ever have a based fashy Kekistan, AquariusAnon should be Minister of Architecture
Don’t you mean Minister of Agriculture?
Those directions would probably work in Asmara, too.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/asmara-eritrea-modernist-city/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80znkXJWHbs
There is no TV anymore.
I miss that actually.
I lolled but what the hell is that?
I’ll hire Chinese architects to design all the buildings with Tolyatti as a template.
To think of it, isn’t there something ironic about an city dedicated to an Italian being filled with brutalist architecture?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/american-chopper-argument
(Not that I knew – had only seen the brutalism one.)
Nobody is seriously going to argue that we should return, literally, to the 13th century. The Thought Police are not worried about that.
What does worry the Thought Police is that ordinary people might see these architecture posts and start asking why it wouldn’t be possible for us to have some of the good things of modern life (clean water and sewerage, antibiotics, etc) but combined with some of the good things of the past (a more human scale of life, actual beauty, family life). That is the kind of dangerous wicked radical thinking that must be stamped out.
What if people start to figure out that ugliness isn’t actually essential? What if people start to figure out that pretty much all the artistic/architectural/literary movements of the pasty century have been a fraud and a scam?
Interestingly, this courtyard in St. Petersburg now alt-right?
https://scontent-frt3-2.cdninstagram.com/vp/8541db517bffd758682845249572debe/5BB69EBB/t51.2885-15/s1080x1080/e35/34394787_261156967773564_7987428393509453824_n.jpg
Exemplary Bolshevik approach to art
Well, designated shitting streets are a proud Aryan tradition.
They are fraud, but more in terms of overdramatizing their own influence.
Current architecture around the world just matches what you can build economically, with present technology, materials, and some engineering plans offsetting low skill level of the contemporary construction workers.
That’s why it’s the same everywhere, whether in China, Japan or Brazil. Regardless of any 20th century architecture movements, the majority buildings constructed now would look the same. The reason is they are determined by current economy, technology and methods – not any deeper aesthetics.
20th architecture movements are fraud because they overestimate their influence. China, Japan, etc are building the same, without any need of them.
In fact, aesthetics is a luxury most buildings do not even reach. People do not build square boxes because they believe some weird 20th century aesthetics – they do because it is the cheapest and most convenient shape – it is lower common denominator architecture.
And this is particularly valued now which is why people pay more for, and it is all the favorite of middle and upper classes.
You can buy specialty beer, handmade clothes and live in a beautiful castle, with all classical art and aesthetics. But it’s expensive to make this kind of life.
When you see gopnik rednecks in the supermarket buying only industrial food and returning to their ugly square apartment building. This is not because they are aficionados of 20th century aesthetic and architectural movements. It’s because it is mass produced food and mass produced architecture, which made their life affordable (for the first time in the 20th century, poor people were living well, and having a normal, if unaesthetic, lifestyle).
If you try to give these people actual beautiful environment and human life scale, then it would be expensive and not possible to live so many people at their level. Maybe in some rich countries like in Switzerland it’s affordable – but that’s just another way of saying everyone can live like middle and upper classes.