The Playbook of Fascism

In what can only be considered old-school-Fascist-playbook-101, the Trump Administration wants to sell a commissioned painting by Kehinde Wiley that, in their mind, evokes, "globalist and woke ideologies.” The painting has lived at the US embassy in the Dominican Republic capital, and features Dominicans and is titled “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960.” The reason why we are using quite careful, considered language here is that we understand the controversy surrounding Mr. Wiley, but also, we understand that Mr. Wiley painted the Presidential portrait of Barack Obama, a nemesis of Trump, who himself just recently opened his own lauded Presidential Library recently with rave reviews and curated art selection. Obama’s portrait by Wiley lives at the National Portrati Gallery in D.C., and probably irks Trump because those kinds of things irk Trump and his sycophants. What we can only assume is happening is just an attempt to create another petty fight with the former president and find any means necessary to eliminate any evidence that anything could ever exist in the world before he was president.

Virginia Shore was the chief curator for the Art in Embassies program between 2000- 2017, who commissioned the work (and as you can see, work under Bush and Obama), told the NY Times, “Calling this woke is difficult for me to understand. This is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders.”

Erin Scavino, the current director of Art in Embassies, was on a podcast recently and did a little shit talk of Wiley and really pushed hard on the connection to Obama. Scavino, with a broadcasting degree, was also a contestant on Trump’s “The Apprentice.” She did not win.

Ambassador Campos said on her IG account that, “In the Trump Administration and under my leadership we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies and instead embracing American patriotism and the beauty of our great country!” We are not sure if she was aware that a painting by an American artist depicting Dominicans in an embassy in the Dominican Republic actually seems to embrace the idea of patriotism and seems to be a pretty positive American moment, nor can we confirm why someone would want to be an Ambassador in a foreign country if they don’t like, you know, global things.

More to come if they sell the work.