The Lasting Impact of the Influencing Machine
The boogeyman comes for you
On Thursday President Trump signed an executive order to rid the Smithsonian Institution (as well as public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction), of anti-American narratives, saying in part, “rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.”
Donald Trump is 1000% right with this move.
About 50 ago Howard Zinn published A People’s History of the United States, which tells the American story through the most hostile and malevolent lens imaginable. Since then it has become socially acceptable, even fashionable in leftist circles, to teach all who will listen, and often students who must listen, that America and its entire history is the most incorrigibly racist, homophobic, misogynist, colonizing group of misfits to ever walk the planet.
This movement glosses over the many contributions the country has made to furthering human rights, ending slavery, and ensuring civil rights, but let’s not let a few facts dirty up a beautiful narrative.
When it comes to the arts, this impulse takes visual form. We’ve seen a slow but steady erosion of production based on merit to focus almost entirely on allyship with so-called marginalized groups. Though they don’t say it, creating works celebrating a specific and narrow criteria for art, while denigrating the entire history of the country, serves only the most radical elements of society, and effectively marginalizes the rest. Since when is it the artist’s duty to be an ally to anyone except himself?
They’ve convinced us that art must hew to certain audiences and affiliations, in this case the most radical and ungracious interpretations of America and its progress. So how did we get here?
Look no further than the work of curator and anthropologist Aaron Moulton, who’s spent over twenty years investigating and researchng George Soros’ entrée into the art world. Jonathan Keeperman, publisher at Passage Press, highlighted Moulton in his article The Influencing Machine, the same title of Moulton’s fascinating book.
Moulton does the unenviable job of coursing through the rabbit hole of what was called the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art, and their lasting impact on subversive art structures meant to direct art for the purpose of superseding existing national cultural identity following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The SCCA was an initiative of the right-wing’s favorite villain George Soros and his infamous Open Society Institute. Soros is credited with funding every left-wing cause and group, from Antifa to rogue judges, and every other cultural crisis worldwide, whether true or not (a lot of it is).
The SCCA was created following the collapse of the Soviet Union and meant to fill the black hole of art in those eastern bloc countries whose art culture was moribund, non-existent, or where it was allowed, merely a propaganda arm of the Soviet system. Keeperman writes that the SCCA “single-handedly reshaped the art world across post-Soviet Europe.”
Moulton’s work goes in-depth into the SCCA, the subversive art, explores the people responsible for shaping the agendas (many of whom are still very active today) and the repercussions of the SCCA that still reverberate across the art world today, as Keeperman says, “where art was not organically produced but steered, curated, and conditioned by institutional mechanisms that rewarded ideological compliance and punished deviation.”
This instinct is well-preserved in the art schools, galleries, museums, and even in Hollywood still. In fact it’s essentially institutionalized.
Moulton makes reference to a Steve Bannon exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands.
The exhibit, titled Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective by artist and propagandist Jonas Staal, ran from March – September of 2019. The website says of the work, “For Jonas Staal, Bannon’s work is a crucial example of the far-reaching influence that propaganda art practices [in] contemporary democratic societies… and to offer spaces and possibilities for resistance.”
Former SCCA director Maria Hlavajova is a frequent collaborator with Jonas Staal.
Promotional image for Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective
At the time of the exhibit I was traveling the world with Steve in an effort to unite a far-flung asortment of populist-nationalist groups with a cohesive populist message. When we heard of the exhibit, we made an overture to the artist to offer him an “opportunity for resistance” by bringing Steve to the museum for a conference to hash it out. Not only did they refuse, they seemed offended that we would even offer.. Fear is the life blood of the leftist.
Back to The Influencing Machine - One of the most fascinating sections is how gatekeepers, and the artists themselves, control not just the language of art but also the language of criticism.
To have an opinion on the influence of Soros is to enter into a world of blood libel and antisemitism. Well-meaning and sincere critics can’t catch a break. They’re boxed in – to butt heads with the a system they don’t believe in opens them up to slander and reputational murder.
To his credit, Moulton dives deep into the blood libel impulse, and effectively dismantles it, while simultaneously exposes the false dichotomy of “discuss[ing] George Soros through the lens of conspiracy theory or unquestioning faith.”
Ultimately as Moulton describes the works commissioned by SCCA, “It is not even art. It’s a smokescreen, an exploration of vulnerabilities in the system designed to inform OSI of where they can best target their resources to exploit weaknesses in society to more effectively achieve their ultimate goal.”
The proof is that you won’t find but a handful of these commissions in any museum archive. They’re not deemed collectable because they don’t rise to the level of art.
To understand the greater implications of the effect of the SCCA on culture today, Moulton says,
“Once the region of Eastern Europe was ‘desovietized’, the decolonization culture of the SCCA had nowhere to go but to become inward-looking and seek out new boogeymen and become more of a elitist policing of culture than anything. The highest goal of the network was to make art programming that had an effect at the policy level. This kind of socially engaged practice demands an “other”, a boogeyman. And the way this reverberates in the art world of America is through the art addressing identity politics, wokeism and other NGO-like issues. Frankenstein’s monster has come home.”
The entire article, and Moulton’s work, are fascinating and help ground the environment we see today across the arts. Five stars.
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Dan Fleuette is a photographer, author, and filmmaker best known for his body of work with Steve Bannon and WarRoom. His national best-seller Rebels, Rogues, and Outlaws: A Pictorial History of WarRoom can be found on doitfluet.com
No AI machines were harmed in this writeup.