Artists: Raise Your Weapons

In this time of escalating exploitation, poverty, imperialist wars, torture and ecocide, we don’t need a piece of art that consists of a mattress dripping orange paint, cleverly titled Tangerine Dream. In this time, as countless multitudes suffer and die for the profits and luxuries of a few, as species go extinct at a rate faster than we can keep track of, we don’t need an orchestra composed of iPhones. In this time, when the future of all life on Earth is at stake, spare us the constant barrage of narcissistic tweets juxtaposing celeb gossip with quirky food choices.

If we lived in a time of peace and harmony, then creating pretty, escapist, seratonin-boosting hits of mild amusement wouldn’t be a crime (except perhaps against one’s Muse). If all was well, such art might enhance our happy existence, like whipped cream on a chocolate latte. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure or decorative art.

But in times like these, for an artist not to devote her/his talents and energies to creating cultural weapons of resistance is a betrayal of the worst magnitude, a gesture of contempt against life itself. It is unforgivable.

The foundation of any culture is its underlying economic system. Today, art is bullied to conform to the demands of industrial capitalism, to reflect and reinforce the interests of those in power. This system-serving art is relentlessly bland. It is viciously soothing, crushingly safe. It seduces us to desire, buy, use, consume. It entertains us and makes us giggle with faux joy as it slowly sucks our brains out through our eye sockets.

The system exerts tremendous pressure to create art that is not only apolitical but anti-political. When the dominant culture spots political art, it sticks its fingers in its ears and sings, “La la la!” It refuses to review it in the New York Times or award it an NEA grant. Political art is vigorously snubbed, ignored, condemned to obscurity, erased. If it’s too powerful to make disappear, then it is scorned, accused of being depressing, doom-and-gloom, preachy, impolite, and by the way, your drawing style sucks. Also by the way, you can’t make a living if your work’s not vacuous, cynical and therefore commercially viable, so go starve under a bridge with your precious principles.

We’re taught that it’s rude to be judgmental, that to assert a point of view violates the pure, transcendent and neutral spirit of art. This is mind-fucking bullshit designed to weaken and depoliticize us. In these times, there is no such thing as neutrality — not taking a stand means supporting and assisting exploiters and murderers.

Let us not be the system’s tools or fools. Artists are not cowards and weaklings — we’re tough. We take sides. We fight back.

Artists and writers have a proud tradition of being at the forefront of resistance, of stirring emotions and inspiring action. Today we must create an onslaught of judgmental, opinionated, brash and partisan work in the tradition of anti-Nazi artists John Heartfield and George Grosz, of radical muralist Diego Rivera, filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, feminist artists the Guerrilla Girls, novelists like Maxim Gorky and Taslima Nasrin, poets like Nazim Hikmet and Kazi Nazrul Islam, musicians like The Coup and the Dead Kennedys.

The world cries out for meaningful, combative, political art. It is our duty and responsibility to create a fierce, unyielding, aggressive culture of resistance. We must create art that exposes and denounces evil, that strengthens activists and revolutionaries, celebrates and contributes to the coming liberation of this planet from corporate industrial military omnicidal madness.

Pick up your weapon, artist.

Stephanie McMillan is a cartoonist. She creates the daily comic strip Minimum Security, and the weekly editorial cartoon Code Green. She has a graphic novel with Derrick Jensen, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial (2007, Seven Stories Press). Read other articles by Stephanie, or visit Stephanie's website.

20 comments on this article so far ...

Comments RSS feed

  1. Don Hawkins said on December 10th, 2009 at 9:23am #

    Stephanie one of the best and the truth.

    Also by the way, you can’t make a living if your work’s not vacuous, cynical and therefore commercially viable, so go starve under a bridge with your precious principles.

  2. grounsel said on December 10th, 2009 at 9:37am #

    Love your rage. Courage calls to courage.

  3. wh1t3f33t said on December 10th, 2009 at 12:11pm #

    Needed encouragement. Looks like I’ve got some work to do when I get home :]

  4. Don Jones said on December 10th, 2009 at 12:48pm #

    I think of Daumier when I think of really good artists who transcend the merely political sometimes. Political cartoonists do this kind of thing the best. The rest of us do our art the best we can and hope that beauty and truth are good weapons against ignorance, ugliness and anger.
    It is my opinion that right-wing, uber-patriot, religious conservative, gunslinging, idiots from any country do not pay ANY attention to good art of any sort.
    Putting energy into political art is preaching to the choir.

  5. Vic said on December 10th, 2009 at 1:57pm #

    Musicians arise ! Dont forget Ministry, who have some of the boldest anti-imperialist lyrics out there (“Lies Lies Lies”, “NWO” etc…) Awesome article !!!

    Vic Pittman, guitar “Los Zancudos”

  6. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 6:48am #

    I sent this to media this morning.

    Let’s start over,

    At the end of beginning the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep and somebody said let there be light was it James Inhofe, no.

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

    To think in terms of winning and losing on everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam, Sagan, well make sure your tray tables are in an upright position and buckle up on the good ship Earth. When this little economic crisis happened what happened first the answers. Well just on the off chance the science is correct and now with what we see with our own eye’s what will be the answers at first? Let us watch the Senate and the man hiding behind curtain the next few months and every everyone you love, everyone you know,…………………………………………..!

    “Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.”
    Mahatma Gandhi

  7. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 7:39am #

    Just saw a few pictures out of Copenhagen and about 150 younger people outside of a meeting of the chamber of commence the international branch the people inside dressed in suit and tie having lunch and getting there 2 cents in and probably look for a half a buck while outside the younger people dressed in causal attire were saying it’s not your air your water. Might take a few more people than a 150 to change the hearts and minds of the chamber of commence international branch just on the off chance what we see with our own eye’s is happening.

  8. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 12:23pm #

    James Hansen new ideas.

    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20091207_SackGoldmanSachs.pdf

  9. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 12:53pm #

    So how to make a real try at this as in dreamland what we see and hear from so called leaders what James Hansen just wrote never seems to come up. Much to hard on the mind I guess. 150 younger people in Copenhagen or James Hansen and a few hundred people at a coal plant here in the States? Might take a few more people than that and probably need ear plugs if we decide to try. Al Gore must know Cap and Trade will not work so I don’t get that part. I guess in just a few months we get to see the Senate transfer more funds to the wealthy and we get the shaft down the drain in not such motion on the third planet from the Sun. I wonder if someone far far away is watching?

  10. AGAINST TOO MANY PASTE said on December 11th, 2009 at 1:21pm #

    We are fed up with huge number of messages Don Hawkins put at this site. He must stop it at once. If you want you can post less than 5 messages per day. Otherwise you should stop it because it is very annoying. NO ONE READS THESE POSTS WHRE ARE COPIED AND PASTED HERE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

  11. lichen said on December 11th, 2009 at 3:01pm #

    Who is “we”. I’m not fed up; plenty of people truly puke-worthy stuff here, and repeat themselves in a much more vile way.

  12. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 3:07pm #

    AGAINST TOO MANY PASTE wait don’t tell me it’s what James Hansen just wrote.

  13. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 4:09pm #

    AGAINST TOO MANY PASTE I hope you like this one. Glenn Beck tonight was talking about good and evil. First he said the smart money is buying gold and bonds. The old smart money then he told people to cut back and pay off there credit cards. He put on his black board GGG gun’s god and gold. I guess that’s what the old smart money does. Then he said the EPA is going to tax carbon and the only reason is to get congress to pass Cap and trade. Something is very wrong with this thinking. First refer to James Hansen above comment and is it true of course. So the EPA is going to tax carbon so as to force congress to pass cap and trade to make Wall Street and the little God’s more money and does nothing or very little to solve the little problem. I know Beck knows this so again I don’t get it. Now at the end of his show he said he feels funny about asking people to buy his book or go to his web site where you can buy more stuff but he is a Capitalist buy the book it’s only $19.95. That Glenn is a real salesman and he’s not alone with crazy talk in Clowntown USA. Breaking New’s the GOP just said bad news for Harry Reed and the Democrats on Health care. What does that mean? There just joking with all of us. That’s so cool.

  14. Don Hawkins said on December 11th, 2009 at 4:42pm #

    Oh climate change is a hoax. Granted the best minds we have say it is happening and now happening faster. Of course the ice caps are kind of melting and drought and flooding funny weather those thousand year storms we see more of and it’s snowing right now. Well from what I understand that might change a little by 2020 and 2030 a tad bit more. Some even say the ice melt’s a little to fast up North could slow or even stop the Gulf stream talk about snow can’t happen? Well what planet do we live on and the last time I checked we are in the Milky Way Galaxy located in the known Universe can’t happen think again.

  15. onecansay said on December 11th, 2009 at 5:45pm #

    Actually when you get to grasp the concept of deciphering Don’s post, he is trying to do the same as the rest. GIVE HIS OPINION!

  16. Gary Corseri said on December 11th, 2009 at 10:30pm #

    Brava, Stephanie!

    I’ve seen your and Jensen’s book–and it’s damn good.

    I wholly agree: it’s time for artists to buff their work with political muscle. The arts were essential to the liberation and anti-war movements of the 60’s and 70’s and too many artists have been A.W.O.L. since then, too concerned with playing it safe with their pay-masters in universities, in the mass-media, etc. They join the competitive rat-race, obsess over grants, grow fat asses in their sinecures, conform and dissipate their energies.

    Where are the great protest songs of this age? Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan were lustrous in their day; where are their likes now? Not on American Idol, that’s for sure.

    The problem is not only with the commercialism of the arts in these parlous times, but also with a failure of imagination on the part of the young organizers of anti-war, pro-Green and protest events. Many of these good and serious people have simply failed to grasp the importance of the arts in popularizing and humanizing the crucial–often excruciating issues–of these times. Speechifying can be grand–look how Obama’s wizardry lulled and entangled masses. But, it’s songs that remain with us. (King, by the way, was a unique and wonderful singer-artist!)

    You raise a clarion call. Let’s hope it will be heeded soon.

  17. russell olausen said on December 12th, 2009 at 12:21am #

    Art today is an extention of politics in case you hadn’t noticed. That is why the level of offence is so high. Andy Warhol is laughing as any fraud artist does when the score is so large. It’s 40 below and I don’t give a fock, cause I’m off to the rodeo. The great white north.

  18. Don Hawkins said on December 12th, 2009 at 7:18am #

    At the end of the beginning change is a good word. The so called deciders all moved to Hawaii and took a few slaves with them. The year 2029 and they had many parties like there was tomorrow. They used coal and oil and gas cut all the trees down kept using chemicals to grown crops and had many golf courses and dug up ever oz of resource they could find it didn’t take them very long before the water was black and the crops not so much but a few still played golf and took from the slaves The rest of us who stayed and tried to build a new World didn’t do that no no no. We listened to our thinkers who stayed with us we called them the high council and man it was not easy. We cut back on everything and learned to get out energy from not coal and oil and gas but the Sun the wind and all those nuclear weapons well we build a new generation of nuclear power plants with the help of the high council and used the fuel in those weapons to make energy. We didn’t cut tress but planted more and lived on very little. We grew our crops without chemicals and yes it was harder but we had food. Golf courses no a thing of the past as the water was used for drinking and crops easy not so much. We taught our children the basics the age of the Earth the speed of light knowledge from there book of knowledge a new way of thinking and Capitalism was also a thing of the past we worked together and we had enough food and water and shelter for all. Now the deciders in Hawaii who we were watching as they never understood why the Goodyear blimp went over the Islands ever now and then after they ran out of food and water and the air a tad bit polluted decided to come and take what we had built. Well there’s a little term called screw you. You see our high council also made a decision the slaves these deciders took to Hawaii could come and join us but the so called deciders it was decided better for them to stay in Hawaii and decide granted it would not be easy for them but was decided the only way for them to learn a new way of thinking. We did fly the blimp over the Islands to see how they were doing and at first they tried something called a crisis manager who went to the Island at first with the decides and this gave us all a good laugh in the new World. The end of the beginning thank you thank you very much.

    The battle lines are draw and climate change a warming World is real and is going to take the human race down and down hard. Fight back calm at peace use the truth the knowledge these so called deciders it’s the hardest thing for them to fight. Thank you thank you very very much and we love you we love you so much.

  19. Don Hawkins said on December 12th, 2009 at 11:46am #

    Phil Thornhill, from the Campaign against Climate Change in the UK, said on behalf of the Global Climate Campaign: “Every year of inaction sees us slide closer to the point where a tragedy of unprecedented scale becomes irreversible.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/12/copenhagen-demonstrators-rally-global-deal

    If you read this doesn’t look good for the human race that’s the human race. Tragedy of unprecedented scale is that true, oh yes it sure is. Here in the States and this little problem we have with dreamland is still in full gear. I see new commercials from the petroleum institute no on cap and trade and none yet from Wall Street. On Fox New’s this morning a show called Forbes on Fox Steve Forbes you know freedom work’s was on with a few other guests and the talk was the EPA will regulate carbon, CO2 you know what we all exhale so it’s all your fault for breathing. This childlike thinking is amazing to see and so far it is not working but stopping any progress. Cap and trade does nothing to slow the problem and I don’t get why Al Gore and a few more don’t come out and say it. It’s the best they can do well a tragedy of unprecedented scale becomes irreversible we are out of time Gore say’s that I still don’t get it. Now is not the time to give up but fight back as it looks like all we are doing is giving a few people time to make plans for themselves and a few close friends. The S word or C word more like the F word. Can it be turned around good question they say 60,000 in Copenhagen today and it’s going to take more than that.

  20. Don Hawkins said on December 12th, 2009 at 1:35pm #

    Even limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees C would not forestall serious damage, the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, told reporters. “We would get sea-level rise, through thermal expansion alone, of 0.4 to 1.4 meters” (1.3 feet to 4.5 feet), he said.

    Climate science co-chair Stocker acknowledged that IPCC projections do not include the potential “tipping point” addition of trapped methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that would be released as permafrost thaws in the far north.

    Plant and animal matter entombed in that frozen Arctic soil for millennia would decompose as it thaws, attacked by microbes, producing carbon dioxide and — if in water — methane, many times more powerful than CO2 in warming the atmosphere. Other methane would be released as the oceans warm deposits of methane hydrates, ice-like formations deep underground and under the seabed in which methane molecules are trapped in crystals of frozen water.

    “It is potentially hugely important,” Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Center, Britain’s climate science center, said of the latent methane in another news briefing. “The size of the reserves are not fully known and are not captured fully in our models” — the supercomputer simulations used to project climate change.

    Russian researchers in Siberia, in particular, have expressed alarm about methane’s potential, warning of a possible surge in emissions in the north, where Earth is warming most, adding several degrees to global temperatures and causing unpredictable consequences for the climate. Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries.

    “We don’t really know enough yet about methane feedback,” Hadley Center climatologist Vicki Pope told reporters.

    The British institution says intensive research on Arctic methane may allow it to be included in Hadley climate predictions within five years. Last year six U.S. national laboratories launched a joint investigation of rapid methane release, and last July the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, asked his scientific network to focus on “abrupt, irreversible climate change” from thawing permafrost. The IPCC’s next periodic assessment report is due in 2013.

    We’re “walking toward a cliff in the dark,” Betts said of such unknowns in climate. “It’s out there somewhere, you don’t know where, and so it makes sense to stop.” AP

    The size of the reserves are not fully known and are not captured fully in our models” — the supercomputer simulations used to project climate change. {Richard Betts} Maybe that’s it. Al Gore when VP had knowledge of simulations on a supercomputer a big supercomputer and the question was asked on this present path all information was fed to the computer how will this play out. The answer from the old supercomputer was strange game no winners makes sense to stop, nice game of checkers

    Also by the way, you can’t make a living if your work’s not vacuous, cynical and therefore commercially viable, so go starve under a bridge with your precious principles.

    We’re taught that it’s rude to be judgmental, that to assert a point of view violates the pure, transcendent and neutral spirit of art. This is mind-fucking bullshit designed to weaken and depoliticize us. In these times, there is no such thing as neutrality — not taking a stand means supporting and assisting exploiters and murderers.

    Let us not be the system’s tools or fools. Artists are not cowards and weaklings — we’re tough. We take sides. We fight back. Stephanie McMillan

    How does that go, “all the World’s a stage and