Cool Fascismo – The Power of Print

Adbusters – The Year of Living Dangerously pt 4 (edition 127)

Scrutiny towards the media has grown ever common over the last year (give or take) as the world was shaken by the Trump presidency campaign in the US. I grew so tired, during this time of seeing his face everywhere as not only did all news of his actions seem fruitless and unfocused, every reminder of his victory seemed like another twist of the knife. We all thought we had come so far and yet we allowed fascist ignorance and fear to win an election in one of the most influential nations on the planet. With every article seeming to try and pin the blame on one thing (as though a single mistake can change a general election) and every journalist seeming to scramble to his ever more absurd remarks like a cat chasing a beam of light, I disengaged. A sense of helplessness washed over me and I turned away from the newspapers being read on the train, put my headphones in when I heard his name on the television.

It wasn’t until early January when I saw this (by then outdated) magazine under the living-room table.

Something struck me about it that made me look closer, rather than turn away. Perhaps it was the clever visual recreation of Hitlers most recognisable feature, his mustache, upon the new President of the United States. More likely it was the blatant use of the word ‘fascism’ right on its cover. Either way, my attention had been grasped. Magazines never interested me as a media format, even by my teenage years it seemed to be an outdated mode of communication, but something made me reach under the glass and retrieve it from amongst the books and magazines discarded there by my father. That initial sensory curiosity was straight away met with intrigue. Unlike the other glossy, clean magazines around it, the cover felt like worn down sandpaper and just like that I was hooked. In mentally discarding print media I had forgotten that whilst film has the ability to express sound and movement in ways print media couldn’t, it relinquished us from a sense of touch. In my hands was something that was telling me that it had something to say that its counterparts weren’t. It would not smoothen out edges or conform to the standards of other magazines, already it was different. To me the visuals, whilst clever in recreation of Hitler-esque imagery, and bold in their unapologetic use of the word ‘fascism’, were no more important than the materials it was printed upon.

Opening the book I was not disappointed. There were 11 pages before the first article could be found and each of those pages built a feeling, of sorts. With no discernible pattern, images and advertisements melded with art; quotes from Sylvia Plath, Benito Mussolini, Abdullah Öcalan scattered amongst them. They displayed a fascist world, a world of so much fear that we give up of freedom for safety. This set-up was jarring to me. Visually spaced out and obscure I felt myself adrift in a medium I though I understood the language of. This thing, in comparison to everything I had previously read, was speaking in tongues… And yet it made more sense to me. In a way it felt like an answer to all the issues I had with journalism in the recent months.

As post-modernist, materialist art melded with rebellious imagery from countries already facing fascist regimes, the articles that were scattered through its pages were not so much defeatist reflections on what we have done wrong as they were a call to arms. All the pieces within this sandpapery magazine accepted the world for what it is and accepted the challenge of changing it. They acknowledged our strength and weakness in equal measure and devised ways of shifting from the current path we are on. It was refreshing to see a magazine created so artistically, each article building into each other. the use of mixed media in the form of visuals and text was used to build a sense of the current direction of the world and how it is we might go about changing course.

Not only did this magazine re-engage me in politics, reviving my will to fight back, it also revived something else. It revived in me a willingness to explore journalism and print media as modes of communication once more. It reminded me that media is not a reflective, passive practice, but an active and engaged one… and that there are still voices calling out for a response, calling out for movement. This magazine was a beautifully paced and effortlessly engaging piece of media that reminded me that information is not what defines the media, message does.

And I heard their message loud and clear.