Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a write up of an interesting phenomenon: The Birth of Godly Trump, the Humble Teacher. Marshall looks at the works of Utah painter John McNaughton and his particular stylized paintings that promote right-wing memes.
You may have seen some of these paintings already. I’d seen maybe half of them floating around social media over recent months. They’re the work of a painter from Utah named Jon McNaughton. (You can find all his work for sale here.) He specializes in a sort of kitschy painting focusing on patriotic and Christian themes. They have a very didactic bent. People from wildly different eras of history side by side in highly didactic group portraits. So you’ll have Jesus being shunned at the podium in the House of Representatives or this painting of Moses with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Antonin Scalia, Phyllis Schlafly and others.
McNaughton reportedly has a huge following on the right; Marshall reports Sean Hannity is a devotee of his work. And why not? As Marshall comments:
They are a sort of Where’s Waldo of right-wing conspiracy theories and victimization. Each photo is a catalog of indictment, with a visual signifier if you look hard enough for it, for every purported outrage.
Art in the service of various causes is nothing new, of course. It can be devastatingly satirical, inspirational, or deliberately flattering to the rich and/or powerful. McNaughton is, so far, not the ‘official’ artist of the Trump era in the way that Socialist Realism was the official art style of the Soviet Union, but the resemblance is too close to miss. As Marshal concludes:
There’s only so much we can draw from McNaughton’s painting, though the sales reproductions of his work and his growing fame on the Trumpist right give some indication of how much he resonates. This kind of hagiography is one small part of a story we are fools to miss. Even as President Trump in some ways losing grip over the Presidency, he is tightening his grip on the Republican party. He’s not losing ground on that front. His grip is intensifying and transforming what the core of the GOP is.
emphasis added
Over at Orcinus, David Neiwert has explored Fascism in several essays, such as this one. Here’s an observation by Chip Berlet that tries to sum up Fascism:
Fascism demands racial, ethnic, or cultural unity and the collective rebirth of a nation while seeking to purge demonized enemies that are often scapegoated as subversive and parasitic. Fascism is a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism that glorifies action, violence, and a militarized culture. Fascism can exist as an ideology, a mass movement, or a form of state government. Fascism attacks both liberal democratic pluralism and left-wing revolutionary movements while proposing a totalitarian version of populist mass politics. Fascism parasitizes other ideologies, juggles many internal tensions and contradictions, and produces chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize.
emphasis added
The right-wing in America has been promoting an alternate reality for decades now. McNaughton’s art is the visual representation of it, along the lines in the emphasized quotes above. It is art aimed at making people feel rather than think. It is designed to divide rather than unite. It’s “You’re either with us or against us” dressed up in pretty colors and fanciful poses, with a touch of Jesus.