German and Italian officials believed that modern states had the sacred duty to defend national art against the degenerative force of global cosmopolitanism. …Against vulgar American consumerism, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal democracy, and the threat of revolutionary Bolshevism, Nazi–fascist leaders offered an alternative framework for European society: spiritual rather than materialistic, organic and traditional rather than abstract and cosmopolitan, overseen by strong and racially pure states. Promoting these racist and anti-Semitic ideas, institutions like the Permanent Council and the Venice Film Festival also modeled a new style of global cooperation: a “totalitarian international” in which ethnic and racial differences were not transcended but rather proclaimed, celebrated, and deepened.

Schemes like these make one’s skin crawl. But the Nazi–fascist way of thinking about European culture found wide appeal, and it’s worth understanding why.

…New technologies had transformed the nature of work and the structure of politics, women enjoyed greater economic and sexual independence than ever before, and the continent was in thrall to American goods and the alluring spirit of mass consumption. Bedrock bourgeois values appeared to be under siege on every front—an impression worsened by a string of devastating economic crises that had erased middle-class savings and eroded livelihoods.

…It was Mussolini, after all, who had called cinema “the strongest weapon” of any political movement.

…inviting several thousand delegates to Berlin for a massive European film conference. The Nazis welcomed their guests with the formal trimmings of interwar diplomacy: dinners and flags and receptions; working sessions at the legislature and the opera house; tours of nearby film studios and the Reich Film Archive; and a formal ball presided over by a tuxedo-clad Goebbels. The event culminated with the creation of the Nazi-led International Film Chamber, a new venture formally announced several months later in Venice—during the Film Festival. Moviegoers then fêted the foreign premiere of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, an exemplar of Nazi ideology and a masterpiece of modern propaganda.

How the Nazis Made Art Fascist | New Republic

hmmm