AVANT-GARDE AND KITSCH
47
dency of culture in Germany, Italy and Russia, it is not because
their respective governments are controlled by philistines, but
because kitsch is the culture of the masses in these countries, as it
is everywhere else. The encouragement of kitsch is merely another
of the inexpensive ways in which totalitarian regimes seek to
ingratiate themselves with their subjects. Since these regimes can–
not raise the cultural level of the masses-even
if
they wanted to
-by anything short of a surrender to international socialism, they
will flatter the masses by bringing all culture down to their level.
It
is for this reason that the avant-garde is outlawed, and not so
much because a superior culture is inherently a more critical cul–
ture. (Whether or not the avant-garde could possibly flourish under
a totalitarian regime is not pertinent to the question at this point.)
As matter of fact, the main trouble with avant-garde art and litera–
ture, from the point of view of Fascists and Stalinists, is not that
they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too
difficult to inject effective propaganda into them, that kisch is
~ore
pliable to this end. Kitsch keeps a dictator in closer contact with
the "soul" of the people. Should the official culture be one superior
to the general mass-level, there would be a danger of isolation.
Nevertheless, if the masses were conceivably to ask for avau[–
garde art and
lit~rature,
Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin would not
hesitate long in attempting to satisfy such a demand. Hitler is a
bitter enemy of the avant-garde, both on doctrinal and personal
grounds, yet this did not prevent Goebbels in 1932-33 from stren–
uously courting avant-garde artists and writers. When Gottfried
Benn, an Expressionist poet, came over to the Nazis he was wel–
comed with a great fanfare, although at that very moment Hitler
was denouncing Expressionism as
Kulturbolschewismus·.
This was
at a time when the Nazis felt that the prestige which the avant-garde
enjoyed among the cultivated German public could be of advantage
to them, and practical considerations of this nature, the Nazis being
the skilful politicians they are, have always taken precedence over
Hitler's personal inclinations. Later the Nazis realized that it was
more practical to accede to the wishes of the masses in matters of
culture than to those of their paymasters; the latter, when it came to
a question of preserving power, were as willing to sacrifice their
culture as they were their moral principles, while the former, pre–
cisely because power was being withheld from them, had to be
