Why Does The Alt-Right Like Depeche Mode?
Molly Lambert explores why white nationalist Richard Spencer likes the synth-pop group Depeche Mode: ‘The racist alt-right’s clumsy embrace of Depeche Mode follows its recent efforts to make an awful subgenre called “fashwave†happen. Just as Goebbels loved a march, the alt-right presumably heard strict ’80s drum machines as an irresistible fascist vision of control. Overt displays of fascism are often arousing to those for whom extreme order is an aphrodisiac, and vice versa. (This aesthetic-political fallacy reminds me of the way that Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Olympia were reclaimed
in the 1970s by clueless film-theory feminists who painted Riefenstahl’s contributions to the cinematic arts as undervalued due to her gender — when, in truth, she was just another monstrous opportunist who was fine with Nazism if it meant more power for her. Personally, I’ve always found her films technically impressive but utterly devoid of soul.)’
