Comment by selimthegrim

This is incredibly dangerous and I’m going to push back hard on this narrative. If informed citizens of a democracy don’t need art, how are they supposed to differentiate between propaganda, nationalist myth making, hate speech attempting to clothe themselves as legitimate attempts at artistic expression? When my mom’s nationalized school in Pakistan had dance classes cancelled by the dictatorship, that wasn’t an anti-democratic attack? When they covered up that statue of Justice in Bangladesh, is that OK because citizens don’t need art? When they said that the national fruit of Bangladesh was the jackfruit so why not have a national religion, you don’t think any time to stop and smell the rose of aesthetics reveals that argument to be the equivalent of GW Bush saying his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ?

When Milorad Pavic wrote that book “Dictionary of the Khazars” that was not too far from a call from genocide in print, no aesthetic training would have been useful then? Art correlates with history and I daresay you wouldn’t maintain informed citizens of a democracy don’t need to know history. Art tells you something about the motivations of an elite (which some of those citizens might be a part of someday), and what is chosen for a high culture tells you about where the place might be going.