What is Fast Food Occultism?
When crass commercialism and cartoon mascots replace industrial music aesthetics and become a new punk transgression
What’s so evil about fast food? A lot of things. But has it ever occurred that the everyday cutest commercialism we witness in America can be subversive and evil? The point behind “fast food occultism” is that Mickey Mouse, or anything crass in commercial art, is so lame and cringe, that it has the same transgressive and offensive nature found in the image of Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. To think that Tony the Tiger may be a used as an artistic and aestheticdevice for punk provocation.
But why so? Doesn’t “industrial” do the same thing? I mean, why change the fascist imagery and sadism to Teletubbies?
Boyd Rice and Shaun Partridge called it “Unpop art.” I even wrote a lexicon on how this crass fast food stuff relates to my own terminology, “post-neofolk.” However, there are some opposing views on pop art history and what is being consumed on Twitter. Adam Parrey called his artistic technique, (infulenced by industrial music) “Aesthetic Terrorism.” So what’s so important about mere cartoons?
Is this nothing more than an aesthetic war? Like, something that Antonio Gramsci talks about?
The reason why I bring this up is that there is a “white nationalist” blog by the name of Counter-Currents that argues that every possible commercial subject has to do with an interest with white nationalism, and therefore, like pedophiles arguing why Leon The Professional is about advocating pedophilia, cartoons like My Little Pony has something to do with the same fight for white nationalism. “My Little Pony fans MUST be white nationalists because I said so!” Well, what does a special nostalgia for 7-11, or even Rally’s, help white nationalism? Is this all some kind of joke? What do these things have to do with “white nationalism?”
In late 2021 saw the rise of the “We Used To Be A Country” meme. This meme was presented in the context of civic nationalism, and supposedly, white nationalism in 1973 was “pure” because the mundane nature of consumer culture was homogeneous and related back to the people. Even the public caught on to how ridiculous this notion was, inspiring tons of other mocking variants celebrating what people hate about consumer capitalism. This meme can only point how folish white nationalism is if they can’t even describe who’s “white.”
I argued that a “post neofolk” scene would happen, replacing the transgressive nature of the swastika with the image of the golden arches (or of McDonald’s). This is because the mundane, or crass production of commercialism, is a form of “nationalism,” something post-industrial musician Snog has cited in his work.
How did Warholian Pop art, Unpop art, “aesthetic terrorism,” commercial art, and “Partridge Family Temple” pranking become immediate tools for avant-garde white nationalism? Just because Captain Crunch is there, does that mean racists should appreciate such crassness. How is this even about racial perservation?
Counter-Currents has been known to ride the success of other derivative art scenes, like industrial music, while trying to proselytize the innocent into Hitlerite anti-semitism. Dr. Greg R. Johnson, its founder, is a closet homosexual, and was attracted to white nationalism originally for subculture purposes, and less to do with politics regarding race realism. “White nationalism” under Johnson’s control became a hipster brand name for Boyd Rice fans and Neo-nazi punk nostalgia. It’s still no surprise that Counter-Currents continues to distort innovative art collectives as their own brand, all while playing into youthful hipsterism without context. Many more “hipster racist” types have come and gone within the Counter-Currents scene, finding out just how hypocritcal the blog is.
The general public knows how dumb commercial nostalgia is. It’s not a form of subversive enlightenment, contrary to any white nationalist talking points. Not even the pop artist Ron English would ever agree with what they try to do at Counter-Currents. Yest, commercial art and the mundane doe have the potential to be transgressive. But nobody in their right mind would ever want to work for an actual totalitarian dictatorship under the rule of McDonald’s. I can only say that Andy Warhol was the true genius who subverted commercial art. It was “queer” under his direction.
For an example of this “white nationalist” buffoonery, Spencer J. Quinn wrote a review about the new Incredibles 2 film. He wrote, “The Incredibles, in my mind, is a perfect gem of a film which transcends the artifice of merely excellent filmmaking and enters the realm of timeless art.”
And then leading up to his climatic persuasion,
"It should be clear to all who watch The Incredibles 2 that when the man was the center of the story the women were treated realistically and with respect. But now that the woman is the center of the story, the men get nowhere near the same level of respect and behave quite unrealistically.”
There is a limit to far-right intellectualism, and as well with this Žižekian style criticism, popular culture, in all actuality, is bad. No need to bring up Evola, Derrida, or some observe philosophy talk promoted by these computer geeks, what they are doing is justifying bad art for normal people.
Jef Costello as well wrote a piece for Counter-Currents titled, “Our Sheep Are The Best,” arguing that a love for normal people is a must because it’s family! But wait! All while white nationalists are transgressive and scare away said “normal” people? How can you be punk rock and then respect normal people as a family? Is it still family when a white person marries a black woman and has children with her? There is something incredibly condescending and religious about Counter-Currents and their brand of white nationalism that feels completely at odds with any punk resistance.
While the editor Greg Johnson will say that every author on his website will conflict with one another, the main argument found at Counter-Currents is that (to paraphrase) “there will still be a world that will have both the left and right, but white suicide will be off the menu.” Johnson has declared himself “a man of the right,” even though his publications have to deal with being stuck in a “right-wing ghetto.” So why is there even a “left” or “right” anymore if it’s all about saving white people? Are the left and right just subcultures we can pick and choose from?
It’s hard to imagine that the far-right a few decades ago was classified as an evil child molester movement full of crackhead rednecks and James Bond supervillains. Neo-Nazis were side attractions for a liberal circus and gave normal people a good reason to be normal. Meanwhile the post-industrial scene, strongly influenced by punk culture and the decadent avant-garde art scene, published Apocalypse Culture and Answer Me! Although these two books did not make an open association with the far-right, they had their best sympathies with Neo-Nazis because they had a common hatred of liberal normies. These individuals, from Jim Goad to Margot Metroland, have been published on Counter-Currents. Although Goad has denied wanting to be published on a “far-right” website and has even called Johnson a “faggot.”
Something was interesting happening in the 1980s. Gen-Xers wanted to feel those transgressive emotions from bands like Whitehouse and Anal Cunt. Now, millennials have cracked that liberal code, and realized that boomers find national socialism the most disgusting sin of all. And eventually, with the help of Richard Spencer’s webzine “Alternative Right,” and with the aid of Jack Donovan, the far-right became cool. Irony is in! And within the past decade, the “alt-right” movement grew as an exciting intellectual and hip movement of “far right intersectionality.” Boomers didn’t get it, but young people sure loved reading about Savitri Devi while being ironic by laughing at jokes from “The Daily Shoah.”
But ever since the disaster of Unite The Right, the Alt-Right became a household name, and normies shunned it forever. The hipsters realized that the alt-right wasn’t giving them the street cred they needed, and so the most “innovative” bloggers and e-celebrities disavowed both Unite The Right and the Alt-Right altogether (although they were invested in the scene, they will make a casual “I hate Jews” remark once in a while for browny points). The far-right scene has become nothing more than a sad Verso book knock-off cashing in on “dank Hitler memes” and “esoteric” nonsense that popular culture is somehow innately “fascist.”
I declare the concept of “white nationalism” dead after Spencer J. Quinn’s horrendous approval of the Incredibles. To quote him again, “Whether the filmmakers realized it or not, The Incredibles struck a blow for the Right in the culture wars, and a brilliant one at that.”
I simply cannot take Counter-Currents seriously if they continue to publish “Buttercup Dew” style arguments about far-right Trojans. There is no substance in these articles, but boring, New-York-Times-Sunday-Morning-opinionism. Since the left died over a century ago, the Frankfort School took over. So now the so-called “left” is what we call cultural Marxism. The actual right wing is also dead because it too is now a “cultural” ghost. Just call it “cultural fascism” now!
Young people, though radical and political, get caught up in Wikipedia definitions of how they should act in life, and have a few things in common. They are all preening, fitting in, finding meaning, and growing up. Academics know that young students are open vessels. As once said by holocaust revisionist Bradley R. Smith, “I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled.” Young people will believe in anything so as long they are persuaded by an agenda. But once they grow up, they grow out of the ideology that made them inexperienced and young.
People evolve, and so do both art and ideology. And this leads to something more important in the next era of the shock art scene. And I believe it comes back to the ethos of industrial music and the work of Throbbing Gristle.
I call it, “fast food occultism.”
Shaun Partridge has an obsession with psychedelic rock, the 1960s, corporate logos, Hanna Barbara cartoons, lame sitcom shows, dated popular culture, and Anne Frank. Add all that together with the help of Boyd Rice and Brian M. Clark, and it creates, what they call, “unpop.”
The rules are as follows:
“pop: adj. -- Of or for the general public; popular or popularized; Of, relating to, or specializing in popular music; Of or suggestive of pop art. n. -- Popular music; Pop art; Popular culture.
un-pop-u-lar: adj. -- Lacking general approval or acceptance; Regarded with disfavor or lacking general approval. u
un-pop: adj. -- The application of pop aesthetics, stylings, or techniques to unpopular, unpleasant, repressed, or otherwise censored ideas. n. -- Unpop art; Unpop music; Unpop writing; Unpop films.”
Ironically, the movement ended in 2010, because “it stopped being Fun and groovy.” And, “Perhaps Unpop will return someday? Today is not that day.” Like a fashion sense and a hipster’s concerns about being cool, the movement was thrown to the side because of normie liberals “not getting it.” (Or that they were just being jerks and offending people). However, Shaun Partridge still practices fast food occultism under “The Partridge Family Temple” or “The Church of Anne Frank.” But more importantly, what is fast food occultism? And what is its esoteric meaning behind it?
Such origins can be traced back to the art of Frank Kozik and Ron English, where they juxtapose childhood cartoon characters mixed with political activism and punk culture. The vinyl toy scene was an extension of the low-brow art scene they were in. It was an appreciation of the kitsch and quirky children’s toys of the past decades, found in cereal boxes and candy stores. Fast food occultism is certainly a variant of Unpop art that mixes popular culture with controversial subjects. If you can think of a “cringe” worthy character, like Chuck E. Cheese, singing “Smile America” while in front of a flag from Nazi Germany, then you might be able to understand fast food occultism.
For example, a Victorian poet would say, “I love you madly, my dear.” But this indicates that the poet sincerely loves a woman he is willing to die for. He has to commit and be authentic with his actions. But how does the new poet say he loves someone without being a fuddy-duddy Victorian? As Umberto Eco writes, “Like a famous romance writer, I love you madly.” This way, the poet removes himself from his claim and puts his commitment to someone else. This not only makes him sound witty but denies any association with sincere authenticity. Chuck E. Cheese with a Nazi flag could be ironic, the same way the band Killing Joke flew a Nazi flag next to the image of the pope and got banned from playing in Scotland.
But what if they are sincere with such an action? Since the alt-right has dissolved, fans who love far-right imagery still want to be appreciated without being labeled as a right-winger or Nazis for it. While juxtaposing popular culture from the 1960s through the 1980s (and only those periods), could this art be appreciated?
Here is some fast food occultist art I made. I have juxtaposed the following to create new occultic symbolism in the tradition of industrial music.
…As you can see, juxtaposition has a lot to do with the creation of fast food occultism and its esoteric nature. Doug Pearce of Death in June doesn’t claim to be an actual fascist, but a gay hipster who loves the ancient and forgotten esoterica, which he realizes that certain symbols offend normal people.
Isn’t it odd that a Jain swastika offends when it is a symbol of life and death? This is the point of fast food occultism.
Shaun Partridge also has taken fast food occultism to a sincere point of actually making prayers and worshipping food institutions like McDonald’s. It could be a performance art, but in all respects, this is very similar to the alt-right belief of a problem-solving “ethnostate.” A sincere belief can be as absurd as worshipping McDonald’s. So why not worship fast food?
Big corporation is just as offensive as the far-right, as it is uniquely hated by every liberal white person. Movies like Super Size Me demonize McDonald’s while rival corporations like Panera Bread and Surf Shack shape their store to be a safe space for white yuppies. But when taking a closer look at “The Golden Arches,” we can make assumptions that the logo has some kind of innate fascist wisdom or some ancient Hindu symbolism beneath it.
Two revered symbols of fast food occultism are the NBC Peacock and the CBS Eye. The peacock’s feathers introduced America to the world of color TV, and the CBS Eyes is the eye of god that looks after us (and god actually could be something like Cthulhu and the CBS corporation knows all about it). A blogger has an entire blog about why he fears the peacock!
In the neofolk movement, there is a fascination with everything from ancient Europe to esoteric Asia. Dead Can Dance still plays on this motif and has opened up the viewer’s consciousness to whole new levels of artistic exploration. However, in the “post neofolk” movement, where fans of Death in June are afraid of being called racist or Nazi sympathizers, safe and mainstream acts, like Xiu Xiu, mix imagery of pornography, shock art, sitcom weirdness, and Asian culture to create a “ post neofolk” imagery that is based on unpop principles. This is also very similar to the post neofolk style of Shaun Partridge, who mixes the “Far-out, radical, and groovy,” nature of the hippies, with the up-to-date style of the hate scene gang of the punk hardcore 90s. Boyd Rice will concentrate on the neo-nazi and serial killer collage art, while Partridge keeps it cool with drug-tripping memorabilia, lost television programs, goofy commercial products, and Peter Max-style art.
Often Partridge will remember “the good old days” of an obsolete decade of masculine, beer-drinking white handymen, without SJWs or liberal feminism. This is similar to the work of John Kricfalusi and his trauma projection of the 1950s. Unpop art takes the viewer back to a time when their suburban parents were both verbally and physically abusive, mixed with the psychedelic attitude of the very first youth movement of hipsters. A shock art that is both truthful to the past, esoteric in juxtaposition, and introduces new ways of thinking for the viewer.
Art has become incredibly stale in the far-right (and the left) because the only thing they can write about is truth, justice, and a nice white country from the perspective of a cookie-cutter Disney film. The very notion that they take this normie art as sincere! No new feelings are expressed. You might as well say that Moana promotes child pornography because the movie shows topless little CGI girls in Trevor Brown fashion. Quinn is using normie art to proselytize norms onto the far-right but ironically will get offended over a cool, communist fruit drink. Quinn is not even radical one bit. It’s conformist and sounds like he is developing a new type of normie that will hate “degenerate” art. The avant-garde arts are against the interest of what normal people want, and I disregard Jef Costello’s article on the subject completely. He can collage the Incredibles as a “fascist” family with swastikas all you want. But what point does it prove? Where is the meaning behind this text of nothingness? What is left is the juxtaposition of images. The feeling when a normie is scared of a swastika for no apparent reason.
The problem with Quinn’s piece is not acknowledging the absurdity of The Incredibles mixed with the message of white survival, but taking the movie as a “sincere” form of art that will help a dying movement called the Alt-right. A fast food occultist would see the Incredibles for what it is. A crass, family-value cash-grab. …Now mix it with pictures of totalitarianism, esoteric religious art, or offensive symbolism or subjects. The work of Trevor Brown is controversial because he likes drawing little underage Asian girls in bondage or violent positions. This is the real mind-opener. The Alt-right is afraid to promote such art for fear that it will be called “degenerate.” Yet such art is authentic to a majority of intellectual individuals in the far-right.
Is fast food occultism degenerate? It certainly is both offensive and mind-expanding. This traumatic juxtaposition, similar to what the work of vaporware is doing, will reinvent the shock art scene, the far right, and the punk scene, by appreciating the very thing that everyone hates, …consumer culture! Consumer culture itself becomes an absolute truth. And fast food occultists will sincerely like the outcome, no matter how dumb it is!
National Socialism would borrow much of its imagery through a mix of Heideggerian philosophy, which came from Human Bio-Diversity and a Western admiration of Eastern culture and religion. Hence, the swastika was used as a symbol to describe Superman, going through life, dying, and creating new people all over again. The greatest meaning of life. And this imagery is ancient wisdom. One day, the CBS eye will be on the coat of arms in 2200. And will the symbol be offensive after a certain political party commits an atrocity as well?
Consider the genre of vaporwave. “식료품groceries” is a vaporwave act that mocks the mindless consumerism of food shopping in a grocery mart. The feeling, the “aesthetic” that we must embrace through consumerism, can be appreciated as a fine art. Now add the 1960’s hippy movement, the 1990s hate scene, and the 2020s anti-liberal movement. Together, they all create a perfect harmony of new industrial noise based on the mindless nature of American commercialism. This is a new industrial art movement that “whiteness” and “nationalism” can never understand.
Move away from "The Incredibles is fascist," and lean towards "The Incredibles is our consuming doom!" Like the Order of Nine Angles, instead, we got the order from McDonald’s!
…The next article you should read is “Cultural Fascism.” Please click on this link to read it.
-pe
Revised on October 16th, 2023.
Originally published on June 30th, 2018.