BUDAPEST -- Ostensibly, a rock concert sparked it, reminding us that culture is not the exclusive province of liberals, certainly not here in Europe. A young woman (who knows whether she was just intending to make trouble) walked into a ticket office in the traditionally Jewish 13th District in this Hungarian capital several weeks ago and asked about Hungarica, an obscure extremist far-right band. The woman said the ticket agents called her a fascist and threw her out. The agents said that she spouted anti-Semitic abuse when told the office didn't handle that event. A little later somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail outside the office. Then a blogger, Tamas Polgar, with the screen name Tomcat urged neo-Nazis to rally at the ticket office, and about 30 turned up on April 7 along with 300 counterdemonstrators. Tomcat called for a second rally, four days later, and about 1,000 more extremists were met that time, across police barricades, by 3,000 antifascists, including the beleaguered Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
The woman said the ticket agents called her a fascist and threw her out. The agents said that she spouted anti-Semitic abuse when told the office didn't handle that event. A little later somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail outside the office. Then a blogger, Tamas Polgar, with the screen name Tomcat urged neo-Nazis to rally at the ticket office, and about 30 turned up on April 7 along with 300 counterdemonstrators. Tomcat called for a second rally, four days later, and about 1,000 more extremists were met that time, across police barricades, by 3,000 antifascists, including the beleaguered Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/arts/design/07anti.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=login Hey, Grandma Moses started late!
Ostensibly, a rock concert sparked it, reminding us that culture is not the exclusive province of liberals
Whoever suggested it was ? Indeed, many of the more established "higher" arts receive much of their cachet (english use) from their elitist status of appealing principally to the more conservative and regressive elements of society.
Hitler was a fine patron of classical music. Mussolini loved Opera. Stalin was very encouraging to composers of properly "revolutionary" (ie staid and reactionary, music.
Punk music in the UK quickly spawned an offshoot brand of confrontational music called Oi!! that had overtones of racism and white power.
But it's typical of that lazy right-wing journalism typical of the NYT to suppose that "chattering" classes and "librhuls" are the root cause of such degenerative and time wasting activities as "art". keep to the Fen Causeway
