Nick Fuentes & The Abstract “Art” of White Supremacy
On abstract art, Nick Fuentes, RAM, and more. Plus: a thank you to everyone joining us on Substack!
Before I bend your ear (errr… eyes?) about white supremacy for a few thousand words, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for joining me on this journey over here at Substack.
As I’m sure most of you already know, the bulk of my career in the public eye has been spent on TikTok. I’ve gotten to share the news with 3.2 million of you from under a desk, in a way that doesn’t prioritize doomscrolling or getting that toxic combo of adrenaline rush and debilitating anxiety. It’s been an absolute honor getting to be a reliably comfortable source of information for so many of you.
And yet many of you likely know that my experience with TikTok is likely coming to an end, as explained in the video I posted a few days ago:
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As David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh reported for Reuters on December 13, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied TikTok and ByteDance’s emergency motion asking for an extension so that they could make a case with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the TikTok ban, which is effective January 19. If you haven’t seen my video, it’s embedded above with more information on the ban, but judging by my OTHER post about the TikTok ban, I’m pretty sure many of you have seen THAT one.
Since I posted this, we’ve gained over 700 new subscribers over here on Substack - 30 of which are paid subs (and every time I check this number while waiting for this post to go live, it gets even bigger!!!). Meaning many of YOU trust me enough to help financially support the life of Under the Desk News, which is a feeling so incredibly humbling that it helps me cope with the very possible loss of a platform and community I love so dearly. I mentioned in my own video how the vibe has been a bit funereal since this news dropped… but I’m starting to realize that it’s not so much the death of a loved one, but actually the closing of one door while thousands of you are opening a brand new door for me like the ladies, gentlemen, and distinguished guests you are.
All I can truly say is: thank you. Thank you. Thank you SO much. I’m so grateful that you’ve come along for the ride with me over here, which is definitely a different vibe from what we normally do on TikTok. It’s a deeper dive, more extensively researched, and a lot less visual, but it’s simply another deck on the SS Spehar - the desk we’re under here is the librarian’s desk, folks. But we don’t need to keep it down like a normal library. The librarian here is a COOL librarian, one that has a photo of David Bowie in Labyrinth on their desk and like a big cool mohawk.
But genuinely. Thank you. This is a new chapter for Under the Desk News and the wonderful dustbunnies who are joining me for the ride. Monday articles are usually for paid subs, but we’re keeping this one open to everybody as a sign of gratitude - and maybe as a preview for the undecided on what we do over here. If the written format is a bit too heavy for you, though, that’s okay!
I’ve also launched a YouTube channel, where I’ll be uploading the short form content alongside some deeper dives into more historical content. We just finished a video on the Citizens United ruling, and you’ll get to hear me rant and rave about the dangers of (and differences between) misinformation and disinformation soon, as well as explain what exactly the White House Cabinet IS and what each job does, to name a few of my upcoming videos.
I’m also on Instagram, where you can find most of the short form videos I post to TikTok, as well as some more off-the-cuff reads on breaking news as it arrives. No matter where you join me, I’ll be happy to see ya. And I’m just glad we’re still in touch.
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With that being said, let’s talk for a second about some news that flew under the radar while I was covering the arrest of Luigi Mangione and murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The following painting is expected to sell for more than $1.5 million in Germany.
As Brooke Kato reports over at New York Post, this is a piece put together in 1970 by the minimalist painter Robert Ryman with the provocative title of “General 52″ x 52″ that was put up for auction in Berlin on December 6. And yes, the asking price was $1.5 million. Now, if you’re anything like me, your first reaction might be “what the hell?” And your second reaction may have been something like “.....okay, but what the hell?” After all, this looks like a blank piece of canvas in a frame from a distance. But look closer and you’ll see- oh wait, that’s just a smudge on my screen.
Jokes aside, I wanted to know why something this blatantly ridiculous may have sold for $1.5 million (no articles seem to mention whether it actually sold at auction - and if it didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised). The Post article makes it a point to mention that the canvas is not, in fact, blank. A darker mesh frame was painted with white enamel paints that are usually used to paint metal, creating a very delicate work that can crack or compromise the white shape if it’s moved even SLIGHTLY incorrectly.
So - it’s some kind of statement on the frailty and limited lifespan of art? Not exactly. Simone Wichmann, the auction house expert the Post interviewed, explains that, “White is not always white. The white color makes light, movement and the structure of the material visible. The viewer is challenged and becomes the creator of the art.”
In short: it’s a work that’s up for interpretation. Just like… all art. Only, this art is the recreation of a blank canvas ONTO a blank canvas - and unlike the ORIGINAL blank canvas, this one’s worth a million and a half smackeroos. It turns out this was Robert Ryman’s thing, who sadly passed away back in 2019. He’s a very interesting success story in the art world, because he was not a formally trained artist by any means.
In fact, a review of a Ryman exhibit back in 2015 by Jason Farago for The Guardian spells out that Ryman was a former army man who went to New York to play the saxophone, working by day at MoMA as a security guard when he decided to take a stab at the art game himself.
Which eventually resulted in works like these:
Look, folks. I’m really trying here, but there’s something so deeply confusing to me about trying to find the artistic value in a white sheet of canvas, and it becomes even more baffling when I try to understand why the value is so high monetarily, too. A famous quote often attributed to Henry David Thoreau states that, “this world is but a canvas to our imagination.” If we take this quote and apply it to Robert Ryman’s work, then it appears that his imagination… is a canvas.
This canvas is but a canvas to our canvas.
I… don’t really find this approach to be artistic. Great art can be impenetrable, and truly great art will always lend itself to multiple interpretations, but a white backdrop on a white canvas should be the beginning of the process, not the entire process. Keep in mind, I’m not an art critic, I’m a journalist. But when I see the passing of hands to the degree of $1.5 million for something like this, it’s a bit of the old confirmation bias that kicks in for me in my belief that there’s maybe kinda sorta allegedly a lot of money laundering going on in the art world.
This isn’t a groundbreaking concept, either, and confirmation bias aside, there’s a lot of reason to support this feeling. In 2023, Charlie Pogacar wrote an article about this subject for Art & Object that touched on how money laundering works. While paraphrasing a Globe & Mail article that’s behind a paywall (sorry, Globe & Mail), he writes,
“Let’s suppose someone has $10 million dollars on hand. They could buy a Picasso at an auction in, say, Geneva, and have the painting immediately moved to storage at a “freeport,” or a high-security storage space near the airport. The painting could be then anonymously sold without ever moving an inch, and the new buyer would have it retrieved from the same freeport. Suddenly, the original buyer, turned seller, has money from what is considered a legitimate business deal.”
And in 2021, the New York Times detailed the story of a drug dealer named Ronald Belciano who was flipping Dali paintings to launder his drug money. There was even a bipartisan senate investigation into money laundering in the art world back in 2020 that found, as CNN puts it, “a pair of Russian oligarchs with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly seized on the secrecy of the art industry to evade sanctions by making more than $18 million in high-value art purchases.”
When you consider that a central portion of the Rymer sale involves the painting conveniently being unable to be transferred until it’s been purchased, suddenly my “vibe” isn’t really a vibe so much as a possibility. It’s not a question of whether money laundering is a problem in the art world - it IS - it’s a question of whether there is legitimate artistic value in white paint on a canvas or if it’s just a convenient way to “clean” a heavy duty amount of cash.
And NO - I am NOT accusing the auctioneers on this specific auction of money laundering. But I’m just a little bit curious as to how something so “white” can be deemed as so valuable. Then again, we’re in America, where white supremacists like Nick Fuentes can be granted a massive platform that puts him within spitting distance of the President-elect’s ear.
Ah yes. Speaking of white supremacy. Another tidbit of news from the first week of December that floated right past me was the release of Nick Fuentes’ mugshot, after he was accused of battery.
For anybody who has managed to go about their lives on this rock without hearing the name “Nick Fuentes” or seeing his unusually punchable face, he’s what Wikipedia helpfully summarizes as,
“An American far-right political pundit, activist, and live streamer who promotes white supremacist, misogynistic, and antisemitic views. His YouTube page was permanently terminated in February 2020 for violating YouTube's hate speech policy. Fuentes has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories against Jews and called for a "holy war" against them, and has denied the Holocaust. He has been described as a neo-Nazi by various sources. Fuentes identifies as a member of the incel movement, a supporter of authoritarianism, and as an integralist and a Christian nationalist.”
So - a real helluva fella.
But in case that still doesn’t ring a bell, I gotcha covered. Because after the results of the U.S. presidential election began coming in, Nicky began going viral for a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter where he stated, “Your body, my choice. Forever.”
This incredibly disturbing refrain went viral for Nick in the ways most people likely never want to go viral. Sure, the tweet as of me writing this has been seen over 100 million times, but Nick immediately felt the consequences of his own shitty actions when he was immediately doxxed, with his address posted across countless social media. Have you ever heard the phrase “fuck around and find out”? I don’t condone doxxing, but I’m not sure what Nick expected to happen when he tweeted this.
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As a result of the doxxing, a woman named Marla Rose actually showed up to Nick’s house and rang his doorbell, only to be pepper sprayed by Nick, then pushed to the floor as he stepped on and broke her phone. Nick was arrested and released the same day, but is actually expected to appear in court on December 19.
Whether it’s an overt anti-semite being doxxed, or the rise (again) of Donald Trump, or even the $1.5 million sale of a white piece of canvas, white supremacy is back in the news in a BIG way. Even aside from these stories, news relating to white supremacy is slipping between the cracks in a big way as bigger news dominates our feeds. In Waterloo, Iowa, Iowa Public Radio reports the reemergence of white supremacist flyers and stickers across town promoting a massive white supremacist national group known as the Aryan Freedom Network.
A few days later, CNN reports that a dozen white supremacists clad in black clothing, red masks, and swastikas adorned on their sleeves marched through the streets of Columbus, Ohio, screaming racial slurs. And most troublingly, we finally saw the end of the Robert Rundo saga, culminating in his sentencing… for two years time served.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the Robert Rundo case, I highly recommend reading this pair of articles by Ali Winston: the first covering Rundo’s sentencing for The Guardian, and the second a deeper look for Wired at clones that have popped up of the Rise Above Movement, a disturbingly influential neo-Nazi gang Rundo founded that trained fascists how to fight - specifically to attack political opponents.
But to summarize, Rundo has been in and out of court for six years, with multiple dismissals, reversals, and even an extradition and deportation from two countries following Rundo’s conviction back in 2018 of “conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act.” This came as a result of Rundo and his affiliates going to left wing political rallies and protests across California with the express purpose of causing harm to participants.
It’s been quite a few years since Rundo’s arrest, but what Winston describes across her articles sound like something ripped out of the events of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, not something that should be happening IRL:
“Rundo helped mastermind an international network of RAM clones known as “Active Clubs.” A transnational alliance of far-right fight clubs that closely overlap with skinhead gangs and neofascist political movements in North America, Europe, the Antipodes, and South America, the Active Club network is proliferating internationally. There are dozens of Active Clubs in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Australia, and Colombia, according to the groups’ presence on Telegram and extremism researchers.
Seemingly harmless from the outside, Active Clubs are small groups of young men who go on hikes, train in combat sports, weight-lift, and build camaraderie—all part of the Rise Above Movement’s original program. But the darkness is in the details: The groups’ membership often overlaps with other extremist organizations like Patriot Front, criminal skinhead groups like the Hammerskins, and other violent extremists in foreign nations. Some US-based Active Clubs are branching out into political intimidation and violence, like the Rise Above Movement before them.”
And now, Rundo’s out. Sure, he served some time. Sure, he’s under two years of supervised probation. Sure, he’s not allowed to talk to the other members of RAM and is getting monitored whenever he goes on the internet. But the fact that this man was able to create his own white supremacist version of Project Mayhem and is able to simply walk (sorta) free among us is an incredibly disturbing development that can and should give each of us pause.
Especially given the news of former Marine Daniel Penny, who was charged but acquitted of the murder of Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man. Now, Penny is going to football games with Trump, Vance, and Musk.
White supremacy is back in the news - though to be honest, it never really went anywhere.
That description interpreting the white-on-white painting reminds me of the tailor's description of the emperor's clothes.
Is this better or worse than the banana "art" that sold for millions this year? At least this one won't attract fruit flies?!