The Veneer of Authoritarian Art
Its propaganda seems like a hollow imitation of reality.
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Time-Travel ThursdaysThe Veneer of Authoritarian ArtIts propaganda seems like a hollow imitation of reality.By Isabel RuehlIllustration by The Atlantic. Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty.June 25, 2026, 3:04 PM ET ShareSave This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.According to George Orwell, there’s a simple reason authoritarian cultural campaigns can’t last: They assume that history can be “created rather than learned,” he wrote in a 1947 Atlantic essay, and this produces superficial literature, unstable and fleeting.
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