Arts Revolt Forum!

In the run-up to the 2016 election, “This Machine Kills Fascists” stickers were affixed to Risographs, laser printers, and relief presses across the country. Broadsides featuring the phrase appeared in the windows of cooperative and academic print shops, and printmakers’ social media feeds became peppered with repurposings of Woody Guthrie’s famous slogan. Print, the adage supposed, would save democracy.

Flash forward to the first 2020 presidential debate, where then-President Trump urged the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Merchandise pairing the phrase with the group’s name was available for purchase online almost before the debate’s end. Just a few months later, the January 6th insurrection was awash in printed swag. 

Through the proliferation of print-on-demand (POD) services and web-based drop-ship companies, right-wing political movements have effectively embraced printed ephemera to advance ultra-conservative ideologies. The default imagery used to advertise POD services reveals a troubling pattern: a subtle (and not-so-subtle) iconography designed to appeal to the political right. Professor Lukas’s research examines the aesthetic conventions associated

with these increasingly affordable, low-run printing technologies, analyzing how this “look” has become integral to the resurgence of far-right, authoritarian political discourse. Lukas further contends that as these technologies have expanded, a medium historically associated with leftist, progressive, and countercultural movements has been hijacked, prompting critical questions about the medium and how contemporary print-based artistic practices might respond.