Thread by @peterwsinger

Let me tell you a bit about the very first “Futurist,”
Filippo Marinetti, who is part of why I don't like the word

(that and it is often used as a cheesy sales pitch)

A thread:

Filippo was Italian by heritage, born in Egypt, and went to school in France. This meant, of course, he later became a virulent nationalist (You will quickly see our first futurist was a man of strong and almost always contradictory convictions).

Trained as a lawyer, he instead decided to become a writer.
It was debatable whether he was any good at it. His first play Le Roi bombance (The Feasting King), debuted to the opening night audience whistling in derision at how bad it was.

Of course, later on Filippo would claim a key element of Futurism was "the desire to be heckled."

(IE, our first futurist was kinda the first troll, attacking everyone else as bad, but then saying their attacks on him only proved how good he was)

In 1908, Filippo drove off the side of a road in one of the early automobiles of the age.

Instead of learning his lesson, he became obsessed with the opposite, speed, claiming the accident made him a new man.

He wrote The Futurist Manifesto, a vision for the new world that celebrated speed, industry, and violence.

"We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman".

Filippo’s new philosophy would get a boost when the guy who said being heckled was good...challenged a critic of his work to a duel.
There was also intimation he was having an affair with this woman, the poet Jeanne Nette

Of course, the guy obsessed with tech and the future used a sword. In any case, a duel in a stadium between writer and critic (Okay, now it does have a certain appeal),
like two “fighting cocks,”
caught worldwide attention, being reported as far away as New Zealand newspapers

Futurism took off and Filippo went around Europe giving lectures and exhibitions and whatnot. But then World War I began and Italy entered it.

Filippo and other futurists volunteered happily. Here was their philosophy in action. They, of course, were part of an army unit formed around a new technology…bicycles.

Of course, the fighting in the Italian theater took place in the Alps, so bikes proved problematic...

As WWI came to a close, now was the time for new ideas and new forms of government. So Filippo founded the Futurist Political Party. A year later it merged with  Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, making the first futurist one of the first supporters of fascism.

But once the fascists actually took power, he got upset, loving fascism's nationalism, but not liking how it celebrated history (such as ancient Roman empire symbolism) and used current forms of government.
So, Filippo focused his work on attacking tradition itself.

This ranged from art to, my personal favorite, a 1932 cookbook, The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking. It was ahead of its time in being Keto in rejecting pasta.

But it was less so for the carbs. Our futurist had decided pasta was not Italian food and thus new recipes were needed.

Instead it had such gems as “Raw Meat Torn By Trumpet Blasts” in which you charged a beef cube via an electric current, then soaked it in rum, then served it to be chewed for 1 minute exactly, whereupon a trumpet would blast to signal the next cube to be chewed.

“The Excited Pig,” which was a skinned salami sausage that was served in a pool of espresso and...cologne

And for dessert, “Simultaneous Ice Cream,” a mix of vanilla ice cream and raw onion, frozen together.

(Little known fact: any modern day person titling themselves as a “futurist” is legally required to eat this way).

By the 1930s, Fascism had taken off, but there was a problem. As part of the anti-Semitic laws, the very modern art that Filippo championed was attacked.
He defended it by arguing that, by being Italian+modern, there were by definition no role for Jews in the future and futurism

Our anti traditionalism 1st Futurist also then became massively proCatholic. He claimed that "Only Futurist artists...are able to express clearly...the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith, such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Calvary.”

World War II began and soon the costs of Futurism/Fascism for Italy were evident to all. But not our boy. He volunteered to serve on the Eastern Front. In his 60s by this point, he was as much aid to the Italian army, as the Italian army was to the fighting.

But the utter defeat and uselessness of the Italian military in WW2 and then toppling of his old buddy Mussolini in 1943 did not lead to a deep soul searching by our first futurist.

Now living in Bellagio on Lake Como, in the rump of Italy still under Nazi control, he then dedicated himself to writing poetry...about the exploits of the Italian military in World War II.

He would die in 1944 of a heart attack (perhaps brought on by Excited Pig like meals).

And now you know more about the strange history of the word “Futurist” and Futurism.