Why are Christian nationalist accounts all using AI-generated images in the same style?
🧵 on propaganda, irony, and moral awakening
🧵 on propaganda, irony, and moral awakening
These AI generated pictures are actually based on a historic artist, Norman Rockwell, whose illustrations were often featured on Sat. Evening Post covers.
Early in his career (1916) he depicted everyday American life, almost exclusively from the perspective of white Americans.
Early in his career (1916) he depicted everyday American life, almost exclusively from the perspective of white Americans.
Famously, Rockwell was commissioned to illustrate FDR’s “Four Freedoms” from his speech in Jan. 1941, intended as an anti-fascist campaign to prepare America to enter World War II.
Freedom of Speech
Freedom from Want
Freedom to Worship
Freedom from Fear
Freedom of Speech
Freedom from Want
Freedom to Worship
Freedom from Fear
The irony: the “Four Freedoms” (memes today) were heavily criticized by conservatives in 1941 when isolationism triumphed and nationalists cozied to Europe’s fascism. They saw FDR as a tyrant (or even the anti-Christ) spreading a campaign of communist propaganda.
It’s true: Rockwell nearly exclusively depicted white supremacy as the American ideal. But that isn’t the end.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s, as legal rulings began to shatter Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement took a new shape, Rockwell’s art changed too.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s, as legal rulings began to shatter Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement took a new shape, Rockwell’s art changed too.
The artist who once depicted an idealized white America now confronted white America with the injustice that was white supremacy.
“The Problem We All Live With” (1964, Ruby Bridges integrating her New Orleans school)
“The Problem We All Live With” (1964, Ruby Bridges integrating her New Orleans school)
Christian nationalists today want Rockwell’s style but won’t tell his story. Because his story of moral awakening still confronts white America with truths we aim to negotiate and deny by our pining after nostalgia for a idealized “Christian America”—now by AI propaganda
Can I add an academic nuance? AI generation is not neutral. It’s entirely plausible for basic “church” prompts to result in Rockwell’s style based on AI data training *alone* — but we’re still left with the pattern of human choices to curate a “CN aesthetic” using the images.
Finally, this CN aesthetic today reflects a story about America that I recognize because I was deeply formed by its ethos. In trying to tell the truth here, I’m implicating myself and pointing towards those who graciously lived/voiced another ethos I saw at key points in my life
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