Conservative ideology and political kitsch

Abstract

Kitsch is a multifunctional phenomenon that the author of this article is trying to "pass on" from the field of aesthetic to ethical area. In that endeavor he develops theoretical assumption of Hermann Broch, at which the kitsch is intrinsic moral evil, and the producer (creator) of the kitsch is "low moral being" and "ethical outcast." This thesis is a key in consideration of the conservative ideology and political kitsch. Kitsch in politics is associated with the moral categories of truth and falsehood, in which the author of this article argues that kitsch is a deliberately designed and programmed lie. The political kitsch serves for manipulation of the masses and represents the basis of totalitarian consciousness, which is an introduction to the repression and crime.Conservative ideology is the basis from which grow a variety of kitsch creations and phenomena, among which the political kitsch dominates. The article, inspired by Andrew Heywood, analyzes the basic categories of conservatism: tradition, human imperfection, organic society, hierarchy and authority, and property, which provides a sense of confidence and conformist security. Each of them the author is putting under a magnifying glass with which he reveals the elements of manipulation with traditional patriotic feelings. From kitsch milieu it can not be excluded Serbian society in the past and present. In the scourge of traditionalism and conservatism, ethnocentrism and ethno-nationalism, xenophobia and kitsch patriotism are the main "fences in the mind" because of which Serbian culture as a whole remains outside the mainstream of modernization and Europeanization.