Benn equated totalitarian rule with the conditions of autonomous art.

Evidence

In 1933 Benn welcomed the totalitarian state as being the type of state that corresponded to the autonomous poem, and in a speech broadcast on 24 April 1933 he stated, moreover, that `everything that has made the West famous, which has marked out its development, which is at work within it even today, was createdlet us be perfectly clear about itin slave-owning states … History is rich in examples of the pharaonic exercise of power being linked with culture; and the song of this revolves like the starry vault.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 551

Categorization

• SHARE: The line ‘history is rich in examples of the pharaonic exercise of power being linked with culture’ is an exquisitely specific gift for one reader who tracks aesthetic justification of domination.
• XREF: connects to: Autonomous high art was founded on excluding the lower classes — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 106; Benjamin rejected Adorno’s faith in the benevolence of autonomous art; Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Autonomous high art was founded on excluding the lower classes — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 106; Benjamin rejected Adorno’s faith in the benevolence of autonomous art; Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions (+1 more)