Our Kingdom of Kitsch

A guest post on Milan Kundera and political kitsch.

Milan Kundera, Czech writer and dissident, in 1980. Credit: Elisa Cabot.

Note: The following is a guest post by Nick Freiling. He is the managing editor of Theophaneia.

I’ve decided to restart publishing outside contributions when I can. More to come.

---

In his best-selling 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Czech-French author and Soviet dissident Milan Kundera defines “kitsch” as not merely tacky art or sentimental excess but a deliberate denial of reality’s messiness. “Kitsch,” he writes, is “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word,” where uncomfortable truths are erased to create an aesthetic of agreement with being itself.

Kitsch is a refusal to acknowledge the “shit” of existence in favor of a polished, collective fantasy.

We tend to recognize kitsch most readily in living rooms and cheap restaurants—think flimsy plastic flamingos perched on suburban lawns, sappy “Live Laugh Love” decals adorning dour apartment walls, and mass-produced “art” prints of crying clowns or glittery Elvis portraits. Maybe your local family eatery features gaudy faux-Grecian columns proudly framing the entrance—that’s kitsch.

In this manifestation, kitsch is a coping mechanism, maybe, and a usually harmless one, at that. Eventually, it may even acquire a charm of its own—something between nostalgia and irony—reminding us that even when we can’t have “the real thing,” we still care (and have the means) enough to try, and that should count for something.

But why does kitsch exist? What are the underlying psychological impulses that give rise to kitsch? It’s to cultivate a sense of camaraderie, or “brotherhood,” that isn’t possible without it—one that can be leveraged to achieve further goals. According to Kundera:

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible on a basis of kitsch.

This longing for emotional solidarity—this second tear—is what can make kitsch so dangerous in a political setting. When harnessed as a tool for political power (and especially by those already in power), kitsch becomes more than a quirk. It becomes doctrine. Dissent is no longer just disagreement—it’s a failure to feel properly. And in such a world, truth matters less than the appearance of shared emotion.

That’s when kitsch stops being quaint and starts becoming totalitarian. “In the realm of totalitarian kitsch,” Kundrea writes, “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.”

Three months into his second term, Donald Trump’s administration has erected a Kingdom of Kitsch—a stilted “brotherhood” unlike anything else in modern American political history, and one that couldn’t exist without kitsch. Its hallmarks include effusive, hyperbolic rhetoric, a cabinet that continuously lavishes the president with public praise, and a digital “MAGA” landscape that brims with sarcasm and “AI slop” that muddies the truth beneath layer upon layer of performative irony.

It all begins, of course, with Trump himself. He’s always been the King of Kitsch—obsessed with gold wallpaper, maximalist interiors, and excessive portraits of himself. Think Atlantic-City-casino-meets-Orlando-Versailles-replica. His musical taste, like his décor, betrays no hint of sophistication. These are emotional shortcuts, engineered to unify without complexity—second-tear kitsch at full volume.

He’s always been this way, in and outside of the White House.

Since his famous escalator descent in Trump Tower to announce his 2016 campaign, his rhetoric has thrived on kitsch’s promise of grandeur without complexity. His speeches and social media posts paint a world of effortless victories—America “back” and “greater than ever before.” Terms like “Art of the Deal” are repurposed to explain every comment he makes as masterstrokes of negotiation.

This is Kundera’s kitsch in action: the denial of failure, the erasure of doubt, replaced by a narrative that demands collective affirmation. The recent tariff disaster, initially touted as a reciprocal triumph, has been quietly diluted with exceptions for electronics and potential carve-outs for automakers. Yet Trump’s economic advisors continue spinning story after story with conflicting reassurances, projecting strength while quietly retreating. It’s the political version of kissing babies for the cameras while quietly rewriting the script backstage—performance over substance, image over reality.

But nowhere is Trump’s kitsch more evident than in his recent cabinet “meetings.” Over the past few weeks, these have become spectacles of hilariously excessive praise, with members seemingly competing—before dozens of cameras and microphones—to out-perform each other in lauding the president’s genius. “You know, you were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority,” Attorney General Pam Bondi recited last week—a claim that is demonstrably inaccurate. Even Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has given himself over to spats of performative flattery: “This is literally the best—the most talented team ever assembled,” he declared in a cabinet meeting last February.

The phenomenon not only mirrors, but full-on demonstrates, Kundera’s depiction of totalitarian kitsch, where “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.” Rather than communicate the truth to the president or the American people, cabinet members come with pre-written statements that stoke their boss’s ego and conveniently paper over uncomfortable facts—like the tariffs’ failed roll-out or the administration’s continued failure to deliver promised “mass deportations.” Indeed, the administration stages symbolic gestures with a fast-increasing sense of urgency, such as proposing to send not only illegal immigrants but also U.S. citizens to prison camps in El Salvador, hoping spectacle alone will do the trick. Dissent is strictly curtailed. It’s an exercise in loyalty reminiscent of North Korea’s choreographed adulation, where dissent is unthinkable and truth is whatever the leader declares it to be.

Social media amplifies this kitsch through sarcasm and what has been dubbed “AI slop”—low-effort, algorithmically-generated content that floods platforms with memes, exaggerated claims, and irony-soaked commentary. See the fake images of Trump as a war hero, visions of America after a nonexistent policy win, and even AI-generated videos of Gaza bulldozed to resemble Las Vegas (replete with golden Trump statues)—all blurring the line between reality and fiction.

@realdonaldtrump/Instagram.

Kundera warns that kitsch flourishes in these environments, where “the brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.” The irony is that this digital din, intended to entertain, dulls skepticism, causing anyone in its thrall to nod along rather than question. Like Kundera’s Soviet parades, where marchers smiled to prove their joy, social media becomes a stage for performative agreement, not truth.

Yet despite the effrontery of his cabinet, the president’s Kingdom of Kitsch isn’t as strong as it pretends to be. Cracks have already formed in the façade.

Elon Musk recently slashed his Department of Government Efficiency’s projected 2025 savings by 85 percent, undermining claims of streamlined governance. He also publicly attacked the president’s economic advisor Peter Navarro, calling him a “moron.” And of course, Trump’s promised mass deportations—central to his campaign—have fizzled fast, leaving only a few theatrical stunts in their wake. Most tellingly, Trump’s tariffs—touted as a bold stand against unfair trade—are quickly unraveling under pressure from global markets and domestic industries, their list of exemptions piling higher every day.

These are not mere slip-ups. They are holes in the very fabric of Trumpism—signals from the real world, beyond the kitschy façade, that all this might not work out.

But so long as kitsch reigns supreme, what can be done? We can take Kundera and ourselves seriously. Though it’s not as fun, maybe, as spewing political vibes into the digital airwaves, Kundera’s antidote to kitsch is simple: embrace the ugly, the contradictory, and the nuanced realities that kitsch tries to obscure. If we don’t want kitsch to swallow American politics whole, we must refuse the seductive pull of Trump’s narratives. That means calling tariffs what they are: an unsubstantiated gamble, not an “Art of the Deal” masterpiece. Even proponents of tariffs should be able to see this.

It means recognizing “AI slop” for what it is—noise, not prophecy. It means caring about the fact that the administration does not see a difference between sending illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens to foreign prisons.

Above all, it means refusing to applaud the lies no matter how loudly the choir of sycophants trumpeting them. We are confronted with a kind of petty totalitarianism that demands the subjugation of the individual to kitsch. In the face of that, real resistance means asking hard questions, demanding evidence over emotion, and valuing results over rhetoric. It means putting data before dogma and judging policies not by their loyalty to “the mission,” but by the reality they produce.

By acknowledging the “shit”—that resources are limited, that tradeoffs are real, that success can’t simply be performed into being—Americans, like Kundera against his Soviet oppressors, can begin to pierce the kitsch facade. And in doing so, they reclaim something far more radical than spectacle: the truth.

---