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Culture

Protected: Ego Over Everything: How the Progressive Fixation on Identity Perverts the Arts

T. G. Kelemen
May 11, 2026
Artists once understood they were serving something greater than themselves – truth, beauty, memory – things universal and transcendent. No longer. In a culture where imagination is cast as “cultural appropriation” and exploitation, what matters is not art but the artist. Ego, self-regard and “lived experience” are paramount. In this searing critique, T.G. Kelemen uses recent examples of cancellation in the arts to explain how “progressive” pieties have inverted the very foundation of the arts, fuelling not just a culture war, but a war on culture.
Culture

Protected: Ego Over Everything: How the Progressive Fixation on Identity Perverts the Arts

T. G. Kelemen
May 11, 2026
Artists once understood they were serving something greater than themselves – truth, beauty, memory – things universal and transcendent. No longer. In a culture where imagination is cast as “cultural appropriation” and exploitation, what matters is not art but the artist. Ego, self-regard and “lived experience” are paramount. In this searing critique, T.G. Kelemen uses recent examples of cancellation in the arts to explain how “progressive” pieties have inverted the very foundation of the arts, fuelling not just a culture war, but a war on culture.
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