The Other Austrian
It’s going to take a little bit of time to get to the point where it becomes on-the-nose for me to make tongue-in-cheek references to a particular Austrian painter, but fear not, good audience, for eventually by the end of this particular newsletter edition, I will have once again proven Godwin’s Law. It won’t be difficult. After all, the subject of today’s post is Twitter user VanKraut (true given name of Vanessa) who is both Austrian and an artist. Unfortunately, the similarities may not end there.
VanKraut has faced numerous controversies surrounding her art in the past, most of which I have happily ignored because who the actual fuck gives a shit about what kind of art people are making? Yes, yes, the art was tasteless, blah blah blah. From drawing a sexy Donkey Kong, rendering a cheeky twink in 1700s Colonial dress, and making fanart of infamous Nazi doctor Mengele, VanKraut’s career of controversy has been varied and colorful. Her depictions of herself dressed in Crusade armor and beating the shit out of indistinct brown people were certainly also a choice which got her some negative attention here and there in civilized spaces on the internet. Though she has claimed recently to be regretful of things she drew “in the past,” it’s been pointed out by several other Twitter users that one of her Mengele redraws was from this year, making it doubtful that this is something that was relegated strictly to her past.
I will add that there is another confusing controversy that has been relatively recent but I won’t be getting into that one here as it has very little to do with anything that I usually talk about and is, frankly, none of my business. The good news is that YouTuber Tyler Goulé has made a relatively short video about what happened and sums it up succinctly, putting together the main players and making certain that even with the wildly confusing and conflicting narratives, the audience can understand at least the gist of what happened and come to their own conclusions. The greatest aspect of this aside is the insistence of VanKraut that she was influenced and manipulated by a man named “Mark” or “Markus” who used her artwork as his own across a span of several years, was an avowed Nazi, and went about the Red Dead Redemption 2 online community in order to groom and victimize minors. Her former “friend” Christianna insists that “Mark” in fact never existed and was actually just Vanessa the entire time.
-dramatic music-
None of that is super relevant to the current problem though it might lend a little bit of an explanation for VanKraut’s apparent ease with speaking to and functioning alongside her ostensibly right-wing audience who have consistently defended her artwork as being “ironic” or “parody” since being overtly fascist is (was?) still fairly gauche. Unlike Snegovski, VanKraut has consistently met the “ironic” label with open arms and her artwork does not have deeper ties to long-lost Old Fag internet inside-jokes but instead seems quite surface-level, appealing mostly to those who find shock humor to their taste. This sort of thing just isn’t enough for most of us to start flinging around labels, but it did get far easier very quickly. Recently, her Meta profile was discovered utilizing the name Vanessa K Nagl which included a profile picture of herself wearing what looked to be a Charlie Kirk memorial sweatshirt and featured a memorial photo of Kirk as her header image. Also included on the page was an artwork labeled “Drawing for Charlie Kirk” that depicted a stylized image of Kirk as an angel with the text: “My prayer is very simple; God, use me for your will.” Being that Kirk’s assassination has been the catalyst for a surge in right-wing extremism straight up into the bowels of the very Nazified White House Trump Regime, any allegiance to Kirk’s “memory” is enough to signal very strongly that one is an ally to modern day American Conservatism.
Now that’s what I call a Nazi.
Assuming that the Vanessa K Nagl Meta account is, in fact, VanKraut (there is very little doubt in this), it’s safe to say that she’s not quite finished making fanart for fascists. Her confirmed Twitter profile featured Nick Fuentes as her picture for a short time and also listed her location as “hyperborea,” a somewhat niche reference to a mythical Aryan homeland referenced in esoteric Nazi occult beliefs. Twitter user @courtlysense discussed VanKraut’s return to Twitter after her brief cancellation in decisive terms: “she’s a crybully too - crying, threatening suicide, then setting her pfp to nick fuentes giving the middle fingers lmaooo , everyone with working eyeballs can see this ho is just a smug nazi, self-obsessed, loves attention, etc. she will live off ragebait til the bitter end” [sic]. Another user expressed anguish at the idea that Vanessa was inevitably falling down the wrong path after having been canceled with the all-caps entreaty of “VANKRAUT THIS ISN’T YOU”.
But…is it not? Though VanKraut’s supporters, in the past, insisted that she was partaking in “irony” only, it’s a very well known Vonnegut adage which states: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” This is not about fantasy or book-writing or even just a little sexy roleplay—this is how VanKraut presents herself to the world. This is the face by which we know her and that which she knows herself. Though Vanessa may be desperate to tell everyone that she’s not a Nazi, she has a very, very difficult time showing us that she’s not a Nazi, in fact going out of her way to consistently show that she very well could be. Her apology statement claims that much of what she did was due to her autism and her art was how she processed her feelings, but what about the rest of it? What about the rest that wasn’t art? When it comes to me, you can damn well be certain that I’m never going to be looking at you sideways over tasteless art—what kind of high horse do you think I have? But this ain’t about the art. Never has been. At least for me.
At current, her account is locked though plenty of screenshots have made out here and there showing her increasingly odd posting behaviors and replies with suggestions that she would be “joining” Charlie Kirk and that America has “fixed” her. It’s been theorized that she’s been brought to the United States possibly through the means of some conservative fans and has been thoroughly brainrotted into white christian nationalism. She’s tweeted vague thoughts about getting a gun while those milling about on Twitter openly share that they hope she doesn’t end up hurting anyone. Unfortunately, all of this makes her uniquely inaccessible which on one hand is good for her mental health but on the other hand, it makes it difficult for anyone to provide her with a soft landing that isn’t the canceled-to-violent right wing extremism pipeline.
With that thought in mind and knowing the personal effects of social ostracism, I was encouraged to reach out, to offer a different path. My message inevitably has ended up in the spam folder of Vanessa’s Twitter DMs, but I did try. It is, after all, loneliness which can breed the worst of our human behaviors and reproduce evil in its most insidious forms. Since there are open, caring, and genuine Leftists out here who have and will probably continue to create some of the most tasteless art the world has ever seen—yes, including that of Nazis—it’s not that hard to gently tap upon the shoulder of someone who might be suffering in similar ways we have and offer them a slight reprieve…perhaps something that might turn into a rapport. It’s not easy to escape an ideology that was designed to tear barbs into the vulnerable gray matter of someone in pain and to offer them the simplicity of fear and bitterness. It’s not hard to lean into what you’ve pretended to be in order to simply give way into becoming. But it is weak.
Is that what you are, Vanessa? Are you weak? It wouldn’t shock anyone to know that you are, after all so was—oop! There’s that Godwin’s Law!
DM me back, Vanessa. You don’t have to live like this.