In the seemingly wholesome world of castles, brutalism, and before-and-after landscapes, white supremacy is hiding in plain sight.
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It would appear that many of the leading accounts in the architecture Twitter world may very well be, in some cases subtly and in other cases blatantly, pushing content with white nationalist undertones (and sometimes overtones). One of those is ArchitecturalRevival, the account that Jack fatefully tweeted about over the weekend.
On the face of it, ArchitecturalRevival seems like your average architecture account. It posts photos of traditional buildings from around Europe, some many people are familiar with and others that are more niche. It writes that it aims to celebrate “Beauty, Tradition, and Heritage” through the account, which of course is not in and of itself problematic. But a racist dog-whistle may lie in the things the account likes, retweets, and most importantly, omits.
While the messages in these tweets seem relatively uncontroversial initially – messages of valuing “beauty” and “tradition” – these quotes are taken out of context, and were originally used as talking points to prop up white supremacy, equating “beauty” with whiteness and white culture.
One vocal critic of ArchitecturalRevival has been Ben Brock, an architecture enthusiast and the creator of last year’s viral Twitter competition the Cathedral World Cup.
“This account seems pretty innocuous [at first], but it follows about 50 people,” Brock argues. “Of those 50, maybe half are architecture twitter accounts and the other half are, broadly, ethnonationalists.”
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