Jay Campbell

Sketchy: Interrogating Fascist Flirtations in Punk

Sketchy, Interrogating Fascist Flirtations in Punk, combines essay and illustration to explore — through autobiography, criticism, and historical documentation — the far-right's influence on extreme music subcultures. As explicit far-right ideology has become more visible in everyday culture, there is an alarming sense that fascism is creeping into our daily lives, neighborhoods, and Facebook feed. What Sketchy aims to show, through examining a specific subculture, is how fascism has always been lurking just below the surface in coded and explicit forms. It is only through awareness and action that society can push back against the fascist ideals and movements that have long been part of our history. Jay has spent the last quarter decade interested and involved in extreme music scenes: punk, goth, metal, noise, basically anything that combined provocation and pessimism that would give a lot of listeners a headache. This is where he found graphic design, making show fliers with rudimentary word processing software long before he ever cracked open an Adobe product. Since then, he has focused on visual communication, both professionally and educationally. Inspired by current events and distant memories, Sketchy is Jay's attempt to make sense of a truly hideous ideology hiding within a purposefully ugly subculture.