Art and Irregular Warfare: Aesthetic Resistance, Symbolic Power, and the Battles for Meaning
Standing before Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in Gernika is more than observing a painting; it is experiencing a cry of anguish cast in oil on canvas. Created in 1937 after the aerial bombing of the Basque town by Nazi and Italian forces allied with Franco, Guernica transcended its Spanish origins to become a universal emblem of civilian suffering and the brutality of total war. Moreover, Picasso’s insistence that the painting not be returned to Spain until democracy was restored illustrates how art can become a tool of prolonged cognitive resistance.
Picasso’s Guernica traveled across Britain and the United States during the Spanish Civil War, drawing vast crowds and raising crucial funds for Spanish refugee relief. Beyond its financial impact, each exhibition forced Western audiences to confront the harrowing human cost of fascism, keeping the plight of Spanish civilians vivid in the public conscience. In this way, the painting became more than a work of art; it functioned as a roaming strategic envoy of political persuasion, galvanizing anti-fascist sentiment abroad and sustaining international attention on the horrors unfolding in Spain.
Guernica provides an example of how art functions not merely as a cognitive consideration, but as a capability that can produce effects to be employed in irregular warfare (IW). From occupied Europe in World War II, to revolutionary Latin America, Cold War insurgencies, and today’s digital conflicts, the use of art shapes memories, fuels insurgencies, contests legitimacy, and serves as an enduring form of psychological and cultural operations.
The Role of Art in Irregular Warfare
Irregular warfare’s center of gravity is in the cognitive and cultural realms, where the opponents seek to fracture their adversary’s legitimacy and build alternative authority. Artistic production becomes central here; murals, songs, plays, and graffiti embed narratives of struggle and hope into daily life. Art provides effects to demoralize opponents, as well to counter propaganda and provide a narrative that is resistant to suppression.
World War II: Art as Resistance in Occupied Europe
Across Nazi-occupied Europe, art became a covert weapon wielded by the oppressed. In France, Resistance networks produced underground newspapers like Combat, filling their pages with razor-sharp political cartoons and caricatures that ridiculed both the Nazi occupiers and the collaborationist Vichy regime, undermining enemy authority and rallying wavering civilians. Graffiti scrawled with slogans such as “Vive De Gaulle” sprang up overnight on walls and alleyways in Paris, signaling defiance, emboldening clandestine networks, and reminding onlookers that the occupiers were neither omnipotent nor universally feared.
In Poland, the Home Army orchestrated an extensive underground culture. The Kotwica emblem, which is an anchor-like symbol of “Polska Walcząca” (Fighting Poland), was painted across Warsaw’s walls, serving as a silent rallying cry. Underground theater troupes staged patriotic plays in basements, subtly reinforcing national identity and solidarity under occupation. Meanwhile, banned songs spread by word of mouth or clandestine radio broadcasts stoked courage and kept cultural memory alive, demonstrating how resistance art not only boosted morale but also eroded the occupier’s psychological hold on society.
Even within Jewish ghettos such as Vilna, partisans organized clandestine poetry readings, musical performances, and theater productions, safeguarding cultural identity in the shadow of Nazi annihilation. These gatherings did more than preserve tradition; they offered vital psychological sustenance, reinforcing communal bonds and resilience at a time when armed resistance was scarcely imaginable. Through art, ghetto inhabitants reclaimed a sense of humanity and purpose, subtly resisting Nazi efforts to reduce them to mere statistics on the path to extermination.
Central America in the 1980s: Murals, Music, and Narrative Warfare
In Nicaragua, after the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime, whole neighborhoods in Managua erupted with vivid revolutionary murals. Walls bloomed with images of campesinos bearing arms, mothers cradling rifles alongside infants, and slain comrades resurrected as larger-than-life martyrs. These works did far more than beautify ruined streets; they functioned as visual manifestos, proclaiming that history, as well as the future, now belonged to the people. Serving as ideological maps, the murals educated, inspired, and bound communities together around a shared narrative of liberation, turning every street corner into a testament of collective ownership and revolutionary pride.
Brigada Muralista Felicia Santizo Panamá S.P.C. Policía Sandinista III-80 (Muralist Brigade Felicia Santizo Panama S.P.C. Sandinista Police III-80). Managua Airport Terminal 1980-1990.
In El Salvador, FMLN guerrillas harnessed the power of culture to sustain their fight in the rugged highlands. Traveling cultural brigades composed stirring songs and performed impromptu theater, while hand-pressed pamphlets circulated through remote villages, keeping spirits high and ideology alive far from urban centers. Meanwhile, murals blossomed on walls in towns like Perquín, vividly depicting key battles and paying homage to comrades slain by the Salvadoran military. Beyond decorating, these images etched the insurgency’s story into the very fabric of local life, ensuring that community identity and memory remained intertwined with the struggle for liberation.
The Nueva Canción movement swept through Latin America, blending haunting melodies with sharp political critique. In Chile, Víctor Jara crafted songs that laid bare the plight of workers and the brutality of repression, transforming his guitar into a weapon of resistance. In Nicaragua, Carlos Mejía Godoy’s ballads chronicled the Sandinista struggle, turning local battles into anthems of continental solidarity. These artists didn’t just entertain; they mobilized, their music echoing across borders to awaken conscience, strengthen transnational ties, and rally countless others to the cause of justice and liberation.
Vietnam War: The Contest of Images and Songs
For the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, art was seamlessly woven into the fabric of revolutionary indoctrination. Hand-painted posters portrayed determined peasants triumphing over American “imperialists,” visually reinforcing the narrative of inevitable victory. In humid jungle camps, fighters recited poems that fused Marxist-Leninist doctrine with age-old nationalist legends, strengthening ideological conviction and a sense of historical destiny. Viet Cong Armed Propaganda teams traveled clandestinely across South Viet Nam, performing skits that exalted the Communist Cause and dramatized unity and shared sacrifice. Through these cultural expressions, art became an indispensable tool for binding fighters to the cause and embedding the struggle in collective memory.
In the U.S., art became a vehicle for protest. The Art Workers’ Coalition produced powerful anti-war posters (warning – graphic) that juxtaposed museum images with napalmed children. Musicians like Creedence Clearwater Revival penned songs such as “Fortunate Son” that cut through patriotic justifications. Even in Vietnam, U.S. soldiers scribbled peace symbols or sardonic slogans like “Born to Kill” on their helmets, personal art that expressed alienation from the war’s official narrative.
Cold War Small Wars: From Algeria to South Africa
During Algeria’s war for independence, the National Liberation Front (FLN) wielded cameras alongside rifles, capturing stark photographs and producing films that exposed French atrocities, from tortured prisoners to razed villages, all the while broadcasting their plight to sympathetic audiences worldwide. These images galvanized international outrage and lent legitimacy to the FLN’s struggle. Meanwhile, theorists like Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, insisted that decolonization was not only a military campaign but a profound cultural reawakening. Art, he argued, was essential for dismantling colonial narratives and forging a new post-colonial identity, enabling Algerians to reclaim their history and humanity from generations of imposed inferiority. In this way, cultural production became both a battlefield and a blueprint for nationhood.
In South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, the Medu Art Ensemble turned creativity into a weapon of defiance. Operating from Gaborone, Botswana, they designed bold silkscreen posters that exposed savage police crackdowns and urged workers to rise up in strikes. These striking images were clandestinely ferried across the border, fueling dissent in townships and factories alike. So potent was their art that the apartheid regime deemed it a serious threat—responding with a brutal cross-border assault that killed several Medu members and obliterated their workshops. Yet this violent reaction only underscored the power of art to challenge oppression, ignite collective action, and keep hope alive under even the most repressive conditions.
The Strategic Power of Art in Modern Irregular Warfare
In Ukraine, artists have transformed city streets into vibrant sites of resistance. Murals in Kyiv depict fallen soldiers with angelic wings, while caricatures of Vladimir Putin circulate as grotesque figures to ridicule Russia’s aggression and reinforce national resolve. These artistic expressions serve not only to commemorate, but to inspire cohesion and resilience—key objectives in unconventional warfare campaigns that rely on sustained population support and psychological momentum.
But art is not exclusively defensive. It is also a potent weapon of cognitive manipulation. As detailed in Small Wars Journal, Russia’s evolving cognitive warfare doctrine fuses information operations, psychological warfare, and cultural subversion into a unified strategy that targets perception itself—not just what populations think, but how they think. Visual art and symbolic imagery are key tools in this approach. Russian campaigns routinely employ memes, doctored historical photographs, and emotionally charged iconography to bypass rational filters and seed disruptive narratives into target societies.
These efforts are calibrated to exploit the “emotive-episodic cognitive style” that many populations rely on when consuming information. By embedding emotionally compelling visuals into the information space—often through proxies or unwitting influencers—Russia’s cognitive warfare apparatus aims to delegitimize adversaries, paralyze decision-making, and undermine democratic institutions. In this model, artistic expression becomes not a supplement to irregular conflict, but one of its front lines.
Historical and contemporary examples reinforce this dynamic. In Syria, the civil war was famously catalyzed by graffiti: teenage boys in Daraa spray-painted the phrase “Your turn, Doctor,” referencing Assad—an act that triggered violent repression and nationwide revolt. In Tibet, traditional thangka painting and diasporic visual arts serve as long-term cultural resistance against Chinese assimilation and erasure. These aesthetic traditions operate as repositories of collective memory and tools of identity preservation in contested environments.
“Your turn, Doctor”
Even non-state actors like ISIS and Hezbollah have adopted this logic, investing heavily in visual propaganda—from stylized martyrdom posters to glossy magazines and short films. These are not mere recruitment materials; they are cognitive weapons designed to saturate the narrative space and dominate symbolic terrain.
In today’s unconventional conflicts, the battle for legitimacy, identity, and influence increasingly takes place not only on the battlefield or in the digital sphere—but in galleries, streets, social media feeds, and the subconscious. Art, as both resistance and psychological instrument, has become an indispensable element of modern irregular warfare.
Cultural Resistance as an Element of the IW Battlespace
History demonstrates that art is far more than a mirror of conflict; it actively shapes the course of irregular and unconventional struggles. Across countless campaigns, art has fortified morale in clandestine partisan camps, ridiculed and undermined occupying regimes through sharp satire, and safeguarded collective memory from deliberate erasure. In these ways, it serves as a powerful non-kinetic instrument that operates across cognitive and informational domains.
For planners and strategists engaged in irregular warfare, supporting local artistic expressions is not mere cultural ornamentation. It is a deliberate line of effort in cognitive operations: strengthening legitimacy among contested populations, disrupting and discrediting adversary propaganda, and maintaining the momentum of a broader war of ideas. Art can reinforce narratives that delegitimize enemy authority while affirming indigenous identities and grievances—directly contesting the adversary’s influence over hearts and minds.
As George Orwell is often paraphrased, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In this sense, art becomes a medium through which truth can pierce the fog of disinformation, sustain resistance morale, and help set the psychological conditions for future operations. By consciously incorporating artistic initiatives into IW campaigns, practitioners leverage an often underestimated capability that can decisively shape the cognitive terrain on which tomorrow’s battles will be fought.
