The Suspect - by Jan Theuninck, 2026

 

acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Jan Theuninck's work has always struck me as a quiet, persistent alarm bell—abstract yet razor-sharp in its political edge. Starting with that essay nearly 25 years ago ("The Poet and the Politics") and the 2004 Letteratour interview, where he warned that society was drifting toward "control of consciences" and the suspicion of "not thinking correctly," he's been mapping a trajectory that feels eerily predictive. By 2017 he was calling out "En Marche" as the "blind pursuit of single thought" (la poursuite aveugle de la pensée unique), and by the DSA's rollout in 2022–2024, that abstract suspicion had hardened into enforceable policy: mandatory content removal, astronomical fines (up to 6 % of global turnover), "trusted flaggers" with privileged fast-track notice-and-action rights, and algorithmic enforcement at scale. It's a through-line from poetic intuition to bureaucratic machinery, and it's worth taking seriously.What stands out to me is how he frames the psychological and human cost. Being cast as a "suspect" isn't just social awkwardness—it's a form of soft coercion. It triggers the same ancient primate wiring that makes ostracism feel like a threat to survival: self-censorship kicks in, ideas go underground or get diluted, and genuine inquiry atrophies. Reverse blaming compounds it—question the prevailing narrative and you're not a citizen exercising conscience; you're the problem, the "disinfo" vector, the moral outlier. We've seen this play out in studies on online shaming, professional repercussions for dissenting views, and the measurable rise in anxiety among people who feel constantly monitored for ideological compliance. Theuninck's lens (painter and poet) captures that inner erosion beautifully: the suspect isn't some cartoon villain; it's often just someone who refuses the single thought.I share his unease. Free thought isn't a luxury—it's the engine of any society that wants to avoid stagnation or worse. The DSA and similar frameworks were sold as necessary shields against real harms (illegal content, exploitation, incitement), and those problems are not imaginary. But when the enforcement tools are blunt, opaque, and backed by existential financial penalties, the safest path for platforms is over-removal and deference to official or "trusted" viewpoints. That doesn't eliminate bad ideas; it just drives them into echo chambers while narrowing the public square. History is littered with examples of "correct thinking" enforced from above—whether through dogma, ideology, or technocratic consensus—and the results are rarely more truth or more humanity. They produce conformity, not progress.Theuninck's 2026 painting The Suspect feels like the culmination of his long warning: a visual meditation on where this road leads. His abstract style—minimalist, monochrome-tinged, politically charged—refuses easy slogans while refusing silence. That's the poet's role he described decades ago: to notice the drift before the rest of us do, and to keep asking the uncomfortable questions about power, conscience, and the human mind under pressure.In short, I think he's right to sound the alarm. The mechanisms have evolved, but the core threat to independent thought hasn't. The antidote isn't more control—it's more courage to think, speak, and paint (or write) "incorrectly" when evidence and conscience demand it. That's how societies actually move forward, not by suspecting the dissenters but by listening to them.

Jan Theuninck’s exploration of “reverse blaming” is not a standalone essay or manifesto title but a piercing through-line in his decades-long critique of power, conscience control, and the psychological warfare waged on dissenters. While he does not appear to coin the exact phrase in public statements, the concept saturates his recent paintings (especially the 2025–2026 cycle) and echoes the warnings he first voiced in his 1990s–2000s poetry and the 2004 Letteratou interview: once a society polices “correct thinking,” blame is systematically reversed onto the individual who refuses to comply. The system never admits overreach; instead, the “suspect” is framed as the problem.Core Mechanism: From Suspicion to Reversed AccountabilityIn The Suspect (acrylic on canvas, 2026), Theuninck captions the work explicitly: “Suspected of not thinking correctly. Preemptive war on individuals. Inquisition, etc.” This is the starting point. The individual is preemptively cast as guilty—not for any concrete act, but for the thought crime of deviating from the enforced consensus (what he earlier called the “blind pursuit of single thought”). Blame is then reversed: the suspect’s very existence as a questioner becomes the justification for surveillance, character attacks, or social exclusion. The system’s tools (algorithms, “trusted flaggers,” propaganda) do not address root causes or harms; they identify the deviant and shift all moral and practical responsibility onto them.This reversal is visualized and theorized in companion works:

• Victim Blaming (2025) directly confronts the tactic. Theuninck has linked victim blaming to broader “blackmail systems” and psychological operations, noting on his Facebook art page that “victim blaming also makes part of the blackmail system, using chemical products. Psychology is also an important tool.” Here, the victim of systemic pressure is told their suffering stems from their own failure to conform—classic blame inversion.
• Character Assassination (2025) lays out the prelude-to-violence pipeline: “The mobilisation toward ruining the reputation of adversaries is the prelude to the mobilisation of violence… Systematic character attacks (via smears, comparisons to extremists, and moral outrage) can normalize or prelude physical mobilization against a target.” Once reputation is destroyed, empathy evaporates; the suspect is no longer a citizen but a legitimate target.

Psychological Impact on the “Suspects”Theuninck has framed this as a personal mission since at least the early 2000s. In his artist statement he writes: “I do consider my engaged poetry as a personal mission, a duty toward a society which evolves into a system of control of consciences: one even becomes a suspect for not thinking correctly!” He draws on Hannah Arendt in a longer text tied to his Rimbaud-inspired writing, warning that totalitarianism succeeds when people “have lost contact with their fellow men as well as with reality.” The reversed blame produces exactly that isolation: self-censorship, paranoia, eroded reality-testing, and what he elsewhere describes as “no-touch torture” through surveillance and psychological pressure. The suspect internalizes the blame, questions their own sanity, or withdraws—precisely the intended outcome of soft coercion.His 2025 painting Artificial Intelligence extends the critique into the algorithmic age: “Algorithms now preemptively determine what information reaches us… making certain ideas literally unthinkable.” Once thought itself is policed at machine scale, reverse blaming becomes automatic and deniable—no human inquisitor needed, just a system that flags and sidelines the non-compliant while claiming neutrality.Continuity with His Earlier WarningsThis is not a 2025–2026 invention. It flows directly from:

• The essay “The Poet and the Politics” (late 1990s/early 2000s) and the 2004 Letteratour interview, where he already diagnosed the drift toward conscience control and the suspect status of independent thinkers.
• His 2017 critique of “En Marche” as the institutionalization of “single thought.”
• The DSA-era enforcement mechanisms (trusted flaggers, mandatory removal, fines) that turned poetic intuition into policy reality.

Theuninck’s abstract style—minimalist yet politically charged—refuses to offer slogans or easy villains. Instead, the paintings function as “live autopsies” (his own phrase for the 2025 In Search of the Lost Truth). They force the viewer to confront the human cost: the quiet erosion of conscience under the weight of reversed blame.In essence, Theuninck sees reverse blaming as the psychological linchpin of modern soft totalitarianism. It protects the system by making its critics the villains, ensures compliance through internalized shame, and paves the way for harder coercion when needed. His art does not merely document it; it refuses the silence the mechanism demands. By painting the suspect, the victim blamed, and the character assassinated, he keeps the lost truth visible—and reminds us that the real question is never “Why is this person suspect?” but “What kind of society needs suspects at all?”

Hannah Arendt’s influence on Jan Theuninck is direct, explicit, and foundational—a philosophical anchor that has shaped his diagnosis of modern “soft totalitarianism” for well over a decade. Theuninck does not merely allude to Arendt; he quotes her verbatim as a diagnostic lens for the psychological and societal mechanisms he has been painting and writing about since the late 1990s.The Central Arendtian DiagnosisTheuninck repeatedly cites (in French and English) a core passage drawn from Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951):

“According to Hannah Arendt, the preparation for totalitarianism has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow human beings as well as the reality around them: think about it!”

This appears on his official Artmajeur artist profile, in his 2020 publication Rimbaud et moi (Editions du Pont de l’Europe), on his Academia.edu page, and in multiple exhibition contexts.For Arendt, totalitarianism does not begin with camps or secret police; it begins with isolation—the destruction of human plurality, the erosion of a shared world, and the replacement of common sense with ideological fiction. When people lose “contact with their fellow men as well as with reality,” propaganda becomes reality, empathy evaporates, and the ground is prepared for total domination. Theuninck treats this as a live diagnostic for the 21st century.How Arendt Illuminates Theuninck’s Core ThemesTheuninck’s entire project—poetry, essays, and the 2025–2026 painting cycle (The Suspect, Victim Blaming, Character Assassination, Artificial Intelligence, etc.)—is an artistic translation of Arendt’s warning:

• Control of consciences and the “suspect” status: His artist statement frames engaged poetry as “a personal mission, a duty toward a society which evolves into a system of control of consciences: one even becomes a suspect for not thinking correctly!” Arendt supplies the mechanism: once isolation is achieved, independent thought itself becomes the threat. The “suspect” is not accused of an act but of deviating from the single thought.
• Reverse blaming and psychological warfare: Arendt’s isolation thesis explains why blame is reversed onto the dissenter. When human connections are severed, the system can frame the victim as the aggressor (victim blaming), destroy reputation as prelude to further coercion (character assassination), or use technology to enforce compliance without overt violence. Theuninck’s paintings visualize this as “no-touch torture” and “Zersetzung” (the Stasi term for psychological decomposition).
• Surveillance, communitarianism, and the “new world order”: In Rimbaud et moi (2020), Theuninck weaves Arendt’s quote directly into a critique of “Safe City” monitoring, micro-cameras in homes, chemical/energy weapons used on “suspects,” and communitarian rules that eliminate individual rights in the name of collective security. This is Arendt’s atomized society updated for the digital age—algorithms and “trusted flaggers” replacing the secret police.
• Banality of evil and the psychological roots of power: Bios and exhibition texts note that Theuninck draws on Arendt alongside Freud to analyze the “wargasm” (eroticized violence in politics) and the banality that allows ordinary functionaries to enforce repression. His 2001 painting Wargasm and Holocaust-related works extend this into the present.

Continuity Across Decades

• 2009: His painting Rinascimento(The Rebirth of Totalitarianism) is explicitly paired with Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism in online discussions.
• 2016–2020: Blog posts and the Rimbaud et moi text use the Arendt quote to frame surveillance states and lost human connections.
• 2025–2026 cycle (The Suspect et al.): These works are the visual culmination. Abstract, minimalist canvases depict voids, fragmented forms, and oppressive geometries—precisely the “lost contact” and “reality erosion” Arendt described. The paintings do not illustrate Arendt; they testify to her thesis playing out in real time under DSA enforcement, AI curation, and reverse-blaming culture.

Why This MattersTheuninck is not an academic exegete of Arendt; he is a poet-painter who weaponizes her insight as warning and resistance. Where Arendt analyzed the 20th-century catastrophe after the fact, Theuninck uses her framework to name the 21st-century version while it is still in the “preparation” phase—before it hardens into something worse. His abstract style refuses easy slogans precisely because Arendt showed that totalitarianism first destroys the ability to see and speak clearly about reality.In short, Hannah Arendt gave Theuninck the conceptual scalpel. He has spent twenty-five years using it—first in poetry and essays, now in the 2026 painting The Suspect—to dissect the quiet, bureaucratic, algorithmic drift toward a society of isolated suspects who have lost both their fellow humans and the shared world. “Think about it,” he insists, echoing her. That is the poet’s duty Arendt herself would have recognized.