Showing posts with label superheroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label superheroes. Show all posts

SUPER-POP FASCISM vs SUPER-BLACK POWER


The Cultural Jihad


by Alex Fontana

There has been uproar in rightist circles – with some spillover into the mainstream media – over the transfiguration of pop culture characters of White identity to minority identity. There is certainly an agenda at work here, perhaps driven by the liberal proclivities of comic book creators, many of whom were and are Jewish, an agenda that interestingly rubs up against the "pop fascism" element in comic books sagaciously identified by Jonathan Bowden.

As leftist journalist Richard Cooper put it in an article entitled Superheroes are a Bunch of Fascists:
"The main problem is force: sheer physical force, which lies at the heart of the superhero myth…
I was reminded of this by Jor-El’s speech in Man of Steel: 'You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.'
How, though? Those watching him can’t fly, topple buildings or fire heat rays from their eyes. What else does Superman do other than these purely physical feats?"
Cooper misses the point completely in two regards. First, he assumes that violence is a characteristic of fascism and fascism only. Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1908) arguably inspired more left-wing violence than right-wing, and when it did inspire right-wing violence, through Benito Mussolini, it was his fluency with leftist discourse that precipitated it.

THE SUPERHERO AS A REACTIONARY ARCHETYPE

Shut up, Superman would make an awesome king.

by General Beardcastle

A year ago Richard Cooper wrote a piece for Salon decrying superheroes as a bunch of fascists. What triggered him in this instance was The Dark Knight Rises, and the similarities he saw between Bane’s revolutionary movement and Occupy Wall Street.

“Where are the left-wing superheroes?” he asked, “Maybe one day we will see a superhero movie championing something other than fascist or hypercapitalist values: a superhero movie in which it isn’t physical superiority that saves the day.”