Donde Esta posted:

glitchwraith posted:

Then why does Spencer keep going out of his way to justify Hydra Cap's point of view?

Mr. Maltose posted:

Also like. Nazis don't have a universal claim to internment but Hydra are loving Nazis. This isn't even subtext. It's 40 years of text.

Donde Esta posted:

I'm not sure Spencer is justifying anything -- he may be showing how a person who does such things might rationalize the things they're doing - that doesn't necessarily justify them or make them right.

Donde Esta posted:

No -- quite the opposite. That interpretation is only valid if you IGNORE 40 years of text and the current context. Originally? Sure.

glitchwraith posted:

They started as Nazi's, and fluctuate closer or further from that group to meet the current author's needs. This story has them historically allied with the Axis powers, so comparing them with Nazi's seems obvious.

Rhyno posted:

The most well known version of Hydra is from the MCU where they are 100% actual Nazis.

Donde Esta posted:

Last time I checked - the Japanese weren't actual 100% literal Nazis just for being axis aligned. They were a sovereign entity. Comic book nazis who had latter careers with Hydra seemed less interested in Nazi ideology as they did the promise of power they thought was coming under the Third Reich - so their applications to any real life cultural context and significance post-1945 are fairly loving thin.


Except, you know, where the Red Skull actually dialogues about how they're just using the Third Reich as a vehicle to acquire power, and that whole weird thing with Inhumans and Hive in Agents of Shield. The strongest evidence that I've seen yet is where a single character in Agents of Shield makes a Justice Potter argument of "I know it when I see it", which is fairly weak unless you're specifically talking about pornography .

At this point Marvel should just end Secret Empire with the raising of a Nazi banner over the Hydra one and resurrect Hitler with an adamantium skeleton. The alt-right would lose their poo poo in joyous exultation after months of incorrectly projecting on a character that doesn't belong to them, and everyone in this thread would jizz their pants in vindication after months of projecting onto issues that don't actually exist in a comic.

Donde Esta posted:

Except, you know, where the Red Skull actually dialogues about how they're just using the Third Reich as a vehicle to acquire power, and that whole weird thing with Inhumans and Hive in Agents of Shield. The strongest evidence that I've seen yet is where a single character in Agents of Shield makes a Justice Potter argument of "I know it when I see it", which is fairly weak unless you're specifically talking about pornography .

Lurdiak posted:

ImpAtom posted:

"We're not Nazis, we're actually Nazis but worse" doesn't actually make them not Nazis.

Donde Esta posted:

That's because not being Nazis makes them not Nazis.

Suggesting that we change the title of this thread to Marvel 2017: Godwin's Black Hole

Donde Esta posted:

That's because not being Nazis makes them not Nazis.

TwoPair posted:

Man I'm sorry America but that Hydra sundae looks really fuckin tasty

e: Also this is incorrect branding as Nazis and/or Hydra would never allow a brown sundae to represent them.

Aphrodite posted:

We have the real world context for that stuff too, you know.

Nazi collaborators get charged as loving nazis. 95 year old former bookkeepers get charged as loving nazis.

The law would consider them nazis, and I don't know about you but I'm not fighting She Hulk.

Pureauthor posted:

Guys, Zeon isn't actually Imperial Japan circa 1930s. I swear.

glitchwraith posted:

Pick any of our arguments, ctrl-f "Nazi", and replace it with "worse-than-Nazis" as you yourself have described them. Does this fundamentally change our interpretation of the story? If not, how is the distinction relevant?

Edit: And again, alt-right, white supremacists, and fascists have all argued the semantics of the Nazi label to defend their point of view which, coincidentally, happens to be pretty nazi-ish. It's a major problem that the same argument has to be used to defend a dumb super hero story.

Donde Esta posted:

Conversely, since you seem fairly reasonable, do you think the alt-right has valid claim to appropriate Hydra Cap as their own?

A lovely Reporter posted:

Donde Esta, you're not fooling anyone. Only someone whose interests aligned with Nazis would be this incredibly invested in defending this garbage.

Mr. Maltose posted:

I've no doubt something of the nature of Secret Empire could be done well, or as well as corporate comics would allow, but we have in front of us what we have which is pretty much garbage.

EDIT: I mean, one of the greatest arcs in Captain America's history explores the appeal of a facist, right wing version of Cap but has 0% cosmic bullshit involved in setting it up and has an actually coherent through-line.

Rhyno posted:

Hahahah gently caress those Nazis Alt Right and everything they do.

Edit: I'm not even going to call them by their cutesy little fascist name. They're Nazis.

Archyduke posted:

I don't want to imply that Secret Empire is good but some of you folks seem to have a pretty narrow view of how totalitarianism can/should be represented in art. To me, most of the most chilling indictments of fascism in the 20th c. either work hard to represent the dirty allure of it (say, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Amarcord, Christa Wolf's great roman a clef Kindheitsmuste or even, you know, Injustice) or, even more scary, were written by fascists themselves (Schmitt's theory, Celine's novels, Marinetti and Pound, etc.)-- if you aren't making the point that the temptation of succumbing to Schmittian us vs. them power worship is horrifically easy even for people who consider themselves good and reasonable and practical, then what's the point? As far as I'm concerned needling this plot for making Steve Rogers look sympathetic is, in theory kind of missing the point-- in a better written, more tightly constructed comic, having a character we like and who is still sketched sympathetically enough that we can at least follow his train of thought is a much more interesting mouth-piece for fascism than, like, Arnim Zola, because we can imagine how people who like some of the same qualities we do and share some of the same broad ideals that we do can be persuaded to throw their hats in with evil.

Otherwise, what? You're telling your audience that movements that prey on resentment and fear and hate will be easy to recognize and easy to resist, which just isn't true. I think art that wants to deal with fascism, especially now, has to confront that it comes shrouded in ambiguity and will do its best to convince you that it's the life-line you've been waiting for, and that it's here to clear away everything in the world that confuses you and frightens you and stops you from having what you think you deserve. I mean, think of how many comics fans spent decades salivating over Dr. Doom for essentially ruling Latveria as a benign totalitarian despot, or how people responded to Hickman's Avengers run which always struck me, in a way that I didn't always see acknowledged, as a very frightening study on how people with great power and great responsibility can use that responsibility to justify ever greater exercise of power-- but which was often read, not here so much, but elsewhere online, as just cool powerful dudes doing cool powerful things with their cool power.

Is Spencer doing that? Well, no. I mean, maybe he's trying to, but he's not doing a good job. But I think the idea could be sound--? To be honest, a lot of my research is in far-right politics in 20th century avant garde circles, but the last bunch of months have made me reconsider a lot of my basic presuppositions about everything. I teach at a big, huge public university with a reputation for laudable diversity, and when white nationalist tracts show up in my department's waiting area it's terrifying to me as a jewish person and as someone responsible, for a few hours a week, for taking care of young adults who have every reason to fear for their future right now. I think it's disingenuous to create art that suggests that hate will always arrive in a lime green jumpsuit or with a gross red skeleton head-- and I kind of worry that this discussion is spiraling out from acknowledging that Secret Empire is dumb as poo poo to suggesting that anti-fascist art has to be agitprot where Hitler gets popped in the mush (although of course I'm all for popping fascists in the mush).

Diet Poison posted:

I haven't read any of this story other than the Doctor Strange tie-ins but it's pretty drat objectionable that supposedly Thor and Deadpool are on Hydra-cap's side, somehow?
Like what the hell. I honestly have no objection to the storyline as I know it: "Captain America is a Nazi because of magic trickery; let's see how our other heroes get him out of this situation". And personally I don't give a poo poo, because it's Spencer, it sucks, and as far as I'm concerned if I haven't read it, I don't have to accept it as continuity.
BUT, like at this point Cap is openly a fascist, right? How the hell would you even begin to be stupid enough to side with him. Like Deadpool, is he saying "well I did recently see the horrors of a fascist state with mass graves and everything, but if the guy I was with over there says it's not bad when he does it then golly gee he's probably right because he's a good guy"? And Thor, he's saying "This is for sidelining me, Aaron you dick, now you'll have to try and write around this when your story's supposed to be about me again".