Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

In the comics it was all handwaved away by Hitler possessing a magical artifact — the Spear of Longinus no less — that somehow prevented superhumans from acting directly against him.

I don’t understand why the writers didn’t just say the JSA wasn’t powerful enough to take on the entire Nazi regime.

Well these kind of explanations only happened later when fans were insane (and children).

It could also be that trying to think about how immensely the political landscape would change in those kinds of scenarios (and even current day) is a daunting task for some writers.

I confess, it's an issue in my supervillainy saga books.

But it's also an issue in my Vampire: The Masquerade games. I had a game involving Nazis and had to think about what the Kindred did if anything during the whole period of the regime and if they affected any RL events.

I ended up deciding there was ONE vampire among the Nazis (A Brujah Neonate) and that he protected the Furher from myriad supernatural attacks out of a stupid devotion to Nazism he kept until his Ancilla days.

Also, the Nazis were heavily supported by the Tremere.

But mostly vampires did their usual thing of only caring about local politics.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 24th 2018 at 10:15:33 AM

I'm guessing this isn't something they thought about during the actual writing process.

World of Darkness generally holds as a rule that World War 2 was just a conflict fought between ordinary hoomans, because they didn't want to do the whole 'secretly monsters are behind every bad thing wot ever happened.'

Then the 5th edition writers decided vampires caused the instability in the Middle East.

Because of course.

Edited by math792d on Oct 25th 2018 at 11:22:04 AM

If i had to guess writers possibly did this so that they did not fall to "Humans Are the Real Monsters" or rather "Humans are the most evil race in the Universe" trope which is very common in this type of stories (dark supernatural or fantasy stuff) as they apply vast majority of atrocities committed by humans to "Human nature" while horrible stuff committed by other races (if they are not "Always Chaotic Evil) as "few bad apples". Not that it did make this specific reveal any more justifiable.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 25th 2018 at 12:34:41 PM

Hitler is a topic around which there is no winning. If you have your heroes thwart the Holocaust, it is extremely disrespectful to actual Holocaust victims. If you have them fail to thwart it, it's disrespectful to the characters.

Personally, I'm more concerned with respecting victims of genocide than respecting fictional characters, so I err on the side of "Do not thwart Hitler".

Unless you're actively trying to go for a Alternate History. I agree that having fictional characters stopping Real Life Mass Murderers.

On the other hand it can be reaaaaaally jarring in how NOBODY stop the holocaust and for some the idea of actually stop be can be a good way of escapit fantasy.

Also is funny but the whole "bad guy influencing history" always more backwards in time when nobody cares.

Are there really fans who would actually find characters failing to stop the Holocaust disrespectful?

Edited by windleopard on Oct 25th 2018 at 9:30:55 AM

Yes, because some feel it erases the memories of the bad things that happened. It is like if Titanic ended with Everybody Lives, (which an animated version actually had as it's ending).

In a sense, sort of.

My impression is that no work has actually had heroes trying to prevent the Holocaust successfully or otherwise. There's various alternate histories, some of which involve time travel where the bad outcome is a Nazi victory. And similarly, ones where attempting to violate the Hiter Time Travel Exemption Act leads to someone framed as worse than Hitler.

So, the underlying idea seems to be that the history we have is as good as it can get. Which I think in a way abdicates responsibility/ falls into a "just world fallacy".

That being said, I'm sympathetic to the underlying premise of time travel fiction that changing history in a significant way could have a lot of repercussions, both good and bad and could erase the heroes from the timeline. I think my complaint would more be with the premise that the history we got is the best outcome possible.

Edit- There are a couple of exceptions- Pavane and The Yiddish Policemen's Union which imagine alternate histories that are kind of sucky but which avert the Holocaust. Well, more so the latter. The former is ultimately explicitly framed as averting genocides/mass deaths in the 20th century, but as with the similar Catholic theocracy imagined in The Alteration, it's not really a good place to be Jewish.

Edited by Hodor2 on Oct 25th 2018 at 11:09:45 AM

"So, the underlying idea seems to be that the history we have is as good as it can get. Which I think in a way abdicates responsibility/ falls into a "just world fallacy"."

I disagree. There's a lot of creative destruction in human society's development where liberalizing reforms could only come about through upheaval. Alternate histories that show a world where "X catastrophe doesn't happen" as being overall more oppressive and small-minded are closer to the mark. The peaceful world is typically the more conservative, more sclerotic world, and one where established wisdom is king. When "established wisdom" is racist, sexist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic, that's how society will develop. I mean, the Holocaust was a horrifying event that must never happen again, but it was an event that happened because most people in Europe held views that accommodated its emergence. While such attitudes are reemerging, they're still considered detestable by the mainstream and "never again" is embedded within Western European political culture. That wasn't the case seventy-five years ago. It was only because the Holocaust happened in the context of a pre-existing, anti-Semitic Europe that most Europeans are today ideologically committed to never allowing it to happen again. If you create a world where the Holocaust never happened and changed nothing else, you'd still have a Europe where anti-Semitism was mainstream. You'd have to go back thousands of years to make anti-Semitism non-existent to credibly make a scenario where the Holocaust never happened and European attitudes toward Jews were better.

And it applies to other events — how different would Europe and the Western World look today if the French Revolution never happened and the people had to wait for entrenched, conservative forces to liberalize society on their own volition? How much longer would women have to wait to be enfranchised if the World Wars didn't make their greater involvement in the economy a dire necessity and give them greater leverage to demand changes? Hell, how much longer would serfdom have lasted if the Black Death hadn't killed off a huge portion of Europe and driven up the demand for labor?

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Oct 25th 2018 at 2:31:08 PM

It depends from a lot of events. You're not going to better the world by causing some disaster.

But what you said...it reminds me to my Gateway Series to Alternate History, Twilight Of The Red Tsar (Aka. Uber Stalin mess with Eurasia even after death).

One of the most unambiguous positives is that after The Second Holocaust or The Great Pogrom (A second, smaller but shocking Genocide of Jews in the URSS), USA starts to put stronger Hate Speech laws against Anti semites. Stalin' name becomes synonymous with Bigotry and thus Cold War America starts to reject it.

Of course, because the author had the need to put the Dystopia Tag, this somehow means that Ayn Rand become a Mainstream Policy. Even if the Republicans end up being the Civil rights party in this timeline.

Like, I get Rand reemplacing the Socialist Counterculture. Is edgy and is tolerable compared to Socialism/Communism given that is now seen as synonimous with Pure Evil due to Stalin' crimes.

But as Mainstream Policy? That was extremely iffy. Especially after the open racists did have to leave (Now that Racism is seen as a trademark crime of the Dirty Commies, they really can't being open about their bigotry).

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 25th 2018 at 2:12:38 PM

@ Crimson Zephyr- Appreciate the reply. I do see your points.

That being said, although I didn't address it in my post, I am also uncomfortable with the idea that the Holocaust "needed to happen" to cure people of genocidal bigotry and anti-semitism specifically. Both because as you note, it didn't really work, but also because I feel like this interpretation is trying to give a happy ending where one doesn't exist.

I do agree though with what you are saying about traditional worlds. To be clearer, although Pavane basically has an Author Filibuster about how the setting is Worth It because it prevented the catastrophies of the 20th century, the setting is pretty dystopian and only really appealing to an anti-modern conservative Catholic (which I believe describes the author).

I think a better illustration and more to my point are things like the Yiddish Policeman's Union or various books by Lavie Tidhar which have a historical divergence not too long removed from actual history and imagine a different history which has pros and cons.

For what it's worth, I should note that in Tidhar's A Man Lies Dreaming, he explicitly presents the alternate history as being in the imagination of a concentration camp prisoner in the real world, so the Holocaust is not actually negated. And the alternate world is pretty lousy. Hitler was overthrown early in his tenure by what became a Communist dictatorship, various Nazis are still doing evil shit, just different evil shit, and Oswald Mosely is poised to do everything in/from England that Hitler did in/from Germany.

Edited by Hodor2 on Oct 25th 2018 at 2:33:09 PM

I think the point is whether you believe the heroes trying to avert the greatest horror in the 20th century to be disrespectful. If you don't have your heroes know about the Holocaust or don't seemingly CARE about it, then you fall into the trap of having the heroes believe it's not an especially important thing for World War 2.

Given how often Holocaust is denied or played down, its something I don't see the effort to stop being a bad thing in fiction.

I mean, how many time travel stories are about stopping Kennedy's assassination versus history's worst atrocity?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 25th 2018 at 2:08:58 AM

Is not much of "this is the best world" but that it was so important that in many way people feel the world war was going to happen not matter what, in a example that you cant fight fate.

Also since world war is so close to modern history is still need to be treat it as real think unlike other history which can be skiped.

Mind you, it's one of those things where I think people outside an event have a different opinion from those with even a tangential connection to it. Roger Ebert was deeply troubled by the idea of Magneto being a Holocaust survivor since he found the whole idea to be disrespectful of incorporating a comic book character into the horror. However, Magneto has often been extremely popular in certain circles for the fact as a pop culture icon he does bring attention to the event and cuts through denial. He's even had several very respectful (at least in intent) comics written about his experiences during it.

I suppose "averting" it is a bad idea but I don't object to comic depictions or uses of it.

The only SUPREME POWER I actually liked in a series I mostly read for Bile Fascination was when Hyperion and Nighthawk went to Africa to try to resolve the Darfur crisis. They were immediately stopped by a group of African superheroes who read them the riot act about their white privilege as well as the idea that they could fix problems with their powers. Then Hyperion and Nighthawk just went back to murdering slavers and mass murderers. Because they couldn't stop what was going on, on their own but they damn well were going to try to help where they could.

It led me to doing a lot of research on the event. I wish I'd done more because of it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 25th 2018 at 3:05:54 AM

Re: Civil War. In an interview, Mark Millar stated that the writers were completely on the Pro-reg side and they knew deep down that registration was much better than leaving superheroes to run around without oversight and accountability. So they gave the Pro-reg side a bunch of unneeded puppy-kicking moments to make the argument seem fair. But the problem is that these crimes had nothing to do with registration and were just there to make the Pro-reg faction look like fascists. Basically, Marvel had not real faith in the Anti-reg side and sabotaged their ideological competition to make them look like they had a reasonable argument.

The same thing happened in Civil War II. In an interview, Tom Breevort admitted that from a real world standpoint, Carol had the more logical argument, but they thought it would be better to side with Tony since he seemed like the underdog.

This why the movie pretty much op to focus in how the hero feel about the accord rather than the issue ad hand because otherwise it wont stand scrunity, which I feel it was a good call.

That's an incredibly stupid argument for multiple reasons.

1. Superhumans being drafted to fight is terrible.

2. Arresting people for crimes they didn't commit is a terrible terrible idea.

But then again, I've never much liked politics in Mark Millers' works.

Why is this terrible? We already have a draft that goes by medical clearance and fitness with more fit draftees being prioritized, and I think having superpowers qualifies as “more fit”.