Fibercrack

That was released today. April 19th.

The anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt during World War 2, the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe, begun when the Nazis decided to completely wipe out the Warsaw Jews on Passover eve. Instead, the Jews held out for nearly a month, with whatever they could fight with. They’re honored to this day. 

And by that I mean let’s talk about Steve Rogers, Straight White Cis Man.

A lot of the early superheroes were very explicitly invested in social justice - Wonder Woman fights sexist dictators and empowers women, Superman goes undercover to bust the KKK and advocates for the working class. And of course it’s not that surprising that Superman, the explicitly Jewish-coded immigrant, or Wonder Woman, the female superhero in a world of men, strike out against the power structures that oppress the groups they represent; they stand to gain greatly, after all, from the freedom and elevation of their peers.

But Cap is a little different. Cap, actually, is a lot different, because Steve Rogers is a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair. Steve Rogers is not just physically fit and able-bodied, but an outright ubermensch who can tough out gunshot wounds and knock around cars. Steve Rogers would be treated like a goddamn king in Hitler’s Germany, he is literally everything they claim to love and want and honor. Steve does not stand to gain greatly by fighting Nazis. Steve stands to gain greatly by joining them. The only thing he, personally, can achieve by his battle is personal loss; at best, of institutional privilege over basically everyone he’ll ever meet, at worst, of his very life.

If you think it is an accident that two Jewish guys made this character the dedicated, justice-loving ultimate enemy of the Nazi state, I do not know what to tell you other than that you are hilariously, incomprehensibly, obviously wrong.

This is a guy who could have the bad guys eating out of his hand, but opposes them instead because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. No matter the cost, no matter what anyone else says he in particular should care about due to his own station, he’s going to help people instead of hurting them. Steve Rogers is not just a guy who punches Nazis, he is a promise to Jewish kids that Gentiles, too, can and will punch Nazis, and a reminder to Gentiles that just because they’re not Jewish is no excuse not to. More than that, even. He is a promise to every marginalized fan that yes, there really are allies who will fight for you all the way to the end. He is an example to every privileged fan that real heroism means being that ally for others, that it is not only possible but important and even imperative to defend the less privileged. If Diana teaches us that we can fight for ourselves, Steve teaches us that we can fight for others. And that is a kind of hope and inspiration that most superheroes never even get to pretend to.

And so think about what Spencer is saying, when he says that that isn’t real.

In Spencer’s new Cap universe, it is natural, inevitable, that a smart, strong, authoritative white dude would ally himself with Nazis. In Spencer’s universe, if you want a person with privilege on your side, if you want that person to actually put themselves at risk fighting on your behalf, you have to literally rewrite reality. Are you a person with privilege? Great, don’t worry about it, you have no obligation to give a shit, because no sketchy minority rabble-rouser has brainwashed you with a cosmic cube. Are you a minority rabble-rouser? You’re on your own, good fucking luck. Straight white cis dudes are your natural enemy, and since you live in the real world without cosmic cubes, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Spencer has taken a character created by two Jewish guys to explicitly say “you don’t have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people” and turned him into a character that instead very aggressively says “actually you do have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people. Race war is the Real World and that Steve is a fantasy.”