Last week Nick Spencer delivered one of Secret Empire’s most important pieces yet in Captain America #25. I knew when I read it, I’d be writing about it. But I hadn’t expected to do so this quickly. However, as I watched the news unfold on Saturday, I couldn’t get this issue out of my mind. The comic, dropping “Sam Wilson” from the title with this issue, is simply Captain America once more. The narrative juxtaposes the approach of two very different Captain Americas. The allegory is clear. Who do we choose? Who are we? It’s a question calling each reader to deep contemplation on a personal and national level, a question I ask myself daily.
It should go without saying that a comic released last week (and written well before) isn’t directly referencing what happened on Saturday as hundreds of white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klan members gathered at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to protest the city’s planned removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee with a “Unite the Right!” rally. However, what happened in Charlottesville didn’t grow in a vacuum and a central part of Secret Empire has been exploring the darker forces at work inside our country. So the choice Captain America #25 poses is part of the choice we must wrestle with whenever we see the vile parts of our national history and legacy assert themselves as they did on Saturday.
Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
While the cover shows Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson staring each other down, it’s clear from the second page of the comic this isn’t going to be our traditional superhero confrontation. Captain America #25 isn’t about Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson battling it out head-to-head. In fact, the two men never even see each other in the issue. Instead, they give two very different speeches to those who stand with them. This issue places two opposing ideologies in tension, two different ways of being Captain America, two different visions of America. That’s exactly what we saw clash in Charlottesville – two different visions of America.
Part of the brilliance of Nick Spencer’s Secret Empire storyline is how it works allegorically on two different levels. At its broadest level, it is a universal story of the importance of hope in hopeless times. It’s about finding the strength to rally when there’s no believable reason to keep fighting let alone believe you can succeed. On a second, more direct level, it’s an unflinching exploration of where America has found itself. An insidious force has been growing in this country. This force that’s corrupted our country is represented with painful perfection in the corruption of Steve Rogers. It’s a darkness that’s been with us since our founding, a force considered largely defeated by many who oppose it while those who embrace it waited, biding their time. And it’s a force the Trump campaign used to help drive itself to victory. Trump didn’t create this evil. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia have always been with us, in one form or another with varying degrees of strength. However, in the wake of his victory the Nazis, KKK members, and white supremacists who harbor these hateful mindsets have found a sense of vindication.
It’s not hyperbolic to say that Trump’s very presence in the Oval Office is fanning these flames. At the start of the “Unite the Right” rally, as reported by The Huffington Post, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, told the crowd, “This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he’s going to take our country back. That’s what we gotta do.” An interview from The Washington Post showed, “Michael Von Kotch, a Pennsylvania resident who called himself a Nazi, said the rally made him ‘proud to be white.’ He said that he’s long held white supremacist views and that Trump’s election has ’emboldened’ him and the members of his own Nazi group.”
Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
We clearly see this type of mindset in the speech Steve Rogers opens Captain America #25 with. He calls Hydra to war against those who will not submit – Wakanda and New Tian – as a necessary show of “strength” and “authority” to bring peace and justice. Steve gives these two nations the chance to stand down and submit while warning them, “Because we are coming. And we will not stop until it is finished. Until what is rightfully ours is returned. Until what was taken from us is restored. Hail Hydra.”
On Saturday, as reported by The Washington Post, the protesters gathered “bearing Confederate flags and anti-Semitic epithets….By 11 a.m., several fully armed militias and hundreds of right-wing rallygoers had poured into the small downtown park that was to be the site of the rally.” They clashed with counter-protesters, brawling in the streets, and someone drove a car through the crowds of counter-protesters resulting in the death of one person and leaving nineteen injured. In addition to violence and hate, those who attended the rally were whole-heartedly embracing the ideology of Hitler and the Nazi Party. As CNN detailed, “Video shows some of the protesters shouting ‘blood and soil,’ a phrase invoking the Nazi philosophy of ‘Blut und Boden.’ The ideology stressed that ethnic identity is based on only blood descent and the territory in which an individual lives….The ‘blood and soil’ chants began Friday night when torch-bearing protesters marched at the University of Virginia and clashed with counterprotesters. More white nationalist protesters continued the cries during Saturday’s gatherings…..The phrase dates to the earliest days of Nazi propaganda.”
Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
What do we say when Nazis are openly and proudly marching in the streets of our country? What do we do? Returning to Captain America #25, while Steve’s speech brings war, Sam Wilson’s heralded hope. As with all of Secret Empire, his words are intended as much for us as readers as they are for the heroes gathered before him. Speaking of the extreme evil they face (which echoes the extreme evil we saw in Charlottesville on Saturday), Sam asks, “Question is — what do we do? Do we give up? Turn ourselves in? Surrender? Admit they were right about us? Or do we remember who we really are?” Do we have the courage to denounce racist, xenophobic. hateful ideology for the evil it is? Will we stand against it?
In the wake of all that happened in Charlottesville we saw a struggle to even name evil for what it was. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency on Saturday morning and was clear at his evening news conference with the message he delivered to “‘all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”
Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
Sadly, if not unexpectedly, Trump didn’t do anything of the kind. It was after 1:00pm when he finally tweeted “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!” and in his spoken remarks said, “The hate and the division must stop and must stop right now. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.” Did you catch that? On many sides. Disturbingly when a reporter asked whether he wanted the support of white nationalists, Trump didn’t respond. As The New York Times outlined when tweeting or speaking to reporters he, “made no mention that the violence in Charlottesville was initiated by white supremacists brandishing anti-Semitic placards, Confederate battle flags, torches and a few Trump campaign signs….In Bedminister on Saturday, Mr. Trump said he and his team were ‘closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Va.,’ then tried to portray the violence there as a chronic, bipartisan plague. ‘It’s been going on for a long time in our country,’’ he said. ‘It’s not Donald Trump, it’s not Barack Obama.’….Mr. Trump did not single out the marchers, who included the white supremacist Richard Spencer and Mr. Duke, for their ideology. While Democrats and some Republicans faulted Mr. Trump for being too vague, Mr. Duke was among the few Trump critics who thought the president had gone too far. ‘I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,’ he wrote on Twitter, shortly after the president spoke.”
So the KKK (and the rest of their racist, white supremacist ilk) are upset because Trump went “too far” by refusing to denounce the terrorism of white supremacists the evil that is it. And they feel validated in this point of view. We are clearly broken as a country. Here too Secret Empire offers us guidance. In Captain America #25 Sam Wilson says, “When things got rough, when we’d worn ourselves down — instead of fixing what was broken, taking responsibility — we decided it was easier to just hand it all over to him, let him do it for us. Didn’t turn out so well. So now, here we are. With him out there every day, talking to the country, reminding everyone how bad we screwed up. How we all caused this. How we spent all our time fighting each other. Chasing big ideas that blew up in our faces. Flying so high we lost touch with the ground beneath our feet.”
Many conservatives are absolutely to blame for where we are. This toxic cancer has grown inside the Republican Party, perverting what it once stood for as so many turned a blind eye because it was leading to election wins. Progressives too are to blame, with so many willing to rest on Obama’s presidential victory ready to believe we’d triumphed over the racist sins of our past. All the while Democrats talked a good game and did very little to bring those promises to life. We screwed up. We caused this. And yes, we are spending far more time fighting with each other than we are trying to fix this. We need to get our hearts and our heads right. And we need to be careful with how we address this sort of hatred.
This can NEVER be the answer. Violence only begets more violence. / Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
As Keegan Hankes, a research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Variety, “the real agenda [of Saturday’s rally]… was to garner mainstream media coverage as a recruitment tool. The violence that erupted between various factions of protesters will be selectively mined for images to portray white nationalists as under attack from violent leftists and the police, Hankes said. ‘The whole thing has been orchestrated around trying to get media attention,’ Hankes told Variety. ‘They used the controversy around the Lee statue as a peg but what you really have is all these little hate groups competing in the same space trying to make a name for themselves. They’ll use media coverage and strategically controlled images (from the gathering) to bring in new members.'” I can understand the anger and frustrations that led some counter-protesters to attack those ignorant, hateful Nazi, KKK, white supremacists. But in attacking them you validate their sense of a “persecuted white minority.” They want to fight. We can’t give them what they want. And, more importantly, violence can only ever bring more violence. The Myth of Redemptive Violence is a dangerous illusion and one we must free ourselves from if we really want to affect true change There was a reason Dr. King held such extensive training sessions in nonviolent resistance.
So, in the face of this hate and violence, who do we choose to be? What vision of America do we embrace? Secret Empire offers us an answer and that’s part of the reason I turned to this issue as I watched the coverage on Saturday. In the face of such vile hatred, Secret Empire challenges us to be heroes. Nick Spencer’s definition of a hero then, as narrated in Sam’s speech, is the perfect note to close on. What do we do in the face of all this? Well, we need the courage to be heroes. What does that look like? He writes, “It was a simple thing really. Something we’d always known how to do, but had somehow forgotten. We saw people being oppressed, hurt — and we stood with them against it. And as we did, we started to remember again — everything else we’d forgotten. What made us put out lives on the line for the good of others. What we stood for, even in the face of so much evil. What we strived, how we struggled…how to be heroes.” AMEN!
No matter what happens, no matter what we do, we can never let go of the DREAM this flag and this country is supposed to represent. / Photo Credit – Marvel Comics
My Comic Relief 
An absolutely outstanding reflection on the events seen in Charlottesville. It honestly terrifies me that this mentality still exists but, as your post highlights superbly, it rests on the shoulders of everyone to extinguish this hateful flame on an international level. I may have to get this issue myself.
Again, an excellent post.
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Thank you. And you’re right, it IS scary to see how many people have this fire of hate still burning so strongly in their hearts. If nothing else, seeing it reminds us that it is still there and we can’t stop the struggle to change hearts and minds in our advocacy for love, compassion, and equality for all.
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Divide & Conquer is the oldest tactic in the book. The main
stream media plays to this strategy constantly & only amplifies
giving these cretins more attention than ever. The actions of a
few then become multiplied exponentially in the international arena.
Social media is now the place for public witch hunts of the modern
era, which further provokes each side, a very very toxic recipe.
The actions of the few then agitate the entire ant hill en masse.
Nothing justifies this level of hatred but feeding into the chaos
creates a dangerous digital feedback loop. Distancing oneself
from this darkness is the only way to really triumph against it.
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I absolutely agree with you in regard to social media being a breeding ground for toxicity and I also agree that we can play into recruitment efforts by giving too much uncritical attention to the Alt. Right. However, I would disagree if you’re suggesting we shouldn’t give these groups any attention at all. I don’t think it’s “feeding into the chaos” to shine a light on injustice and condemn it. We have a responsibility to be thoughtful and compassionate in what we say but we also must allow our words to be fueled by a prophetic fire. As I try and teach my students every year in our Peace & Justice lessons, if we aren’t saying something when we see injustice, calling it was it is, denouncing it, and doing all we can to work against it, then we’re actively aiding oppression with apathy.
As Elie Wiesel said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Price in 1986, “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
We only truly triumph over the darkness by refusing to look away and facing it with unwavering love until it is ultimately transformed.
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I think these are important conversations to have in a controlled setting,
definitely worth parents having with children at home, educators with
historical references, documentaries etc, for employers to re-iterate
workplace policies & acceptable behavior. But taking to social media to
sound off just incites more friction, there is a time & a place for these
conversations that can really make an impact, especially with the youth.
Distancing away from the social media diatribe is what I was referring to,
not the discussion or the topic altogether. Growing up traveling with the
military, there was so much diversity & was no place for this type of bigotry.
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Oh, I’m with you completely there and I apologize for misunderstanding your earlier point. Social media can give us the avenue and potential to connect and share our thoughts and ideas with people literally the world over. But so often it turns into a toxic and narcissism-driven hellhole. How much nuance can you express in 140 characters, let alone have the space to try and listen?
The youth is a particularly interesting facet of this because each generation is growing up shaped more and more by an online presence. I once had a conversations with students where one made the honest-and-not-ironic claim that they felt an experience was only truly “real” once it had been shared with and liked by others. In addition to harming our ability to live, learn, and dialogue all our social media exposure is also hampering how we experience reality, avoiding what’s in front of us now for what we will share later.
I spend a lot of time wondering how we can most effectively retain our humanity online in the age of social media let alone how we can remember everyone else on social media is human too. It’s a major issue for the 21st century.
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I have always been amazed at how well certain comics can capture and reflect current events. Such a versatile genre, it can be for fun escapism or tell something deeply meaningful. Thanks for a great, and timely, essay.
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Absolutely! And we need comic books for both of those facets – the escapism as well as the commentary. It’s one of the joys I’ve found in experiencing comic books as an adult, seeing these other layers I couldn’t see/appreciate/understand when I was a child. And thank you for the kind words!
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Reblogged this on Jedi by Knight.
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As always, I’m in awe of your posts and how well you write them. I don’t have much to add to this but – thank you for being, neutral but not neutral (when talking about how we got here). For seeing faults with both the Republicans and the Democrats. Not blaming it on one party entirely.
As for everything else, I completely agree.
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Thank you! I think that’s important. If we don’t see/own the blame on both sides we fall into the trap of demonizing one side and idolizing the other. It’s never that simple and I feel that sort of thinking only makes finding common ground and progress more difficult.
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Strangely enough today on National Geographic Channel of all places
is a Nazi marathon (O.o) Nazi Megastructures, / Nazi Secret Weapons.
S4 Ep5: Hitler’s Propaganda Machine. At this point it is declassified
information that Project Paperclip brought over key Nazi scientists to the
US rather than allow them to defect over to the Russians. So a lot
of what we are dealing with now are Nazi ideologies that were co-opted &
absorbed into the deep state. So the Hydra comparison is very fitting.
The propaganda techniques developed in Germany have been perfected
in the United States, we are seeing the full force of that technology today.
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It’s so fitting you reference the Nazi propaganda machine because Nick Spencer just tweeted the other week “SECRET EMPIRE is the story of heroes rising up to defeat a fascism that has subverted and corrupted an American symbol.” So the idea of the corrupting and subversive effect of these co-opted Nazi techniques is absolutely part of what he’s going for with the story.
It’s interesting to swing this back to your original point about social media being toxic too. If we look at these co-opted Nazi ideologies that have been absorbed here and tie it to how we use (or are being used by) our modern technologies we see the ability for that message to be spread with dangerous speed over a frightening distance. It all plays out in avenues where “truth” and “reality” have been stripped of any objective meaning and are created with no connection to actual fact-checking. It’s a scary storm that’s brewing.
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