On Nazi Captain America
Okay everyone. So while we’ve all been indignant and disgusted by Nazi Cap, the fact that his creators are Jewish, and that it goes against everything Steve Rogers was meant to stand for, there’s a few things the writers completely and utterly missed.
Now, I want to come out and say that I am not Jewish and that I am not trying to make this trivial to them. I think that it is abhorrent and I am completely, utterly shocked they would violate a character like this. I am not happy.
I also have yet to read the comic and, frankly, I’m not going to buy it. I won’t give Marvel money for this shit. What I have is what I’ve taken from tumblr and my own research, so take this with a grain of salt.
So while the fact he is now a Nazi and has never been, apparently, a good person, there is something important that I wanted to focus on.
Like the fact that Steve Rogers would have NEVER been chosen by HYDRA in the first place.
Let me tell you guys about something–Eugenics.
This was a big deal in the 20s and 30s. Google it. The short answer is this: the perfect race. The desired traits. The perfect human being. Sounds familiar, right? Hitler used it for his Aryan race. Blonde, blue-eyed, tall (i.e. what he wasn’t). We ought to know about that.
Well, here’s the thing–it started in the USA. Well, not completely. The idea of Eugenics has been around since Plato. But the idea that people who weren’t “perfect” should be removed from society became pretty big in the USA in the 20s. Hitler borrowed the principals of it from the US. You’ve heard of the Kennedys. The oldest daughter was sterilized against her will, lobotomized, and locked up. Don’t believe me? Look it up. This was common. It was common through the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was repealed in 1972. People who were mentally ill were locked away and sterilized. When it became too expensive to house those people, they government shut the program down and those people who had been locked away were suddenly homeless because no one wanted them. Hitler got his Nazi Youth from the USA, people.
Back to the topic at hand.
Steve Rogers was Irish and most likely Catholic. Click here and look under “early life”.
Remember little orphan Annie? With her cute little red hair? Yeah. That means she’s Irish. Not a big deal right? Everyone today loves the Irish. Being Irish or part Irish nowadays is, well, cool.
Yeah, no, not back then. The Irish were hated. You did not advertise the fact that you were Irish back then because you would be beat up. Annie was made an Irish girl because she wasn’t wanted. That reboot in 2014? Annie is now African American because they are among the children who are adopted the least, nowadays. HYDRA would not take Steve Rogers in simply because he was Irish. But hey! It gets better.
Steve Rogers wasn’t healthy.
See, Eugenics only works if the desired people are healthy. You don’t want unhealthy people. So Steve, with his asthma and his heart conditions and his color blindness and his partially deafness … well. Yeah. HYDRA would have left him and his mother to die. His father is now a drunk in the comics, right? Drunk Irish. They would have been tossed for that. His mother was single. She worked instead of remarrying. Tossed for that.
So this woman who took Sarah and Steve in an indoctrinated him into HYDRA? Nope. Wouldn’t have happened–not even out of the “goodness of her heart.”
Also, literally the only people stopping Steve Rogers from being institutionalized and sterilized were Sarah and Bucky. When Sarah died, Bucky would have kept Steve out (MCU, for those fans.)
Steve is a good person. He would have been more loyal to Bucky than anyone else. That’s the MCU. In the comics, well … I guess Steve would have found a way to stay out.
So HYDRA would never have looked twice at poor little Steven G. Rogers. They simply wouldn’t have. He wasn’t “perfect.”
Personally, I think some of the reason why Steve was chosen for the serum was not only because he is a good person, but also because he was the exact opposite of what the Nazis and the Eugenicist considered desirable. It was sort of a “Fuck You” to the Nazis.
So while it’s horrifically offensive that Cap has been turned into a Nazi and that, suddenly, half his character no longer makes sense (Thor’s hammer? The fact he provably has no prejudices? The fact that he would have turned out like the Red Skull if he had been a bad person when injected with the serum?), it’s historically inaccurate. There is no way some Eugenicists would have looked at Steve and told him he was destined for greatness. There is no way a Eugenicists would have taken pity on poor, unhealthy Irish folk. There is no way a single mother and her sickly kid would have been accepted into the Nazi fold. There is no way Steve Rogers would have been indoctrinated into the Nazi ideals. He would have never been chosen in the first place.
The writers are completely ignoring history and completely ignoring the time period. The events and the people’s ideals played an ENORMOUS role in Steve’s life. The writers literally do not understand just what that time period was like. They threw everything out and ignored it. Not only have they done a disservice to the Jewish, Catholic, Romani, and Homosexual (and every other group that suffered under the Nazi reign–while 6 million Jews died, the total death toll was 12 million) communities they are doing a disservice to the USA’s history, both good and bad.
This is a problem. Sure, Steve Rogers as bisexual would be great. But this? I don’t care what anyone says. If someone tells you this is no big deal, tell them they don’t understand the cultural and historical impact this has. This comic may be lost in the recesses of time, but it still exists, now.
Some people may still remember the 20s and 30s, but there’s a century between the rest of us and that time period. Most of us can only know that era through history–and this is why the writers should have done that time justice. People often learn more fact through fiction than they do in school. This was an injustice.
And writers?
Only a handful of people ever saw Steve’s worth, andHYDRA was never one of them.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
