NS: Hydra... Are they Nazis Anymore?

[informationgeek]

Got an interesting topic and question for you all and I thought I ask you it.



So Nick Spencer brought this up recently about an old article so... let's discuss! An article by Newsarama argues that Hydra isn't a Nazi organization, despite... everything. You can read it here, but here's an excerpt:

In short, while Hydra’s real world roots may be planted in the idea of neo-Nazi terrorists, for most of their history, they’ve been run of the mill supervillain fascists – whose later origins go back even further, tying them to alien invaders rather than race warriors and real world tyrants. There’s always the chance that Marvel will once again retcon Hydra’s history, but as it stands, with the information currently available, there’s little chance Steve Rogers is a Nazi, even if he genuinely is an agent of Hydra ... and that's a big 'if.'

and then Nick Spencer jumps in with this Twitter conversation:

One last thing for now on this subject. One of the reasons the Hydra=Nazi argument is so flawed to me, is how selectively it's deployed.
Hydra has been one of the most prominent villains in the MU for years. Most of the stories don't even make sense if you go w that premise.
As an example- the last volume of Captain America ended on a cliffhanger that Misty Knight might be a Hydra agent.
Not only that, but she claimed that Hydra had an agent on every team and every organization in the Marvel Universe.
Another example: a major thread of New Avengers was Spider-Woman potentially being a Hydra agent/plant.
Bob: Agent of Hydra.
All of these stories and countless others depict Hydra as a super-secret organization bent on world domination.
They are very, very bad people, and unquestionably villains. But Hydra's goals, beliefs, and membership criteria simply aren't the same.

So.... what do you guys think? Do you consider Marvel's Hydra to be Nazis?

Comments

[angelophile]

See, you could argue for a divide between NAZIism and Hydra IF Marvel weren't so keen on using NAZI imagery in association with Hydra, along with the organisation's founders being literal NAZIs. You can't claim that Hydra are a totally different thing and then have a character walking around in an SS uniform with the badge switched out.

[thehood]

Right and even you use the argument of the different cells, with different leaders. That doesn't change the fact some of them are guys like Baron Strucker, who was a Nazi and thus more than a few of those cells are white supremacist.

[angelophile]

Exactly. Marvel have spent some considerable time now making sure that it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, they don't get to be cute now and blame readers for cover stretching when they assume it's a duck.

[cainofdreaming]

I'd have thought they'd have more in common with geese. Ah well, they're still the same fowl breed.

[sadoeuphemist]

Is Nick Spencer himself not writing Hydra as Nazis, though, or at least right-wing ethnonationalist extremists? In Steve Rogers: Captain America #1, Red Skull gives a whole speech about the evils of refugees, how the culture of the United States is under siege, how this reminds him of WWII and how they needed to preserve their heritage and culture, how it's the (((bankers))) who are benefiting from from the degradation of America, etc etc.

I mean, I looked up the scene again just now, and there's a post on the dailystormer praising it effusively and celebrating that Cap is now a Nazi.

edit: I mean, I agree in theory that you can write a story where Hydra is a generic supervillain organization with no particular Nazi ideology, but Spencer is 100% not doing that and it's cowardly of him to try and shirk responsibility like this.

[laughing_tree]

The stories show that as the Red Skull's particular take on Hydra, and other factions treat it as a hijacking of their cause.

[sadoeuphemist]

Sure but Red Skull's in charge right now and that's the vision of Hydra that's ascendant right now and he's who Steve Rogers is answering to right now.

Yes, he's trying to subvert him, but even in real life among the 'alt-right', there are all sorts of factions and schisms. There are people who will say something like, "I'm alt-right, but I'm certainly not a Nazi. The Nazis hate me! I don't approve of them at all! I'm merely a white nationalist!" I mean, that's what Richard Spencer was saying right before he got punched for being a Nazi.

You can make an argument that so-and-so isn't actually a Nazi, they're just Nazi-adjacent, and that's a meaningful distinction because there is really is a lot of infighting that goes on within that sphere. But to an outside observer, they're all fucking Nazis.

[gnarll]

Red Skull has a cosmic cube and Xaviers mindpowers.

He pretty much gets to define what Hydra is. What it would be without him may not be entirely the same.

[flint_marko]

It looks like the Uncanny Avengers are going to get rid of Xavier's powers, and then Cap will kill or just defeat him.

[gnarll]

Red Skull has a cosmic cube and Xaviers mindpowers.

He pretty much gets to define what Hydra is. What it would be without him may not be entirely the same.

[flint_marko]

Except Cap wants to kill the Skull.

[locuatico]

that only means that the super duper evil boss is not popular with the rest of the members, who are only 90% evil.

[laughing_tree]

Well, no one's saying they're not evil.

[lilacsigil]

This is it exactly! Spencer (and Marvel in general) is trying to benefit from having Hydra not be actual Nazis while getting to use Nazi ideology and imagery at every turn. It would be entirely possible to write a no-longer-Nazi Hydra - the MCU version is definitely closer to it - but to do that they'd have to be less lazy about how they write them.

Yes

[long_silence]

In that same Captain America run where it was implied that Hydra had agents on every team, Zemo was running Hydra and his convoluted plan involved the use ticks, fleas and mosquitoes; Inhuman blood and a vampire, in order to sterilize everyone on Earth so that only Zemo's chosen few would be able to breed. Compulsory sterilization straight out of the Nazi Eugenics playbook.

Hell the flashbacks in the Captain America book literally have Steve Rogers acting as an undercover spy acting on behalf of the Axis powers. That's the Hydra he's trying to bring to power.

How is this even a question?

[mastermahan]

If - and it's a big if - you want to get into some frankly dodgy retcons, Hydra was started back in ancient Egypt, or possibly by evil reptilian aliens that predate mankind.

Otherwise, they sure look like Nazis. They were founded (or re-founded) by Nazis. They dress like Nazis. They salute like Nazis. Their slogan is a variant on Hail Hitler. As some other people have pointed out, they've engaged in various schemes right out of White Supremacy 101.

So yes, Hydra are Nazis, because Hydra are clearly *trying* to be Nazis.

[laughing_tree]

Like Spencer says, it depends on what stories you refer to. Some clearly play up the Nazi imagery and parallels big time. Others, like the Bob stuff, just portrayal them as a generic world conquest organization like AIM (which was a Hydra spin-off org, IIRC), which is how they started off.

The question isn't "Are they Nazis anymore" as if being Nazis is the original setup being changed but "Have they become Nazis now"? As Kurt Busiek, a guy who knows a thing or two about comics history put it, they were originally "Red Scare Bond villains." But stuff since has muddied the waters, primarily the MCU stuff which specifically uses Hydra as a stand-in for Nazis.

[thehood]

And the recent cartoons did the same, further tying them together.

[flint_marko]

They're not even Nazis in the MCU, the Skull turned on them when he wanted to bomb Berlin, and AOS revealed they were an ancient group who worshipped Hive.

[shadwing]

Wasn't the whole "HYDRA" name created because people didn't like/want using actual Nazi's? It was a *winkwinknudgenudge* Oh no...they are not Nazis they are this Super Secret other group. Maybe something to do with actual Nazi symbolism being outright banned in some countries?

It's was a way to use Nazis without you know...actual Nazis, for cripes sake Cap is Punching HITLER on the comic cover!

Spencer is either full of crap or trying to drum up controversy again...

[cyberghostface]

I think he's trying to play damage control. Magneto was on a "villains of Hydra" cover for Secret Empire and Spencer got in a lot of shit from fans for obvious reasons given Magneto's background.

[thehood]

Granted, in that case it isn't Spencer's fault, since he's not in charge of variant covers.

Still a very poor choice though.

[icon_uk]

Unless it's a reference to the story inside that the alt cover artist drew upon.

Even if it's Secretly-Evil Cap recruiting Magneto with the promise of getting to punch the Red Skull a lot, with Magneto not being aware that Secretly-Evil Cap is seeking to depose Skull, not defeat him per se, it's still a dangerously tone deaf story point.

[thehood]

Not sure how that would work, since Steve Hydra will be known to everyone by the first issue of the event.

[thehood]

Do you mean how they were used in the films or when they first showed up in Nick Fury's book?

Anyway, they were founded by Nazis, but in the comics HYDRA wasn't created because they couldn't use actual Nazis.

They are used as a substitute in tv shows and films though.

[laughing_tree]

"Wasn't the whole "HYDRA" name created because people didn't like/want using actual Nazi's?"

No, in other Marvel comics of the period, they clearly had no issue depicting actual Nazis.

In the MCU films, yes, they're used to reference Nazis without actually saying Nazis.

[jetpack_monkey]

Literally none of Nick Spencer's examples of "stories that wouldn't make sense" actually negate a Hydra = Nazi reading.

[locuatico]

POersonally. i call it bullcrap that their retconned origins makes them any less of nazis than they originally were. why? because we don't hate Fascism because Nazis are fascists, we hate nazis because they are fascists. And Hydra are still fascists.

Okay, fine, they are not nazis, they are simply an organization with a huge fascist boner and whom plenty of their most noteworthy members just happen to looooooooove nazism. great, wonderful to know.

In fact, if we go with Hydra either working with the Nazis during WWII or even being responsible of Nazism, guess what? that means HYdra is STILL responsible for all the crap we give nazism.

also, another thing. spencer. Nazis never identified themselves as Nazis. they hated the term Nazis. WE call them Nazis.

I call the empire in Star Wars Nazis.
I call the Death eaters Nazis.
I WILL call Hydra Nazis.

[laughing_tree]

That's not the point, though. There are obvious intentional parallels between the Empire in Star Wars and Nazis, yes, but no one would get offended at art of Magneto and Vader teaming up. Nobody finds it offensive that so many fans like to dress up as Stormtroopers.

Nobody's saying Hydra's decent people or that they have nothing in common with Nazis or that they're not 100% evil. It's not the evil that some people consider offensive, it's specifically the Nazi connection. The question is whether they're simply Nazi-esque in the way Star War's Empire is -- in which case Magneto's role here is no biggie -- or if they're so closely connected to Nazis, conceptually, that Magneto's role is offensive.

So, yeah, they're horrible even if they're not Nazis, you're right. But that's not what matters here.

[deepspaceartist]

People aren't wrong to point out that Hydra has not consistently been a Nazi stand in. Hydra's Nazi origins are themselves a retcon, as they were originally founded in the 60's as a generic Bond Villain-esque organization for Nick Fury and Shield to fight. Then writers wanted an organization to back Red Skull and Captain America's other Nazi villains, and they just re-used Hydra instead of making up a new one. Ever since then it's been a 50 year merry-go-round of Nazi/generic evil/alien lizard death cult/whatever the writer felt like coming up with for Hydra's backstory this time.

But that fact is that the MCU's version of Hydra is solidly Nazi (despite Agents of SHIELD's valiant attempt to switch to alien lizard death cult). And since that's the version that the vast majority of people who know of Hydra at all will think of nowadays. So any attempts to distance Hydra from them right now seem doomed to fail.

As for Magneto joining, the guy's almost always been 100% down for fascism and genocide when he's the one doing it. Even when he's a good guy, you know he's be ecstatic if Xavier or Scott ever decided "fuck it, let's wipe out all the humans and set ourselves up as the dictators of the superior mutant race". So him joining a non-Nazi group of genocidal fascists makes sense if he thinks it would benefit mutants. But Hydra? The guy's never been known to tolerate Nazi's to any degree. So it might work, but ONLY if Steve Rogers makes a huge public show of killing Red Skull and purging all the current Nazi elements. And even then he better be planning to backstab them as soon as it's convenient. And frankly, I have no faith in Nick Spencer to write in a not stupid and offensive way.

[laughing_tree]

Magneto as a Hydra member is just one of a number of "Character X as a Hydra agent" variant covers. It's not an in-story element, as far as I know.

[long_silence]

You're thinking of a different set of variant covers.

These recently unveiled Secret Empire Villain variants seem to be showcasing characters who are the villains of Secret Empire. A number of the other characters getting variants include the new Madame Hydra, Zemo, Arnim Zola, Crossbones and Sin. They're have long been affiliated with Hydra and they all are going to be playing a big role in this event.

Taskmaster and Black Ant are also getting a variant and we literally just saw them getting recruited by Madame Hydra.
Baron Mordo is getting a variant as well and based on solicits he's going to be part of this Secret Empire and will be fighting the Netflix Defenders and Doctor Strange.

That leaves Magneto, Kingpin and a classified cover. And speaking of, if these variants had no bearings on the in-story elements then why would one of them be classified Top Secret?

I get trying to get all of the facts before jumping on the outrage bandwagon, but this does not seem to be one of the times when the internet is exaggerating due to a simple misunderstanding.

[flint_marko]

I can't see Magneto or Kingpin being members, seeing as whats happening in Kingpin's solo and X-Men Blue.

[long_silence]

So why are they getting villain variants if they aren't working with Hydra in Secret Empire?

Hydra’s grip is tightening around the Marvel Universe. With an army of deadly villains assembled, the next phase of their plan can begin! Even united, the heroes may not be strong enough to overcome an army of the most dangerous villains ever assembled. Look for the SECRET EMPIRE VILLAIN VARIANTS at your local comic shop beginning this May!

From this release it sounds like all of the characters getting variants are part of that army of villains. So even if they aren't part of Hydra proper, they're still Nazi collaborators

If Magneto wasn't working with them why not just walk it back and say that's not what's happening instead of having Spencer on twitter trying to cover their asses by saying "Hydra's totally not Nazis guys"

[flint_marko]

He's been saying "HYDRA aren't Nazis" ever since the Cap reveal.

[thehood]

The army of villains is probably referring to Zemo's new Masters team.

[long_silence]

Who are all working for Steve and Zemo's Hydra

[wizardru]

Magneto literally has a history of fighting Hydra with Professor X and of hating the Red Skull in particular (locking him in a box and leaving him to die). Setting the Nazi element aside (though I'm not sure why you would), why would he work with either, unless he's being mentally dominated...which since that just happened in IvX would be super weak.

[laughing_tree]

Ah, I stand corrected then.

[cyberghostface]

Magneto's for mutant supremacy but he was offended at the idea that he'd be for human genocide when people thought Xorneto was him.

[deepspaceartist]

Magneto's feelings on human genocide are like Hydra's ties to Nazis. They come and go depending on how evil the writer of a given story wants him to be. But whatever his modern interpretation is, it can't be denied that he has been in favor and working towards it in the past.

[matrix_dragon]

You're writing them as being led by the Red Skull. Nazis. Next question!

[flint_marko]

Except Cap wants to kill him because he believes he's perverting the true HYDRA.

[jlbarnett]

yes, they're Nazis despite what Spencer says

[owlbrigade1]

Are the guys who act like Nazis, wear uniforms styled like Nazis, use Nazi slogans, give Nazi style salutes; are these guys Nazis? Yes. Yes, they are.

If Marvel doesn't like it then they shouldn't have dipped so deep into the barrel of Nazi tropes in their use.

[janegray]

I was going to say "if it looks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck..." but you said it better.

[lonewolf23k]

Hydra is a Fascist organization. Fascism isn't automatically the same as Nazism, although it's always almost as bad. Nazism is basically Fascism with extra racism added to it.