Scans_Daily

Yes, but fascism has an enormous amount of baggage associated with it. And whilst every fascist is an authoritarian, not every authoritarian is a fascist. Certainly not in fictional stories.

I mean, look at Napoleon, he was a dictator, but would it be fair to call him a fascist? To apply the baggage of 20th Century politics to a man who wasn't privy to them? Likewise, is it fair to do the same for a fictional character inhabiting a fictional world?

The Red Skull? Fascit. Hydra Cap? Fascist. But the same couldn't be said of say Dr. Doom or Namor. Both authoritarians, both prone to bouts of expansionism, both brutal men. But you wouldn't connect either with that specific ideology and all it represents, would you?

And the reason a lot of people wouldn't is because it irreversibly changes a character, it connects them with the real world horrors we endured less than a hundred years ago at the hands of such people. Creating fictional despots is not the same as creating fictional fascists, there's a clear difference.