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The Atlantic / Adam Serwer: Republicans Are Confused About the Concept of Bad Guys (Gift link)
The Atlantic / Adam Serwer - Republicans Are Confused About the Concept of Bad Guys
Some conservatives are embracing the villains in what are supposed to be cautionary tales.
By Adam Serwer
December 5, 2024, 2:35 PM ET
In every Judge Joe Dredd story I’ve ever read, there is at least one almost comically obvious moment when the author makes clear that the protagonist is a jackbooted fascist and not someone to admire. This may come across to the average reader as heavy-handed, but when the richest man in the world misreads the character as heroic, you can see why such heavy-handedness is sometimes necessary.
Shortly before former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his nomination for attorney general, Elon Musk posted on X that Gaetz was the “Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.” Generally speaking, one’s model for justice should not be a fascist invented in part to illustrate the distinction between elite impunity and the brutality that ordinary people face. (Were Dredd’s zero tolerance for lawbreaking evenly applied to obscenely wealthy scofflaws like Musk himself, it would surely be less appealing to him.)
Musk’s media illiteracy is not particularly shocking—it seems to be part of a broader trend tied to the rise of Donald Trump. Genre stories that are meant to highlight the dangers of fascism, cruelty, or selfishness instead end up being misinterpreted or even condemned by those who find fascism appealing or see cruelty and selfishness as aspirational virtues.
The messaging in Dredd stories verges on didactic, but it also assumes at least a tacit objection to fascism in the reader. One of the series’ co-creators, Pat Mills, has said that his model for Dredd and the other judges was the monks at his parochial school, who subjected children to physical or sexual abuse. The stories are set in a dystopian future where several “megacities,” surrounded by a radioactive wasteland, are ruled by draconian judges. Initially established by the character of Eustace Fargo in response to rampant street crime, this judge system empowers its agents to convict and sentence those they deem criminals, and simply kill many of the people they encounter.
As mentioned, the implications of these stories are not exactly subtle. In one 2019 story arc, The Small House, Dredd confronts Judge Smiley, the Justice Department’s chief of black ops, over Smiley’s use of invisible assassins to murder democracy activists in Mega-City One. Dredd’s main objection to Smiley’s operations, it seems, is that Smiley’s assassinations are not following proper protocol. Dredd has no moral objection to killing democracy activists, but it has to be done by the book. Smiley calmly explains to Dredd, “We’re fascists. We rule. It’s the only way we can survive in this irradiated, dead world.”
Dredd is a true believer in the judge system, and as such lacks the corruption of his contemporaries. This renders him ethically superior only to the other fascists, however; he is an unthinking armed goon who would never allow the system to be changed just because the majority would prefer it. He acts fanatically in service to the unjust system he upholds, not to any larger ideals of honor or integrity. In the 2006 storyline Origins, a cryogenically frozen Fargo is briefly thawed and begs Dredd to undo the judge system. “It was never meant to be forever,” Fargo pleads, just before dying. “We’re the monster, we got greedy—wanted everything—so we killed the dream Joe, we killed America!” Dredd, being Dredd, ignores Fargo’s pleas and, when asked later about Fargo’s last words, says Fargo wanted him to “keep the faith,” forever burying Fargo’s wish to end the judge system in favor of democratic rule.
/snip
Some conservatives are embracing the villains in what are supposed to be cautionary tales.
By Adam Serwer
December 5, 2024, 2:35 PM ET
In every Judge Joe Dredd story I’ve ever read, there is at least one almost comically obvious moment when the author makes clear that the protagonist is a jackbooted fascist and not someone to admire. This may come across to the average reader as heavy-handed, but when the richest man in the world misreads the character as heroic, you can see why such heavy-handedness is sometimes necessary.
Shortly before former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his nomination for attorney general, Elon Musk posted on X that Gaetz was the “Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.” Generally speaking, one’s model for justice should not be a fascist invented in part to illustrate the distinction between elite impunity and the brutality that ordinary people face. (Were Dredd’s zero tolerance for lawbreaking evenly applied to obscenely wealthy scofflaws like Musk himself, it would surely be less appealing to him.)
Musk’s media illiteracy is not particularly shocking—it seems to be part of a broader trend tied to the rise of Donald Trump. Genre stories that are meant to highlight the dangers of fascism, cruelty, or selfishness instead end up being misinterpreted or even condemned by those who find fascism appealing or see cruelty and selfishness as aspirational virtues.
The messaging in Dredd stories verges on didactic, but it also assumes at least a tacit objection to fascism in the reader. One of the series’ co-creators, Pat Mills, has said that his model for Dredd and the other judges was the monks at his parochial school, who subjected children to physical or sexual abuse. The stories are set in a dystopian future where several “megacities,” surrounded by a radioactive wasteland, are ruled by draconian judges. Initially established by the character of Eustace Fargo in response to rampant street crime, this judge system empowers its agents to convict and sentence those they deem criminals, and simply kill many of the people they encounter.
As mentioned, the implications of these stories are not exactly subtle. In one 2019 story arc, The Small House, Dredd confronts Judge Smiley, the Justice Department’s chief of black ops, over Smiley’s use of invisible assassins to murder democracy activists in Mega-City One. Dredd’s main objection to Smiley’s operations, it seems, is that Smiley’s assassinations are not following proper protocol. Dredd has no moral objection to killing democracy activists, but it has to be done by the book. Smiley calmly explains to Dredd, “We’re fascists. We rule. It’s the only way we can survive in this irradiated, dead world.”
Dredd is a true believer in the judge system, and as such lacks the corruption of his contemporaries. This renders him ethically superior only to the other fascists, however; he is an unthinking armed goon who would never allow the system to be changed just because the majority would prefer it. He acts fanatically in service to the unjust system he upholds, not to any larger ideals of honor or integrity. In the 2006 storyline Origins, a cryogenically frozen Fargo is briefly thawed and begs Dredd to undo the judge system. “It was never meant to be forever,” Fargo pleads, just before dying. “We’re the monster, we got greedy—wanted everything—so we killed the dream Joe, we killed America!” Dredd, being Dredd, ignores Fargo’s pleas and, when asked later about Fargo’s last words, says Fargo wanted him to “keep the faith,” forever burying Fargo’s wish to end the judge system in favor of democratic rule.
/snip
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