Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

^From context, the map was showing locations of recent or ongoing SHIELD/HYDRA battles, as I said. At the time the map was shown, the attack on the Fridge hadn't happened yet.

 

These days people characterize Nazis more with their methods than their ideology (and Baron Strucker at least in the comics was a card carrying national socialist) . If people want to call Ward or Garett Nazis, let them.

 

Dude, they had Kevin Bacon in a crappy German accent play Dr. Mengele. Besides X-men is a story about outcasts like Jews. Of course they are going to take Antisemitism and the Holocaust more seriously.

 

In regard to the Nazi argument, clearly the modern HYDRA has largely or entirely evolved beyond the racial ideology of its Nazi parent and has focused on the more broad characteristic of maintaining order at all costs, hence decidedly non-Aryan and Jewish members such as:

Spoiler: CA:TWS HYDRA members

Agent Sitwell and Senator Stern.

Or Ward's mostly an act but somewhat real love for the half-Chinese Skye and Garrett's respect for the black Agent Triplett, even though he would still consider him an enemy when the time came to reveal himself.

The Nazis were mostly just a means to an end of establishing world domination for HYDRA even back in WWII.

 

Not to mention making Raina one of their key operatives.

 

^Or it could be more a matter of utilizing a resource until it has no further use. Or, to quote the Red Skull, "There are always more workers."

 

I thought of Raina but didn't mention her because the Nazis had no problem with exploiting people they considered to be their genetic inferiors in order to achieve victory, and Garrett's treatment of Raina seemed along those lines (exploitative I mean, not anything racial), so it doesn't really bolster the point as well as personal expressions of love or respect, IMO.

 

Hydra 2014, designed a master race that was not divided down racial lines, but test scores.

Same shit.

 

i'm with Alidar on this.

Also, HYDRA has spent 70 years (like 3generations) within SHIELD, WAAAAY more than within the Nazi Party. More than enough time for HYDRA recruits to forget the origins, or at least rationalize the distance from that time.

By now, HYDRA has recruited people like Garrett, who aren't as idealistic as Coulson. They aren't Nazi's, but they are cynical enough to subscribe to a dominate government as a viable option. They could easily recruit people from here in Chicago who see election after election incumbents re-elected with no opposition (or an electorate not willing to vote different). Such things would make people turn against the current state of America; HYDRA might sound appealing.

Planned Parenthood would certainly distance themselves from Margaret Sanger's racist remarks, or Southern Baptists on their own racist history.

 

In the comics Hydra is part of an origin Myth. It's 10's of thousands of years old.

In the comics Leonardo DaVinci was an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Yes I remember the mini movie with Peggy now, but Hydra and/or S.H.I.E.L.D. could still seriously predate World War 2.

 

I think there is some confusion here. The Nazis where white supremacists they were not necessarily racist (some were). They actually admired other races like the Japanese and Tibetans. Losing to Jesse Owen in the 1934 Berlin Olympics wasn't as earth-shattering as myths make it out to be. Their big hang up was race mixing. So having a relationship with Raina, Skye or Mei was no big deal but having kids with them would be bad.
Now the Japanese are your classical racist.

 

Also people are missing a very important point. HYDRA doesn't have an ideology. Even in the first Captain America they were a cult of personality. Strip away the goofy salute and their masturbatory fantasy of world domination and what do you get, Nothing.

 

Sounds like the confusion is yours, if you think those aren't the same thing. A white supremacist is someone who thinks their own race is superior to other races. That is the very definition of racism.

 

Racism is an irrational hatred of another race. You can believe in the superiority of your own race and not hate other races.

 

And nobody who belongs to one of those other races would consider that a meaningful distinction.

Anyway, here's how the dictionary defines racism:

So you're absolutely wrong. Any belief that one race is better than others, whether based on emotion or not, is racism by definition. Even believing that races are fundamentally different or separate from one another is racism. And any government or party whose policies or laws are founded on racial distinctions of any kind, as was certainly true of the Nazis, is certainly racist.

 

It's probably safe to say that HYDRA was an offshoot of the Nazi Party or was once associated with it, but the modern-day organization that Zola reestablished has its own agenda of world domination.

I'm surprised they would label HYDRA as a terrorist group. Isn't that a misnomer? HYDRA is about domination, repression, and authoritarianism, and much like the repressive Galactic Empire, it seeks to achieve world (or galactic) peace and order through subjugation. Terrorists are rebellious by nature and wreaks havoc and destruction.

 

That's your opinion. If you look at French society, their sense of superiority is expressed as benign neglect against non-whites. Is it wrong. Sure. Is it hateful, I don't think so. There is a big difference between not caring and active engagement.

The dictionary definition is inadequate. Modern racism especially in the US and Europe is based on the sense that non-whites are aliens, not they are inferior. There is also an element of the fear of the loss of status which is the opposite of the dictionary definition.

And I am not wrong about the Nazis. All National Socialist believed in German superiority, not all of them were antisemitic or traditionally what would we call racist. Red Skull and HYDRA are not the outlier you want to make them out to be.

 

Terrorist is just another name for evil used in pop culture.

 

Or rather, to make people so afraid that they'd tolerate having their personal freedoms eroded and a police state established in the name of security, thereby essentially handing themselves over to HYDRA. It's an allegory for modern concerns about the surveillance state and the PATRIOT act and so forth: Have we compromised our freedom too much out of fear?