I thought that the way I placed emphasis on that Comics-Journal-fascism exchange made it clear enough, but since what I was getting at still managed to elude at least one former editor of the Comics Journal, let me state for the record that the “problem” I was pointing to was Gary Groth’s opinion of the concept of heroism, not Jean-Claude Mezieres’s. Meziere was the interview subject–why on Earth would I, and how on Earth could I, hold one of his opinions against the magazine the interview appeared in?
Obviously, it was Journal editor & publisher Gary Groth’s “yes” that I was pointing to. To him, the idea that “the concept of a hero is fascism” (not “smacks of,” but is; A=A, if you will) is so clear-cut that it doesn’t merit any more exploration or explanation than a one-word confirmation, or at least that’s how it comes across.
I mean, duh, of course I wasn’t talking about Mezieres. How would his opinion signal a problem with the Journal? Everyone did notice that the “emphasis mine” was placed on Gary’s “yes,” right? Okay, everyone except Milo, then?
I’ll say again that this exchange took place 18 years ago, and I’ve had it pointed out to me by people who should know that heroic fiction was viewed with even more suspicion than usual back then, seeing as how it was Morning In America and all that. But the point was that, despite what Milo says, it wasn’t me who “project[ed] the whole tired ‘heroes=fascists’ stance onto … a word”–it was Gary. (And Gil Kane, oddly enough.)
(UPDATE: I think Milo might be saying that I’m making too much out of what might have just been a monosyllabic silence-filler, but in my experience as an interviewer I’ve never said “yes” in that context. Yeah, mm-hmm, uh-huh, okay, sure–those I’ve said, but I can’t imagine saying “yes” unless I was agreeing with someone or confirming something. Certainly Gil Kane chiming in with an identical statement lends credence to the notion that Gary wasn’t just making noise, but was in fact saying something intentional.)
(BTW, Milo then proceeds to launch into a couple of tangentially related diatribes about the infamous blogospheric ideological echo-chamber, Ugly American Nerds, and a defense of the French, all of which he seems to think are spot-on responses to my “straw man” argument. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t’cha think?)
Anyway, NeilAlien has a linkfilled round-up of this whole hero/fascist debate, with some thoughts of his own (I was interested to see that, like me, he too pointed out the fact that since the early ’60s superheroes themselves have, in the main, been anti-authoritarian individualists); meanwhile, David Oakes writes in to Tim O’Neil with an exploration of the relationship between simple (mere?) power and full-blown fascism.
PS: For a solid, comprehensive, difficult-to-abuse definition of fascism, I recommend the following:
Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation. This is why fascism is a movement of the extreme right. It is also a movement of the radical right because the defeat of socialism and feminism and the creation of the mobilized nation are held to depend upon the advent to power of a new elite acting in the name of the people, headed by a charismatic leader, and embodied in a mass, militarized party. Fascists are pushed towards conservatism by common hatred of socialism and feminism, but are prepared to override conservative interests–family, property, religion, the universities, the civil service–where the interests of the nation are considered to require it. Fascist radicalism also derives from a desire to assuage discontent by accepting specific demands of the labour and women’s movements, so long as these demands accord with the national priority. Fascists seek to ensure the harmonization of workers’ and women’s interests with those of the nation by mobilizing them within special sections of the party and/or within a corporate system. Access to these organizations and to the benefits they confer upon members depends on the individual’s national, political, and/or racial characteristics. All aspects of fascist policy are suffused with ultranationalism.
From Kevin Passmore’s excellent Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. I myself probably wouldn’t have privileged fascism’s relationship to feminism quite so much, nor perhaps even its relationship to socialism–it seems to me that the nationalistic exclusionary/exterminationist facet of fascism is thereby undersold; not to mention the fascists’ use of violence to further their goals, even within a nominally democratic framework such as those possessed by both Germany and Italy during the inter-War years–but I think that’s the best working definition I’ve yet come across. You can see how it encompassess not just Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini’s Fascists, but to one extent or another Imperial Japan (which used a fall-guy Emperor in lieu of the charismatic leader), Falangist Spain (which used fascist tactics, but eventually was more accurately an extreme-right conservative dictatorship, in a more traditional sense, than a fascist one), the various Islamist movements (which define the nation in religious terms–the Ummah), and the American extreme right (which has not truly adopted fascist tactics, but has to one degree or another a fascist conception of the ideal America), and the European extreme right (ditto). You can also see that it does not encompass Spider-Man.