I usually spend my days on this site, ranting and raving about comic books and little else. Here I am going to do something slightly different: I will still be doing my usual rant but I will also be talking about something that is very close to my heart. Today I am going to talk about something that worries me so dearly: anti-semitism.
For me, there is nothing more sick then anti-Semites in this world we live in. I your fearless writer almost bulked when I read this article in The Guardian yesterday. It sickened me to think that this kind of racism still existed, it sickened me to see just how widespread this evil seemed to be, and to me I think it makes any doubter understand why the Israelis do what they do. I have always felt a link to the Jewish people, I have always felt that their way of thinking, their way of worship made more sense. I could never understand how so many people could treat a group of people in such a way. And do not get me wrong the Nazis were the worst but the thing that sickens me more is that the Jews have been persecuted from almost the beginning of time. For what reason you ask? Simply because they are Jewish.
Now the Israeli/Palestine debate. I am happy to inform you I am a Zionist but at the same time I do not condone what goes on in this little country, all I can say is that I understand why the Israelis are so protective. I am sick of hearing people blame the Israelis for the way they are. It is the Nazis that made them feel this way. Imagine if for no reason apart from you being yourself, you had been persecuted, your family had been persecuted for centuries to the extent that a group of people tried to commit genocide against you. I think I would start to think enough was enough, never again and that is the problem. Don’t get me wrong, there is probably a better way to go about it but when you have tried every other attempt and it got you sent to the gas chamber, I can understand why you would become extreme. When you have idiots in the west screaming absolute nonsense, when you hear so many still being prejudice, I can understand why you would become extreme for this. I understand the Israeli case and now I am actually gonna get onto the comic books (I am sure you are all sighing a relief now).
The main character I am going to talk about is Magneto and why I do not see him as a villain whatsoever. But before I do, I want to illustrate the evil that anti-Semitism is again, in the form of a history lesson. Most of the comic book creators who gave us superheroes were/are Jewish. The creators of superman, Bob Kane created Batman and Stan Lee created basically every Marvel character there is. What sickens me is that at least two of these felt the need to change their name because it was too Jewish to get a job back in the thirties. For example Bob Kane and Stan Lee altered his name from Stanley Lieber. I think it is a travesty that they had to do this. Now on to Magneto. If you, my faithful reader have never read Magneto: Testament you should run as fast as you can to your local shop and pick up a copy.
This is possibly the best book I have ever read but at the same time I can honestly tell you that I found it very difficult to read. The emotions that come out of this book will make you cry buckets as you watch Magneto growing up in Nazi Germany before being sent to a concentration camp. At the end of the book, the boy that was Erik, is said to no longer exist and this is why I had my rant about Israel to begin with (ah you all say, it finally makes sense!). The abuse Magneto faced twisted him, making him no longer able to trust others like he once had. Magento’s path into becoming the master of magnetism continues when he flees to Russia. There he settles down with a family before they are murdered in front of him for their beliefs. Again think if this happened to you. If you were different, you had watched your people be killed for that difference followed by your family and you had another difference that was bound to come out at some time. Would you trust them? I think few people can answer yes. Like the Israelis, the racist idiots created Magneto, they made him the man he is. And in the same way that I believe that the Israelis deserve Israel (because of everything they have gone through) I believe that we can understand Magneto and I see him more as a freedom fighter then a villain, an anti-hero. Let me offer you two more examples to back up my argument. If the apartheid had never come down, if Nelson Mandela had died before he went to prison, South Africa at least would have looked at him as a terrorist nothing more. Therefore the fluidity of the terms terrorist, and freedom fighter change every time dependent on your own opinions. Secondly, Stan Lee (Magneto’s co creator) argued that he was not a villain: he was the Malcolm X to Xavier’s Martin Luther King.
So people of the world, this is why I am sickened by the anti-Semite rush in society at the moment and this is why Magneto is one of my favourite characters ever and why he is one of my heroes.
comicgeekboy 