Is Krakoa a fascist cult?

[tuck frump]

Do ppl read Harry Potter (ughhh) and be like wow this is so racist to ppl who can't practice magic.

[Ferro]

pffff asjajs, at this point i think there is a punch card for threads like these, pls tell us what you get and when

[CoCoBandz]

Do ppl read Harry Potter (ughhh) and be like wow this is so racist to ppl who can't practice magic.

Only good muggle is a...

[Ferro]

Do ppl read Harry Potter (ughhh) and be like wow this is so racist to ppl who can't practice magic.

tbh as i grew up im thinking "would magic be enough for me to deal with a culture that is stuck in the middle ages and snoby about not using toilet papper" and i said to myself i was just overthinking it until i got to the part where the kids are ordered to bring parchement and feathers to write stuff...
then i was like , im gonna stay a muggle with no magic and proper bal point pens and stapples notebooks

[Zelena]

Hickman said that he's okay with fans interpreting Krakoa as a cult or seeing the X-Men as being morally ambiguous, which is not to say that's the story he's telling. He said once, "We don't tell stories for free". So obviously there' more to this.

Krakoa is intended to be a mutant nation -- Straight Outta Genosha or Genosha 2.0 : Organic Boogaloo. As Xavier says at the end of HoX #6, "It's a terrible business, running a nation. Is what we have perfect? No, what is. But it's a start. And a good one".

So Krakoa does speak to nationalism and so on, so in the sense that all nations and nation-states can be said to be cults or nationalism is a form of cult-worship, then Krakoa is a cult.

The reason is strikes people as weird is that Hickman is trying to imagine what a nation by mutants, for mutants, of mutants would look like, what kind of values it would have. And that is intended to be weird and off-putting. Remember, they are supposed to be the 'Uncanny X-Men', i.e. weird/strange/other. The X-Men are supposed to challenge and expand our sense of "the normal". When Magneto took over Genosha, the entire thing resembled a human nation-state for the most part with little sense of the mutants creating their own culture. Krakoa is an update on that. So it's something that strikes everyone in the Marvel Universe and some readers here as weird.

If Hickman didn't intend to send 'cultish vibes', he would have denied it, saying it's not the story that he was telling… He would have been offended.
He clearly likes to confuse his readership, being the one who knows.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Do ppl read Harry Potter (ughhh) and be like wow this is so racist to ppl who can't practice magic.

Not a good comparison. HP is far more regressive than the X-Men. After all the main character ends the books owning a slave and made to feel okay about doing so.

HP also normalizes or sentimentalizes UK's old school norms like different houses, and where originally the houses were random color coded stuff with no significance, in the HP books each house has essential traits.

If Hickman didn't intend to send 'cultish vibes', he would have denied it, saying it's not the story that he was telling… He would have been offended.
He clearly likes to confuse his readership, being the one who knows.

I mean his run on Avengers/New Avengers certainly alienated and challenged how people saw the Avengers and what kind of stories you could tell with them. So this isn't different.

Hickman is going to put the X-Men through the ringer and have them flirt with the dark side so-to-speak but in the end, he will affirm the X-Men and all the characters as in the case of the FF and Avengers.

[Zelena]

You made a comment that some readers seem to have forgotten they are human. Comparing some readers to animals and beasts then. What an asinine thing to say over comic book discussion.

That's not what I said. Should I have insisted that people are wrong when they are comparing their ennemy to beasts and animals? It's just a mutual thing they do. So for each side, the other is not like them, less than human. And in a world where everyone is a human.

For the 'humans' in MU, the mutants are less than human. And for the mutants, the humans are not like them, never able to see them as equals. That was before.
Because, in Hickman's run, it's not that: the mutants are considering themselves as superior…

[king of hybrids]

If the books feature the ‘Krakoa Hell Yeah!’ Characters pressuring the mutants who still hold to human religions to abandon them I’ll maybe call it a cult. But not before.

[Zelena]

If the books feature the ‘Krakoa Hell Yeah!’ Characters pressuring the mutants who still hold to human religions to abandon them I’ll maybe call it a cult. But not before.

If I'm not mistaken, I don't think there are many places of worship on Krakoa…

[Vegan Daddy]

Only good muggle is a...

Mudbloods make me sick

[Zelena]

No amount of fear justifies rounding up and torturing babies. None. Ever.
It is the fault of the humans committing the crime and the humans not trying to put an end to it. Therefore the mutants must act.

There are acts so there are causes. It's not a justification. How much the X-men writers are talented enough to explain the behaviour of 'humans', it's up to you.
They can say "It is like that because they are bad" which I don't find very satisfying.
In real life, a lot of things are explained by fear. That's all.

[Zelena]

It's the handwaving and brushing off of actual evidence from the pages posted that gets me. Charles literally said he still believes and loves humans, yet I saw a comment from this morning saying Xavier has abandoned the dream. So it's clear that disliking the Krakoan status quo is a choice and most will choose to dig their feet in no matter what.

But looking at the results of the "right or wrong" poll, these redundant threads do not represent the majority.

There is no love; there are only proofs of love. Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my action.

Pierre Reverdy

[JB]

There are acts so there are causes. It's not a justification. How much the X-men writers are talented enough to explain the behaviour of 'humans', it's up to you.
They can say "It is like that because they are bad" which I don't find very satisfying.
In real life, a lot of things are explained by fear. That's all.

I think the issue comes down to people equating the "Pro-Mutant" stance with "Anti-Human". I personally want to see more interactions with friendly humans, but I also want the mutants to establish themselves so they can prevent atrocities. There isn't a single thread questioning if humans are bad. But we have multiple threads questioning the mutants and for those of us that support them, we're then filed away as anti-human. I can only speak for myself but that's not the case at all.

[Kisinith]

There is no love; there are only proofs of love. Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my action.

Pierre Reverdy

I could be wrong but creating and selling drugs to cure cancer, cure dementia and extend human lives by up to five years for the low low cost of not murdering mutants and accepting the nation of Krakoa could be taken as a sign of love. I mean cancer alone kills close to 10 million people a year... Furthermore, Charles Xavier and the X-Men have spent years proving the love they have for humanity, many literally dying for them. Spending three months (in universe) establishing a mutant nation and homeland somehow invalidates that?

So let's flip the argument, where are the proofs that he doesn't?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So let's flip the argument, where are the proofs that he doesn't?

It's strongly hinted to us multiple times that Xavier hasn't entirely given up on his dream.

Go back to the final issues of HoX/PoX, where Xavier meets Namor. Namor pontificates about Krakoa and whether it implies that Xavier and the X-Men have finally decided they are better off. He then snarks that they're starting a train he long got off on, and tells Xavier to call Namor when he means it.

And in X-Men #4, Xavier tells Davos People that there's a part of him that will never give up on the dream.

To be honest, I think what Hickman is doing is similar to New Avenger/Avengers where he tests the values of the Illuminati -- Reed, T'Challa, Tony, Strange and all their big talk about acting for the greater good, by actually bringing them to the ultimately trolley problems. And in the end, they find they can't do it, and it ends up reconstructing their old ideal selves. To save the Multiverse, they needed to be Doctor Doom, and that seat is taken. What the heroes do is save the Multiverse from Doctor Doom since they can rebuild a world for everyone.


Here the X-Men are confronted likewise, with the ultimate test to the values, and it's a question of how far they will go, and how they will submit to that test. They are taking the awesome responsibility of a true mutant nation for everyone, the good mutants, the bad mutants, the ones in-between and they're gambling big and it's about what they do when things won't work their way. But for that to happen, you need to buy into why they think this is a good idea to start with.