Did the Krakoa era unwittin give humans a legit excuse to hate and fear mutants?

[Anthony W]

Sigh, that is supposed to say "unwittingly".

I said legit excuse. Holding the drugs over everyone's head. The colonization of Mars. The gates in the major cities. The no humans on Krakoa rule*. Messing with Mister Fantastic's mind etc.

*That is broken a lot.

[Wolverine12]

They never needed a reason before. Krakoa just gave them something to be afraid of.

[Anthony W]

They never needed a reason before. Krakoa just gave them something to be afraid of.

The thing I can't stop thinking about is if someone was an ally before Krakoa did enough happen that they would flip into the hate and fear column?

[numberthirty]

The thing I can't stop thinking about is if someone was an ally before Krakoa did enough happen that they would flip into the hate and fear column?

I don't think anyone is going to try to stop someone from wasting their own time attempting to cook up a scenario that is unlikely at best.

[Wolverine12]

The thing I can't stop thinking about is if someone was an ally before Krakoa did enough happen that they would flip into the hate and fear column?

Besides Moira, no.

[Rift]

It's not unwitting? The whole point (at least originally) was that the mutants were not only isolating themselves from others, but that they were victims of their own hubris. Humans in-universe were constantly reacting to these things and talking about how they felt threatened.

That said, most of these were also justifiable. the drugs were a bartering chip so the mutants could have amnesty, which they needed to live. The drugs were still snuck into countries where they weren't accepted, so people could still use them even if their country didn't accept the deal. Mars was colonized largely because the Arakki kept messing with humans. The gates are a necessity. Even if Xavier violated Reed's mind, he did it for the safety of his people, because Reed's invention posed a serious danger to them, and he was already willing to use it on his own son.

[MythicalChicken]

A group's that has made people nervous since their inception banded together, formed a country overnight and immediately became a superpower.

It's like if your personal political opponents suddenly gathered, had the same economic and military clout of say, China, and also holding the world in a benevolent form of blackmail -- they don't need to threaten because the world already is threatened. And that happened in a matter of days.

Honestly, I'm surprised there wasn't *more* freakout.

[Grunty]

This feels like the kind of question where it's important to seperate the reader perspective from that of the average person in the Marvel universe.

While the reader can still be given informations that are either false or eventualy retconned into being false, in general they still have a near omniscient perspective in which they can witness events first hand including hearing the thought of characters.

On the opposite end we have the average person in universe who's access to informations is bound to be just as limited and prone to being biased, error prone or even intentionaly manipulated/falsified as in the real world.

Another point where readers and arguably many writers often seem to ignore the in universe perspective is the passage of time.

In the real world 60 years have passed since the stories of the first X-men team, while the sliding timeline dictates that only a maximum of 15 years have passed in universe. Making major status quo changes occur in comperable break neck speed, which is bound to create a much more different perspective.
Though to be fair, if that is taken into account than Earth's entire population should be highly paranoid, eratic and the world would look anything but comparable to the real world.

Neverless. When it comes to concern and fear of mutants, we should consider that Genosha, Decimination, the Phoenix Five, M-Pox, Rosenberg's stuff and then Krakoa all happend within the span of only 4 to 5 years in universe.

To put in comparison, by the sliding timeline when Decimination happend the current world would have been in the middle of the lockdowns

So one day the worldwide mutant population drops from officialy 17 million, to only 1 million.
Also an entire nation was wiped out by a giant walking WMD, build in secret by a non-government associated organization, and the world just shrugged.
Then less than a year later the mutant population drops again from 1 million to 198 and no mutants are going to appear anymore.
Another year later 5 mutants become the host of something called the Phoenix Force and seemingly attempt to rule the world. But the Avengers stop them and then suddently mutants are going to appear again.
Within another year the world's mutant population increases to the thousands and then they beginn to die be hundreds again from something called M-Pox (on a related note people should have been absolutely paranoid of Nu-Humans).
But then the X-men and Inhumans had a big fight and M-Pox was gone. Which meant that the number of mutants would increase again.
Then less than a year later, the US government enforces a mass sterilization of the X-gene, seemingly with no protest, reducing the number of mutants to a few hundreds again.

And then within less a year later, the mutants have their own sovereign island nation in the middle of the ocean, which is seemingly so high tech that they declare the rest of the world primitive in comparison.
They have wormhole portals that can be placed anywhere and allow to reach any point on Earth or the universe.
There are hundred thousands of them again all of a sudden.
They declare amnesties for murderers and criminals on the basis of having a shared gene that should except them from "human" law. Which includes pulling them from trials of international recognized courts of law.
Their leader runs around in a black diving suit while wearing a face concealing metal ball on his head looking like some weird overlord.
He also shows up at an UN meeting with 3 known super villains as his entourage.
One of them claiming to have been responcible for the destruction of entire civilizations in the past. Another previously declared that mutants are gods now and normal humans should bow to them.
They suddently offer "wonder-medicine" to the world which various scientific institutes are seemingly unable to figure out or replicate.
A whole second island with over a million of ancient, seemingly super powerfull, mutants show up all of a sudden.
They hold a fancy dress up party which ends with them performing a tour deforce in which they alter the nature of an entire planet to rapid terraform it within a single night (meaning they could potential destroy Earth in much the same way), which they then claim as their own property and put the second mutant island on.
Then, after events involving a war with other super humans, giant godzilla style monsters and an undead god thingy that tried to declare judgement against all of humanity, their casual usage of cloning technology to bring their dead back is revealed, which has been the basis for declaring themself immortal and above normal humans,

And much more.

All within less than 1 year, after 4 years of the world thinking multiple times that they are going to disappear.

This complete whiplash of state of things regarding mutants should make it nearly impossible for the average person in the Marvel universe to be sure anymore what is real or not regarding mutants at all. Infact it's the perfect breeding ground for suspicion and conspiracies.

Even people who might have previously been sympathic towards mutants, might start to wonder if they weren't fooled into feeling that way. Especially when one of their leader is known as telepath who can manipulate the thoughts and memories of entire masses.

[marhawkman]

You left out one... Sending APOCALYPSE to the UN as an official diplomatic representative!

Everyone in-universe knows what he did LAST time he visited the UN building!!!!! Peaceful negotiations.... with someone who threatened to cull the entire PLANET last time?

[Stormultt Divine]

Mind you, Krakoa was an answer to the already apparent hate.

[Grunty]

You left out one... Sending APOCALYPSE to the UN as an official diplomatic representative!

Everyone in-universe knows what he did LAST time he visited the UN building!!!!! Peaceful negotiations.... with someone who threatened to cull the entire PLANET last time?

(...)He also shows up at an UN meeting with 3 known super villains as his entourage.
One of them claiming to have been responcible for the destruction of entire civilizations in the past. Another previously declared that mutants are gods now and normal humans should bow to them. (...)

It's a wall of text. So easy to overlook. Unless that was about the previous post.

[Bruce Wayne]

Mind you, Krakoa was an answer to the already apparent hate.

This needs to be emphasized.

Marvel did everything before Krakoa to undermine the dream of human-mutant coexistence (which was the dream of Xavier and what the X-Men were fighting for) by constantly emphasizing the bigotry and hatred of everyday humans and constantly churning out stories where the X-Men and mutant kind were on the brink of extinction and which all sort of grotesqueries were done to mutant characters.

The idea of Krakoa didn't happen in a vacccum. It happened because the idea of coexisting with humanity (which the X-Men were about) made no sense in the current publishing environment. As long as Marvel decides they are going to make the X-Men's lives miserable everyweek to earn a few more bucks, something like Krakoa will always be the endgame.

It's just cowardly editors and writers backtracked on Krakoa while doing nothing to change the environment around the X-books, which justified it.

[bat39]

Krakoa is what happens when you take something like the mutant metaphor (which is inherently flawed for a lot of reasons I won't get into here) and apply a modicum of real-world logic to it, as opposed to the idealized (and often stagnant) logic of 'superhero morality'.

Because in the real-world, it makes perfect sense for a minority group which is not just 'oppressed', but a target for extinction, and has even been on the verge of it a few times, to marshall its considerable resources to band together and create an exclusive nation where they can not only survive and protect themselves, but even thrive. It equally also makes perfect sense for people from the majority group to fear a minority that not only theoretically has the capability to wipe them out, but is potentially the next stage in their evolution and might one day replace them entirely.

We can argue with the morality of superhero comics ("there are heroes and there are villains", "heroes don't kill", "heroes are noble beings whose foremost priority is saving everyone"), and we can argue with the 'progressive, liberal' morality of a lot of fans and creators of this franchise...but when you get down to brass tacks, reality is what it is.

Frankly, if I was a human in the Marvel Universe, I would probably be in favor of some kind of Mutant Registration Act, and would probably sleep a lot easier if I knew that something like the Sentinel program and the mutant cure existed, at least as a deterrence to mutant aggression. Alternatively, if I was a mutant, I would probably love the idea of Krakoa, and the fact that it gives me and my kind advantages that our would-be oppressors lack.

[marhawkman]

It's a wall of text. So easy to overlook. Unless that was about the previous post.

You left out that Apoccy had been to the UN before the previous visit could actually be construed as diplomatic negotiations too. highly aggressive negotiations mind you, but negotiations all the same.

[Harasar]

Sigh, that is supposed to say "unwittingly".

I said legit excuse. Holding the drugs over everyone's head. The colonization of Mars. The gates in the major cities. The no humans on Krakoa rule*. Messing with Mister Fantastic's mind etc.

*That is broken a lot.

IMHO Krakoa's actions were no different from any other nation. Every nation have laws about who can enter their territory and who can't, normally only citizens can enter and leave as they please, while peoples of other nations require permission, that could be denied, the same way how Krakoa allows only its citizens (mutants) enter the nation's territory, while foreigners can enter only together with a citizen and/or by getting permission from the Council. Every nation have their own secrets and recourses and have no obligation to share them with other nations, the same way how Krakoa kept Resurrection Protocols a secret, and Gates only for themselves, etc. No ones demands Wakanda, Latveria, Atlantis, USA, China, Russia, etc., to open their borders to everyone and share their best medicines and technologies with other nations for free, so why they ask it from Krakoa?

About terraformation of Mars, it was a dead planet with no value for Earth, so if I was a part of government, for example, of China, I would not be angry at mutants for it or antagonize them. Instead I would have tried my best to befriend mutants and Krakoa at any cost, in order to ask them to terraform some other planet, like Venus for me.

And about Xavier messing with Mr. Fantastic, does anyone besides them (and people close to them) even knows about it? Likely not.

This complete whiplash of state of things regarding mutants should make it nearly impossible for the average person in the Marvel universe to be sure anymore what is real or not regarding mutants at all. Infact it's the perfect breeding ground for suspicion and conspiracies.

Even people who might have previously been sympathic towards mutants, might start to wonder if they weren't fooled into feeling that way. Especially when one of their leader is known as telepath who can manipulate the thoughts and memories of entire masses.

To be fair, in the same amount of time since the Decimation to today, the world (and in most cases New York) experienced:
* Civil War between multiple heroes and normal humans demanding their registration and control, and it ended with a public death of one of the most well-known and symbolic heroes - Captain America.
* Shortly after it was revealed what the planet was invaded by Skrulls for many years and some of the heroes were actually Skrulls
* Then a World War Hulk happened with Hulk causing massive destruction all around the planet.
* Then Osborn took over the USA in Dark Reign, with lots of heroes becoming outlaws while villains becoming ones in control
* Then Asgard fell on Earth during Siege
* And then another conflict between multiple Hulks and heroes happened in Fall of the Hulks and World War Hulks
* Then Chaos War happened with multiple deities all around the universe massacred by Chaos King and his end-goal is to destroy the universe completely, while on a smaller scale a Shadowland happens in Hell's Kitchen with lots of deaths
* Then in Fear Itself Asgardian's god of fear attacks the world and give multiple villains Thor-like hammers, and almost at the same time entire New York City gains Spider-Man-like powers during Spider-Island.
* Then aforementioned conflict between Avengers and the Phoenix Five and the remaining mutants, and also during it conflict between Wakanda and Atlantis.
* The events of Hickman's Avengers with Earth and Mars being transformed by the White Event, that lead to Infinity and Thanos attacking the planet with his army and then Inhumans detonating their city and unleashing the Terrigen Mists that started to forcefully transform humans against their will into Inhumans, with lots of them dying in the process
* The Secret Wars probably doesn't count, since majority of normal humans doesn't know what the entire multiverse was destroyed and then recreated by a kid mutant Franklin Richards and (former?) villain Molecule Man
* and then another Civil War between heroes happened and shortly after a war between mutants and Inhumans
* the planet was attacked by yet another aliens in Empyre, and then was sealed in darkness and attacked by Symbiotes and their ancient god during King in Black

With the sliding timeline effect, they had a world-changing/ending event every month or so, so it is IMHO really weird what anyone still willing to live in New York and what anyone on the planet cares one bit about mutants, it should be just another Tuesday for them.