I’m not super into comics so someone let me know if I’m off base here but…
Ok so the X men are stand ins for marginalized people. Their primary conflict is that they are demonized by society, even though they are a boon for society. Charles and Magneto attempt to solve this in different ways. Charles via working within the system, and appealing to saving their haters to prove they are good and restraining what makes them different. And Magneto is heavily militant in his defense of mutants against any who would harm them, and is big in not hiding who you are.
Now Magneto is villain coded so don’t take what the post said without a grain of salt. He does bad things. But these days he usually is given a sympathetic reason. And due to how comics and stories are told Charles Xavier will never succeed in his quest to prove mutants are not to be feared. (Especially when you have some kids who’s power is they turn into a literal nuclear bomb that will go off at any time for any reason… poor kid)
But this ties in with the rise in right wing authoritarian hate mobs
That is such a frustrating storyline… Why couldn’t they just slap a suppression collar on him? Or see if there’s a material that might block his power, and make him a suit out of that? Or get him a LMD and let him live virtually through that while he stays safely stashed somewhere? Why do they go straight to “kill him, he’s bad PR for us!!!”
Depending on the story magneto ranges from Hitler 2.0 to anti-hero. The better stories tend to be him as an anti-hero. It generally boils down to Xavier believing people are good and they will chose the right option if you set a good example. Magneto believes people are bastards and you have to force them into the right decision.
So magneto has actually fought for mutant rights from the beginning. And every time he gets ahead the xmen win and mutant rights don’t really move forward.
The xmen literally fight for the status quo. The status quo is bad for mutants, but they want to keep it for some reason.
An analogy I’ve heard a lot is that professor x is the mlk to Magneto’s Malcolm x. The difference is that mlk didn’t bank roll a CIA black ops style team to constantly beat up Malcolm x whenever he started getting a leg up.
People are fed up. They’re more open to extreme actions. That’s why people are more sympathetic to Magneto
The xmen literally fight for the status quo. The status quo is bad for mutants, but they want to keep it for some reason.
Not quite. Professor X believes that humans will eventually overcome their inherit racism and would be able to live with mutants in peace. He also believes any act of violence from the mutants will push this ideal future further and further (he also does not agree on hurting humans indiscriminately because not all humans are rabid racists)
Whether Professor X is enlightened or just naive, well that’s another story
“Fought for mutant rights” is a stretch. At the start he was a 2-dimensional villain fighting for mutants to rule over humans.
Direct quote: “The moment is at hand! All my months of preparation and planning shall pay off! The Human Race no longer deserves dominion over the planet Earth! The Day of the Mutants is upon us! The first phase of my plan shall be to show my power… to make homo sapiens bow to homo superior!” His plan involves invading a military base and taking control of “The mightiest rocket of all”.
As for the status quo, the emergence of mutants changed the status quo. What Xavier is generally fighting for is that mutants have the same rights as normal humans. Magneto is fighting for mutants to dominate over humans. And, certain powerful interest in the government are fighting to either cage or exterminate mutants. The early years of the X-men comics are fights on one side against Magneto trying to do something with his group of super-powered mutants (literally called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants), and on the other side fighting against powerful forces in the (human) government who see mutants as a threat and want to stop them before they get too powerful. Plus a bunch of fights against aliens, dimensional-hopping baddies, dinosaur-human hybrids from Antarctica, you know, the usual.
Eventually, Magneto is seemingly satisfied with mutants having their own country where they get to set their own laws and live separately from humans (backed up by the threat of force from the most powerful mutants), whereas Xavier wants humanity and mutants to live together in peace and harmony.
He just wanted freedom from subjugation for the mutants. Having survived the Holocaust, he had strong feelings about the government deciding they weren’t people with equal protections.
Magneto’s whole shtick is that he survived the holocaust. This made him a radical against discrimination. So when he sees the mutant minority starting to get the same treatment as Jews in Germany (dehumanizing propaganda, lists and “yellow stars”) he’s like “not this time” and decides to start fighting before things get concentration camp bad.
Professor X believes that regular humans and mutants can reach an understanding despite all the propaganda to the contrary. But if mutants on one side (magneto)attack then due to the powers only other mutants are really effective, both for stopping them and for showing that it’s “not all mutants”.
You’re getting a lot of answers that are more sympathetic to Magneto than he deserves.
I’d argue that Magneto has a slightly better argument on diagnosing the problem (that humans and mutants can’t peacefully coexist) than Professor X (that humans and mutants must find a way to peacefully coexist).
But the logical diagnosis of “the humans will genocide the mutants of we let them” doesn’t make Magneto the good guy when he prescribes a solution for that problem. The history of the character oscillates between trying to create segregated societies where mutants are separate and not accountable to the human world, or outright subjugation or genocide of the humans.
Maybe peaceful coexistence isn’t possible. But is it better to continually strive for that ideal, or is it better to reject humanity entirely and create strict segregation (or destruction) of the other side?
Put simply, given the state and direction of the world the lofty, idealistic goals of Professor Xavier of peaceful coexistence and mutual trust have come to seem quaint and naive in a world of division, exploitation, inequality, discrimination, and hate. Magneto, by contrast, has always advocated the use of force and exercise of power, not in the interest of “bwahaha, I’m a bad guy!” evil, but in the interest of enacting vigilante justice and/or almost anarchic self-determination outside the system when the system fails.
So in 2024, your sympathy towards Magneto is inversely tied to your faith in the system to deliver fair and just outcomes. The more your faith in that has slipped, the closer you get to the position that Magneto is right.
In all seriousness, I buy the irony thing, and also don’t think Magneto would particularly care what the public thought, and as for the members, well, not all of them had super intelligence.
I’ll take a shot but I’m not a die hard X-Men guy. If someone has a little more precision please correct me.
Basically magnetos driving idea is that people (and their governments) are out to get mutants and won’t ever change, so it’s up to him to lead mutants to fight back. Basically if they want respect and fair treatment, they have to take it for themselves. He tries many times in many ways to pull down the establishment by, for example, attempting to convert all people to mutants.
The premise of the post is basically that, since Reagan, social support is diminishing and power and wealth are concentrating in such a way in the upper class. Ergo, taking an… uh… active approach in advocating for ourselves is looking increasingly like a good idea.
Magneto being a victim / survivor of Anti-Semitism , has made him have
a severe black-and-white justice complex.
a severe inferiority complex.
a do-or-die / either friend-or-foe complex.
a guilt for being powerless to save himself or his parents.
All these things are a complex brew in the psyche of any human being.
It made Prof.X seem somewhat naive or Magneto too brash/risky.
The balance of things either Prof.X or Magneto depending on the scenario plays out. Neither of the results or methods are satisfactory or acceptable but it is a quandary.
No one can predict at the moment of action/in-action where is the correct path.
That is what it means to live your life. Regrets or no-regrets no one can say but you.
Your lived-experience IS NOT a solution for the entire planet or universe. DO NOT apply your solution on others.
Let them live their life.
And that is sometimes very very hard to let-go or adopt.
This is my opinion. You may or may not agree with me. Im good.
That seems about right, except for the inferiority complex.
Magneto has always had a superority complex the size of a continent, and it leaks, making him see not only himself but all mutants as superior… to the point that in Marvel continuity he seems to have been the one to coin the term “homo superior” to refer to mutants as opposed to homo sapiens, or at least he was the first one to use it in the books, in the very first X-Men issue, in the second panel in which he ever appeared (in the real world the term was coined by Olaf Stapledon).
Can someone help me out with this? Not a super hero guy. Why is magneto good now?
I’m not super into comics so someone let me know if I’m off base here but…
Ok so the X men are stand ins for marginalized people. Their primary conflict is that they are demonized by society, even though they are a boon for society. Charles and Magneto attempt to solve this in different ways. Charles via working within the system, and appealing to saving their haters to prove they are good and restraining what makes them different. And Magneto is heavily militant in his defense of mutants against any who would harm them, and is big in not hiding who you are.
Now Magneto is villain coded so don’t take what the post said without a grain of salt. He does bad things. But these days he usually is given a sympathetic reason. And due to how comics and stories are told Charles Xavier will never succeed in his quest to prove mutants are not to be feared. (Especially when you have some kids who’s power is they turn into a literal nuclear bomb that will go off at any time for any reason… poor kid)
But this ties in with the rise in right wing authoritarian hate mobs
Based off of what you’ve said I’ll take Magneto on my side! Covid showed us reasoning doesn’t work lol
If anyone wants to read the comic referred to: https://imgur.artemislena.eu/gallery/I71V6
That is such a frustrating storyline… Why couldn’t they just slap a suppression collar on him? Or see if there’s a material that might block his power, and make him a suit out of that? Or get him a LMD and let him live virtually through that while he stays safely stashed somewhere? Why do they go straight to “kill him, he’s bad PR for us!!!”
Depending on the story magneto ranges from Hitler 2.0 to anti-hero. The better stories tend to be him as an anti-hero. It generally boils down to Xavier believing people are good and they will chose the right option if you set a good example. Magneto believes people are bastards and you have to force them into the right decision.
So magneto has actually fought for mutant rights from the beginning. And every time he gets ahead the xmen win and mutant rights don’t really move forward. The xmen literally fight for the status quo. The status quo is bad for mutants, but they want to keep it for some reason. An analogy I’ve heard a lot is that professor x is the mlk to Magneto’s Malcolm x. The difference is that mlk didn’t bank roll a CIA black ops style team to constantly beat up Malcolm x whenever he started getting a leg up.
People are fed up. They’re more open to extreme actions. That’s why people are more sympathetic to Magneto
Not quite. Professor X believes that humans will eventually overcome their inherit racism and would be able to live with mutants in peace. He also believes any act of violence from the mutants will push this ideal future further and further (he also does not agree on hurting humans indiscriminately because not all humans are rabid racists)
Whether Professor X is enlightened or just naive, well that’s another story
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Hurting humans indiscriminately would translate to hurting white people indiscriminately, not fascists. That’s the flaw in your reasoning.
This is where your rebuttal faltered. Not everyone out there is a fascist
Magneto wanted to push, hurt, kill everyone regardless of their stance towards mutants
Ironically, thinking everyone “else” deserves punishment is one of the hallmarks of fascists
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IMO a better comparison would be Professor X is the same as the core democratic party and Magneto is the progressive wing.
“Fought for mutant rights” is a stretch. At the start he was a 2-dimensional villain fighting for mutants to rule over humans.
Direct quote: “The moment is at hand! All my months of preparation and planning shall pay off! The Human Race no longer deserves dominion over the planet Earth! The Day of the Mutants is upon us! The first phase of my plan shall be to show my power… to make homo sapiens bow to homo superior!” His plan involves invading a military base and taking control of “The mightiest rocket of all”.
As for the status quo, the emergence of mutants changed the status quo. What Xavier is generally fighting for is that mutants have the same rights as normal humans. Magneto is fighting for mutants to dominate over humans. And, certain powerful interest in the government are fighting to either cage or exterminate mutants. The early years of the X-men comics are fights on one side against Magneto trying to do something with his group of super-powered mutants (literally called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants), and on the other side fighting against powerful forces in the (human) government who see mutants as a threat and want to stop them before they get too powerful. Plus a bunch of fights against aliens, dimensional-hopping baddies, dinosaur-human hybrids from Antarctica, you know, the usual.
Eventually, Magneto is seemingly satisfied with mutants having their own country where they get to set their own laws and live separately from humans (backed up by the threat of force from the most powerful mutants), whereas Xavier wants humanity and mutants to live together in peace and harmony.
All it takes is one mutant to fuck up the trust built with humans. Professor X is on ketamine
Because most superhero writers are assholes who never think of the bigger implications of the world they write.
He just wanted freedom from subjugation for the mutants. Having survived the Holocaust, he had strong feelings about the government deciding they weren’t people with equal protections.
He was akin to the Malcolm X to Charles’s King.
Magneto’s whole shtick is that he survived the holocaust. This made him a radical against discrimination. So when he sees the mutant minority starting to get the same treatment as Jews in Germany (dehumanizing propaganda, lists and “yellow stars”) he’s like “not this time” and decides to start fighting before things get concentration camp bad.
Professor X believes that regular humans and mutants can reach an understanding despite all the propaganda to the contrary. But if mutants on one side (magneto)attack then due to the powers only other mutants are really effective, both for stopping them and for showing that it’s “not all mutants”.
This is a fantastic explanation. Thank you!
You’re getting a lot of answers that are more sympathetic to Magneto than he deserves.
I’d argue that Magneto has a slightly better argument on diagnosing the problem (that humans and mutants can’t peacefully coexist) than Professor X (that humans and mutants must find a way to peacefully coexist).
But the logical diagnosis of “the humans will genocide the mutants of we let them” doesn’t make Magneto the good guy when he prescribes a solution for that problem. The history of the character oscillates between trying to create segregated societies where mutants are separate and not accountable to the human world, or outright subjugation or genocide of the humans.
Maybe peaceful coexistence isn’t possible. But is it better to continually strive for that ideal, or is it better to reject humanity entirely and create strict segregation (or destruction) of the other side?
Put simply, given the state and direction of the world the lofty, idealistic goals of Professor Xavier of peaceful coexistence and mutual trust have come to seem quaint and naive in a world of division, exploitation, inequality, discrimination, and hate. Magneto, by contrast, has always advocated the use of force and exercise of power, not in the interest of “bwahaha, I’m a bad guy!” evil, but in the interest of enacting vigilante justice and/or almost anarchic self-determination outside the system when the system fails.
So in 2024, your sympathy towards Magneto is inversely tied to your faith in the system to deliver fair and just outcomes. The more your faith in that has slipped, the closer you get to the position that Magneto is right.
Thank you for the response. I am jaded so I’m with Magneto 100%
To play devil’s advocate: the guy did name his terrorist group “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” (emphasis mine)…
(I think it’s later been retconned as an attempt at irony, but if so the general public and some of the members clearly didn’t get it.)
In all seriousness, I buy the irony thing, and also don’t think Magneto would particularly care what the public thought, and as for the members, well, not all of them had super intelligence.
I’ll take a shot but I’m not a die hard X-Men guy. If someone has a little more precision please correct me.
Basically magnetos driving idea is that people (and their governments) are out to get mutants and won’t ever change, so it’s up to him to lead mutants to fight back. Basically if they want respect and fair treatment, they have to take it for themselves. He tries many times in many ways to pull down the establishment by, for example, attempting to convert all people to mutants.
The premise of the post is basically that, since Reagan, social support is diminishing and power and wealth are concentrating in such a way in the upper class. Ergo, taking an… uh… active approach in advocating for ourselves is looking increasingly like a good idea.
In my opinion,
Magneto being a victim / survivor of Anti-Semitism , has made him have
a severe black-and-white justice complex.
a severe inferiority complex.
a do-or-die / either friend-or-foe complex.
a guilt for being powerless to save himself or his parents.
All these things are a complex brew in the psyche of any human being.
It made Prof.X seem somewhat naive or Magneto too brash/risky.
The balance of things either Prof.X or Magneto depending on the scenario plays out. Neither of the results or methods are satisfactory or acceptable but it is a quandary.
No one can predict at the moment of action/in-action where is the correct path.
That is what it means to live your life. Regrets or no-regrets no one can say but you.
Your lived-experience IS NOT a solution for the entire planet or universe. DO NOT apply your solution on others.
Let them live their life.
And that is sometimes very very hard to let-go or adopt.
This is my opinion. You may or may not agree with me. Im good.
That seems about right, except for the inferiority complex.
Magneto has always had a superority complex the size of a continent, and it leaks, making him see not only himself but all mutants as superior… to the point that in Marvel continuity he seems to have been the one to coin the term “homo superior” to refer to mutants as opposed to homo sapiens, or at least he was the first one to use it in the books, in the very first X-Men issue, in the second panel in which he ever appeared (in the real world the term was coined by Olaf Stapledon).