When I first read Chip Zdarsky and Daniel Acuña’s Avengers: Twilight earlier this year, I knew I wanted to teach it at some point, and I did just that in my “Who Watches Superheroes?” course. As I reread the series in preparation for class, Bullseye’s comments in issue #5 as the Avengers moved to attack Red Skull stood out. The series revolves around older versions of the Avengers, specifically Captain America, as they inhabit a nation controlled by a dictatorial and fascist government lead, in the background, by Red Skull. The United States exists under constant surveillance, and everyone has bought in to the misinformation that Red Skull and the oligarchs pump into the populace. Even when Captain America goes live to detail everything, no one believes him.

The series culminates in Red Skull attempting to ultimately seize overt control of the government through a coup. On approach to Washington D.C. for the final confrontation with Red Skull, Captain America points out that the Red Skull has “taken control of the military and law enforcement,” getting them to go along with his plans by “feeding them lies and propaganda.” Through this, he pumps them full of lies, leaving the, to “believe that they’re asving the country from a rogue president.” Bullseye replies to Captain America by highlighting the impact of the misinformation campaign and the ways that it will persist, long after their demise. She says,

This is years of brainwashing. These men and women are sure of their convictions. My buddies in the Marines were all headed down that path, telling me about conspiracies and #$%& I knew wasn’t real. But they believe it. And once someone believes, it’s like trying to erode a mountain and the truth is rain.

A few things stand out with Bullseye’s comments. First and foremost, Bullseye notes the years and decades of “brainwashing” that led to this moment, the foundations stretching back into the past. Here, I think about discussions we have had in my “The Reverberations of World War II” class where we have read various novels situated in World War II by individuals who lived through it. Early in the semester, students kept commenting on Nazi atrocities and framing them as if they just appeared out of nowhere, springing forth fully formed from the ground. As the semester progressed, they began to realize that this was not the case; rather, Nazi ideology grew over time, culminating in World War II and the Final Solution. They built upon foundations laid long before their ascendence to power, and they maintained the ideology.

The other point that stands out with Bullseye’s comments comes at the end when she argues that trying to disentangle individuals from these ideologies is like rain eroding a mountain to the ground. Even with defeat, the ideologies remain. The ideologies do not dissipate or erode to nothingness. Angela Davis drives this home in her autobiography when she describes her time in the German Democratic Republic. She writes, “half the people I saw on the streets, and practically all the adults, had gone through the experience of Hitler. And in West Germany, unlike the German Democratic Republic, there had been no determined campaign to attack the fascist and racist attitudes that had become so deeply embedded.” She notes that West Germany did not work to eradicate the ideologies, and they maintained, as we see today with the rise of far-right parties in Germany and throughout Europe.

Even those who fought the Nazis carried within them hateful, xenophobic ideologies. I’ve written, countless times, about the ways that the Jim Crow South and the United States influenced the Nazis. I always return to James Luther Adams describing his interactions with U.S. Army officer following World War II as they prepared to become one of the occupying forces in Germany. Adams saw within the officers “an orgy of self righteousness,” with them proclaiming their “superiority” to the defeated Axis. However, he turned this “self righteousness” on its head by asking them if they maintained “similar attitudes” to the Nazis, attitudes that were “not only among lunatic and subversive groups but also among respectable Americans in the army of democracy.” He asked them about their views towards African Americans, Jews, and others.

The officers responded to Adams by asking him if he thought that whites and Blacks should intermaary or if he had even been in business with a Jewish individual. Adams received these types of questions for over an hour as the officers denied, with every fiber in their being, any similarities between themselves and the Nazis. When they asked him these questions, he would respond with a question of his own, asking them, “How do you distinguish between yourself and a Nazi?” On a base level, they could not distinguish themselves. They, like the Nazis, had been inculcated with propaganda that claimed their “superiority” over others. They, like the Nazis, bought into fear and hate.

All of this reminds me of one of Ed Fisher’s political cartoons in his 1961 Domesday Book. The panel shows what appears to be an American serviceman coming home from the war to his old bedroom. He stands at the top of the stairs as his mother holds open the door. We can see inside the room, and we see Nazi memorabilia throughout the room, including swastika bunting and a portrait of Adolf Hitler. The mother, looking at her son, says, “And I’ve kept your old room for you Bruno, just as it was when you left!” The point here, of course, is the same as Adams’ during his oirnetation with the officers. Even though Bruno and the officers fought and defeated the Nazis, the ideas didn’t die. They maintained, even within those who opposed them.

The eradication of an idea does not occur with defeat. It does not occur with imprisonment. An idea cannot fade away into the nether reaches of our psyches. It stays with us. We can “eradicate” polio through vaccines, reaching a point where the majority of the population is inoculated from the disease. However, the disease does not go away. We may have eliminated polio is certain parts of the world, but it maintains elsewhere, causing death. The same holds true for ideologies. One can “cure” an individual and provide a “vaccine,” this inoculating the majority of the populace against it, but that does not mean it has gone away. It lies dormant. Waiting to reappear.

Bullseye’s metaphor of comparing fights against misinformation and propaganda to the eroding a mountain with rain holds true. It takes centuries or millions of years for rain to erode a mountain. The same holds true for those infected with propoaganda and hateful ideologies. They get passed down.

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.