Why MAGA Hates Superman

He stands for truth, justice, and an American way that Trump is tearing down

Fox News is mad about Superman. Ahead of the new movie’s release this week, multiple Fox shows denounced it as “woke,” with former Trump White House communications advisor Kellyanne Conway complaining, “We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us.”

“Woke” is an ambiguous term—especially on right-wing media, which uses it as a catchall for “thing I don’t like”—but Fox commentators were clear that their objections are to Superman’s positive attitude towards immigration and diversity. “Superwoke: iconic movie hero to embrace pro-immigrant themes,” blared one chyron. Here’s the offending quote from director James Gunn, which Fox had panels (plural) discuss: 

“‘Superman’ is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

I bet that sounds perfectly fine to most people, a combination of factual description and reasonable opinion. But it’s no surprise Fox hates it, and wants viewers to oppose it. Each part of Gunn’s quote, and the character of Superman more broadly, embodies the opposite of what MAGA stands for. 

“Something we have lost”

“Has Superman gone woke?,” worried another Fox chyron, implying that a pro-immigrant, pro-diversity Superman is something new, a change for the worse.

But he’s always been this way. In a 1946 radio serial, Superman took down the “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” with the show exposing secrets of the real KKK. An award winning 2019-20 comic adapted that into “Superman Smashes the Klan,” where he saves a Chinese-American family from hooded white supremacists. And here’s a poster from the 1950s where Superman stands up for diversity, calling bigoted bullying un-American:

Truth and justice have been Superman’s values since he first appeared in 1938, and subsequent interpretations have included related concepts, such as tolerance. The slogan “truth, justice, and the American way,” linking those values with the United States, was popularized by the 1950s TV show with George Reeves, and the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie.

In sharp contrast, MAGA has a cult of personality around a serial liar who thwarted justice to get away with crimes against the country, reversed justice by pardoning convicted January 6 attackers, and frequently undermines justice in office, abusing power to break laws and violate rights.

Trump’s core values are the opposite of Superman’s. Not just in the latest movie, but from the character’s beginning, and through over 80 years of adaptations. James Gunn couldn’t make an anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, self-centered lying criminal Superman, because then he wouldn’t be Superman. Even Zack Snyder’s darker take on the character in Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman includes things like Superman rushing off to save people from a fire in Mexico—and not demanding public praise for it—rather than watching them suffer and defending that choice as “America First.”

The slogan “Make America Great Again” implies that an earlier time was better, and the government should aim to bring those conditions back. Except they never existed. Trump, Republican politicians, conservative media, and right-wing influencers are calling back to a mythologized past, using manufactured nostalgia as a rationalization to hurt people they don’t like. It’s one of the things that makes their movement fascist.

“Basic human kindness is a value”

MAGA hates empathy, at least for anyone besides themselves. Elon Musk argues that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” and calls empathy a “bug,” like a software flaw that needs correction. Denouncing empathy is now common on the American right, especially among Christian nationalists, with popular books such as The Sin of Empathy by theologian Joe Rigney, and Toxic Empathy by commentator Allie Beth Stuckey. Defending the Trump administration illegally shipping Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on false pretenses and without due process, influential right-wing activist Chris Rufo dismissed concerns as “empathy turned pathological.”

Superman, however, is empathetic. He cares about people, and wants to help for the sake of making things better.

Consider this famous panel, in which Superman saves a girl from suicide by talking to her. Some formerly suicidal comic readers say it saved their life.

Even a cynic can’t dismiss this as “virtue signaling,” because no one else sees it. Superman does it because he cares. The entire reward for his effort, the full answer to “what’s in it for him?,” is that Regan—who he didn’t know before and probably won’t interact with again—feels a little better, and chooses not to jump.

In ways both small and large, Superman helps people because he wants to. If he didn’t care, he’d be like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, who dismisses “the world’s smartest man” as no more than “the world’s smartest termite.” But Superman chooses a life of service, defending people weaker than himself—which is everyone—without asking for anything in return. If anything, Superman is super-empathetic, presenting an unreachable ideal of human caring in addition to strength and speed.

It’s similar to the traditionally masculine ideal, or at least a lot closer than today’s self-appointed masculinity advocates in the “manosphere.” Superman sacrifices, protects, and never complains. He’s respectful, reserved, and doesn’t seek thanks or attention. He shows strength in restraint, not in bluster. He finds Lois Lane’s success appealing, rather than emasculating. He lifts people up instead of demanding they bow down.

An alternative is Homelander from The Boys, a self-centered, whiny, approval-craving man—and unsubtle Trump analogue—with Superman-like powers. It is also, in its way, American. But it is not heroic.

“An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country”

Superman wasn’t born here. As even people who have never seen a comic book, show, or movie know, he’s an alien from the planet Krypton, who crash-landed in the middle of America as a baby. He is, incontrovertibly, an immigrant. A character with all the same powers who is not an alien that arrived as a child is not Superman.

And he’s not just any immigrant, but a refugee, fleeing natural disaster. He did not choose to come here, his parents did that. And they didn’t get him legal status first.

With the noteworthy exception of his skin color, Superman is the sort of immigrant MAGA hates, and the Trump administration is breaking laws to hurt. They’d spread lies about him, deny that he positively contributes to his community, pretend he’s a criminal, send ICE after him, and work to revoke his citizenship.

Trying to argue that the analogy to Trump-persecuted immigrants doesn’t apply, Fox host Greg Gutfeld said, “With Superman, they are sending your best,” a reference to Trump’s 2015 campaign announcement when he lied that Mexico was “sending” rapists and other criminals into America instead of “their best.”

But we know MAGA doesn’t care about that because the Trump regime is revoking visas from foreign graduate students who committed no crimes, and blocking all foreign student visas for Harvard. America has been great at recruiting foreign talent—graduates stay and work in the US, or go home with positive memories and American connections—but MAGA is fighting to reverse that, weakening the country to advance their ideology.

As Alan Elrod has eloquently written, they’re going after adopted families as well. Right-wing culture warriors denounce adopted children as “not real,” and are especially vicious towards parents who adopt a child of a different race. Plus the Trump administration’s effort to erase the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants impacts adopted kids too, since some were born outside the U.S., and some don’t know their birth parents.

Core to the MAGA movement is opposition to America as a nation of immigrants, both as value and fact. From the Mayflower and slave ships to various migration waves, the vast majority of Americans have been immigrants—voluntary or forced—or the descendants of immigrants. But MAGA insists on pretending that isn’t the case, or that there’s some descendants of immigrants who are “real Americans,” defined more based on race, religion, and location within the U.S. than on legal status or adherence to the American Creed.

They hate illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and the citizen children of immigrants. They’re fighting the traditional American value that’s expressed in the Statue of Liberty reaching out to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and in Ronald Reagan analogizing the country to “a shining city on the hill.” There have always been racist and nativist forces in the United States opposed to that. Except now they control the federal government, and are operating outside the Constitution.

In a recent speech, Vice President JD Vance asserted that “people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America.” He did not specify which side.

“Superman is the story of America”

Superman highlights why MAGA is wrong about all this. He is Clark Kent, his adoptive parents’ son, raised with their values. He has no connection to America via blood or soil, but he’s deeply American, embodying the country’s pluralist, “melting pot” nature.

He’s both rural and urban, growing up in a small Midwest town then becoming a professional in the big city.

He’s physically dominant, but pursues a career in journalism, working with words.

He has white skin and he’s a minority (not unlike the character’s Jewish American creators, one an immigrant, the other a child of immigrants).

He isn’t human, but he’s a person.

He is an alien and an American in one.

JD Vance thinks this has less claim to America than Confederate traitors

I bet the new Superman movie will be a success despite MAGA complaints about its values. Gunn has a great track record (eg Guardians of the Galaxy). And as seen when the right threw fits over the NFL, Star Wars, and Barbie, some things people just like. Superman is one of those.

So are the values Superman embodies. And fights for. Values America used to stand for, strive for, and over time get closer to, before this fascist movement rejected and reversed them.

Though I expect things to get worse before they get better, that’s a big reason I haven’t lost hope. Superman’s values are more popular in America than the right-wing bubble thinks. It’s just that some Americans didn’t realize how much that matters until their government not only failed to approach their ideal, but started actively opposing it.