Tentpole franchises have been the cash cows of major Western studios for most of this century. Each installment is just a piece in an ever more complex überplot of cosmic magnitude, making viewers passively come back for more. The audience might need to watch every single movie to understand everything. Eventually, all leads to a galactic empire, a dimension-trotting conqueror, a magic glove that can make wishes come true in a snap, or in the case of real life, the ghost of a dictator.
When following the goings of the far right around the world, it helps to think about them as characters in a shared universe with an ultimate narrative goal. Subplots and marked differences dictated by local contexts complicate matters. In addition, debates about the precise definition of fascism could spur annual conferences and a CNN weekly show hosted by Wolf Blitzer. Still, in all their cacophonous dreams of totalitarian rule, phallic power, and decimated opposition, the far-right club never loses sight of one main character.
Due to the abrasive nature of this character, they might talk about him in whispered tones or deflect similarities by projecting them onto their opponents. True: some of their adversaries have once fallen under the spell of an authoritarian swastika before mending their ways, but they have always lacked consistency anyway. As for the out-right crowd, you just need to focus on their actions, imagery, and words long enough to recognize the Austrian artist, the one who appropriated Charlie Chaplin’s mustache, the butcher of babies, the man who “is able to talk well as a host” in his “handsome new house” high up “in the clouds,” Herr H. himself.
They all want to be him minus the outcome: adored, absolute, devoid of empathy. This is their saga’s endgame. But suspense is paramount for survival and box-office returns. So they will resort to subterfuge and ambiguity to make audiences go “will they, won’t they” for as long as they can. You may think the burden of Godwin’s Law is on you until a twist reveals our characters’ true intentions. To be continued.
Here is a non-comprehensive list of the latest installment in this dark universe.1
Donald
The first avenger of this team –– but not necessarily the one who came first –– reminds the world of his proclivities every fortnight. In November, Donald Trump and his advisers not only brought up the specter of “detention camps” in case the former president wins a second term; Trump himself also referred to his opponents as “wurmin,” a more succinct way to say “race-tuberculosis of the peoples.” To shake off any hesitation, he once told his military staff to behave more like the “German Generals” who “were totally loyal” to the Führer. He even told his chief of staff that Adolf “did a lot of good things.”
Bibi
In Benjamin Netanyahu’s view, he had a weak mind, the perfect prey for the insidious influence of others. The German leader “didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time,” mind you. It was the Mufti of Jerusalem who, like an Elder of Zion, suggested the Final Solution! The facts may be against his assertion, but U.S. Neo-Nazis were not. The Daily Stormer backed his claims as “completely factual.”
Netanyahu intends to weaken judicial oversight in his country and calls the killing of thousands of civilians “collateral damage.” It is the kind of attitude that puts him at ease when he hobnobs with most of the other characters in this list and then some. He is the bonding character of the entire franchise. Still, he has his own plans. Israeli newspaper Haaretz describes them as “back our Jewish supremacy, we’ll back your Christian supremacy.”
Hamas
At the time, Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog condemned Netanyahu’s anti-history lesson. Now, as the Israeli president, he showed journalists an Arab edition of Mein Kampf that Israeli soldiers allegedly found at a Hamas bunker. As with every claim in the Israel-Hamas information war, this one should be taken with caution. It should also be noted that Younis al-Astal, Hamas’s spiritual leader, lashed at the UN when it recommended the inclusion of the Holocaust in Gaza’s school curriculum. He said it was a “war crime” –– not the killing of millions of Jews but the teaching of such a subject. In their 1988 Covenant, Hamas tried to have it both ways by accusing the Jews of “Nazi treatment” against women, children, and old people and calling for them to be vanquished. On October 7, the Islamic group invaded Israel to apply the Nazi treatment on women, children, and old people.
Marine
Holocaust-denying was the bread-and-butter of Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder of Front National, sorry, Rassemblement National (RN). Because of this, he was fined, isolated, and expelled from his party by his own daughter. Marine Le Pen swears she will not tolerate these ideas anymore. And yet her party never really gave up Frédéric Chatillon, a close friend of the Le Pens, who used to beat leftists in college and mourn Hitler’s demise after he graduated. Now, he prints RN’s campaign kits. In 2022, one of these campaign posters featured a well-known white supremacist dog whistle, the “OK sign,” which Le Pen fille had probably learned from Neo-Nazi philosopher Ruuben Kaalep during her visit to Estonia in 2019.
Marine is more like the Iron Man of the bunch: her armor is constantly optimized according to the latest conditions. She even joined the French political establishment to march against antisemitism in Paris in mid-November, hoping people would not boo her the way they did when she tried something similar in 2018. The RN hardly mentions the Great Replacement conspiracy theory these days. Marine prefers to warn that “immigration is used… by the great financial circles to depress wages.” Just in case, RN still rallies against those Jewish boogeymen, George Soros and the Rothschilds.
Viktor
One cannot mention Soros without also remembering the man who built a political career out of calling the Jewish financier/philanthropist a “public enemy.” But Viktor Orbán is much more than that or the Latverian name. He shows no compunction in detailing his purity ideals: “We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race.” He even makes gas chamber jokes that would make Mel Brooks pale.
Jair
Jair Bolsonaro surprised everyone. What started as the rehashing of a major player (see first entry on this list) with a shorter budget soon became an unexpected success. One good reason for this may be explained by his willingness to go all in, making his storyline the most straightforward of them all. Consequently, he scores high on the N-scale.
He never hid his low regard for homosexuals, Asians, journalists, women, poor people, indigenous people, Black people, sick people, pretty much everyone but himself and his kids. His enemies as vermin? Check. A vow to “swipe these red criminals off the map”? Check. Admiration for Nazi Germany’s “order and discipline”? Check. A failed putsch? It seems so. “Arbeit macht frei”? Check. White supremacist aides? Check. Neo-Nazi support? Check and check. You do not get much fonder than “You are the reason I have this job,” his reply to a bunch of them when he was a lawmaker. What about actual German Neo-Nazi connections? Check.
His Minister of Culture even cosplayed as Joseph Goebbels for an official statement.
It was so on the nose that he had to be sacked. Apparently, only Bolsonaro himself can be garishly obvious about certain things.
His story seemed to have come to a closure this year: the Electoral Court banned him from running for office until 2030. Then he showed up in a cameo this November. When Daniel Zonshine, Israel’s ambassador to Brazil, went to the National Congress in Brasilia to show lawmakers a video with images of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, the unelected Bolsonaro attended the meeting. This guest appearance may have been engineered by Yossi Shelley, former ambassador to Brazil who edits lobster photos and Netanyahu’s confidante. (Again, Netanyahu is omnipresent in this franchise.)
This story does not end with the cloning or mystical resurrection of You-Know-Who. It could conclude with the full blooming of a spiritual heir. Or, as in horror franchises, with many. It is wise to pay attention to what Silvio Berlusconi, the deceased right-wing populist crooner, said in poor jest. The Nazi leader’s supporters find out he is alive and attempt to persuade him to return to power. He replies, “I’ll come back but on one condition… next time, I’m going to be evil.”
The producers of this franchise might want to check another dark universe’s fate.