Dirty Communists: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

{{quote| "The only good communist is a dead communist!"}}

* [[Iron Curtain]]

* [[Useful Notes/From Russia With Nukes|Mnogo Nukes]]

* [[A Nuclear Error]]

* [[The Political Officer]]

* [[Secret Police]]

* [[Soviet Superscience]]

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

== Comic Books ==

* During the fifties, [[Captain America]] of the very popular [[World War II]] comics was set against communists. The title folded quickly. Years later Marvel wanted to bring him back from near the end of the war. Who was the fifties version? An [[Dork Age|'Evil' Cap and 'Evil' Bucky]] who had changed their names and faces to seem like the genuine article, made into a [[Knight Templar]] and driven madly paranoid by a version of the Super Soldier Serum. Later Cap battled Evil Cap and Evil Bucky. Evil Bucky eventually became non-evil and sidekicked for a while before being killed; Evil Cap became a supervillain for a while, died, and recently, after the death of real Cap, came back not so evil though still slightly bent, ramping up the "righteous revolution" elements for all they're worth.

* ''[[Danger Girl]]'' mocks this trope by creating the outrageous 'Hammer' organization that [[Commie Nazis|combines Nazism and Communism]] (!!)

* Averted in the ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' comic series written by [[Larry Hama]] and published by Marvel. The Joes' Russian counterparts, Oktober Guard, were actually reluctant allies of the Joes who set aside their differences to fight against the Cobras. The only time the Soviet Union is ever referred as an "evil empire" is done sarcastically by one of the characters. Quite a feat, considering the comic was published during the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] era. Of course, portrayals of their soldiers and their government are two entirely different things.

* Also averted in [[Larry Hama]]'s ''[[Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja (Comic Book)|Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja]]'', despite being set in the middle of [[World War III]] between the US and the USSR. The Soviet military might praise [[Glorious Mother Russia]], but they're highly competent, no-nonsense professionals. Too bad they're facing the world's deadliest assassin...

* ''[[The Tick]]'' parodied this trope with a villain-for-hire actually called the Red Scare, who would take jobs dressing up in supervillain attire themed around communist Russian symbology, pretend to menace some major public place, and then get defeated by his customers in a staged fight. The whole affair went hilariously awry when the Red Scare's customer was late to arrive, and the Tick, mistaking him for a real supervillain, attempted seriously to thwart him.

** Red Scare made an appearance in the live-action series as well, but in a completely different form. There, he was a 25-year-old Soviet combat android designed for one purpose: to kill [[Jimmy Carter]]. A group of diehard Russian commandos (or something) unearth it as part of a poorly-explained plan to destroy the U.S. Postal System, but the robot goes haywire (at the exact same time as Jimmy Carter arrives in town for a book signing).

* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' villain Omega Red was made as a Soviet [[Captain America]] before turning into a [[Terrorist Without a Cause]].

* One of the members of the "evil" superhero team the Ultimates of Ultimate Marvel encounter is a Russian Thor copy named Perun (the Slavic god of thunder) who carried a hammer and sickle instead of a magical hammer. The implications are obvious, despite the comic being published 15 years after the [[Cold War]] ended.

** For one thing, the actual Slavic god Perun did carry a hammer and a sickle in the old myths. For another, he's based on the 616 Perun of the Winter Guard/People's Protectorate/Supreme Soviets.

* ''[[Red Scorpion (Film)|Red Scorpion]]'' shows Russians as inhuman killing machines, except the one who turns against them.

* ''[[Rocky IV]]'' created Ivan Drago whom remains one of the most recognizable symbols of Communism of the 80s.

* America's favorite adventuring archaeologist fights some [[Dirty Communists]] in his fourth film, ''[[Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Film)|Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull]]''.

** This particular example seems more of a homage to Cold War era pulp fiction, fitting the overall theme of the series pretty well.

** ''Colonel Sun'' is an example of how politics can get REALLY ugly in the James Bond-verse. Kingsley Amis, under the pseudonym Robert Markham, wrote a very Fleming-like interpretation of the Chinese [[Dirty Communists]] threat with the titular sexual sadist. What's really appalling about the book is that the book contains countless humanized Soviet villains as it goes out of its way to say how different they are from the Chinese!

** Gen. Orlov from ''[[Octopussy (Film)|Octopussy]]'' is a full-fledged villain, but General Gogol investigates him in unwitting parallel to Bond's mission. The result of that was Gogol attempted to arrest Orlov before the East German border guards shot the renegade general dead and it's fairly obvious that if Gogol had learned Orlov's whole scheme, he would have raced to warn NATO.

* Dennis Wheatley had a real thing for bashing commies. Even in the stories for which he is now remembered, the Black Magic books, there is a Dirty Communist link, as the blurb on the back of ''The Satanist'' puts it: ''Colonel Varney had long suspected a link between Devil Worship and the subversive influence of Soviet Russia...''

* The [[Bulldog Drummond]] story ''The Black Gang''.

* ''[[Paranoia]]'' takes the notion of a Red Scare to the Nth degree and beyond, usually with humourous effect.

* The ''[[Star Drive]]'' setting has a nation called the Nariac Domain, which consists of spacefaring cyber-communists.

 

 

** Since then, the Communist parties in the West have been largely Trotskyist and claim that the Trotskyist parties of the Fourth International [[No True Scotsman|represent the only true Communism]] and that the Soviet government was actually State Capitalist. This is why the New Left in [[The Sixties]] was hostile to the rump Communist Party-US, which only gained traction during the period of US-Soviet friendship, and [[Misaimed Fandom|highly enamored]] of [[Mao Ze Dong|Chairman Mao]] instead.

*** Well, some of them were. Anarchists like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky definitely weren't.

* Considering in the [[Real Life|Real World]] most scholars are usually only divided on ''how many'' tens of millions of people were killed under various Communist rulers like, [[Josef Stalin|Stalin]] or [[Mao Ze Dong|Mao]], it wouldn't be difficult to find any number of real life figures who fit this trope to a T.

** Germany, Japan and Italy, whom we call the Axis Powers today, first called their group 'The Anti-Comintern Pact' on the strength of this trope, the Comintern meaning 'Communist International'. After all, the revolution, Red Terror, famines and purges in Russia predated Hitler's atrocities so at the time the Soviet Union had much worse PR.