When Race Trumps Story: Black Panther – an Alt-Right Superhero for Leftists

By Timothy C. Trepanier

Imagine that Hitler and Oprah had a baby, and that baby’s name was Shaft (or perhaps Helmut). He would be like a skinhead, but with an afro. One hand raised in protest as a fist, the black power salute, clutching a flag emblazoned with a rainbow coloured swastika. The other hand attempting a feeble, limp-wristed Seig Heil, barely mustering the strength to hold a piece of fried chicken, coincidentally shaped like a hammer and sickle.

He wears a dark hoodie with a picture of Che Guevara, who himself is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Richard Spencer being punched by Chairman Mao, who is wearing a red MAGA baseball cap, loaned to him by Joseph Goebbels, the original founder of Antifa. His archetype – Pepe the gorilla, sipping on a soy milkshake.

This baby was no ordinary baby, for he was destined for greatness. He grew up to be the benevolently xenophobic, compassionately despotic emperor of the ethnically pure, 100% genuinely fictional country of Wakanda. His name is T’Challa (the artist formerly known as Kangz), and he is here to chew watermelon-flavoured bubblegum and kick some deplorable butts, and he’s all out of bubblegum!

To say that Black Panther is a mess of incongruities and contradictions would be an understatement. Not the movie itself per se, but the way it’s being marketed as some kind of watershed moment for dark-skinned people worldwide. A quick glance of leftist friendly headlinesand one would have little doubt that T’Challa must be the new saviour of the world, like some kind of revolutionary Black Jesus.

It’s hard to imagine a person whose whole sense of being and belonging in the world is so fragile that their self-worth depends solely on identifying with a comic book character from the 60s written by a couple of white Jewish dudes. It’s actually kind of sad when you think about it.

And it’s not like black people don’t have a plethora of real-life examples of heroes to draw inspiration from. Leaders, innovators, statesmen, activists, politicians, inventors and artists. There are even numerous examples in the world of cinema that tell heroic black stories and showcase black talent behind and in front of the camera. So, why all the hullabaloo about this particular movie and why now?

If one were conspiratorially-minded, one might think that Hollywood and the mainstream media are going out of their way to deliberately drive a wedge between different groups of people.

Whether wielding the heavy-handed club of ‘intersectional feminism’ to sow discord between men and women, or dangling the grisly specter of ‘Islamophobia’ in order to demonize anyone remotely critical of a third world religion composed of jihadi head-choppers, or in the case of the new Black Panther movie, using the identity politics of race to further divisions between arbitrary groups of people based only on something as shallow as skin color. It’s almost as if The Powers That Be are fanning the flames of division on purpose, in a glaringly obvious attempt to incite an all-out race war.

And the ironic thing is that in the Black Panther movie, the country of Wakanda comes off like a weirdly utopian version of the way liberals envision Trump’s America. The Black Panther rules as king. The country is conservative, anti-globalist and nationalist. Walls protect the kingdom from outside influence. Pride in your race and county of origin is emphasized. They have an isolationist immigration policy and Wakanda is a hierarchical society that’s intentionally racially homogeneous.

In this review from the Daily Wire, the author generously gives the movie an 85% rating, while still pointing out that its overall theme is staunchly conservative.

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is so deeply conservative that it makes Captain America look like a washed-up neo-Marxist Berkeley grad who spends their days of unemployment shouting “speech is violence” from the rooftops at a Ben Shapiro rally. But that doesn’t stop virtue-signalling progressive libtards from publishing specific “rulez” for white people to follow before seeing the movie: “When you go see it, unless you specifically came with us… Don’t comment on our outfits, don’t report us to theatre management cuz we got chicken wings in our bag, don’t comment on our children’s behavior, whether to shame or praise… don’t say anything. And if you touch our hair, we get to slap you.”

One of them even published a whole article about the necessity for black people to verbally shut down any white person who dares to offer even an opinion about the movie. He recommends doing this by emulating an actual scene in the movie where a character loudly grunts and barks like a gorilla until every pasty faced know-nothing learns how to shut their privileged pie-hole: “One thing, however, that we can and definitely should start doing is what M’Baku and his Que Dog Jabari Tribe did when encountering a problematic white dude who was speaking when there was no ask or need or purpose for the thoughts and opinions of problematic white dudes.”

Not a purposeless bark. This isn’t a shih tzu barking through the window at a squirrel. Instead this would be an intentional bark. A targeted bark. An overpowering bark. A drowning bark. A Wakandan bark. A bark meant to communicate: “Um, who told you that you can speak? When it is time for your words, we will let you know. And maybe that time will never come. We’ll see. Now, just shut up and stand there. Maybe get on your phone and google ‘How not to be a colonizer.’ Whatever you do, I want to hear you not speaking.”

Here’s a novel idea – if we are going to look to movies to provide an archetypal example of how to live our lives and operate in the world, how about we empathize and identify with the hero’s actions and not only the color of their skin? How about we put race issues aside for just a moment and judge this movie on the merits of actual film-making and storytelling, and let everyone enjoy it regardless of rigid ideological categories?

In the end, the question remains: what’s the difference between Nazis on the right and Antifa on the left? Nothing, apparently. Absolutely nothing at all.

For an alternative perspective on the Black Panther movie, away from the race-baiting inflammatory mainstream media, here are some YouTube videos worthy of consideration: Sargon of Akkad video, Joe Rogan video, Paul Joseph Watson video.

yogaesoteric
March 6, 2020