This 
is Bryan “Big Boy” Konietzko and Michael
Tortelini Dimartino, the creators of Avatar
Following the success of The Last Airbender
Bryan and Michael set out to create a more
mature followup series that would introduce
nuanced political themes
The only problem is
Mike and Bryan don’t understand political
ideologies
Book 3 and 4 are what I think of as the better
half of the Legend Of Korra, they were produced
simultaneously and Book 3 confidently sets
up characters and ideas that don’t really
pay off until Book 4, by the time Book 2 wrapped
up The Boys announced they would be doing
2 more seasons, and knew exactly when and
how it would end, which can only benefit the
writing process, so let’s see if this allowed
them to develop the political ideas in their
work a little further than they’d been able
to do previously. This time around The Boys
revisit some of the ideas they touched on
in Book 1. Questions of authority, of hierarchy.
Are these things justified? What actions are
justified in response to finding yourself
at the bottom of a hierarchy? But their approach
is slightly different this time.
The antagonists of book 3, the Red Lotus,
set themselves apart from the other enemies
Korra faces throughout the series in two key
ways. The first is that they are completely
transparent about their ideology. They explicitly
state they are anarchists multiple times while
Amon, Unaloq, and Kuvira in season 4 require
a little bit of exploration to understand
what kind of ideological gears are turning
in their heads. The second distinctive quality
the Red Lotus has, is they mean it. Anarchy
is not a convenient cloak for a quest to gain
power, these guys genuinely hold these beliefs.
Zaheer, even in defeat, is still espousing
his ideals, he never cared about taking power
for himself. He genuinely thinks the world
would be a better place for everyone if his
plan to end all nations and governments succeeded.
The Boys, however, don’t agree. In previous
seasons their go-to tactic to uhh “prove”
why someone’s ideas are wrong is to have
them not genuinely believe in the ideals they
espouse. To be using communism or environmentalism
or what have you to give an air of legitimacy
for their personal petty vengeance or hunger
for power. When The Boys don’t do that,
when they write an antagonist with actual
integrity, who believes the things they say,
their only other option if they require that
antagonist to be Wrong, is simple. Their ideas
need to be dumb as shit.
If you think Henry Rollins here sounds like
a 14 year old boy who just discovered Black
Flag and thinks this anarchy thing is pretty
cool, whatever it is. Well it’s because
he does. But before we dive into that, we
should understand the status quo that these
anarchists are fighting against in the first
place.
When the gang arrive in Ba Sing Sei they see
a city divided by a rigid class system. Literally,
there’s giant stone walls segregating the
city into the Outer, Middle, and Inner ring.
The inner ring is a beautiful landscape of
palaces and gardens while the outer ring is
a deeply impoverished slum where massive families
cram into small, poor quality homes, and fruit
stands sell rotting produce. This is meant
to be shocking and a contributory factor to
the Evilness of the Earth Queen, who is written
to be deeply unsympathetic.
But does Republic City not have an underground
shanty town full of homeless people? When
the gang discovers it in season 1 it’s made
out to be almost idyllic. The one resident
we meet is cartoonishly happy go lucky and
even expounds how tolerant and equal everyone
is down there. What is bad under monarchy
becomes good under liberal democracy and capitalism.
Or at the very least it becomes an acceptable
price to pay.
Or how about when the Queen drafts the air
benders into her army, something clearly depicted
as terrible, as tantamount to kidnapping.
As if the real world parallel of the United
Republic has never had a draft before? From
the perspective of The Boys: We’ve agreed
the absolute rule of monarchs is unacceptable.
This means they are able to criticise monarchy
in a way that they seem to suddenly become
blind to the moment the object of said criticism
becomes a system more akin to the one they
live in. It’s a blind spot you notice a
lot throughout the series, as we’ve touched
on before.
And we only know about the underground shanty
town beneath Republic City or the impoverished
slums in the Outer Ring of Ba Sing Sei because
our protagonists visit them. But the way they
interact with these places is telling. They
rarely have much to say about the incredible
poverty around them, and they certainly don’t
discuss these economic circumstances or the
system that designed them with the people
who live in these places. They’re more than
happy to forget about them and hang out in
mansions and palaces.
But you know who we never see in the shanty
town or the outer ring? You know who we never
ONCE see having a conversation with a normal
person, with a worker or a peasant or an otherwise
oppressed member of society? The Red Fucking
Lotus. Zaheer’s entire plan to liberate
the people and bring about a non-authoritarian
anarchist society is to never interact with
the people, to turn up and assassinate the
Queen, President, whoever, and then announce
over the radio “there you go, fuckinnnn
figure it out my dudes” and then just leave.
Throughout history, kings and queens were
assassinated or otherwise died unexpectedly
all the time. You know what generally happened?
Their successor would take the throne, and
the power structure would carry on.
In fact at the beginning of season 4 Prince
Wu was set to do EXACTLY that. And he would
have, if not for Kuvira taking advantage of
the instability and the power vacuum caused
by the assassination. You know, the vacuum,
that great void where an organised working
class movement should have been. Whoopsie.
So with all that in mind what was the point
of killing the Earth Queen?
Do The Boys think that an individual leader
IS the system? IS the government?
A mindset that might have you thinking all
the terrible things that have happened under
the Trump administration are unique to Donald
Trump with no thought to a system and a culture
that permitted these things to begin with.
Trapping you in the mentality that if we can
just beat The Bad Man everything will be Good
Again.
At first I thought they simply wanted to depict
Zaheer as thinking that way, to show that
he doesn’t understand how power can be systemic,
rather than held by individuals alone. But
the second he announces the Queen is dead,
the people begin to riot, loot, and burn their
city. Apparently all the super powered guards
disappear with the queen? Apparently the people
suddenly stop fearing for their safety and
family and begin doing all sorts of violent
shit the second the leader dies? Why? Do The
Boys think this happened whenever a monarch
died? Most people likely didn’t even think
that much about it, like when a new president
is elected it just means a new monarch will
be crowned shortly. Literally nothing changes.
And what a high opinion of The People The
Boys seem to have, as soon as the status quo
is disrupted in any way they immediately set
fire to the place. Again… Why?
This is presented as exactly what Zaheer expected
to happen. With all his weird poetry about
chaos being the natural order we can assume
this is in no way a surprise to him. But here’s
the problem. That’s not what anarchists
think.
Anarchists don’t think the concept of chaos
will magically fix society's problems. I don’t
think.. Anyone believes that. That’s not
a real political position that anyone has.
The Boys have crafted a perfectly ridiculous
strawman that communicates a clear message:
the people questioning the status quo, challenging
the hierarchies that exist in our society,
don’t have a real plan, and haven’t thought
this through.
Anarchists believe that capitalism and private
property not only inhibit the freedom of the
vast majority of people but cause them needless
social and economic hardship. And this system
is enforced by the state, which must be done
away with or radically transformed to accomodate
a more equitable society. And that doesn’t
mean everyone gets paid the same and shares
a toothbrush, it means people have common
ownership of the means of production, of property.
Anarchy is at its core about democratic control
of the things we need to keep society running
which are currently in the hands of a wealthy
ruling class who is able to dictate their
will unto us in a distinctly top-down way.
In a hierarchy.
In order to achieve this kind of world, you
would need to elevate the class consciousness
of the people dramatically. People are not
used to having this kind of control over society,
over their own destiny. We are still trapped
in a mindset of looking to leaders for guidance
in a way that makes many of us averse to this
kind of system. And that’s not a personal
shortcoming, it’s the result of the environment
we live in. We have very little control over
our environment, even if we’re sold an idea
of independence that is entirely superficial,
so many of us are trapped in jobs where even
out bathroom breaks are controlled, we’re
conditioned to not have autonomy. This means
education and organising with other working
class people or peasants in this case has
to be at the FOREFRONT of any anarchist’s
plan to transform society, and indeed any
mass movement that wants to succeed.
But Zaheer and the Red Lotus don’t do that.
They don’t educate people, they don’t
build solidarity and confidence in these oppressed
communities, they turn up from out of town
and off their leader. Their so called revolution
has no involvement from the people. We don’t
even know to what degree people disagree with
the status quo, because nobody ever asks them.
These “anarchists” who claim to be liberating
the people without ever engaging with them
are delivering a distinctly Top Down revolution.
There was never any way this could go other
than a new ruler coming in to take the throne
because they built nothing, they planned nothing.
The people had no idea what to do when the
system was suddenly pulled out from under
them because they didn’t even know it was
happening.
Pick any country in the world. Do you think
if you went and eliminated whoever was in
charge and sent out a message to all the people
to Just Do An Anarchy Now that they’d do
it? Or would they regard you as some weirdo
terrorist and ignore you. There is no revolution
without the people, you cannot build a world
where things are collectively owned and operated
without collective action. Anyone who knew
even the first thing about what anarchists
actually want and believe could tell you that.
But The Boys decided the vague and inaccurate
notion of anarchist politics that I have to
imagine they got from watching The Dark Knight
would suffice for exploring the ideological
opposition to authority.
The Boys are so deep in the ideological framework
of Capitalist Realism that they can’t even
imagine an anarchist revolution that isn’t
Top Down. That isn’t being thrust upon the
people without their consent or involvement,
by a few Great Men.
And what’s more, they have a weird focus
on the individualist aspects of anarchy. At
one point Zaheer says this.
Even your more individualist anarchists understand
COLLECTIVE POWER as the key to individual
liberation. I was confused when Zaheer came
out with this highly conservative “I just
gotta look after me and mine” sentiment,
but then it hit me. The Boys don’t know
the difference between anarcho communism and
anarcho capitalism. Once you come to that
realisation it all starts to make sense. Of
course they weren’t doing real revolutionary
work, of course they had no concept of class
consciousness or building power among the
people. They’re a freaky mishmash of left
and right. And the only thing ancoms and ancaps
really have in common is an opposition to
the state, supposedly.
But with that in mind, of COURSE Zaheer’s
ideology boils down to Chaos Reigns. When
you strip away all the actual substance of
anarchy until there’s nothing left but an
opposition to authority, to states and heirarchy,
you’ll find you’ve stripped away the REASONS
that anarchists are opposed to these things.
Leaving nothing but a lifeless husk of an
ideology. One that is easily dismissed as
juvenile, and misguided.
But simply having a poorly thought out ideology
isn’t quite enough to make The Red Lotus
as villainous as we need them to be. They
also do a lot of very bizarre things that
don’t really gel with their anarchist philosophy.
Like when they threaten to commit a second
air nomad genocide to get to the Avatar. Or
when they gratuitously torture Korra in a
scene that I can only describe as grossly
fetishistic and I think The Boys have some
explaining to do.
Matter of fact have you noticed that Amon
and Zaheer are portrayed as more frightening
than any of the other antagonists Korra faces?
That the distinctly anti oppression guys give
her nightmares and torture her until she looks
like this, something no other foes she faces
even come close to. Now on your first watch
you might not have noticed that pattern…
but your brain did.
Anarchy is foolish. Idealistic. Dangerous.
The problems of Ba Sing Sei are very real
but the answer is not to radically change
the system. It’s to have those same problems
but enforced by elected representatives instead
of hereditary leaders. What a coincidence
that the solution happens to be the system
The Boys live in today. Once again, the status
quo is untouched, even when the text itself
tells us liberal democracy does NOT solve
these problems. What message can we take from
The Legend Of Korra other than a clear statement
that these problems CAN’T be solved. That
we CAN’T prevent homelessness and starvation.
That we just have to accept things the way
they are and hope we can vote in a good guy
next time who will slightly lessen the burden,
until the next election at least.
After all, It’s easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism.
