Superhero TV Shows Take on White Supremacy.

• Date: 01 October 2022
• Author: George, Joe
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Author: George, Joe

"Ripped from the headlines." That's the tagline for the long-running Law & Order television series franchise, promising realistic storylines where fictional police officers grapple with real-world issues. One might think that this approach would lead to many episodes about white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other forms of nationalist violence.

To be sure, a handful of Law & Order episodes have indeed dealt with neo-Nazis, and even comedies such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Black-ish have portrayed racism in various forms. But most shows choose to ignore radical racial hate.

But that's not the case with action shows. Whether it's the drug runners that Walter White (Bryan Cranston) defeats in the final episode of Breaking Bad or the biker gang threatening Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) in the first season of True Detective, violent white nationalists make clear bad guys, simple villains to be defeated by the show's...