The Philosophy of Amon and Communism in Avatar

is amon a communist now i'm not asking is aman a red flag waving you have nothing to lose but your chains bring up the guillotine i mean is he meant to metaphorically represent communism you may have seen cain skittles video critiquing a mons thematic representation of communism it's a good video and i can understand why you might make this connection there are a lot of parallels between the equalists and communists at a glance but i don't think amon was ever meant to represent communism there are glaring ideological differences between them and i think it's a lot more complicated than that i believe i have your attention people of youtube for centuries spenders have possessed an unnatural advantage over ordinary people with it they have exploited you all but there is another issue plaguing our city you haven't joined tim's patreon and discord but your chance is now the revolution has become first let's look at the similarities the most obvious being the desire for equality the giant surrealist posters of oman recall the propaganda posters of the soviet union and maoist china they both use red as their dominant colour equalists at various points refer to one another as brothers and sisters in the same way communists might refer to others as comrade it takes place in an early 20th century era and amman's rhetoric juxtaposes a ruling class against an oppressed class that must rise up and amon takes something from that ruling class to attain equality they're bending like a communist might take the wealth of the bourgeoisie there are also a number of other more subtle parallels that you might have missed too the famous 1917 october russian revolution was called a bloodless coup because almost nobody died in the process of taking over a relatively small group of rebels seized all of the crucial infrastructure in the capital city the railways post office communications power stations government buildings and well the revolution was won the equalist coup in republic city actually follows a very similar pattern chief all river rescue ships have been sabotaged what chief saikon tencent am i glad to see you i was afraid you'd been captured too i'm the only council member left what's the status chief the phone lines just went dead they take the power station the radio towers and kidnap members of the ruling council to paralyze the city's infrastructure it is to a relatively bloodless coup but most of these are aesthetic similarities more than they are ideological similarities and a lot of them can be put down to iman's connections to populism more than a connection to communism specifically populism is a political strategy that pits an elite class who controls society against an oppressed people who are oppressed and make up most of society and must rise up and take back control naturally communism's juxtaposition of the wealthy bourgeoisie with the proletariat fits quite neatly with this rhetorical strategy but it's not at all exclusive to it nazis used populist rhetoric to juxtapose a jewish elite with the average ethnic german while figures like trump have used it to juxtapose coastal elites or the media with the average worker equalism is going to share this rhetorical strategy in how ammon speaks and frames issues because equalism and communism are both just populist ideas i do think it's fair to say that amon's posters recall communist propaganda in colour and design but here's the thing it's okay to invoke imagery from things in our world without necessarily being that thing the empire in star wars uses nazi imagery to invoke certain connotations feelings but that doesn't mean that it's a one-to-one allegory darth vader having a redemption at the end isn't saying hitler's right-hand man heinrich himmler eventually redeemed himself no amon invokes communist revolutionary imagery to give us the feeling of an underclass rising up and the status quo being dramatically brought to an end but that doesn't mean that everything he is is an allegory for communism in the 20th century i think a lot of people latched onto the term equality as a dog whistle for communism and took it too quickly as a direct metaphor despite equality being the rallying call of a number of movements that are not communist and a number of sharp ideological differences between iman's equalism and communism for one amon focuses on bending as an impurity which he must cleanse you will now be cleansed of your impurity which uh yikes and uh don't worry we will get to that this may be why the propaganda shares commonalities with nazi and spanish nationalist posters too one even bears the slogan amon is the solution so it's not just communist imagery that they're drawing on secondly bending as an advantage someone has is very different to wealth which is why canned skittles rightly conclude that if it is a metaphor for wealth it doesn't work and it leads us to some bizarre thematic conclusions people can be born into wealth sure but it is not an inherent trait of who they are taking wealth is not destroying a part of who a person is unlike taking their bending that's why cora is so afraid of it she's defined herself by her bending for so long and the writers mike and brian seem very aware of this among was interesting to us because it's something we can all relate to i think a lot of who i am and how i identify myself is tied up in what i do as far as art and writing in the show what would i do one day if i couldn't draw or write everyone has a unique ability or personality that is part of his or her persona i think it's fascinating to explore what makes us who we are is it our jobs our hobbies our families there's no simple answer of course bending is not compared to wealth or anything that people would consider close to wealth here the writers seem very aware that this story is about losing part of what makes you who you are your abilities personality your interests and a mon is framed as someone who is designed to take those personal things away from us the story framework itself only works because it's aimed at critiquing a kind of collectivism that communism is not critiqued for defining and demonizing people by their immutable unchangeable traits namely whether they are non-benders or benders this is why tarlock and amon are paralleled you may not realize but tarlock is actually given more screen time as a villain than a monis he dominates the first two thirds of the season he oppresses non-benders he cuts off their power supply he imposes curfews on them he arrests them for peacefully protesting purely because he associates them with the equalist because they are non-benders this is an equalist rally there is nothing innocent about it they're not equalists they're just normal people who want their rights back they are the enemy round up all these equalists both oman and tarlock are shown to be targeting groups of people because of their immutable traits regardless of whether they personally oppressed others there's actually a fundamental line from korra explaining this here you're just as bad as i'm on this comparison only works because the writers wanted to portray tarlog and ammon as doing the same thing on some level rather than solving society's problems by talking and empathizing they target others with violence for things they can't control which fits quite nicely with khora's arc of not learning to rely on violence whether this is a fair comparison because amon is trying to address genuine problems with society while tarlock is trying to take power for himself is a different discussion the point is saying that communists target rich people for things they can't control was not and never has been a critique of communist philosophy even from its opponents i mean the writers never indicated they were dumb enough to believe that wealth is an inherent unchangeable part of who you are in fact they indicate quite the opposite and that quote i read out before that it's about your skills your interests and your personality that's what amon is targeting however benders are a minority in their world population so after spending three seasons dealing with a war of cultures that was largely element versus element turning our attentions to the relations between benders and non-benders gave us a fresh story to tell and with republic city being a melting pot where different kinds of benders are mingling the differences there became less about disparate cultures and more about the haves and the have-nots which in this case is about having a physical advantage and ultimately power while the writers do see commonalities between class and wealth relations and bender non-bender relations both leading to a have and have-nots dynamic they recognize that this is rooted in inherent physical capabilities leading to power even if there are some rhetorical or aesthetic similarities the issues of benders versus non-benders are unique to the world at hand our world doesn't really have inherent physical advantages as pervasive as bending someone might be smarter stronger more attractive and these will afford them some advantages but people cannot as easily draw lines to define themselves by these immutable strengths into groups and people have the ability to buff themselves up to get smarter to match them for the most part the question the mon is concerned with how do we ensure equality between those who are more genetically privileged and those less genetically privileged just simply is not a question communism tackles whereas philosophically communists are concerned with the existence of excessive wealth and thus power because they believe that having so much wealth itself depends on others having none a mons philosophy is concerned with the use of power communists view wealth as a consequence of exploitation while amon sees exploitation as a moral consequence of the inherent power of benders people having been abilities does not depend on others having none but the inherent inequality means that abuse is so rampant that the only solution is to remove it entirely with all of this i find it really hard to buy that wealth was ever the intended metaphor i think the closest someone might come to a critique of communism is that movements aimed at ensuring equal outcomes can go too far and end up undermining people's individuality by forcing them into places they would not choose which is a valid criticism cane skills also point out that a mon being revealed as a bender at the end could be a reference to how communist leaders often end up living rich and lavish lifestyles at the expense of their people that the promise of redistributing the wealth was a lie but i doubt this too the metaphor just doesn't fit because the show treats ammon as wholly genuine but i think amman truly believes bending is the source of all evil in the world no scenes ever suggest that he is somehow inauthentic in the moment where cora confronts him privately this would usually be the story beat where the villain reveals yes i'm going to be the only bender left and then nobody will be able to stop me but amman says nothing of the sort on the other hand tarlock has a moment exactly like this where he confesses to manufacturing conflict to gain more power this is a critique of how dictators come to power while amon does lie about his past and true identity if this were say a reference to stalin lying about his terrains among would do something that indicates he has an ulterior motive like tarlock but he doesn't in contrast to some communist leaders his lies in no way make life worse for his supporters amon carries out his promises as best he can amon's lie is just rhetoric and framing and that's just politics so yes a monotalk are paralleled but their goals are not treated narratively as morally equivalent talk is shown to be disingenuous only doing bad things for his own selfish gain while amon is totally authentic shown to be doing bad things for the good of others in fact those flashbacks that we see later on the series try to help us empathize with why he's doing them having the revolution fall apart once a mon is exposed could be read as saying that the whole thing was based on a lie but i think this is more likely that it's just because of the rush writing of the 12 episode season they were given rather than being an intended metaphor for saying that communist regimes are based on lies no so if one doesn't represent communism the question becomes does ammon represent anything i don't think there can be a perfect parallel to be honest but he could be called a rosian embodying john rose's two principles of justice 1. everyone deserves the same rights and liberties and 2 inequalities are only justified insofar as they benefit the most disadvantaged members of society for a mon the most disadvantaged are the non-benders while roles was talking about material inequalities ammon is still dealing with a kind of inequality related to this roles was concerned with the absolute welfare rather than the relative welfare of the most disadvantaged in other words whatever system ensures the best life for the least among us is the one we should use even if it decreases the welfare of more advantaged groups among believes eradicating bending will improve the lives of non-benders by removing the threat of violence and coercion more than bending makes life better for non-vendors in construction power generation transport etc to a mom the political arrangement where bending is outlawed and removed on principle is the system that will create the best life for non-benders but amman's rhetoric actually focuses more on the first principle that everyone is entitled to the same rights and liberties roles pointed out that people do not have the same rights and liberties if inequalities make some people more able to exercise those rights i don't know for example maybe if rich people could fund their own political campaigns and so exercise more control inequalities that violate the first principle are not allowed and oman has the same critique in republic city he points out how the government is biased towards benders and the show makes a point of tarlock ignoring the rights of non-bending citizens because what are they going to do the rights to protest freedom of speech to a fair trial to the presumption of innocence all the while the avatar does not defend those rights non-vendors may have equal rights by law but bending means that they cannot exercise those rights as easily you and your children will no longer have to walk the streets afraid they have the right to move and to speak freely in the streets as benders do but they do so in fear and to ammon the exercise of equal rights is incompatible with having bending it's still a prison even if it's an incredibly well built one but something really does warp iman's philosophy here away from roles and that's his framing of bending as an impurity those men were supposedly the best in the bending world and yet it only took a few moments for me to cleanse them of their impurity this is distinctly not rosian and not communist and it brings a pseudo-racial element into a mons ideas the closest we might come to explaining this is strasserism stressorism is an off-branch of nazism which put a lot more emphasis on the socialist part of national socialist and it emphasized economic anti-semitism above all else it played heavily into the racist trope that jews controlled the financial world and were leeches on society not producing anything of value unlike the working german to be clear this was not true then and it is not true today like nazism it employed a populist rhetoric by pitting the quote jewish elite against the quote working class germans but a key difference was that whereas hitler's nazism emphasized a clash of races or cultures stressorism emphasized class politics by conflating class with racial politics stressorites argued that the jewish people were at the heart of capitalism's problems exploiting the working class unnaturally and pure manipulative and deceitful making them richer it's a populist ideology that classifies jews as a quote economic elite because of their supposed inherent traits obviously among describing benders as impure rings a lot more familiar here slogans like ammon is the solution is an interesting choice of words and recalls fascistic talking points however again this fails as a one-to-one analogy because stressorism is based on a racist lie jewish people are not naturally deceitful not naturally manipulative nor do they unfairly occupy places of wealth and power because of their immutable traits and if you believe that get the hell out in contrast the writers fully acknowledge that benders do have an unfair advantage because of their inherent abilities and a manifest in power wealth and status which are mon critiques in the series the similarity here is that amon does seem to view the class wealth conflict in republic city as the same thing as this kind of pseudo-racial conflict between benders and non-benders gangs extort non-benders for money society idolizes pro benders in the arena and the governing council is entirely made of benders there's even an explicit critique of korra as the avatar who uses her powers violence and threats to get what she wants you're using your power to oppress and intimidate people isn't that what you came here to do you're just as bad as amman threats like this are just something non-benders aren't able to do so much korra's arc in season 1 actually serves to prove him on right as it shows how prone the avatar is in particular to oppressing others there's a distinct moment where korra's display of power isn't awe-inspiring or epic but dark destructive and villainous still think i'm a half-faked avatar cora doesn't even give a care to how much property damage she causes and thinks herself above the law she is what amon is talking about it's also implied that the avatar is going to be biased towards benders like yourself when non-benders are being rounded up you're our avatar too all of these are critiques of bending in the avatar world and not wealth in ours and forcing them to be a critique of wealth makes the story weaker than it is like pretending animal farm as a critique of animal cruelty means of course you're going to arrive at some strange conclusions iman's philosophy is a strange mix of rosian justice and extreme stressorite theory without fully fitting either of them he has a non-rosian focus on purity and he lacks the strongman nationalism that also defines stressorism there is no real parallel to our world because the issues in a world with bending come from a different place to issues and ours and so do their solutions fundamentally i think viewing a mon this way makes them more fascinating more complex and the story much more compelling that's all for me social media etc come 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Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 384,897

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, avatar, korra, amon, philosophy, communist, communism, capitalism, aang, zuko, toph, sokka, element, bending, water, fire, earth, air, bloodbending, tarrlok, season 1, scene, watch

Id: YcwExAXPkJk

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021