C Scott Jordan's Ten Farcical Fascists

Time and again we need a reminder. Some of us need to be violently shaken from our slumber on a bed of apathy. And our good friends who take up the Antifa flag set that watchman and certainly declare what they see, loud and clear. However, there is something that reaches more to the masses. Popular culture. And while many songs and art instillations do their work to put fascism in its place, I feel film is the realm where certain concepts can be taken on more completely. Film gives us the ability to play with what otherwise might be illogical, inconceivable, and confounded by multiple interpretations and perspectives. Most importantly film can give and take away power where otherwise, in the real world, this can often seem an impossibility.

There is no shortage of antifascist films. Indeed, one of the greatest films of all time is 1985’s Come and See from the Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov. Described as a film belonging to both the horror and tragedy genre, this film stands against war, fascism, and human violence. Its visuals combine with the arch of its teenage protagonist, Flyora, to take us along for a ride through the history of human suffering during the Nazi occupation of Belarus in the 1940s. Nothing quite captures the lengths of humanity’s ability to make itself suffer than the lens of the loss of childhood followed by the violent thrust into adulthood. Though, it must be noted that this is no film for the masses, especially those with weak constitutions. Even the most well-adjusted viewer will get up from the credits shook, and quite possibly changed. This may not be the best way to take on fascism. We often need a keen look in the mirror, though a mirror distorted just enough can help us see what is otherwise not necessarily clear. While distortion should be undertaken with extreme caution, funhouse mirrors in particular help broaden our perspective on things. While realism in film certainly brings things home, it is comedy that can really capture the absurdity of something so terrible as fascism. So, to begin our antifascist journey through cinema here is my list of ten films that highlight the silliness of fascism. In laughing at the clowns, perhaps we can remove their power in the real world. So, sit back and let’s enjoy some lovely films and take the piss out of those fascist bastards!

1. My imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler

If one film could be seen as the comedic spiritual opposite to Come and See, it would have to be Taika Waititi’s 2019 satire Jojo Rabit. Our protagonist is a ten-year-old member of Hitler’s Youth, Johannes ‘Jojo’ Betzler, who is accompanied by his dreamt-up approximation of Adolf Hitler, portrayed by Waititi himself. This is one of a very short list of films that begins with a young impressionable boy being given a pep talk by his imaginary Hitler and shouting ‘Hail Hitler’ multiple times, growing exponentially in volume and intensity before the title card. Waititi’s Hitler becomes both the angel and devil figures of conscious as Jojo asks him increasingly difficult questions until he runs out of the ability to rationalise the worldview he is imposing upon the boy. The situation is further complicated when he discovers that his mother, a voice of peace and stability in a Germany-gone-mad, is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic. A packed cast includes Rebel Wilson, who embodies the apathetic German who follows her orders, unaware of the full extent of the Nazi’s doings, and Sam Rockwell, the leader of the local Hitler Youth organisation slowly realising his identity and the worldview he preaches are incompatible. The ‘Hail Hitler’ opening shouted at the audience is brilliantly juxtaposed with Jojo, becoming aware of the buffoon that is his imaginary friend and by extension Hitler, shouts ‘fuck you Hitler’ before kicking him through the window of his bedroom, effectively severing his devotion to Nazi propaganda. The film also cleverly shows us how fascism literally causes a city, a nation, and a people to spoil and decay while juggling tearjerking tragedy and chortles of gut-wrenching comedy.

2. Adenoid Hynkel

Adenoid Hynkel represents the classic, farcical analogue of Adolf Hitler. The 1940 film that brings Hynkel to life, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator is the standard of antifascist satirical cinema. Chaplin portrays both Hynkel and a former Jewish soldier, suffering from amnesia, who becomes a barber in the fictionalised German nation of Tomania. Even Benito Mussolini was taken on through the dictator Benzo Napaloni of Bacteria, the fictionalised version of Italy. Coming out at the height of World War II, the targets of this satire was made obvious by the use of certain motifs and symbols. The Great Dictator also represents a rare case where the subject of the satire was still alive and at large. Following a botched assassination plot against Hynkel, that the barber was roped into, the barber is suddenly mistaken for Hynkel just as he undertakes the invasion of Osterlich, a fictionalised version of Austria. With all the troops gathered, the barber takes to the stage, all thinking he is Hynkel, and gives one of the greatest antifascist speeches put to film, announcing that he has had a change of heart and will abandon his dictatorial ways, ushering in a new era of democracy for Tomania. The film was largely popular in the United States and would become an essential piece for British propaganda during the war, although it was produced while Great Britain had a policy of appeasement with Germany.

3. ‘Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden’

As a young American Jewish man, having served as a combat engineer in the US Army during World War II, Mel Brooks had always seen Adolf Hitler and Nazi fascism as his greatest adversary. Hitler and the Nazis in fact feature, even in small ways, in almost all of his films. But it was his 1967 film The Producers, where he crafted them into the ultimate clowns. When wanning theatre producer Max Bialystock is faced with indiscrepancies with his taxes, his accountant Leo Bloom discovers that he could make more money if he was certain that his next show would be a flop. To ensure this plot could come to fruition, they search for the worst play imaginable. They come across ‘Spring Time for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden’, written by a Hitler-loving Nazi in New York, pairing this with the worst director and cast they could find. They were certain the show will close before the end of Act I. After a bombastic and overly offensive opening number Bialystock and Bloom are sure that all will go to plan, but the direction and cast are so bad that, in actuality, the production comes off as a clever parody of the script as originally written. The actor who was cast to play Hitler is such a bad actor he plays him as himself, a smooth-talking beatnik which transforms Hitler into a fool which enraptured the audience in laughter. Instead of being the quickest cancelled shows in history, it becomes one of the most popular shows. Landing themselves in prison they start over with a new production: ‘Prisoners in Love’. With Hitler personally pacified in this film, it stands as one chapter in Mel Brooks’s long career of removing the fangs from such evils as fascism, xenophobia, and hate.

4. Standartenführer Hans Landa

Quentin Tarantino’s brand of filmmaking blends violence, witty dialogue, and absurdity to place this entry more firmly in the category of black comedy. While his 2009 film Inglorious Basterds goes to great lengths to paint Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in a less than favourable light – especially in the third act – the crosshairs of his satire are focussed on Christoph Waltz’s portrayal of SS officer Hans Landa. In Landa, Waltz perfectly incarnates evil in a blend of cold-hearted anger, eloquent speech, eccentricity, and hypocrisy. Landa is the ultimate hunter of Jewish people in one of the greatest cold openings seen on the silver screen. The story positions Hans Landa as coincidentally placed in the path of the Basterds – a black ops commando unit of Americans led by Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine, who collect the scalps of the Nazis they kill and carve swastikas into the foreheads of those they allow to live only so that they may spread tales of terror to other Nazis. When the Basterds are called in to assist British forces in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at a film premiere in France, Landa is presented with an opportunity. As a ‘fan’ of the Basterds he has longed to make contact with them, to see if the stories told of them are true. So enamoured by them, when he catches a couple of them at the film premiere, he agrees to allow their plot to carry on if they can promise him safe passage if he turns cloak. In Tarantino’s alternate history World War II film, things rarely go as planned and violent delights always get their violent ends.

5. Dr Strangelove

The 1964 film Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is lauded as Stanley Kubrick’s magnum opus and one of the most influential films ever made. Ostensibly, Dr Strangelove stands primarily against nuclear proliferation and the absurdities of the Cold War. However, underneath this classic Cold War farce is a looming shadow of fascism in the shape of the titular Dr Strangelove, a wheelchair-bound former Nazi, nuclear war expert played by Peter Sellers. Dr Strangelove is introduced within the war room where the American president and Soviet premiere meet to try to prevent nuclear war between their two countries. Aside from a case of alien limb syndrome, where Dr Strangelove involuntarily extends his right arm in a Nazi salute, the quirky character appears the ultimate embodiment of fascism propaganda, welcoming the end of the world as others race to prevent the strike. A world where fascism is denied the reigns of global dominance is best a world destroyed in cumulatively expressed in Dr Strangelove rising from his wheel chair at the moment when all hope is lost proclaiming to his ‘Führer’ that he could walk again. Fascism is portrayed here not only as a worldview of the insane, but one that even dements and twists the body as it did with Dr Strangelove.

6. High Chancellor Adam Sutler and the Norsefire Party

Acclaimed novelist and wizard Alan Moore’s graphic novels all containmajor antifascist themes, but none go so directly as V for Vendetta, adapted to 2005 film of the same name by James McTeigue and the Wachowskis. Set in a dystopian future Britain ruled over by a fascist authoritarian regime helmed by the ubernationalist Norsefire Party and High Chancellor Adam Sutler, an ironic portrayal where John Hurt, having formerly played Winston Smith in 1984’s 1984, now plays a Big Brother equivalent in Sutler. Propaganda drives a society that imprisons and executes all undesirables including immigrants, those of different sexual preferences, those who worship alternate religions, or who embrace other ideas or lifestyles. In a tightly controlled society, one vigilante stands up against the totalitarian system, an individual known as V, who sports a mask in the likeness of Guy Fawkes, a controversial figure of resistance and antifascism infamously one of the conspirators behind the gunpowder plot of 1605. Where Sutler is certainly the face of fascism in this film, the complacency of a people and the well-oiled propaganda machine of complete media control go so far that even as the party leaders being purged, the show goes on. The film proports, along with our vigilante, V, that ideas are stronger than anything and outlast regimes and oppressive policies.

7. The United Citizens Federation

Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers is one of the most misunderstood films, as it parodies fascist society to the point of almost appearing to be arguing for it. The film is roughly based on the 1959 book of the same name from the controversial sci-fi novelist Robert A. Heinlein. However, Verhoeven’s vision comes from a much more absurdist and violent lens than Heinlein’s book. Known for his over-the-top displays of death and destruction – as seen in 1987’s Robocop and 1990’s Total Recall – he blends blood and gore with intercut advertisements, that are beyond-the-pale absurd in their displays of commercialism and propaganda, to reveal the true satire at play here. Constant and repeated messaging from the universe of this film ask us to be more violent humans and join the United Citizens Federation’s fight against the enemy. Starship Troopers is essentially a coming-of-age story on a future Earth which found itself at the brink of total destruction, only to be united in a struggle against the threat of an insect-like alien that surfaced following a colonialist exercise by the United Citizens Federation on a distant planet. We follow a group of friends as they finish school and join the Mobile Infantry charged with fighting and killing the alien threat. We see first-hand how generational violence, all of the mentors in Mobile Infantry are horribly maimed and have seen all their friends killed, propels a fascist society with the help of propaganda and a heavily controlled education system. In case the fascist point was not made clear enough, the highest ranking in the Mobile Infantry wear uniforms and long coats that are oddly similar to the uniforms seen in Nazi Germany. Any character who might be able to make a difference is killed as the complacent and conformist characters survive and work their way up the ladder. Empathy for the alien ‘Other’ is completely denied. This entry is a rather nihilistic one, but fascism, especially in the future is not likely to be rainbows and sunshine.

8. Illinois Nazis

American Nazis have always been a strange phenomenon that many in the US wish to remain ignorant of their existence. However, since 1998 gave us Tony Kaye’s brutal film American History X, white supremacy in the US has been given increasing attention from film and popular media. But before this the American Nazi Party was lampooned in John Landis’s 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Some Americans’ first exposure to American Nazis was through this Saturday Night Live sketch turned film following two musically talented brothers, putting together their old band for a ‘mission from God’ to prevent the shutdown of the orphanage that raised them. Along this sojourn around the Chicagoland area, they run into a demonstration put on by the Nazi party that they decide to crash after John Belushi’s character utters the famous line ‘I hate Illinois Nazis’. By driving their car through the demonstration they add the Illinois Nazis, their leader portrayed by the affable Henry Gibson, to a coalition of enemies that include the National Guard, firefighters, law enforcement officers, a country music band they upstaged, and a mysterious shotgun-wielding woman out to kill the brothers, all on their tails as they try to pull off one big gig. Although the film is certainly in the genre of goofball comedy, the scene featuring the Illinois Nazis is a sobering display of white supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric set to the backdrop of foaming-at-the-mouth Americans disgusted by their presence and the police in between upholding their constitutional rights to free speech and demonstration. An image that looks quite different nowadays!

9. Team America: World Police

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, of South Park fame, bring us an interesting addition to this list with 2004’s Team America: World Police. At hindsight you would think the films ‘protagonists’ are fighting the fascists. However, in their bombastic demonstration of militarism, racism, and destructive foreign policy, this film highlights the fascist nature of American society that was kicked into overdrive following 9/11 and into the ‘War on Terror’. Team America is an international counterterrorism force that ends up seeing out their ends regardless of the collateral damage, which in the opening scene is most of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre. In taking on a coalition of ‘Islamic terrorists’ and liberal actors led by Kim Jong-Il, the former dictator of North Korea, the fascist face behind the US’s foreign actions is brought front and centre. It is interesting how the use of puppets in this film plays at the uncanny valley, giving an eerie distorted mirror on American exceptionalism and quest for supremacy. Although largely focussed on critiquing the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of the time, the film could be easily remade today with a few names and locations switched out. Although a clear satire of American exceptionalism turned fascism, the film is readily quoted by Americans on both sides of the political divide. Should ‘America, Fuck Yeah,’ one of the films memorable themes, be played, numerous Americas are ready to sing along at full volume. Some ironically, and some not.

10. Donald Trump Analogues

Donald Trump is an interesting character. Numerous films made throughout his life have antagonist characters that have been modelled after him and what he represents, even before he was elected President of the United States in 2016. There are even some characters that predate Trump’s birth that make you do a double take when looking at Trump’s actions today. Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons, Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, and Gordon Gekko from Wall Street have all been tied to the inspiration of Donald Trump. But, since his leaving office in 2020, a proliferation of characters have featured on the silver screen with funny hair, odd accents, or lots of money and a rude, bullying demeanour. One example is Pedro Pascal’s character Maxwell Lord in 2020’s Wonder Woman 1984, a failed businessman who works to save his company and gain power and influence by stealing a stone that grants people their dreams. Another is 2025’s Mickey 17, featuring Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall, a failed politician turned leader of a deep space colony to the planet of Niflheim. His arrogance, funny speech patterns, and even Ivanka Trump-like wife Yfla, played by the talented Toni Collette, ooze with a Trumpian sentiment – even though filmmaker Bong Joo Hon denies anything like Trump to be his intension when writing the character. We are even seeing portraits of Trump himself, such as Sebastian Shaw’s embodiment of the Donald in 2024’s The Apprentice. Though perhaps it is too early to rule on the fascistic tendencies of Donald Trump, but a quick glance at his supporters, his policies, and the 6 January 2021 incident, one cannot help but think. If the shoes fits…