Will you still be anti-racist even if you’re the most beautiful, most intelligent, and most powerful human being?
Naoki Urasawa’s manga entitled Monster tells the story of Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a compassionate Japanese physician traveling across Europe to defeat a strange antagonist known as Johan Liebert. Johan is a unique villain because he actually cares for Tenma. He is all praises for the doctor who migrated to Germany to become one of the country’s top neurosurgeons.
But it gets weirder. Johan wants Tenma to kill him off. And it’s not because Johan relishes murder for the sake of it. According to Urasawa’s novel Another Monster, Johan is not a pleasure killer. In fact, he always suppresses his desires to advance causes that matter to him. So what does Johan want? And what does he teach us about racism?
Johan Liebert is a product of a eugenics project. His parents were set up so that they could produce the most intelligent and athletic Czechoslovakians. Johan was then subjected to several abusive experiments that were meant to turn him into the superior European dedicated to asserting his race’s dominance.
The eugenics project is a success to a great extent. Johan turns out to be far more gorgeous and more intelligent than anyone. No one can outdo him in anything. Johan has such superior aptitudes that he has become a killing machine that confuses government authorities about the culprit behind the crimes that he commits. While other manga villains must wield superpowers to defeat the protagonists, Johan’s talents as a human being are more than enough to wreak havoc upon society. He also doesn’t feel like he should call on a deity to subjugate his enemies. He only has to exercise his natural abilities to advance whatever cause he chooses. Both the Nazis and the communists are also offering him all their resources so that he can become the supreme leader of the White race. Plus he has unimaginable wealth himself.
Johan can therefore murder Tenma and all of the physician’s allies if he wants to. In fact, he was bred for the purpose of killing someone like Tenma because the latter is a Japanese immigrant in Europe. Moreover, Tenma helps other migrants, both legal and illegal.
Yet Johan spares his life. He even chooses Tenma to bring him to justice, which is a slap in the face of White supremacists. Johan also refrains from massacring other ethnic groups even if he can. And that’s why despite his Luciferian crimes, Johan is also a hero... and has more integrity than the social justice warriors (SJWs) tweeting about racism as they lounge in Starbucks. No, there aren’t any SJWs sipping frappuccino in either the Monster manga or in its anime adaptation. Johan simply holds up SJWs to a standard that they cannot meet by embodying Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch. Such a person creates his own morality that transcends those of the masses. He possesses all the abilities that are necessary to impose his ethics upon society for the sake of all of humanity’s progress. None of us will ever become that gifted or moral.
Instead, we are not outright bigots because our limited skills render us unable to muster the kind of violence that will assert our identity group’s superiority. We also fear the consequences of letting our inner racist manifest. Then we mistake our ineptitude and cowardice for anti-racism. But we do maltreat those who we think are beneath us. For example, we gossip about co-workers or clamor for more state programs that are going to be paid for by people who earn less than we do. Demonizing others for behaving differently from us is also a projection of our hidden weaknesses. Finally, victimhood is now fashionable! People now want to be considered oppressed thanks to pseudointellectual theories that posit that the more victimized you are, the more privileges society must confer upon you.
Monster fans have commented about how demonic Johan Liebert is. The truth is that despite his evil heart, he is the most meritocratic of all the characters in the anime. Seeing that Kenzo Tenma has the competence and the character to advance the human race, he uses his talents to drive the physician to a position where the latter can be the new Ubermensch regardless of Tenma’s ethnicity. Johan sees Tenma as an individual, not as a Japanese man who’s guilty of Japan’s crimes against humanity in World War II. Now THAT is real tolerance!
I can’t imagine what will happen to therapists if we discriminate against people based on circumstances that they can’t control. Doing so will entail cancelling Dr. Michael Iwama for the rape of Filipino women in the hands of Japanese soldiers. And may God have mercy on us if we stop reading Snell’s Clinical Anatomy just because Westerners published it.
A human being must not be treated merely as part of a group that should bear the guilt of their ancestors. We must therefore see every person as a unique individual. More importantly, may we consider others as better than ourselves even when we have reasons to believe that we’re superior to them.
(Photo by Clay Banks)
Comentários