Peacemaker Issues Important Message to Trump Supporters Who Are Too Angry to Listen

Photo: HBO

Speculation about twists and theories surrounding Peacemaker season 2 spread quickly after the premiere. Early on, many viewers suspected that the alternate-dimension Christopher Smith (John Cena) hadn’t simply found a better life — he had crossed into a darker, corrupted reality. One popular guess was that the show had transported characters to Earth‑X, the DC Comics timeline where the Nazis won and the United States became a racist dictatorship.

That theory proved accurate. When our Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) steps into Earth‑X in episode 6 (which creator James Gunn has sometimes called Earth‑2), she immediately notices what Chris had overlooked: the near absence of nonwhite people and an ARGUS headquarters bedecked with a mural of Adolf Hitler. The concept — an alternate history where the Nazis prevail — is a long-standing narrative device (see shows like The Man in the High Castle). Still, because of today’s political climate, Peacemaker ignited outrage in some corners of social media.

After the reveal, a number of right‑leaning accounts on X seized the moment to attack the show, the broader DC Universe, and DC Studios co‑CEO James Gunn (who helps oversee both the studio and the franchise) for allegedly making an anti‑MAGA statement. Those responses are overwrought. Nazis have been a go‑to antagonist for decades because they symbolize unequivocal evil.

The real‑world Nazis of the 1930s and ’40s were brutally authoritarian and deliberately targeted millions of people for extermination. Their systemic, state‑sponsored violence and scapegoating are well documented. Imagining a world in which they triumphed is consequently terrifying; that’s why Nazi‑victory alternate histories are a persistent trope across film, television, and literature. Their role in fiction is to embody monstrous cruelty that deserves condemnation.

If we can agree that historical Nazism was horrific, then much of the anger directed at Peacemaker season 2 isn’t about fictional fascists so much as the mirror the story holds up. Some viewers bristle at the suggestion that certain strains of modern nationalism could resemble fascism. Gunn acknowledges, implicitly, how easy it is to grow comfortable in a world that benefits you and overlook the suffering it causes. His point is blunt: white nationalism, however it’s packaged, is a racist ideology that must be named as such.

On Earth‑2, Chris initially believes he’s found an idyllic life: his father and brother are alive and supportive, and the woman he loves returns his affection. Those personal gains blind him to the broader, chilling reality — the world he’s stepped into is a Nazified dystopia. Gunn’s broader argument is that self‑interest can make people blind to injustice; material comforts, career gains, or social status can be enough to obscure systemic cruelty.

Put simply: when you’re focused on attractive benefits, it’s easy to ignore the rotten foundations that produced them.

Given Gunn’s outspoken criticisms of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement — and the 2018 episode that cost him a Marvel job after old joke tweets were weaponized by far‑right actors — it’s unsurprising that some audiences read political intent into his work. His politics have invited hyperbolic critiques before; for instance, his 2025 Superman film was branded “too woke” by some critics, and there have been baseless online claims about characters like Sasha Bordeaux being substitutes for established heroes (she is not; Sasha has a long, separate history in DC Comics).

Still, it feels reductive to claim Gunn is simply equating all conservatives with Nazis. The season’s Earth‑X storyline is adapted from a decades‑old comic premise and uses a familiar comic‑book device to make a larger ethical point: empathy and equality should matter more than personal advantage. That lesson transcends partisan labels, even if the people who most need to hear it are often too busy stoking outrage online to listen.

Source: Polygon