Fascism in ''Men Against Fire''

I’m sure at this point lots of you have heard about the tv series Black Mirror. If not, briefly it is a dystopian tv series that each episode tells different stories with different casts. Today I am gonna be talking about S3/E5, namely Men Against Fire, and try to make you think more about what you have watched. Don’t worry, I’ll try to give you a minimum amount of spoilers so that I won’t ruin it for you. 

There is a saying: too much of a good thing is bad. This can be said for some of the ideologies or goals, such as fascism or antisemitism, as we see an example in this episode of Black Mirror. Men Against Fire is an episode in which a fascist ideology took place with its all extreme concepts.

Fascism is a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts a nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.*

The events that are shown in this episode can be explained by fascism itself based on some specific details and its concepts of it. These details and concepts can be specified as; having a common enemy, manipulation, extreme situations and choices, and so on. We can give an example of the concept of having a common enemy. The military creates a technology called ‘‘mass’’ that is put in soldiers' eyes. It makes visual changes on a certain group of people so that they genocide them more easily. 

Due to the lack of some of their senses and the changes in their visions, soldiers started to see the same creatures other than human persons. In addition, by giving these creatures a specific name ''roach'' the government emphasized that roaches and humans are immensely different from each other. So, the unity against the common enemy has become stronger.

Another example could be given about manipulation. In a scene, the doctor says to a soldier that “ As humans, we don’t actually wanna kill each other, which is a good thing. Until your future depends on wiping out the enemy”. By giving soldiers historical tragic information and futuristic scary scenarios, they tried to make them someone who can’t think of their further existence outside of the possibilities that have been told to them. Hence whether it fits their values or not, they will be ready to choose the way that is given. They will be ready to choose themselves or their own nation over others’ when it comes to the matter of survival, which is the idea behind the manipulation that fascism likes to use.

Extreme situations and choices can be mentioned as the last example. We can look at a scene where the doctor asks the soldier whether he agrees to reset the mask or to go to jail. Or similarly, we can look at the fact that they claimed that roaches carry disease, but instead of curing it, they want to destroy it by killing the carriers. Both in fascism itself and in this episode, the decisions that are made are not for finding the proper solutions for everyone, but for finding the solutions that the authority benefits. Thus, this creates a prejudiced view that may come with extreme ideas due to its tendency to look at an event only from a specific perspective.

So, it is safe to say that fascism as a form of fiction is still an extreme, tricky ideology that separates even the same species with various games. Moreover, in the episode, it is shown how painful or inevitable results it may have for each and every individual.

For photos: 1 / 2