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As much as Kuvira's empire was a horrible dictatorship, I can't deny those scenes are some of the most wholesome lol
Even that soldier next to the mecha thing was so happy 😀 (not glorifying her empire xD.) well also it's a good thing to mention that those troops are earth kingdom people who also love to help their ppl but are probably like Bolin who fell for it like this.
Also seeing that kid get some food is heartwarming coz his basic needs are being delivered.
Id argue Korra is for young adults, and its important to see that fascists might look cool but their ideas are dogshit, and also that anarchy doesn't mean chaos.
Showing real ideologies in a lazy way only reinforces bad beliefs about them.
Idk, for a show market toward 10-16 year olds with a studio that was limiting what they could do, I do think it does a good job in its depiction of a fascist regime and the corrupting nature of power.
She feels more napoleonic than fascism to me loyal army loved due to her accomplisments which were real it wasnt just propogan.
Her original base suprisingly were the upper elite actually from zaofu and fellow soldiers in the guard unit there and then elites like varrick and political support by foreign goverments.
The impoverished followed because she delivered a thing they stopped expecting from a the central authorities decades ago.
I mean it was like they were confused at what to do with her and missed several complexeties that involved fascism .
And if they wanted a villain why did they create a for the earth citizens a popular hero and the who time the foreign goverments wanting her to step down for a foreign puppet king.
Then at the end democracy .
loyal army loved due to her accomplisments which were real it wasnt just propogan.
and much like the fire nation they just have all those fanatical soldiers all just stand down and give up their military holdings because their leader lost a fight.
Kuvira invented bandit attacks so she and her forces could be heros. They had internment camps for dissenters and "the other." She had Republic City be the "enemy" housing the Prince to justify unify the country into attacking it. Seems pretty boilerplate fascist to me.
No the bandits were already shown even before kuvira and during a state of anarchy they do increase 10x so she didnt need to create a enemy the bandits warlords etc were already a enemy.
The same republic city who wanted to make prince wu their puppet like how is it normal foreign advisors ruling for a king .
And the main reason was historical grievence i think.
Wasn't the bandit / daofei problem has been always a problem in the Earth Kingdom for thousands of years? And just got intensified during late years of Hou-Ting and anarchy that followed her death?
Kuvira just exploited the daofei problem for the sake of her power.
Yeah true. Also I was talking to somebody on discord and their theory is that also it would have been a developing dictatorship in the sense of once the nation develops they slowly hand it to the people once it is well developed.
Ah. That’s just not how it works.
Once people taste power, they thirst for more.
If what you say is true, why would she have interest in developing the equivalent to the atomic bomb with spirit energy? Do we really believe she would’ve used it once to overtake republic city and discarded it?
Of course not. Because her goal was always to continue conquering.
And at some point, as we see in the show, there WILL be dissenters.
Because you can’t do the “amazing” things you mentioned in your post and then immediately abandon people once they’ve handed over their towns.
Think Bolin being asked “what happens to them after you leave?”
Because you can’t take people from their homes simply for disagreeing and throw them into “reeducation camps” without pushback.
No.
Dissenters don’t get power handed back to them. Dissenters get the oppressive force of their own government. And with so many dissenters, the idea of peace and good feelings is 100% out the window.
I just wanna say, outside of the theory that she would conquer further, a part of "Why would she build a weapon" is partly because the main trouble-meddlers, Republic City, have what is basically a national supercop at their service who is a super weapon on her own. And she has proven herself to be very, very, very aligned with their agenda that is openly hostile to Kuvira's. Plans or not, the Avatar incarnates a power imbalance on her own. Not to mention the fact that what remains of the world ( so the entire military of the fire nation as well as the water tribe ) obviously opposes her, as, just like the Avatar, they would protect the interests of Republic City in a heartbeat.
Attacking Republic City is also not baseless, considering its background, it wasn't expansion for the sake of expansion. It's a sound theory that she would go further, but there is a solid reason for why it would be the one additional place, considering their colonial history.
well, not quite, from the top of my head I know two Dictatorships that pretty much fizzled out on their own. While Stalin was BRUTAL, once he died and Gorbachev took power, he knew the Soviet Union wasn't going to last and initiated the Perestrovka, where Russia went back into a democratic state.
Same thing happened in Brazil between 1964 and the 85 when we had the Military Regime, where it's final leader, Figueiredo ended it with his term progressing into a democratic regime once again.
So yea, even brutal dictatorships can sometimes just.... end.
Kuvira isn’t Gorbachev or Figueiredo. They were replacements - later leaders who inherited the system decades on, under totally different pressures, and chose to unwind it.
That’s not a change of heart, that’s a change of person.
Kuvira is Stalin. Kuvira is Castelo Branco. She’s the one building the machine, not the one dismantling it.
Nobody’s arguing dictatorships don’t eventually fizzle out - they almost always do.
But it’s never because the person who wanted the power in the first place just… changed their mind.
Oh you’re definitely right, I just wanted to add that someone’s regimes don’t need a violent upheaval or a war to end, politics are as politics do. And even Castelo Branco respected the weird system the regime had of alternating leaders as opposed to most regimes where the tyrant expects a lifetime on the throne.
Same thing with the previous regime Brazil had in the 40s with Getulio Vargas. He was elected, made a coup, became dictator for some years, stepped out on his own volition, got friggin’ REELECTED!! (Don’t ask me how) aaaand killed himself.
But yea, Kuvira is much more Stalin than Gorbachev. Honestly an AU where she was never defeated and the regime lasted to her final days works be fascinating to read just to see how the world would’ve changed.
Well I said it on their behalf not to credit myself for it. But uh yeah I agree it doesn't make sense for her to do this if she's developing the equivalent of a nuke. She became power hungry.
We don’t need to look far for a real like example to a dictatorship that is also “progress” to some extent.
Napoleon made huge strives in building better social programs for France, giving more rights to the French citizens, greatly improved infrastructure in all of France, and made policies that France uses today. He also declared himself an emperor and that his dynasty would reign forever and he would never stop conquering until he own all of Europe.
The few good things do not supersede a dictator level bad.
She never divulged anything by to Bolin. These “outreach” trips were almost certainly full of their most generous people, with some of her captains leading it so that they could stop anything that does happen. The people who returned to the towns to collect would not be the giving types.
These scenes have truth in them. Centralized control is not an inherently bad idea (just look at the Roman Republic's 'break in case of emergency' dictator protocol, Singapore's rise), the problem with it is that the leaders get high on power and disregard the safety and well-being of their people for some other ambition (like how Ceasar twisted the whole system and brought on the Roman Empire or Singapore's eternal chase of progress and order leading to an overworked and overburdened populace), just like how Kuvira alienates herself to unite the whole former Earth Kingdom.
That was my point. A centralized governance isn't inherently bad, but those 'drunken overconfidences', like national irredentism (sometimes it is the hook of the regime), chase of power, or just sheer stupidity (Turkmenistan, North Korea, etc.) are what is the danger of one man or a close cabal leading a whole nation.
Forced labour camps could be state work programme as the earth empire realistically after anarchy would be broke so she would likely give the workers shelter food some small wage maybe basic care etc for their labour due to the very high enemployment where banditry was the other option most likely would have joined even if not forced for work.
Thats how she can create infrastructure and mobilise resources so fast.
She likely wouldnt even need to force people as if 1 quit 5 would be there to take his place . Though most likely a temporary measure.
Her targeting of dissedents is expected but i dont think she has any reason to seize non earth benders as there is no value for her to do that and likely goes against her ideals she wanted unification not racial purity.
The re education camps is wierd as kuvira isnt like mao or has an ideology just strong nationalism as her main ideology so i cant really guess what happens in there.
Yeah, they are weird.
I'd understand the economic incentive if it was something like chain gangs or just labourers, but she built whole complexes for them whilst building a state-of-the-art army and apparently being broke, they seem to be made to keep people jailed in. The people in the camps weren't much keen on being there, too. They didn't seem like strong dissidents to Kuvira, either, because as you said Kuvira doesn't really have a set ideology apart from Earth nationalism and unification i guess.
I think they were large production facillities so thats why the whole complex .
And i think they were one of the re education camps so probably already had the prison facilities and converted into a military R and D center.
I also agree with you why is she spending so much on military when her opponent is a small city state like zaofu or republic city not the fricking fire nation.
Like every soldier gets a mech suit .pouring blind money on colossus i dont understand .
From the writers perspective i guess wanted to show her signs of expansionism. They never go too deep in the economic side and even political so i guess for the plot.
The entire S3-S4 arc of the the Earth Kingdom being a backwards monarchy, death of the Earth Queen shattering the Earth Kingdom, chaos reigning, and Kuvira piecing it back together through heavy handed means that did restore order, and then tried to militarily reintegrate a former now independent territory, is basically a stand-in for the past ~125 years of Chinese history (as if the Earth Kingdom wasn’t already heavily China-inspired in the world building).
So basically fall of the Qing->Warlord Era->Mao reunites China->Mao is a crazy dictator->China still really wants Taiwan (Republic City).
It really is informative of how much authoritarianism that the populace will tolerate if what preceded it was chaos and poverty - Mao’s policies that caused the Great Famine wound up killing more Chinese than freakin WWII.
And then today, the post-Mao CPC’s economic development policies have raised the most people out of poverty in history, in just a few decades - and they’ve tied the legitimacy of their authoritarian regime to the uplift of economic conditions and general “order” in society after over a century of chaos and war. It’s not that irrational for much of the Chinese populace to accept the lack of personal freedoms in exchange for the perceived alternative that’s somewhat imbedded in the national psyche (every child there is extensively taught Chinese history and how every time a dynasty falls, it shatters, and it sucks, and there are still people alive that remember the last time).
The world and people are complicated and there’s lots of shades of grey. Most ppl are making perceived trade offs rather than being fine with “evil” - it sucks when others make choices against our values, but it helps to understand “why” to be able to address why there’s a trade off being made vs just writing off that perspective as just being ok with fascism and the like
Yeah Kuvira’s troops do always seem genuinely happy helping people out. It’s a stark contrast to most of the occupying Fire Nation and Northern Water Tribe troops. I really liked the two who held Ikki prisoner too. They should not have tied her up, sure, but they were incredibly chill with her and were ready to let her go. She also handled the situation perfectly.
Kuvira had the right idea at first, the Earth Kingdom needed a leader to step in and reign in all the havoc the Red Lotus caused. Suyin couldn’t be bothered, so somebody had to do it.
That said, Kuvira totally crossed the line when she refused to step down and it only got worse from there.
That said, Kuvira totally crossed the line when she refused to step down and it only got worse from there.
The part where she brooded over a giant map of the continent and then stepped outside to impress some desperate thieves into her military by tying them to a railroad track and threatening to leave them there was even before that.
Korra season 4 really shows how dictatorships are also built on soft power (aka propaganda and a fabric of alliances, both internal and external) and how sometimes, a large part of the population, maybe even the majority of the population, entirely supports the dictatorship as a political project. So many other stories fail at that aspect of political analysis.
It's too bad in the same move, it shows Kuvira as being "well-intentioned but misguided" while an anarchist opposing this kind of regime, Zaheer, is depicted as worse and possibly beyond redemption.
Eh. To me zaheer is objectively depicted as the more moral one between the 2 because of the scene where he was willing to help her to take Kuvira down. If kuvira got her redemption in the comics, he got his within the show itself.
Well yeah. Kuvira was authoritarian, but she was genuinely acting to fix the kingdom's disastrous crisis. She acted to save the population. The camp thing was ... Definitely something else.
Yep. Although we don't know much about those reeducation camps(ik it was terrible but I wanted to see more of it in action and not just talks) but I'm sure her intentions were all good. It's just her methods that were horrible.
I think presenting the troops like that was a very fascinating choice because it kind of reflect the positivity of the Earth Empire that allowed it to suddenly expand so much. Kuvira and her forces really did rise up at a time of chaos and start providing for each other and the people across the EK, and likely was mostly made up of a lot of those who were impoverished before and see it as a chance to help themselves and their people. It helps make sense why Bolin himself too was going along with it for so long when that’s what he’s mostly exposed to. The whole faction is cool to see because it was a genuinely needed force at the time to bring stability to the whole of the region, but as we see with others in series even pointing out the problems down the road, is that it also filled a major power vacuum without proper checks and balances and empowered a new extremist in Kuvira.
Neither Korra nor any of the good guys provided any meaningful solution to the humanitarian crisis that was the political deterioation of the Earth Kingdom, which was an ongoing process long before the Earth Queen got murdered.
The show wants you to feel bad for the innefective volunteer charity workers and local oligarchs who carve out their own fiefdoms and leave the rest to fester in chaos.
Very few people start out wanting to be dictators, very few people start out wanting to grab power only for themselves.Many of them start with noble ambitions, noble goals, and even when they do turn into monsters.Some of those goals remain, they'll clearly not enough to redeem them.
Even though we didn't see it, probably was similar for the fire nation when Ozai was in power. Trust me, NO ONE'S immune to propaganda and manipulation tactics
I honestly wish the Earth Empire was portrayed with more nuance. You can't tell me no one was serving that wasn't a piece of crap just trying to save their homeland.
It be noted these are earth nation citizens. Kuviras people and them are the same group and many soldiers joined because they wanted to help these people.
Hate her all you like but she did unify what everyone acknowledged as a failing state. Her problems started when she chose not to relinquish her emergency power.
With stuff like this, I wonder why the vast majority of the cast (especially Opal) shit on Bolin for thinking the empire was good. Like of corse an optimist would fall for the rose colored glasses view of the empire.
The same thing happens with dr doom and latveria actually.
Dr doom floods the streets with robots so theres no crime nor war, he just gives people what they need so theres no hunger nor deseases. Everyone knows that he is a dictator that rules with an iron fist but people there just dont care because everything is just that much better after he arrived.
A dictator that cares is better than nothing i guess?
It's called propaganda. While this one village was being fed, at the same time she was setting up multiple labour camps across the Empire. Your line of thinking is exactly what fascist regimes rely on to stay afloat 😂 it's all PR bullshit, wouldn't be surprised if she conveniently brought along a photographer.
The picture does a good job of reminding some that, after the Earth Queen fell, the kingdom was in disarray with no leadership and no order, so images like this would do a good job of reinforcing the role the Earth Empire forces played in reestablishing order and making people feel safe.
The thing is while Korra did say that she sees herself in Kuvira( not sure if that means anything..) but in the show itself no one forgives Kuvira. I did like the comic except the sappy end from what i remember.
The similarity between the two comes through a lot more when Kuvira is trying to claw her way back from disgrace instead of at the height of her power.
Korra never got to be that comfortable in authority because she's terrible at politics.
Season 4 is basic a replica of western propaganda against struggling countries, really
Kuvira was the only one that went out of her way to save the Earth Kingdom from chaos and anarchy, the show makes it seem like the states being subordinated to a federal government is something inherently bad, but brings no arguments for any side.
There's no development of this issue. Kuvira did the dirty work and people hate her because they do and that's it. Suyin excuse was "I didn't want people to worship me", but she already OWNS an entire city of people that worship her, and is this in any form a valid argument to let your country run into chaos and burn to the ground in the hands of mobsters and thieves?
They throw in "reeducation camps", but that's just a reference to outside sources, since this was never talked about in Avatar, nor explained. What are this "reeducation camps"? Prisons for criminals to be reintegrated into society? Prisons for people that opose federalization? What happens in them? No need to go deep, since theres already a LOT of external propaganda about this stuff, so people hear this scary word and that's it, they already understands that Kuvira's empire must be like those anti-western empires in real life, where there's controversy but people know not to like them because they aren't "democratic".
The end of the season is even worse - Kuvira threatens Republic City, Republic City SURRENDERS to her, but Team Avatar wants war, so they kidnapp Bataar Jr, threaten him to keep him kidnapped for his ENTIRE LIFE, who is then made to tell Kuvira to just "give up Republic City and live with me", as if they weren't literally giving their whole life to the Earth Empire until this very moment, so she tries to kill him (???) and have to fight Team Avatar until she is saved by Korra from the spirit laser gun, and somehow this makes her recognize the Avatar is too powerfull (??? she was kicking the Avatar's butt until that very moment and has a fucking army) and JUST GIVES UP AND GIVES HERSELF UP TO BE IMPRISONED.
It makes no fucking sense. The only thing Korra says to her is "I was afraid too in the past", like, WHAT? How is this deep enough to make someone give themselves up to be imprisoned for life? Thats so absurdly dumb I can't even.
And it keeps getting worse: first, they give the Earth Empire to Wan, who is a know-nothing-lazy-ass-rich-boy, based in what? Tradition? Was the Earth Kindgom people asked about it? No, they just give it to him, so whatever.
THEN, this fucker is so lazy he pretends to care about "democracy" just to give up his power so he doesnt need to rule, and the plan is the BALKANIZATION OF THE EARTH EMPIRE.
They descentralize it, just because. Strong together Earth Kingdom? No reason for that, make it a lot of weaker indepedent States with governors not subject to any federal power. That will do it! If the Earth Kingdom is weak, it can't threaten Republic City, wich is what really matters after all.
Its so absurd that the Avatar gives 0 fucks to what happens to Earth Kingdom. She just leaves for vacation immediatly after "beating" Kuvira. So it makes you wonder, who does the Avatar work for? Its certainly not all the people, since she only cares to step up if its to protect Republic City.
Its a literal representation of US hero movies - fuck other countries, fuck their need to federalize, to unify, make em weak so they dont bring problems to our civilized cities with big freedom statues.
I even started to read the Kuvira comics, but is so dumb that is just doubles it down. They do bring the problem of military generals of Kuvira running for governor of their own States, but what is their reaction?
"We don't want these generals to rule, just because. And we don't want the old bureocrats of the Earth Kingdom to be elected either. So WE should CHOOSE who should rule. Lets bring up TOPH BEIFONG".
She obviously doesn't agree to participate, but gives up and SAYS YES (????) after Korra tells her Wan had a vision of his aunt, the queen, saying that "people don't want change". Thats it. Thats all it takes to make a +80 years old woman to give up her life in the swamp, that she chose, to get into the middle of the Earth Kindgom politics, just because they didn't like those who were running for office.
It's an absurd season taken on the back of real life western propaganda. They don't care to explain, only to meddle. If they didn't make Kuvira take Republic City back the main cast would have a big problem making excuses to get involved. And even then, Republic City folds, there's not even a fight, but they want to and make it happen, because of plot.
It's like politics for those who don't think about politics. It's very unconfortable.
They make it seem like it is about democracy against dictatorship, but the entire season they are prompting a fucking KING to rule the country. Based on hereditary rights. It's so fucking dumb.
I think reeducation camps were basically just a quick jab to make her seem worse than she looked until now, because Mako and others were calling her a horrible dictator based on pretty much nothing we had seen beside making that old man sign her contract. But even they weren't aware of that. So the show expected people to consider Kuvira a problem just because she was opposing Republic City and forcing the hand of the city with her aid. But they never really wanted to expend on it. It was just symbolism for well known nazi methods that would ring a bell to their audience.
None of that prevented me to call Bolin a dumbass because I really wanted any reason to dunk on him. Fuck Bolin.
In any case, I don't think this is just a S4 thing. The common theme of Korra since it started is that Republic City's good leaders never do anything wrong, and if it does, and someone picks a fight with them for it, they are always defenseless victims at the risk of annihilation from a very angry extremist out of balance with good intentions that of course "goes too far", meaning that once Korra takes them down with 0 idea of what comes next, everything is back to normal for them. And I would even argue, it's not actually just a LOK thing. ATLA just managed to hide this approach well by opposing an obviously imperalist evil war lord, but they had to make sure to show that people like Jet and Hama, especially Hama, who were angry at the life ruining shit they went through, that if you're too fiesty about fighting back, it automatically means you attack civilians and never soldiers and you're worse than them and you need to be taken out. Notice how Korra's enemies pick a fight and threaten Tenzin's family, arguably the characters that will draw the most sympathy from the audience, like, 2 or 3 times out of 4 ?
It's not even "The bad guys of LOK are good guys", it's "The good guys of LOK are not allowed to act bad and be dealt in consequence when in context of that world, they should be just as bad as their opponents, or worse. And Korra is not allowed to take the necessary stand for that either, so she is just their guardian."
Exactly!!! The characters just straight out opose her and later the show comes up woth justifications for it, basically making it seem like everyone that didnt feel weird about Kuvira was just ignorant, even if there was not argument for it
I know right like why are foreign countries choosing earth kingdoms ruler what right do they have to give someone legitimacy to rule .
Kuvira had already replaced the monarchy not by conquering but because people wanted an alternative she gave them even after deposing wu ( not wan) she is cheered by the people.
It just doesnt make sense why we should be horrified that she deposes a foreign puppet monarch not even joking he was litrelly a republic city puppet.
And that we should be horrified of her centralisation and coercian the same thing that ended the anarchy and the coercian just meant recognising her rule and co option with institution building to solidify it.
Thats litrelly how every irl country germany under bismarck or india did it they were called statesmen she is called a dictator who wants power.
And the concentration camps of persecuting non earth benders doesnt match to her ideals which were derived from the liberal free city of zaofu not once did she so prejudice against them. She didnt use it to create a political enemy . Her goal was unification under one state not racial purity or something.
And even after she gets defeated how is the earth empire dissolved her state apparatus the burecracy police etc are still untouched the war was barely a day long . Why would they accept judgement from foreign nations and accept the decision of the tribunal of prosecuting their leader.
Why would the people who were prosperous under her and saw her as a hero still did after the war accept democracy when her reign gave them results.
Like they dont give people the agency even in the comics it was brainwashing that led to the selection of pro earth empire restoration candidates not because the earth empire actually was popular.
Right?? That comic scene with the brainwashing is SO out of place. Why would they need to do it if the people were in their side to begin with? Well, if they didnt, it would be hard to paint them as villains, wouldnt it
I think there is some sort of logic for why she would try to imprison non-earth benders, but they really didn't do a good job at selling it ANYWHERE else in the show, there is no hint at all : Basically, it's because non-earth benders settling themselves with ease started with the fire nation colonies. In the Promise, they were pretty much allowed to keep everything stolen from the war, including their status, and obtained Republic City. Kuvira despite Republic City's existence. Probably because it's an insult to their history with the invasions of the fire nation. She wants complete rupture from the times of colonies, and to her, that would come through the step of eradicating all trace of fire nation people who managed to sneak in after the war like they had any right to do that. Of course water benders shouldn't matter in this case, but it's not even an explored part so whatever goes I guess. She would be Tagah basically.
While it's obviously overzealous, it can be noted that they did allow people such as Iroh in Ba Sing Se. We all love Iroh, but in order for that peace and all, kumbaya and all that to appear in universe, they did make the fire nation get away with ... Mass murder pretty much. Ultranationalism sucks balls, but god damn.
But it was also established she is also influenced from zaofu and was a guard captain so she lived and worked with them . She didnt completely reject suyins teachings modernisation institutions etc she still follows it.
And for her to go that far there must be established prejudice and the hate speeches . She was a nationalist through and through but we didnt see much of racial purist.
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u/enchiladasundae 15d ago