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Thanos and the Rise of Ecofascism By Elizabeth Yee Illustrations by Catherine Liu and Angella Ma Layout by Natalie So
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hat does a fictional villain have to do with the two most devastating mass shootings this year?
The battle between ‘good and evil’ in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is not as black and white as it presents itself to be. Thanos, the antagonist in the film, seeks to attain 5 infinity stones - but instead of taking a traditional world domination path, Thanos makes it his mission to gain the power to solve overpopulation and resource scarcity by ridding the half the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s population with his infamous ‘Snap’- in turn becoming the ‘neo-Malthusian’ savior from complete annihilation. Thanos’s rhetoric is not the only trace of the extreme form of neo-Malthusianism that has made its way into public conscience. Inferno, 2013 mystery thriller and subsequent 2016 film adaptation by Dan Brown portrays fictional villain Bertrand Zobrist, who sacrifices his life to wipe out half the planet’s population. Zobrist likens the end of the world as we know it to a clock striking the monumental hour of 12:00. He states that if the 12:00 represents the time the Earth will reach its maximum carrying capacity for human life, the clock is currently at 11:59. A bioengineer with millions of dollars on his hands, Zobrist creates supervirus that would wipe out half of the earth’s population. There is a reason why in both narratives, the seemingly noble ‘saviours of the earth’ have been portrayed as villians. And while a purple god-like being travelling from planet to planet, or the intentional release of deadly viruses to kill half the population seems implausible, the relevance of their extremist neoMalthusian ideologies is one that should be followed closely in this day and age.
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