Avengers' Director Whedon Goes On Anti-Capitalist Rant

Breitbart.com ^ | 7/14/2012 | John Nolte

[Beave Meister]

So says the guy probably worth somewhere around a gajillion dollars and who likely made somewhere around a thousand times more money from "Avengers" than anyone on the crew.

But Whedon's obviously talking about socialism for, you know, other people:

“We are watching capitalism destroy itself right now,” [Whedon] told the audience.

He added that America is “turning into Tsarist Russia” and that “we’re creating a country of serfs.”

Whedon was raised on the Upper Westside neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1970s, an area associated with left-leaning intellectuals. He said he was raised by people who thought socialism was a ''beautiful concept."

Socialism remains a taboo word in American politics, as Republicans congressmen raise the specter of the Cold War. They refer to many Obama administration initatives as socialist, and the same goes for most laws that advocate increasing spending on social welfare programs. They also refer to the President as a socialist, though this and many of their other claims misuse the term.

This evidently frustrates Whedon, who traces this development to Ronald Reagan[.]

We have people trying to create structures and preserve the structures that will help the middle and working class, and people calling them socialists,” Whedon said. “It’s not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal […] it’s some people with some sense of dignity and people who have gone off the reservation.”

Great idea. Let's start with Hollywood!

[tarawa]

You weren’t wrong. I read an interview with Whedon several years ago where he spoke about being a very hardcore leftist, but stated that he felt Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly was very much a Libertarian. He said he did not share any views with the fictional Captain Reynolds, but thought it was a good fit for the character. As much as I find Whedon’s views to be rather screwy, I do respect a writer that can step outside his own views to write an honest portrayal of a person that they probably wouldn’t associate with in real life. I found it similar to J.M. Stracynski (sp?) who wrote Babylon 5. He is very much an atheist, but a couple of the stories he wrote for Babylon 5 concerning religion and the group of priests onboard (Passing Through Gethsemane, especially) really captured some fairly heady philosophy and some solid Christian thinking.