Has anyone ever made the national (or even your local) news by seriously attempting to fight crime or injustice in a costume that protected his true identity? (comic book hero style). If so, where and when? * Did the person last for long in their chosen guise before being uncovered, caught or exposed; or did they merely give up after a few outings? What was the nature of their chosen costume / name / persona?
There have been a couple of odd single issue self-styled vigilantes in the UK, but no one who, I believe, started out taking themselves in any way seriously (or remaining strictly private and elusive) - or who got taken seriously by either authorities or criminals.
Thanks.
I realise there are many pro-wrestlers who have taken up the plight of the underprivileged in poor areas of Mexico (and other Latin American countries) whose identities are superficially protected by their wrestling attire, but they do so publicly and they deliberately court publicity and awareness to advance their chosen causes. This is not quite the same as attempting to be Batman.
A bit of a hijack (sorry), but my girlfriend asked almost the opposite question recently. That is, are there any known cases of mad scientists using their power to take over and/or destroy the world? Note that physicists working on a nuclear bomb don’t count, they don’t want the bomb used (deterrent strategy and all that). I’m talking specifically wanting to blackmail the world for – power, money, whatever – or destroy it.
The kind of arch-enemy that costumed superheroes tend to go after.
Ned Kelly, as a vigilante hero? Is that how people see him, seriously? By all accounts he was a thief, a police-killing thug who build himself some poorly made steel armour to help survive a shootout. What did he do in his life that is considered in any way heroic? Defiance of law and order does not a vigilante make.
There’s some evidence that that’s how he saw himself. He considered that he and his family were unfairly victimised by the police, a view which in time he expanded to a belief that his and his class were unfairly dealt with by the colonial establishment, and that force was used against him and his family before he ever used force against anyone else.
Not everybody would share his perspective, to put it mildly, but there is some foundation for it.
Coming from NoRn iRoN, you’ll surely be aware of how the same people, committing the same actions, can be characterised - and defensibly characterised - as outright criminals, heroic freedom fighter, or anything in between depending on how you want to characterise them.
Fair enough, actions of individuals can be defined differently from different perspectives. I don’t want this to develop into a discussion on the virtues or personality of Ned Kelly; but in no way, regardless of sympathies for his stance and his plight, could he be said to be a costumed hero vigilante as per the definitions outlined in the OP.
Well, that’s far from true. While many people didn’t openly support the KKK, they had enough underground support that supporting a party plank denouncing them cost William McAdoo (son in law of President Woodrow Wilson) the Democratic nomination in 1924. In another presidentital election (1920? 24? Sorry, I don’t have time to look it up), the KKK was able to block ALL the nominees who had been voted on in the primaries, in favor of the convention nomination of (IIRC) the governor of WV, who was not an open supporter of the KKK, but was an open opponent of denouncing it (the two were not remotely the same thing in that era)
I’m not expressing any support of the KKK, but it was not merely a rural southern phenomenon. In fact, in its heyday, the south was a stronghold but not the major source of it numerical and political power. Our nation did indeed have a prevailing view of its racial identity that we would consider distasteful today. Even in the 1940s there was immense support for the Germans; it is well documented historically that most Americans didn’t want to fight the Nazis at all, only the Japanese who attacked us. The DoD was deeply concerned about this, and started a massive propaganda campaign (including such famous films as “Why We Fight”) for the soldiers who were going to the European front). I’ve seen some of the letters that (later President) George Herbert Walker Bush wrote home from flight school, decrying the ridiculous (not his word, but not far from it) anti-German propaganda training, and how some of his “less intelligent” (his sentiment) officer candidates fell for it.
Heros? Not in my book – but Jesse James, Dilliger, and Robin Hood are just a few of th criminals who became elevated to the rank of “heros”. In th case of the American Outlaws, this was common in their own time, and they often enjoyed the material support of the private populace. The truth about Robin Hood is mere conjecture, with several competing theories, but there is no question that he persists as a hero image today
And still is not. Neither are most of the White Supremacy movements.
Pennsylvania is, to our utter shame, a major stronghold of these idiots, as is the upper midwest (Idaho and Oregon, particularly…Aryan Nation’s major headquarters used to be in Oregon, before they lost a huge lawsuit and had to turn over the compound to their victim).
