The Death of Oliver Queen: What Green Arrow Teaches Us About Social Democratic Ideology
For fans of Green Arrow and DC Comics in general, “Green Arrow” a.k.a. Oliver Queen has the reputation of being a “radical socialist left-wing liberal social justice warrior” (all the buzzwords that are used to describe US leftists). And it’s not inaccurate: Oliver Queen’s personal politics of social progressivism and reformed capitalism/social democracy is at the far-left of the American Overton window. The character of Green Arrow in the comics is defined by his politics, and it’s a big part of his personality. The 2016-2019 run of Green Arrow, also known as “Rebirth,” is considered by many fans to be a return to form in terms of Green Arrow’s political character. Throughout the issues, he claims the label of “social justice warrior” and frequently talks about fighting fascists and capitalism.
This is all well and good, but Green Arrow is a comic book published by a mainstream comics corporation designed to appeal to a mass audience. So authors have to strike a delicate balance between the personality of a character whose beliefs are underpinned by blatant politics and how much that politics can actually show through to relate to the reader. To this end, social democracy is the perfect option to pick for Green Arrow - it is the furthest left position in the US you can go in real life without being laughed at, think Bernie Sanders and AOC, but also come off as reasonable and not immediately antagonized. An anarchist or Marxist-Leninist Green Arrow would struggle to even be conceived as a good guy. You also have to contend with the nature of a “good” superhero: you are often on the side of law enforcement and the capitalist establishment. There’s a reason why the punisher, who kills cops, is portrayed as an “anti-hero.”
All this is why, in my opinion, social democracy is the perfect political ideology for a comic book superhero. It is the compromise between labor and capital, the “middle ground,” in the same way superheroes are the compromise between justice and the state: outlaws upholding the law. It follows that social democratic ideology is inherently in constant conflict with itself, and so are superheroes. Green Arrow, the social democratic superhero, must be doubly self-contradictory, right?
Let’s look at some examples. We already get a bundle of contradictions beginning with Green Arrow’s backstory: he’s the billionaire CEO of a family corporation. Oh great, how can he critique capitalism then? Well, his way of justifying his wealth is by spending it all on charities and social welfare programs that are superior to government options, designed to help the poor in Seattle (or Star City depending on your Green Arrow run of choice). We see this in the beginning issues and the very end of Rebirth. I’d agree with him that these are pretty good uses for his money, but they don’t address any of the deeper issues with capitalism other than “these people are poor.” For example, why doesn’t he reform his company into a cooperative, or at least democratize its structure? In Rebirth, his entire company was taken over by an evil secret society known as the Ninth Circle simply because it was infiltrated at the very top by a Ninth Circle member becoming the C.F.O. of Queen Industries. It seems like he isn’t very concerned with the problems the hierarchical structure of corporations cause, something symptomatic of social democracy.
He could also use his wealth to participate in the political system he so wants to change instead of funding charities, which are like putting band-aids on a fire. It appears that he isn’t even interested in the reformist aspect of social democracy, which is already the reformist wing of socialism. Although, he is a big believer in “democracy” and the American way, even as it fails right in front of him when he meets Ninth Circle-funded mayoral candidates. This is probably one way Green Arrow’s politics has to be sanitized to appear friendly to an American audience. The vigilante would fight a group of mercenaries for the right of Native Americans to peacefully protest, but around 20 issues later would arrest a guy in a ski mask throwing a Molotov cocktail at a building. C’mon man, it’s just property damage, nowhere near violence. The whole thing reminded me of the Swedish government’s repression of the EU Summit protests at Gothenburg: social democracy turned violent when faced with challenge. I wonder what Oliver Queen was up to canonically during the 1999 WTO protests at Seattle.
Speaking of arrests, in issue #43, Green Arrow is sent to safeguard the transportation of a supervillain prisoner, Parasite. He then discovers that the reason Parasite is so “on edge” all the time, so to speak, is his inhumane treatment at the prison facility he was kept at. Okay, great: but what does he do about it? Absolutely nothing. If you know about inhumane treatments in prison, why do you still send criminals, even thieves and someone peacefully protesting, into prison?
Green Arrow shows us all of the internal contradictions within social democracy, which boil down to one thing: the advocacy of improving something irredeemable, a plan that is currently failing all over the world. Sweden has been governed by a right-wing party since 2022, and Europe as a whole is turning right-wing with the rise of far-right parties like the AfD in Germany. If Oliver Queen actually followed through with his moral convictions and acted in favor of stronger changes to capitalism instead of arresting bank robbers trying to do the same thing he is just on a more individual scale, he would be more consistent, but no longer a social democrat nor a superhero.
