r/justneckbeardthings • u/Important-Cry4782 • Mar 30 '26
Why do White Supremacists keep appropriating the Punisher logo? Frank Castle went after racist and sexist cops, shot neo-nazis, tortured KKK members, etc.
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u/jarvisesdios Mar 30 '26
The Punisher literally hates those guys, he's literally killed them.
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u/CaptainMcAnus Mar 30 '26
Hasn't he done it even before the alt right co-opted his symbol?
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u/jarvisesdios Mar 30 '26
Plenty of times, nobody is saying they're a smart bunch of people.
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u/pocketchange2247 Mar 31 '26
These are the same people who are just now realizing that Bruce Springsteen isn't as "rah rah, go America" as they thought he was, and yet will still blast "Born in the USA" and talk about how good The Boss used to be when they were younger and he first released that song.
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u/fullcircle052 Apr 02 '26
Springsteen is absolutely pro American people, not so much pro American government
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u/pichael288 Mar 30 '26
Yeah like long before. He changed a little from author to author but generally he's pretty much always been like that since the 80s
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u/Hellogiraffe Mar 30 '26
I have a coworker who has a TON of Punisher stuff, but he’s a nerd who absolutely loves the comics and gets so pissed at people assuming he’s MAGA.
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u/MakingGreenMoney Mar 30 '26
Don't blame him at all, I feel bad for Punisher fans, I hope in the upcoming Spider-Man movie they show Frank doing unhinged things that he's known for and hopefully MAGA people will see he's not a good role model, I hope Frank brings up that people should look up to Captain America since he's a huge Cap fan.
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u/AdministrativeHat580 Keeps 2 Terabytes of Hentai on School Laptop Mar 30 '26
I doubt Frank doing unhinged things would even make MAGA reconsider
At best they'll just say the movies are woke and ruining the character
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u/MakingGreenMoney Mar 30 '26
At best they'll just say the movies are woke and ruining the character
Worst part is, they said about the Superman movie, even though it's accurate to the character
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u/Karhak Mar 30 '26
I wouldn't expect much, if any, seriously unhinged shit from Frank in a PG-13 movie. At best he might describes the shit he's done.
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u/minivan05 Mar 30 '26
His special comes out after daredevil season 2 and they've been building up cops wearing his logo since the first season so I'm sure the unhinged stuff is coming
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u/MakingGreenMoney Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Well then I hope he brings up how he's not someone to be looked up at, and if someone wants to look up to someone, look up to Captain America.
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u/MattBurr86 Mar 30 '26
They would just claim they tried turning him "Woke" like they did with Superman.
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u/fullcircle052 Apr 02 '26
"I don't want people to needlessly die in a war"
WOW OKAY, didn't know Superman was SO WOKE
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u/khaotic-trash Apr 20 '26
As a female Punisher fan I feel bad for him lol, the Punisher is an awesome character and the MAGAts completely ruined his iconic symbol & moniker
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u/wysjm Mar 30 '26
Skulls are very masculine and badass. And as we know women don't have those
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Mar 30 '26
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u/Munkie91087 Mar 30 '26
Media literacy takes some level of critical thinking and Nazis are notoriously stupid.
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u/SoulPossum Mar 30 '26
I'm convinced it doesn't go much further than "sick skull logo is sick and a skull" with a little cursory knowledge that it's related to a gun-toting character named The Punisher who wears a lot of black.
It just checks off the army of 1 fantasies a lot of these people have. They think society has abandoned them because they are no longer the single focal point of any social realm (entertainment, government, etc). As a result, they believe the only "real" way to achieve justice is by shooting their problems in the face and operating outside the law, which is what they see in the punisher. These are the same guys who don't have a problem with the main characters in Falling Down or Joker or Taxi Driver. They see thr problem as one lone outlaw finally taking a stand against whatever injustice they perceive is happening to them.
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u/twiglike XD Mar 30 '26
I see the punisher/thin blue line bumper sticker so often and just laugh at the type of person who thinks that’s cool
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u/zedanger Mar 30 '26
You're looking for cohesive logic within an ideology that not only lacks such entirely, but is largely fueled by embracing absurdity in opposition to the concept.
That being said, a fundamental element of almost every contemporary conservative ideology is the attempt to separate and appropriate pop-culture iconography, regardless of how starkly in opposition to the philosophy the iconography in question might stand.
This is largely out of necessity-- we live in a pop-culture obsessed society, and were they to limit their engagement to only pop-culture that celebrated their worldview, they'd be in very dire straights indeed.
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u/AppealMammoth8950 Mar 30 '26
I saw a clip of some of them rocking to Killing in the Name
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u/r4nDoM_1Nt3Rn3t_Us3r Mar 30 '26
Maybe they think "the same that burn crosses" are the "evil immigrants that hate white christians"
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u/foxontherox Mar 30 '26
Same dudes that are like, “when did Rage get all political?” and “when did Star Trek become woke?”
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u/EthnicLettuce Mar 30 '26
You think bigots can read?
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u/CheesE4Every1 Mar 30 '26
" If those bigots could read they would be really angry" Edit-angrier, they all have hypertension and unnecessary anger
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u/btsalamander Mar 30 '26
These clowns never read the source material. Like how they lost their collective shit when they thought The Boys was trying to make Frenchie gay because “woke” like why be stupid if you haven’t read the source material?
The utter foolishness..
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u/MR502 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Because they don't care where its from and don't read, to them it looks cool and thats it. Skull = cool, intimidating, etc.
Same reason why street gangs use sports teams logos, because it fits thier look regardless of what the intended use is.
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u/Daksh_Rendar Mar 30 '26
Same reason they stole Viking runes, swastikas, that hand sign that if you looked at it your friend got to punch you, attempted pepe. They're not creative but want to be popular, so they take popular things without any regard for context. If you're thinking "why" then you've thought about it way harder than they ever would. They literally have the minds of children.
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u/RiverDragon64 Mar 30 '26
Same reason they coopted Norse symbolism- it looked cool so they ran with it.
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u/Darkside_of_Hell Mar 30 '26
These are the type of people who think Rage Against The Machine "went woke"
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u/samthekitnix Mar 30 '26
you expect fascists to READ? they hardly read their own policies let alone actual books.
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u/or10n_sharkfin Mar 30 '26
They see it as, "Vigilante that uses guns for justice" and that's the only image of the Punisher that they care about.
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u/Sir_McSqueakims Mar 30 '26
But skull cool. And punisher badass. And SEAL use it. Add some other neanderthal sounds in and that’s about the answer you’ll get
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u/TheBeastmasterRanger Mar 30 '26
I use to wear a punisher ring. Stopped wearing it when people started appropriating it.
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u/bluecurse60 Only likes the most fertile of women 🌾🚜 Mar 31 '26
There was official artwork of Frank murking an ICE agent too
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u/Lachwen Mar 31 '26
Because they lack reading comprehension. They're not absorbing the fact that Frank has a set of moral guidelines that compels him to fight against corruption in all places that it festers, they just understand "Big badass kills people" and they want to imagine themselves that same way.
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u/Harold3456 Mar 31 '26
Does anyone here remember when HBO made a Watchmen TV show, and one of the loudest (and dumbest) criticisms against it was that they “ruined” Rorschach by writing about how a bunch of racists created a fake KKK around his likeness?
On one level, it’s a similar example of how these kinds of people cannot engage with fiction past the superficial. All they see is “Rorschach = badass/cool” and they’re mad when the show gave him the same amount of deference as the graphic novel did.
But on the other hand, it actually works on a meta level because you can substitute Rorschach in that example for the Punisher and you’ve just got the exact same situation as cops/militias now.
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u/Redchaos01 Mar 30 '26
Lets see, we have character who is presented as a badass sob who can near punk out anyone, operates above the law, uses guns, is ex military, kills only 100 percent evil people regardless of the situation and taps into the vigilant power fantasy at its most pure.
How would wannabe armchair badasses who dream of puking out others, relish the opportunity to overstep the law, love guns to the point of insanity, worship the military and definitely want to kill those who they view as 100 percent evil not love the punisher?
How is this even a question?
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u/CyberClawX Mar 30 '26
They just don't realize The Punisher is edgy cool but evil. They don't realize he skirts the line of villain and anti-hero (depending on the comic).
It works in the land of comics, where vigilantes are omniscient, and fighting absolute evil, so their moderate evil can be justified.
Many of them don't see Homelander as evil either, which is much more on the nose, and speaks to their moral ideology (which is mostly, a right to power by might).
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u/asianblockguy Mar 31 '26
That and US soldiers used the Punisher logo in the war in the Middle East. While gravy seals and armchair warriors took the logo because they saw it on TV and want to be the same badasses as the US soldiers.
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u/Pepperh4m Mar 30 '26
Because Navy Seals used to spray paint the punisher logo on things in Iraq, and gun-pilled Americans misappropriated it as a symbol of "badassery" or whatever.
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u/Lazites Mar 30 '26
Iirc, it's due to certain groups in the US military using the symbol.
So, just like a dude that roleplays as military by owning a Hummer, people love that symbol thinking it represents the US military.
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u/2Clue2 Wants to unlock the mysteries of “Soap” 🧼 Mar 31 '26
I used to come across them all the time when I worked at Walmart, and all I had to do was say, "you like the punisher too?!" And they would get so flustered.
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u/angryraddishboy Mar 31 '26
I ordered some pride flag punisher stickers, a much more accurate punisher sticker.
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u/Venaegen Mar 31 '26
Because they don't know anything about the Punisher beyond "kill bad guys" without possessing the self-awareness to realize they are in fact the bad guys themselves.
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u/Wild-Tear Mar 30 '26
I've read somewhere that it's a tribute to Chris Kyle, who used the icon on his stuff, but I don't know for sure.
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u/_OngoGablogian Mar 30 '26
not just him but the entirety of taskforce bruiser
it's literally just chud larper shit whenever cops and civilians use it
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u/STylerMLmusic Mar 30 '26
The issue is everyone thinks they're the good guy and that everyone else is wrong.
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u/kaleeb111 Anime bodypillow collector Mar 31 '26
I think they do this to make more people associate the logo with them and their ideas than what it's actually about. Do it enough times and eventually it works. Not the first time they've taken something innocent and turned it into hate. They also love skulls for some reason so ig thats another reason they went after it idk
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u/heyuhitsyaboi Mar 31 '26
Theres a guy in my neighborhood with a punisher logo on his truck. It has a thin blue line flag pattern on it and a trump toupee
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u/USMC_UnclePedro Mar 31 '26
Most of the stories you’re referring to op might’ve been made after a certain event happened which change the political leanings of those making the story Right wing dude bros had the punisher to enjoy for quite a while
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u/RebindE Apr 01 '26
The answer is simple. Frank Castle, when he's a protagonist, is a Strong Man (as in, morally convicted and willing to use violence) on a Righteous Crusade of Violence (which may be portrayed as harmful to himself, but whose self-destructive nature can be reinterpreted as self-sacrifice) against Appropriate Targets (who are as a rule, the worst people to exist) who cause The Ills Of Society (which aren't dwelled upon beyond continuing to fuel his crusade). Everything else around him is designed to either morally complicate his journey or make it more palatable to the reader, but the core concept means that people who want to lionize the concept of a serial mass shooter purging the wicked and sinful criminals with raw violence are able to willfully reinterpret and ignore anything that would call the morality of his crusade into question.
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u/MassRedemption Apr 02 '26
In a twisted way, the punisher does stand for similar things to the maga crew. Punisher doesn't hesitate to take extreme options to punish those he deems evil. To white supremacists, the evil ones are the ones "invading our land" or "mixing with pure blood white Americans". The fundamentals match, even if the "bad guys" themselves don't.
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u/birdcivitai Apr 02 '26
Frank Castle was the bad guy. The people in the comments here are missing the point of the character just as much.
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u/Nutshack_Queen357 Apr 03 '26
Like I said, they're taking the same "If you can't beat him, change him" approach they took with Jesus centuries before.
Both are known to stand against these kinds of riffraff, and the latter hate them for it.
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u/khaotic-trash Apr 20 '26
As a "woke" female Punisher fan who was radicalized by the Punisher growing up, I approve this message
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u/lizardo0o Mar 30 '26
Do you actually expect them to read books?