Thank God, "Superman" is woke!

America's most iconic superhero is an immigrant who stands up for the underdog.

Part One: Trumpers hate “Superman” because it supports kindness.

Trumpers accuse the new Superman movie of being “woke.” Thank God, they’re actually right!

It makes this a great Superman movie (and melts MAGA snowflakes).

The new movie “Superman”, as directed and written by James Gunn, is proudly pro-immigrant, pro-diversity and anti-oligarch. Perhaps most importantly, it promotes kindness as the ultimate virtue… a grave sin to many conservatives today.

Hence we see President Donald Trump’s political movement getting triggered. Fox News contributor and ex-Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway whined that actor David Corenswet, who plays Superman, does not use the word “American” when referring to Superman’s slogan of “truth, justice and the American way.” Conway adds that "we don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us."

She was joined by Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who described the movie’s philosophy as a “moat of woke, enlightened opinion.” Fellow Fox News hot Jesse Watters contributed with the joke, “You know what it says on his cape? MS-13.”

Perhaps most conspicuously Dean Cain — a pro-Trump D-list actor best known for playing the single most forgettable iteration of Superman — explicitly bashed the new “Superman” movie for advocating compassion toward immigrants.

"The 'American way' is immigrant friendly, tremendously immigrant friendly, but there are rules,” Cain said, reacting to Gunn describing Superman as "an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country," with this being "a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost."

Ironically enough Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman would also be placed in the “Too Woke” basket.

Trump’s conservative followers, as led by oligarchs like Elon Musk and the always-well-funded Christian right movement, do not like kindness, at least when extended to groups they wish to persecute. Grounding their anti-compassion arguments in the same self-serving, partisan pat used by Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s, they have convinced thought leaders, most notably podcaster Joe Rogan, to promote the idea that kindness is actually a bad thing.

"You can't come in saying, 'I want to get rid of all the rules in America, because I want it to be more like Somalia,’” Cain argued, characteristically misrepresenting liberal ideas to justify excluding a group of people (Somalis) against whom he is self-evidently prejudiced. Pretty soon he drops the mask of supposed concern about rule-following and admits he just wants to exclude people.

“Well, that doesn't work, because you had to leave Somalia to come here...” Cain said. “There have to be limits, because we can’t have everybody in the United States. We can't have everybody, society will fail. So there have to be limits."

Conway, Gutfeld, Watters and Cain all support Trump’s war against immigrants and his pro-oligarch tax bill that increases resources by $12,000 on average each year for the richest households and decreases them by roughly $1,600 annually for the poorest households. Their movement insists that the kind of racial, ethnic and gender-based diversity promoted in “Superman” is “woke.” For these reasons, they are all anti-immigrant, anti-diversity and pro-oligarch, regardless of whether they’d describe themselves that way.

Not coincidentally, the main villain in “Superman,” Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, is an oligarch who abuses his power to manipulate public opinion and colludes with dictators, particularly Zlatko Burić’s seeming hybrid of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. (Like Putin and Netanyahu, Burić’s Vasil Ghurkos is invading a weaker nation to steal its land with the help of corporate bigwigs.) Also not coincidentally, Hoult’s Luther explicitly hates immigrants, his eyes bulging with tears and rage as he rants against “aliens” for being, to him, less than human. He is a bigot, pure and simple, jealous and fearful like all xenophobes.

The Trump movement is reflected in and refracted by the Luthor character in this movie. I do not doubt that, if you support the Trump/Luthor philosophy, that hurts a lot.

Part Two: Non-Trumpers love “Superman” because by being “woke,” it returns to its comic book roots, thus telling a great story.

As I watched Gunn’s “Superman,” I thought of a quote from my favorite “Superman” movie, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” As a longtime buff of presidential history, I wanted to include it in my original review but feared I wouldn’t get it verbatim accurate. Now I can confidently include it word-for-word, because it is damn appropriate.

Per Laurence Fishburn’s Perry White: “The American conscience died with Robert, Martin, and John.”

Like this Superman movie, that Superman movie also wore its politics on its sleeve, although apparently 2016 conservatives missed this obvious call-out to three liberal heroes from the 1960s: President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We need an economic bill of rights,” King famously wrote in a 1968 essay published shortly after his assassination. Robert Kennedy later channeled King’s ideas, and his late brother no doubt would have at least been intrigued by them. “This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work. Some people are too young, some are too old, some are physically disabled, and yet in order to live, they need income.”

That’s an awful lot of kindness, which the cerebral “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” happily advocated. That motion picture grappled in depth with these complicated questions of class, as Henry Cavill’s iteration of the titular character questioned which stories to prioritize both as a journalist and as a superhero. In “Superman,” by contrast, our protagonist must fight the class war in a different way, by defeating Hoult’s Luthor despite the latter’s seemingly limitless resources.

That is the conflict at the core of “Superman,” the central tension that drives the plot and creates the bitter rivalry between Corenswet’s Superman and Hoult’s Luthor. Like millions of immigrants all over the world today, Corenswet’s Superman strives to thrive even as those richer and more powerful than him fearmonger at his expense because of their own deep hate. He even accepts his own fallibility, welcoming challenges from journalists and other critics, in part to distinguish himself from Luthor.

“Siegel and Schuster felt very much like outsiders,” explains David Welky, a historian at the University of Central Arkansas and author of "Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression" (which I highly recommend). Welky is referring to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the comic book artists who created the character. He added that the pair were “working-class Jews living in a run-down neighborhood in Cleveland” (Corenswet is proudly the first Jew to ever play the Superman character).

“The early Superman was very much an outsider seeking to assimilate into mainstream Americans,” Welky pointed out. “Like Siegel and Schuster, he wanted to belong. His origin story parallels Moses' — a kid set adrift in an ark. Moses' was made of bullrushes. Kal-El's — that's Hebrew for ‘all that is God’ — was made of whatever Kryptonians used to make spaceships. Kal-El plops down in an anonymous Midwestern town and rises from obscurity to fame.”

He concluded, “That's the American dream, isn't it?”

It is, at least if you aren’t in the Trump movement. This is why, from his earliest comic book appearances, Superman fought the same kinds of battles we see him wage in Gunn’s movie.

“From his first comic book appearance in 1938 Superman always fought for the little guy,” Welky said. “Sometimes that meant helping oppressed mine workers get a better deal. Sometimes that meant helping a skinny loser become a football star. From the outset Superman operated in a gritty, urban environment full of murderers and kidnappers.”

This is not to say the early Superman looked at America through rose-colored glasses. If anything, the stories included the disturbing implication that free people will ultimately need to rely on an invincible strongman to solve their problems, a theme I applauded “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” in 2016 for confronting directly.

“That dictatorial streak helped bring a lot of negative attention to the comic book business, which was just getting its start and was vulnerable to bad publicity,” Welky illuminated. “Superman started shaping up after that. Siegel and Schuster were already losing control over their creation. Other writers and artists were doing the work. Superman started talking less about the need for social reform and more about good-old-fashioned, 100% Americanism.”

To be clear, despite the Trumpers’ complaints, “Superman” spends far more time engaged in the premiere good-old-fashioned, 100% American value — spectacular ass kicking — than preaching. For every scene in which Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane thoughtfully challenges Superman’s assumptions, Superman and his super-pals Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Ed Gathegi) and Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) fight an array of baddies. The choreography and special effects here are all top notch.

Interspersed between the action scenes, “Superman” is stuffed with poignant character moments, humorous interludes and a veritable menagerie of cute animals (most notably, of course, Krypto played by Jolene). All of this makes “Superman” a lot of fun, even for those disinterested in its political message.

Part Three: If you’re against Superman, does that make you a Nazi?

When I compared Trump’s political movement to that of the Nazis, his press secretary Karoline Leavitt called me “disgusting.” Yet in light of then-Trump adviser Musk giving a literal Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration, and Trump constantly cozying up to Nazis, that comparison remains not only fair, but necessary.

In light of that context, what does it say that they are trying to lead a political movement which opposes kindness? One so anti-compassion that it literally opposes as beloved an American icon as Superman?

I suspect I know what Superman would think. To explain, I’ll close with Welky’s description of how Superman viewed the Nazis during World War II.

“Superman spent 1941 battling spies and subversive elements that were trying to trick Americans into militarizing,” Welky said, explaining that this reflected widespread public opinion at the time which opposed American involvement in the war.

“But Nazi Germany lurked behind all of this,” Welky added. “Spies looked like stereotypical Nazis. Insignia on enemy weaponry often looked Nazi-ish. There's an issue from the summer of 1941 set at a sports festival pitting American athletes against ‘Dukalians’ who walk, talk, and salute like Nazis as they declare their racial superiority. That is, until Superman defeats them in every event.”

While Welky had not seen “Superman” at the time I interviewed him, I suspect he’d see a lot in common between the Dukalians and the Luthor movement in this movie. (Another group of characters surprise us later with their own Dukalian-esque ideology.)

“So we need to remember that prior to Pearl Harbor one could be both anti-Nazi and anti-war, which is where Superman sat,” Welky concluded. “Then came Pearl Harbor, and Superman had to fail his eye exam....”

That is because Superman was so powerful, he accidentally used his X-ray vision to see through the eye test. Yet he still helped out the American troops wherever and whenever he could, doing all he could to fight the Nazis.

Fortunately for the free world, the American people of the 1940s — both in the fictional “Superman” universe and our real one — were strong enough at the time to stop those Nazis.

The biggest question our own time is whether the same thing is true today. I certainly hope so.

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Back Seat Socialism

Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.