Jean Grey Takes On Fake News In X-Men Red

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for X-Men Red #5 by Tom Taylor, Mahmud Asrar, Rain Beredo and Cory Petit, on sale now.

In this modern age of ours, disinformation is so prevalent that it’s been weaponized by the most hateful groups in society and used to sow division throughout our communities. X-Men Red is Marvel’s most socially conscious and politically relevant mutant comic in a long time and as the X-Men have evolved to represent various civil rights causes throughout their fifty-plus years, it was only a matter of time before Marvel’s merry mutants came face-to-face with the modern face of bigotry, which is largely online and viral.

Of course, this being the X-Men, it’s not quite as simple as some hateful and abusive messages on Twitter. In recent issues, one of the team’s most awful enemies has returned to do everything they can to turn the world against Jean Grey and her message of inclusion and acceptance.

The Woman Called Nova

The villain for Tom Taylor and Mahmud Asrar’s X-Men Red is Cassandra Nova. First introduced by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely in New X-Men #112, she was originally believed to be Charles Xavier’s biological twin whom he killed in the womb, only for her to survive as a psychic entity until she was strong enough to create a body of her own. That later turned out to be half correct, as Cassandra Nova was discovered to be a Mummudrai, which is the Shi’Ar word for “opposite.”

According to Shi’Ar legend, everyone faces off against their own personal Mummudrai — a shadow self — at some point in the womb, and by defeating it we are exposed to our first understanding of the other; an outside invader. In reality, Mummudrai are parasitic monsters from the astral plane, and Cassandra Nova was able to create a physical form for herself through her connection with Charles Xavier.

Cassandra Nova was responsible for the largest massacre of mutants in history, when she sent the Wild Sentinel to Genosha, resulting in the slaughter of sixteen-million mutants. She later swapped minds with Xavier, leaving him trapped in her paralysed body while she wreaked havoc on the Shi’Ar Empire in his and was eventually trapped within the immobile alien body of Stuff, a member of the Imperial Guard and imprisoned within the lowest levels of the Xavier School For Gifted Learning.

She eventually escaped, using suggestions implanted in Emma Frost to facilitate her freedom and has only appeared sporadically since, most recently in a clash with the Los Angeles based X-Force team led by Storm. Her return to prominence in X-Men Red shows a Cassandra Nova recommitted to mutant genocide, likely due to the fact that mutant births are on the rise for the first time in years, and Jean Grey’s return and message of acceptance is antithetical to her goals of hatred, division and mutant eradication.

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The Hate Machine

Cassandra Nova has been using her influence to manipulate world leaders and regular people alike, and thanks to her newly improved Sentinites — nanomachine Sentinels imperceptible to the naked eye, capable of burrowing their way into a person’s mind and changing their personality into something much more hateful — she’s able to maintain control of people and encourage their hatred of mutants for longer and from anywhere. It’s these Sentinites which led to the death of the UK ambassador at the end of X-Men Red #1 (making it look like Jean Grey did it with her psychic powers) and caused an innocent man named David Bushell to shoot and kill a young mutant girl.

The thing about hatred is, Cassandra Nova doesn’t have to infect every person with Seninites to turn the tide against mutants, she just has to infect enough people and humans will do the rest. As we’ve seen with international bot-farms focusing on sowing racial hatred via platforms like Facebook and Twitter, these tactics only need enough influence to lead the conversation and regular people will pick up the ball and run with it.

It’s this division that leads to a tense standoff on the Polish coast, as a group of mutant refugees attempt to escape detention and flee to safety. In real life, Europe is currently gripped by a rise in far-right nationalism, bolstered by charismatic figures pointing to refugees from countries such as Syria being responsible for everything wrong in their societies. Just as mutants were metaphors for the black civil rights struggle of the sixties and the push for gay rights in the eighties, Taylor and Asrar have updated the metaphor to be incredibly current, with mutants representing anyone just trying to live a safe life, hounded by their own government because they don’t look a certain way. This leads to a tense standoff between the Polish army and Namor’s Atlantean army, as the Sub-Mariner arrives to usher the fleeing mutants to the safety of Atlantis, despite the Polish general’s orders to detain the asylum seeking mutants.

Jean's answer to this is something we could use more of in the real world. She doesn’t alter the minds of the soldiers on that beach, but instead she gives them a small look into the minds of the scared and vulnerable mutants just trying to get their families to safety. In that moment, the soldiers realize that the mutants are people just like them, with hopes, fear, loves and ambitions.

Jean's response to the spread of Cassandra Nova’s fake news is to spread empathy throughout the world. As lines are drawn and division is sown, all it takes is a common bond for people to realise they’ve been forcing their own fears and insecurities on completely innocent people just like them. It’s a shame we can’t magically make people experience what it’s like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes in the real world, but Jean Grey and her X-Men squad are showing the importance of it and giving us all a lesson in how to fight hate and misinformation with facts, kindness and love.

KEEP READING: Jean Grey’s Newest Enemy Is Also Her Most Powerful – And Personal