How media has never stopped mistifying fascism

Bit of odd thing to talk about here, but with the current rise of the far right I have come to the conclusion that fascism may have lost the war, but it has achieved a remarkable victory in how they are portrayed in media. The image of nazism for the last eighty years, even in the most critical works with nothing but disdain towards fascism, has been nothing but echoes of Triumph of the Will. Fascists are shown as calculating, cold, terrifying, machiavellian. Their weapons are elegant, unstoppable, perfectly designed or in a word that Nazis would be happy with, superior. This is what happens in almost every story including real or fictional fascists, from silly children fantasy tv to grim dark sci fy.

Now, I enjoy the story of an underdog and I love cold, calculating, terrifying villains. It's no shock that this perception has remained popular. But this has created extremely undesirable, completely untrue narratives. Nazis are seen as the saviours of the German economy, an economy that they merely kept afloat by taking more and more debt. Their tanks, while featuring cutting edge technology, were full of issues, prohibitively expensive. Their successful plans weren't laid by a mastermind, they were a mix of luck, allied incompetence and impulsiveness. In conclusion, nazis weren't cold, calculating and smart, but brutish, reckless, corrupt, stoned. Their discourses should not be only terrifying, they also should be seen as absurd, ridiculous and immature.

This is why it's a shame that the idea that lives on about fascism isn't more like something like The Great Dictator. The Great Dictator doesn't feature everything I would like anti fascist media to feature but it shows how fascism is about little men wanting to feel big.

I feel like the way the western media portrayed communism should also be a good way to see the failures of anti fascism in media. The reason why the perception of communism has been destroyed by western media is that media has not only made North Korea, China, and the USSR deeply evil but made sure to criticize the underlying structure and ideology (partly because the rich were fine with fascism, partly because simply painting a geopolitical rival as purely evil without any arguments beyond that gets old quickly). What defined how people saw the Soviet Union isn't the Soviet propaganda films, but a satire, Animal Farm.

Because if fascism is shown as an ideology that delivers its promises of prosperity, triumph and efficiency, the only thing that stops people from gravitating to fascism is basic human values, and if people are desperate, basic human values is the first thing they are going to drop.