He-Man: Satanic Propaganda or Neo-Nazi Recruitment Tool?

Sometimes I think I’ve seen and heard it all, but then something even dumber comes along. I’m sure you’ll recall that I’ve previously written about how the He-Man toy line and cartoon series has very strong parallels to Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria cycle, and through it to H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. But did you know that He-Man is also satanic propaganda?

That’s the word from Unexplainable.net, a website devoted to exploring why aliens and UFOs are actually the demons and fallen angels of Christian legendry.

According to a post made on the website this month, Mattel and Filmation Associates designed the program to convince children to accept the Antichrist. There isn’t much of an argument per se, just some photographs and Bible quotes, so I’ll try to make some sense of this. It begins with identifying He-Man’s alter ego, Prince Adam of Eternia, with the vision of Daniel from Daniel 7, specifically verses 24 and 25: “After them another king will arise, different from the earlier ones; he will subdue three kings.  He will speak against the Most High and oppress his holy people and try to change the set times and the laws. The holy people will be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time.” The warrant for this, according to the author, is that the evil king to come is a human being, so Adam is therefore the king. Never mind, of course, that Adam is technically only half human, since his father is an alien from Eternia and his mother an American astronaut. Never mind, too, that Adam isn’t a king. But whatever, right?

Next, we watch Adam turn into He-Man by drawing his power sword and absorbing the lightning signifying the power of Grayskull. This, we are told, is really the power of Satan from Luke 10:18, the same passage other biblical nincompoops tried to say was “Barack Obama” in Hebrew: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” The context of this sentence is completely different from that of Daniel and comes in a passage about exorcisms. Similarly, Revelation 13:13, also said to apply to He-Man, is from yet another context: “And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people.” The “it” is the second beast, with horns on its head. He-Man does not have horns.

He-Man enveloped in light.

The second beast of Revelation. Same thing, right?

As He-Man is wrapped in light and screams out that he has “the Power,” our author sees this as reflecting 2 Corinthians 11:14: “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” Our author is also particularly taken by the Scandinavian-style St. George’s cross on He-Man’s chest, a Swedish Freemason’s symbol visually similar to the cross pattée, used as the German Iron Cross and that of the Teutonic Knights. Our author chooses to associate this with the small red crosses appearing on the papal pallium, as worn by Benedict XVI and Francis, based on the earlier omophor. Catholics are, of course, demonic hell spawn according to evangelical Protestant extremists going back to the Reformation, so the papal vestments, derived from Byzantine imperial robes, are obviously satanic. However, while Benedict’s pallium had red crosses, his was the first to do so. Since the late Middle Ages they were black, and were still black during the period when He-Man was created. Honestly: Who cares?

This same evidence, incidentally, is used by Neo-Nazis (I’ll spare you the links to white supremacist websites) to proclaim He-Man Ayran propaganda since he is “obviously” wearing the German Iron Cross. In this reading, He-Man’s lightning stands for the SS, which used lightning bolts as its insignia; his Battle Cat is “obviously” a Nazi panzer (panther) tank. “Man-at-Arms” must also be an SS officer, since his name is an English translation of the singular of Shutzstaffel. Also: He-Man’s a blond barbarian superman. Skeletor, Neo-Nazis agree, represents Jews since he carries a ram’s head staff, like the ram’s horn and staff of Moses; uses black magic; obsesses over ancient texts and scrolls; and tries to suck all the wealth and goodness out of Eternia to enrich himself.

Returning to our fundamentalist author, we read that the sorceress of Grayskull violates biblical prohibitions against sorcery, such as those of Jeremiah 27:9, Malachi 3:5, and Revelation 21:8. Our author sees Skeletor much like the Neo-Nazis, recognizing his ram’s-head staff as an “occult” symbol and accusing him of stealing the “powers of Eternia” through Snake Mountain, symbolic of Satan, that old serpent from Eden. Our author accuses Skeletor of idol worship, expresses shock that he performs pagan yoga positions during magic, and objects that he visited ancient ruins in the shape of pyramids, which are obviously anti-Christian since pyramids on earth are associated with pagan gods, whom we know from 1 Corinthians 10:20 are actually Satan’s minions.

Above: Skeletor with ram's head staff.

Right: Danish fresco depicting Moses, with ram's horns (derived from Jerome's mistranslation of "rays of light" in the Vulgate), riding with staff and commandments in a wheeled Ark of the Covenant.

I’m not sure I quite understand how both He-Man and Skeletor can be agents of Satan if they also battle one another. It seems somewhat counterproductive for satanic propaganda.

At least the Neo-Nazis have a small grain of truth in their version: Since He-Man was inspired by Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, he carries with him some of Howard’s racist attitudes—although Mattel actually made He-Man into a blonder, more Aryan figure than Conan, who was a blue-eyed, black-haired, muscle-bound proto-Celt. Howard imagined the ancient (rather than the current) white race as pure and manly and noble and rising up from barbarism after the destruction of the decadent brown-skinned ruling peoples of Atlantis, a race of evil sorcerers headed by Skeletor’s prototype, Skull-Face, also called Kathulos.