The authoritarian strain in modern democracies has only heightened since I first posted this bit of cartoon wisdom several years ago. In 1937, H.T. Webster’s Casper Milquetoast (The Timid Soul) responds to Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolph Hitler with his own fantasy of assertiveness. This 1937 vision of fascism’s psychological appeal to feelings of personal disempowerment is eerily relevant to the current ethos. Webster perceptively understands how the personal and political entwine around identity. And through Casper he renders it as a will to power that is at once frightening but also silly and petty. Webster even seems to understand something American liberals are only now grasping: the most effective response to bro-aviating fascist cosplay is ridicule.