Yes, the left loves Superman.

The Man of Steel is everything we value. Strength used for good. Power wielded responsibly and a passion for justice for all. Of course he's woke. He always was.

You’d think by now that most people with even a passing interest in the subject might have actually read a Superman comic. Or watched any of the half-dozen incarnations that don’t involve Zack Snyder’s colour-bleached carnage.

Or even, God forbid, thought for five seconds about who and what Superman actually is. But no. Every time the Man of Steel dons the cape for a new outing, a gaggle of red-faced, culture war simpletons loses its collective mind over how “woke” it’s all become.

This time it’s James Gunn’s Superman and the usual suspects are already howling. Why? Because the new Superman is kind, because he’s diverse in his friendships, because he might — horror of horrors — actually care about people.

Because he’s played by a guy who doesn’t look like he spends ten hours a day injecting horse testosterone. Because he doesn’t represent the kind of masculinity they’re so desperate to cling to: cold, stoic, emotionally constipated, and capable of punching through buildings without ever once saying “I love you.”

So let’s say it plainly: of course Superman is woke. He always has been. And if you think otherwise, that says more about you than it does about the character.

Let’s go back to the source.

Superman was created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two working-class Jewish kids from Cleveland whose families had fled antisemitic persecution in Europe. The man they created wasn’t some Ayn Rand power fantasy. He wasn’t a libertarian tech bro in a cape. He was a literal alien, raised by humble Kansas farmers, who used his powers not for profit, not for revenge, but for justice.

Read those early comics — really read them — and you’ll find a guy who beats up slumlords, rescues battered women, takes down corrupt politicians, and smashes up the military-industrial complex. Superman wasn’t protecting the status quo. He was attacking it. He was the fist of the downtrodden and the displaced.

If Superman turned up in the UK today, he’d be blockading arms factories and tweeting support for junior doctors. He may even pull on a Palestine Action t-shirt and dare the authorities to arrest him for it.

This is what the culture warriors can’t process. They’ve been sold a version of Superman that makes him a boring symbol of order and power — a Reaganite wet dream. But that’s not the character. That’s the rebranding, and it’s a rebranding that it’s hard to find an actual source for; those ludicrous digital trading cards of an 80 year old Trump in the outfit do not count and should embarrass everyone connected to them.

The real Superman is radical. He’s dangerous to the powerful. He doesn’t exist to protect capitalism. He exists to call it out. He sees suffering and does something about it. Not because it’s profitable, not because it boosts his brand — but because it’s right.

That’s woke. That’s the whole point.

But to the angry lads on YouTube with thumbnails full of flames and ALL CAPS TITLES, “woke” just means “things that upset me because women talk now.”

It means inclusive casting. It means empathy. It means anything that suggests the world doesn’t revolve around them anymore.

They are enraged by a Superman who’s nice. Who feels things. Who might even stand up for people who don’t look like them. To them, that’s emasculating. As if strength only counts when it comes with dead eyes and a body count.

They want their Superman to be a killer. Cold, cruel, untouchable.

They want Zack Snyder’s Superman, the guy who causes more damage than he stops and scowls while doing it. Synder himself knew it was ridiculous; that’s why he created a Batman who saw that version of Superman as a potential threat to the human race; it’s also why a distrust of “the other” hangs over the whole film. As mad as that movie was and as OTT as it got, the pushback was clear and its politics and moral grounding were obvious. Which is probably why a lot of these YouTube types hated it.

Snyder’s Superman wasn’t inspirational — he was traumatised. And more than that, he was a symptom of a wider disease in pop culture: the myth that moral ambiguity is somehow more mature than moral clarity. That hope is for children, and cynicism is for adults. That’s not why people went to see the original movies.

The original Superman was hopeful. That was the point.

A working-class immigrant story about someone trying to do the right thing in a broken world. If that bothers you, it’s not because he’s “too political.” It’s because the politics don’t serve you anymore.

And yes — let’s say it — Superman would absolutely be anti-fascist.

If he turned up at a rally full of flag-waving goons chanting about “reclaiming our streets,” he’d tear their banners in half and tell them to grow the hell up. You know how I know? Because he has. In comics. Multiple times. The man literally fought Nazis. He put Hitler on his arse in a 1940s comic strip.

And now you’re whining that he might share a scene with someone who’s trans or be friends with a Muslim? Honestly, what did you think the “truth and justice” bit meant?

Superman isn’t a nationalist icon. He’s not “America First.”

He’s an outsider. An immigrant. A man with powers beyond comprehension who chooses to serve, not rule. Read that again; serve, not rule. He could have conquered Earth and served himself. In a day. He chose to be a friend and an ally to humanity. He chose devotion to duty, to civic responsibility, instead.

That’s woke as hell. That’s the fantasy — not the powers, but the morality. The idea that strength should be used to help others, not dominate them. That power without compassion is tyranny. It is precisely that mindset which he fights – and defeats – when he crushes Zod. They are the right-wing power fantasy … and it’s woven through the Superman legend from its earliest days as that which he despises most.

Which, funnily enough, is what the right-wing rage machine really fears.

Because the Superman they want is a lie.

He’s a delusion of unaccountable authority, force without feeling. They don’t want him to be moral — they want him to be a weapon. Their version of Superman is basically that Zod had won; not even in the literal sense. They want a Superman who in effect was General Zod. They want that symbol of unchecked dominance.

That’s why every time a new Superman project drops, they scream about “virtue signalling.” Because the idea of a man doing good just because it’s good is something they no longer understand.

They’re afraid of a Superman who makes you think. Who says things like, “You’re stronger than you believe. You have more power than you know.”

Because deep down, they know they’ve built their identity around weakness masquerading as strength. Around fear dressed up as anger. Around nostalgia for a world that never existed, where men were men, women were silent, and aliens knew their place.

Well, not this alien.

Superman is not dour. He is not afraid to smile. He lifts people up instead of smashing them down. He believes in something. He’ll care. He’ll try. And to a certain type of person, that’s terrifying.

Because hope — real, honest-to-God, unapologetic hope — is revolutionary and it does not even matter whether you love the movie or hate it, whether you are a fan newly arriving at the character or if you are simply taking another step on a road already set out long ago. This Superman is a hero in the truest sense.

So yes, you daft right-wing tits. Superman is woke.

Here’s the thing that the true fans all know; he always was.

It’s why we love him.