But similar concerns were discussed going back to 1941, only a year or two after Superman debuted. A German S.S. newspaper even praised Superman as an American effort to copy "Germany's reawakening" and to "import the ideas of manly virtue and spread them among young Americans." Presumably, the S.S. didn't realize that Superman's creators were Jewish. If Superman was an avatar of manly virtue, it was an anti-anti-Semitic manly virtue—a patriotic and strong fascist dream from the U.S. designed to beat the tar out of that strong fascist dream across the Atlantic.

Minaj takes Nazi fascism and anti-Nazi superhero fascism and cheerfully conflates the two, throwing in Catholic imagery, gangsta boasting, and feminist declaration that she's responsible for her own success ("I never fucked Wayne/I never fucked Drake/On my life, man/for fuck's sake"). The result is an indiscriminate potpourri of power fantasies: Minaj as superhero being fanned like an Orientalist pasha while sitting in front of a Riefenstahl military review, or super-Minaj walking amidst the troops with her super-butt (making a cameo from "Anaconda") while spitting lines about "bitches" and how they can blow her.

Minaj, then, starts from the typical hip-hop gangsta assertion of toughness, power, and mastery—"These hoes couldn't test me/Even if their name was pop quiz." But that assertion spirals out into a hip-hop stream of consciousness: power=superheroes=fascism=Catholic Church=military hardware. Hip hop has often been criticized for its embracing of violence and force, and Minaj's video at once underlines that criticism by linking gangsta and Nazis and implicates American culture in general, by linking superheroes—an ongoing pop obsession—to fascism as well. And if that's not enough to make everyone uncomfortable, she also mixes in pop feminism. If you want female superheroes and women owning their own career success, here they are—with guns and pseudo-swastikas. Whether for men or women, worship of power is worship of power, down to the last heil.

That's not to say that Minaj was intentionally using Nazi imagery to critique hip hop violence, or superheroes, or pop empowerment feminism. It's more likely that she was just using a bunch of imagery that seemed like it fit together and would be entertaining/provocative. The fact that the instantly famous rear-view picture from the "Anaconda" single shows up for a split second in "Only," squatting on a quasi-Greek monumental building, is indicative. That image was ubiquitous; Minaj was photoshopped onto the Google symbol, into a scene from the Lion King, and (disturbingly) into Kermit the Frog. Minaj has been turned into a symbol, which symbolizes nothing but its own ubiquity. The only intentional ideological commitment here is to the pop pomo stew.