The whole “Steven Universe would’ve forgiven Hitler” meme is so stupid

It’s honesty baffling to me how the go-to thing people use to explain why Steven Universe is a bad show is this idea that Steven is some ignorant pacifist who goes out of his way to redeem “Space Nazis.” Aside from the weird implications behind this argument (the creator of Steven Universe is Jewish, and based the character on her brother, who is also Jewish), it’s not even accurate.

I’m not the first person to point this out, but just to recap, Steven doesn’t even forgive the Diamonds. Both the movie and Steven Universe: Future make it clear that he does not like them, and is uncomfortable around them at best, and outright has deep seated resentment against them at worst. Again, not the first person to point this out, but he tries to murder White Diamond at one point. Does that sound like forgiveness?

If people are mad that the Diamonds weren’t sufficiently punished for their actions, what exactly were Steven and the Crystal Gems supposed to do? It’s not like they can put them in jail, and Steven needed them to undo all the damage they caused anyway.

Aside from that though, the thing I find most bizarre about this meme is that I never hear people use this same “critique” about characters like Aang. Remember how Aang tried to get Katara to forgive the man who killed her mother? Or how he unironically suggested that there must be a peaceful way of stopping Ozai? He even pleads with Ozai to stop being evil, before he’s ultimately forced to fight him, and even then, he passes up a perfectly good opportunity to kill him, and that’s before he realized he could take away his bending.

Of course, there’s also something like Dragon Ball. I don’t see people grilling Akira Toriyama for having Goku be cool with someone like Vegeta.

Edit: I will also just say for the record that it would probably be more accurate to describe the Diamonds as colonialists, rather than Nazis. They invade planets to mine their resources, not because they believe in gem supremacy.