It may seem silly to anyone who doesn’t take an explicitly anti-fascist tack in their politics, but one major reason why Nick Spencer’s molding of Steve Rogers as a HYDRA member is so shitty is that Marvel has now given explicit iconography to alt-right/Nazi shitheads like Richard Spencer or Identity Europa.
Nick Spencer and Axel Alonso and anyone else working on the whole Secret Empire bullshit may view what they’re doing as making complicated, shades-of-grey stories where a classic hero is actually a villain and everyone in the Marvel Universe will be tested by this, but the fascists who are currently in the process of taking power – not just here but in places like France and Germany and Hungary – won’t view Captain America, HYDRA member as a villain.
They’ll view him as a hero.