Edward Nashton is a forensic accountant nobody looks at: an orphan, invisible, ignored by the city that abandoned him as a child. But online, hooded, he is something else: the Riddler, a vigilante who unravels Gotham's corruption through riddles and murders, followed and cheered on by a community of anonymous admirers who revere him. For Glaser's differential identification, the Riddler is the most contemporary case: a man who commits crimes not as Edward, but from a persona he built out of others.
// The theoryIdentities fabricated from models
Glaser said we commit crimes when we identify with figures —real or imagined— from whose perspective crime seems legitimate. The Riddler carries that idea to its contemporary version: he doesn't identify with one figure, but rather assembles an entire identity out of several —the Zodiac's modus operandi (the ciphers, the letters), the aesthetic of the vigilante, the language of the forums. Edward Nashton, invisible and without agency, becomes the Riddler by borrowing the masks of famous killers. From that constructed persona, he does what the accountant would never have dared to do.
The film is explicit about the modern ingredient: the online community. The Riddler is not alone; he has anonymous followers who validate his narrative, share his rage and, in the end, are willing to imitate him. Glaser in 2022 would have to add a chapter: today identification feeds not only on distant idols, but on communities that reinforce the toxic identity in real time and reward it with belonging.
The mask that authorizes
The key to the Riddler is the persona: the constructed identity that authorizes what the real self repressed. Edward Nashton is not a killer; the Riddler is. By identifying with that figure assembled from murderers and vigilantes, Nashton gains access to a perspective from which killing is "doing justice." Glaser would explain it this way: identification offers not only a model of conduct, it offers an alternative self from which that conduct becomes coherent. The mask does not hide the criminal; it enables him. That is why Batman's line —"I am vengeance"— and the Riddler's mirror each other: both act from a constructed identity, and the film sets them against each other as two versions of the same mechanism, one that stops in time and one that does not.
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// The subjectThe grievance that was looking for a form
Beneath the Riddler there is a real grievance: the abandonment, the orphanage, the corruption that sank people like him while enriching the powerful. That rage is authentic and understandable. But on its own it had no form or outlet; what gave it both was the identification with a vigilante-killer model and a community that applauded it. Glaser would frame it without excusing it: the grievance is the fuel, the identification is the fuse. Without the model of the Riddler, Nashton's rage might have stayed as silent resentment; with it, it became a campaign of terror.
Edward Nashton
// The crackNeither "vigilante with a point," nor the internet's fault
The Riddler's crack is twofold and very contemporary. One: buying his narrative —"he denounces corruption, he has a point"— and forgetting that he murders people, some of them innocent; that his grievance is real does not excuse the terror. The other: blaming "the internet" for creating him, as if the online community were the cause and not the amplifier. Glaser qualifies: the network did not manufacture Nashton's rage, but it offered him the model, the method and the applause that made it lethal. The honest reading holds both things —the subject's full responsibility and the responsibility of digital environments that hand out toxic identities and reward whoever adopts them.
The final shot says it all: his followers, hooded, activate to continue his work. Identification has gone viral. It is Glaser's warning updated: in the age of online communities, a single model can replicate itself across hundreds of borrowed selves.
Dismantling the factory of toxic personas
The Riddler is the criminological portrait of online radicalization: loners with a real grievance who find, in digital communities, a model to identify with and an audience that rewards them. The prevention Glaser suggests is not censorship —impossible and counterproductive— but competing for the identity: offering the Edward Nashtons belonging, recognition and legitimate channels for their grievance before the forum that idolizes killers does. And, in parallel, designing digital environments that do not reward the adoption of violent personas with status. The void the Riddler fills is the same one that better communities could fill.
"You'll see what I want you to see," says the Riddler. His tragedy is that what he wants them to see, he learned from killers, and that there was a whole community waiting to look at him. Edward Nashton dared to do nothing; the Riddler, made of others' models, dared to do everything.
Three key takeaways
- The Riddler is differential identification in the 21st century: he assembles a persona —the Riddler— out of real killers (the Zodiac) and an online community that validates it, and kills from behind that mask.
- The constructed persona "authorizes" what the real self repressed: it does not hide the criminal, it enables him. And digital communities reinforce the toxic identity in real time and reward it with belonging.
- The grievance (abandonment, corruption) is the fuel; identification with the model, the fuse. Neither vigilante with a point nor the internet's fault: the network amplifies, it does not create. Preventing means competing for the identity.
Sources · further reading
- Glaser, D. (1956). «Criminality Theories and Behavioral Images». American Journal of Sociology, 61(5).
- Ebner, J. (2020). Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists. Bloomsbury.
- Surette, R. (2015). Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. Cengage.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Edward Nashton?
Edward Nashton («el Enigma») es un villano de The Batman, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. Edward Nashton, an invisible accountant, dared to do nothing.
¿Por qué Edward Nashton (el Enigma) se convierte en villano?
The Riddler and Glaser's differential identification in its most contemporary form: a loner who fabricates an identity —the Riddler— out of real killers and an online community that cheers him on, and kills from behind that mask.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Edward Nashton?
El caso de Edward Nashton se analiza desde la Teoría de la identificación diferencial. Glaser's theory explains crime as identification with a model. The Riddler of The Batman brings it into the 21st century: Edward Nashton, an invisible loner, builds the persona of "the Riddler" out of real killers like the Zodiac and an online community that validates his rage, and from that identity commits crimes he never would have committed himself.
