To be honest I just think that the repeated take that "Jason needs to learn to appreciate Bruce's code by killing the wrong person and realizing why it exists" is the most boring and misguided approach to his motives possible.
First and foremost, this pretends that Jason's decision to kill isn't inherently in response to the failures of Bruce's no-kill rule in the first place. Jason was Robin first, he knows why the no kill rule exists, and he's not anti-redemption, you're just refusing to acknowledge that there's nuance.
In Superman (1987) #22, Superman executed three prisoners who committed planetary genocide of every human being from the earth of their reality, and swore to do it again if they ever escaped. Clark was forced to make a decision of whether or not to risk them following through with something they've already proven themself more than willing to do once, and putting an end to it for good and ensure that that possibility never came to pass. This is closer to the logic that Jason is working with, albeit more extreme. You could also, actually, compare him to Savior, though I would say he's more mild.
If I were to give canon Jason an actual political stance, I would put him as sort of... Social-anarcho-fascist. Yes, I'm aware that that's contradictory, which perfectly mirrors Jason's contradictory ideals & the biases he's never been given the chance to help. He's intensely critical and ultimately against the system itself, and always has been. He DOES believe in helping people, & especially in either his Robin run or in some of his more recent runs show some connection to community. He's far from perfect, mind you, but there are buds of it.
And, I would like to note, of course, that the fascism was inherited from Bruce, who I would mark as somewhere along liberal-fascist. Like, come on, guys. He's pro-cop, so he's not exactly batting a thousand in the politics department either. In fact, he's extremely adherent to the system. "But sometimes the cops turn on him and try to arrest him!!" yeah and then they expunge the corrupt cops and return to the status quo where Batman is the GPD's most specialest guy and nothing ever happened.
Bruce has repeatedly shown that he will talk the talk of people getting better and redemption from time to time, but he won't walk the walk: Whether it's Annual #11 "Love Bird" where he refused to believe that Penguin was actually trying to turn over a new leaf until it was too late for him to take back his accusations and he ruined Penguin's attempt to go straight & help other former convicts get their feet underneath them bcs the operation was technically a violation of parole, or Face the Face when -after installing Harvey as the vigilante in Gotham while he was gone for a year- he immediately accused Harvey of killing people again when he was being framed for it instead of trusting him and created a self-fulfilling prophecy of Harvey relapsing back into crime. His so-called "belief in redemption" is simply not stronger than his paranoia and hatred of crime itself, and it actively hampers any attempts to apply this effectively.
(Additionally, there were MULTIPLE incidents of Jason being the target of suspicion for doing things he hadn't. Under Bat-Fascism, if they have ANY reason to suspect you for a crime, especially if you have a history, then you are guilty until proven innocent. And this is an inherently anti-redemptive stance btw.)
Jason's methodology, his contradictorily fascistic politics, can all be attributed to Bruce's own flaws and being over-familiar with the system and not enough on the alternatives. To learning that at his knee and, as Jason said himself, "trying to be a better Batman." To want to be the kind of Batman that Bruce is, is to want to be effectively a shadow-dictator of Gotham.
There is no being a genuinely "better Batman" unless you can let go of Bruce's inherent flaws. First and foremost of which being the idea that he believes he knows what's best for everyone - himself, his family, the criminals he faces, and Gotham itself. He thinks he has rights to dictate what everyone in the city can or cannot do. Even beyond that, sometimes, but often he will ignore outside crimes that he would have punished with impunity within city limits. He's criticized for his controlling tendencies often. So are other members of the Bats who often hold very similar issues.
"The bats aren't fascists!" Yeah, they kind of are. Sorry to burst your bubble but I've already kind of explained some of it above. And if that's not enough let me remind you that Batman created "Brother Eye," that one of the bigger issues during Oracle's Birds of Prey runs was her and Dinah arguing about people's rights to privacy, that Bruce, through his connection to Wayne Industries, has complete & unfettered access to Gotham's powergrid and has been shown to be able to turn off portions of it on a whim. Just because you think they're benevolent, doesn't make them any less what they are?
Fuck, you guys love to use "royal" titles like "Prince of Gotham" and not actually confront what a monarchy in all of this actually means. Because spoilers: it's not a beneficial thing. He doesn't even live in the city proper.
They're like... the ideal of "communism" as people like to proudly proclaim themselves when being anti-US Gov't vs the reality of it. People think the Bats fit that shiny perfect ideal, some kind of benevolent dictatorship, and in some ways, sure, yeah, that is kind of the lie that the comics are selling you. But in other ways it's really, really not.
Bruce has historically frequently abandoned Crime Alley and only visits there once a year, and thinks there's "no hope" for Crime Alley. (that's not very redemptive now is it?) He also tosses people into Arkham, which has gone through multiple changes of leadership all of which were horrible fucking people who did unethical experiments on the patients. He never even bothered vetting them, or investigating the corruption enough to try and make the place more functional. Dick tried, but even he dismissed it as a place you only send people who are too far gone (notably, this statement I'm pretty sure was after Jason was sent there, lol).
Actually, if we're being blunt, it would be harder to find a prison in DC comics that wasn't the site of horribly unethical treatments and experiments than to find one that's a hell hole. Getting one that treats anyone humanely would be a literal miracle and probably actually secretly evil. As if it's any wonder that most of these people end up re-offenders. But Bruce never addresses that, he continues to feed people, even people you claim he understands "sometimes need to do crime to survive" into the woodchipper of DC's US Prison system.
(And let's be honest - the real life one isn't really any better.)
Jason is specifically operating off of the failures of the No Kill rule and how it hasn't stopped feeding children into the woodchipper. It hasn't stopped victimizing people who are trying to get by without the crime. When you are gardening, sometimes you have to prune the weeds to let the other plants grow. And yes, I know how inherently dehumanizing that sounds - I never said it wasn't flawed, I never said it was right. My stance is that there's no way that """Bruce's rules""" are ever going to change Jason's mind, because he's already based his entire approach to crime on them. He has made a deliberate choice to contradict them, he's made the decision that he's fine with the consequences.
"Well if it's okay to kill criminals why shouldn't they kill him." You know, like what was said in that one comic. Anyways, Jason has literally told multiple people to kill him. He told Bruce to do it to stop him from killing Joker, he told Ollie to do it and that holding back made him weak, he told Mia to do it and letting go was the only way to ensure that she'd be safe. I cannot stress enough how much Jason would be okay with someone killing him to stop him.
I think maybe he would feel a little bit of regret, but he wouldn't lose sleep over killing the wrong person. He didn't in Task Force Z. Granted there were bigger issues at hand but y'know. That's kind of the point. He's even mercy killed multiple people who asked him to even without a full understanding of their crimes.
I think the reason so many people refuse to acknowledge the fascism inherent in the Bats (and a lot of DC comics in general) is that they're so used to this milder form of fascism that it's normal, it's nothing, it's not an issue. You love using buzzwords like communism/socialism and harm reduction and acab and redemption and you don't actually know how to walk the walk. Because it's not something you're going to find anywhere in DC Comics (even Green Arrow got a little uncomfortably pro-cop in the latest series esp), and least of all within Batman, the #1 face of copaganda extraordinaire.
So like, comparing Jason's politics to the other Bats is just a matter of deciding which flavor of paint you prefer to paint over that. And at least Jason's more critical of the system at large on a fairly regular basis (well, barring Lobdell's time. He was pretty pro-cop there), and that struggle of trying to not be adherent to the system but still feeding into it because you've been so steeped in it that sometimes you're just running into another issue you need to unlearn can be pretty relatable to people who are trying to embrace and embody the ideals of a non-fascistic state.
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