Our Betters Make Plans
Attention, comrades. My fellow heroes, titans, thinkers of deep thoughts. It is time to map out the world of tomorrow:
There are no post revolution theatre troops, only post revolution mine troops, comrade. pic.twitter.com/ACIref7r9r
— Hegel Borg™️ (@xxclusionary) June 10, 2024
Because after the revolution, we will need accessible theatre.
Presumably, to take our minds off all the riots and ruin and burning cars. Earlier revolutionary rumblings can be found here and here. Topics covered include the pivotal importance of “artists and visionaries,” and the righteous washing of other people’s bin contents. Thereby enabling us to “eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint.”
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
A lot of sf fans do display a very childish worship of Heinlein Case in point talking about how SpaceX boosters land on their tails “like God and Heinlein intended” which is not meant ironically if you listen to them in person. Sure, it’s impressive technology but please.
“Throwing rocks” is a recurrent reference to Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in which the Luna rebels win independence by bombarding the Earth with catapult-launched rocks.
A military presence in space seems a reasonable concern, given the sad reality of global politics and the idea that having all one’s military assets at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well makes them less useful in space.
Heinlein gets some well deserved credit for playing a major role in bring sf out of the pulp era with far more sophisticated writing. His predecessors were not good enough to appear in mainstream fiction-publishing magazines but he achieved that a few times.
A military presence in space seems a reasonable concern, in the context of LEO out to geosynch or maybe a tad beyond. A military presence on the mooooon is silly and/or absurd. Except possibly in the way, way as yet unproven viability of extracting wealth from the moon itself. Which itself is unproven as to what specific geographical location one would need to be in to extract the as yet unproven wealth. We went there 50 years ago and planted a flag. No one cares. No one looking to make a buck anyway. That so many “conservatives” swoon like schoolgirls at the thought of flying to the moon on the taxpayer’s dime is itself absurd. It’s as if reasonably well educated people have no bloody idea how far away the moon is. Hint: it’s mighty damn far. And then there’s Mars…
Well that’s the thing: The economic value of the Moon is as yet unknown. And if it may have economic value then military considerations should be studied. I don’t pay much attention to what NASA wants to do, figuring that private ventures are more likely to reflect real world possibilities. We’ll see….
I guess we aren’t getting a reply backing up those assertions.
Yes, I was off on a bender for some days. The movie is very much about American militarism and crony capitalism. The people you see are all playing the same old game and it takes til the end of the movie before we see any sign that they even appreciate the circumstances that they’re in. The novel depicts a genuinely different society with a point of view that has been beaten into shape by the circumstances.
Militarism and propaganda do not define or constitute fascism. I’d go so far as to say that the kind of society at risk of fascism is one that has a capacity for militarism and propaganda; but it needs to go further. The sense of collective identity and existential adversity is essential, and the bugs provide it in Starship Troopers where the Nazis basically had to hallucinate it. If we are indeed seeing Nazism in the Ukraine (not something I would concede lightly), then Putin is giving them all grounds they need.
Verhoeven relied on imagery to convey clues that this was a fascist society. The omnipresent war eagle symbol, the long black Gestapo coats, and the heavy handed and omnipresent propaganda were crafted to remind us of 20th century fascism.
So any society (fictional or historical) which faced up to an existential threat was fascistic? No.*
No. The bugs are merely a convenient plot device to provide a reason for the war and a contrast between the bugs’ efficient perfect communism and Earth’s very libertarian society.
You cannot use the mere presence of a existential enemy to “prove” that the society fighting that enemy is fascistic; you need to demonstrate that the society’s culture and institutions are indeed fascistic, something that is rather hard to do given that Heinlein portrays it as being very high in individual freedom.
It would be better to instead look at the theory of fascism, as expounded by various fascist thinkers going back to Mussolini et al. At the very brief, soundbite level, fascism involves a top-down organization of society. (See the concept of corporatism, advanced by Mussolini and others, and revealingly endorsed–implicitly and explicitly–by contemporary progressives.): Government formulates policy and issues instructions to corporations. (Corporations in fascist/corporatist political theory are business cartels, individual companies, labor unions, professional organizations, social service organizations, recreation clubs, social clubs, interest groups, etc. All of society must be organized in “corporations” which coordinate the totalitarian control.) Those corporations then pass the governments decrees down the hierarchy ultimately to the individual. And those corporations facilitate totalitarian government by taking on much of the local responsibility for enforcement. (This is one reason why fascists like big organizations as opposed to huge numbers of tiny companies and independent local organizations.) This is different from old style socialism in that ownership of those organizations remains nominally in private hands, but government maintains total control.
Remember the fascist slogan, “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
And then there is the ultra-nationalistic aspect of fascism. (This fanaticism can be national, or ethnic, or racial, or religious.) This contrasts with international socialism, which is class-based but just as murderously fanatical. In fact, the early fascists were inspired to switch from internationalism to nationalism precisely because their internationalist ideology was rejected by the working classes of the nations of Europe.
Addendum: Given that Heinlein portrayed his future Earth society in a highly sympathetic light, it is absurd to speculate that he was exploring the nature of fascism: In every book and story he wrote, he made it quite clear if a society deserved condemnation or even serious criticism.
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
–George Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune (24 March 1944)
“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’ “.
–George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)