"Buenas noches, mein Führer!"
this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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ya, ya
That movie might be the only case of an adaptation purposefully doing a severe putdown of the source material.
I read the book just a couple years ago thinking it would be awesome because the book is usually better than the movie, and oh my God. I can't believe someone actually thought that kind of government would be rad.
I'm not sure if Heinlein genuinely thought it would be rad. He did play around with a lot of ideas in his books. Stranger in a Strange Land is totally different and full on hippie communism or whatever you'd call it, which is in a bit of a contrast to Starship Troopers. And then there's the Finnish matriarchy in one of the books. Of course another explanation was that he just radically changed his minds but I dunno.
Interesting stuff, nevertheless and IMO really good book if you like military scifi.
Its a facist utopia, if you're a facist it IS great.
I always find it interesting to read stories investigating alternative ideas. I'm generally very left wing in my views. Stories like starship troopers are 1 way of doing it.
The thing is, such a system has some significant advantages. You just need to paper over the cracks. The biggest issue is the requirement for an external enemy. Without one, it would likely turn inwards and destroy itself. In the book's case it's the bugs that provide this. They are also not mindless. You start the book with a terror raid on an ally of the bugs, proving they are capable of interstellar diplomacy. It's designed to "persuade" them to stay out of the war, but they also idly use nuclear weapons on civilian targets.
A "benevolent dictator" funnelling public funds and lives into an offensive war effort to keep the populace unified in hate sounds, and is meant to sound hellish. It's an unnecessary waste of resources and lives that comes at the direct expense of providing for your people.
What are the advantages?
Common goals, with a strong unifying purpose for 1. Opportunities for significant advancement. Significant investment into medical care. Strong leadership direction. An extremely egalitarian society. Filtering of those in power.
Just because it's a horrifying setup doesn't mean it doesn't have advantages. It's possible to dissect a large complex idea and extract useful tools from it. It also helps you better see the pitfalls, both to help you make decisions on it, and explain the problems to others.
A couple of examples. The Nazis significantly improved the fitness level of a large chunk of the population. Nazi scientists were also critical in America making it to the moon. The current German autobahn road network is one of the best built in the world.
Just because the source is horrifying doesn't mean everything it is attached to is also horrifying. The catch is separating the 2, or explaining why the cost is not worth the benefit.
And just to clarify. I'm a strong proponent of a robust social safety net. I also think all "natural monopoly" infrastructure should be controlled by a government owned non profit. Capitalism and nationalism should be treated like fire. A fire in a hearth will keep you warm. A fire in a smelter will help make steel. A fire in your bedroom will kill your family. Useful, but controlled and channeled.
Common goals, with a strong unifying purpose for 1.
In no way reliant on a benevolent dictator, and using authoritarianism to push a purpose generally results in outcomes like genocide and the annexation of neighbouring territories.
Opportunities for significant advancement.
The opposite is typically true as autocratic leaders use their power to entrench their power, enforcing strong hierarchies.
Significant investment into medical care.
This one is a mixed bag, but also isn't remotely dependent on an autocrat.
Strong leadership direction.
That needs to point in a positive direction for it to be a positive - something that's almost never happened for long
An extremely egalitarian society.
The opposite is almost invariably the case - preferential treatment (generally paired with bloodshed) is necessary to keep the powerful in power.
Filtering of those in power.
Who filters the dictator? That would mean they're not a dictator.
I liked the general approach, but my own system designed by the same method plus my, not author's personality would look completely different.
Books like this are a "what if" game. The details, and the author's biases will shape it. They are still useful tools however for seeing how things will play out.
The parts of that book that aren't heavy handed philosophy are great. There's some fuckin awesome sci Fi hidden in the book that's pretty much "Atlas shrugged for the military"
People used to think that a lot.
They still do too, which is concerning.
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Like the guy on the pic being Filipino, for example.
I still wouldn't say it's fascist, rather paleo-Republican. Too nostalgic about Athens or the Roman republic.
I know I lived under a rock and all, but what is the movie's name?
Starship Troopers. It's great.
It's campy trash that's fun and has some interesting meta background.
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frantically hides NASA scientists behind a potted ficus
Hey man, you got any more of them pixels?
Sorry, that's all I could afford at the meme market.
This movie could easily be seen as a world where Germany won WW2, so I think they had to include that part about Japan being bombed to prevent that.
It’s an egalitarian military oligarchy. They know no race or gender, as long as you’re doing your part you can be a citizen too.
I don’t think that fits very well with what Hitler had planned…
it is an in-universe propaganda film in a fascist regime. it is not the nazi fascism, but it is still facism
It not being Nazi fascism while still being fascism was sorta their whole point
It's just war propaganda every non fascist country has also done that.
Of course it is, I didn’t say otherwise no? Just that it isn’t a race based regime. Any human can be a full member of the apparatus. No herrenrasse here
They had to throw in some POC as well.
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under their breath
"And I say kill 'em all!"
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