So I'm currently watching through TNG and it's probably one of the few things in Sci-fi that truly shows a society well advanced past Capitalism and living out what can mostly be described as a Luxury-Communist society. The people work together for a better future, there is no poverty, no war, no money, no ethnic differences. The drive of society seems to be self-fulfillment and good spirited competition between individuals based around ability. Status in society seems to be set around merit and not wealth, you can be a pleb and sit home and shitpost on Holla Forums all day, or you can be a chef and work up to be given a restaurant to run and manage or join starfleet and try to get into starfleet academy to work your way up to bridge crew.
Star Trek TNG shows us basically what a Socialist vision for the future is, so the question really is, should we basically be using TNG as material to say, "This is basically what we want, this is the future we want to work towards as Socialists, when we think of Socialism, it's pretty much this".
TNG seems to be the only major piece of pop-culture that is outright Socialist/Communist so does it have any use in education and raising awareness of our positions?
I think real life examples are much more convincing. Kind of silly to point to a piece of fiction as a model for a serious political movement.
Carter Howard
TNG was pretty imperialist and racist though. They only followed the prime directive when they wanted to and a lot of aliens are thinly veiled racists stereotypes klingons
Deep space 9 played a lot on the theme of federation hypocrisy
Nathaniel Jenkins
Sure are a lot of white people tho.
Brody Kelly
And they are?
Socialism is at it's core a futurist movement. What we need to sell is a vision for a future, not point to dirt poor third world countries playing revolution and say "lets do that".
James Phillips
More to the point, we live in a world of fictions. People relate to fiction more easily than fact. We can also create an "ideal" model this way so that when real life attempts are made, they can be compared and we can try to figure out where the ideal model is unrealistic and where the real life attempt could be improved.
May I REMIND you that the Bajoran provisonal goverment SHITPOSTS on the Holla Forums using the Internet network WE built.
Adrian Hall
Roddenberry was a Communist.
According to his wife he was fond of Communism "of the chinese kind" which makes sense since Maoism was popular in the west in the 1970s
Also read he was Posadist, which also makes sense since Star Treks backstory is almost 1:1 Posadism.
Caleb Martin
Imperialism? Where do you get that from? The Federation are explorers, where is the conquering? If anything, they've been too weak willed at resisting actual Imperialist nations such as the Cardassians, Romulans, and The Dominion, they wait until they are backed into a corner before responding with force. The Prime Directive was also designed as a storytelling device in many ways to show its limitations, they didn't just violate it for no reason. And I don't know where you get the racism from, some of the more extreme ones were made as framing devices for stories or moral lessons. You need to understand Trek has always been about destroying stereotypes through storytelling, I don't know why you would think it's somehow the opposite.
These
Brody Murphy
Unit 31 and their policy of controlling trade and later turning their trading partners into client states/protectorates that they turn into larger federation seems imperialistic or at least expansionist to me. Not to mention their whole social engineering of these client/protectorate states before allowing them to join the federation.
William Campbell
t. someone that's never watched star trek
Eli Long
I don't know what you're talking about at all, unless you mean Section 31, which was an illegal organization within the Federation that nobody sans a scant handful of people knew about, the entire DS9/Ent arc was about how fucked they were and how they would be torn apart had the Federation as a whole knew about them. As for the trade policy, I'm not sure what you mean either, the Federation is a Federation, people join it by choice for the benefits of that. There are many worlds that are within Federation space that are not members, Bajor was one of those worlds for a long time, supposedly there are others. The social engineering aspect I can only assume you mean the Federation not wanting worlds with extreme cultural or social conditions becoming members, I don't see how that's a bad thing, would you have a world that practices human sacrifice or subjugation of other peoples to be members? Standards for behavior and social conditions are not a negative in that context.
I think you're reading too much into a fictional show that is limited by its writers and existing politics for the time it was made, compounded by studio limitations.
Matthew Walker
Reminder that Porky's been using Brave New World, 1984 and Farenheit-451 as models for years.
How is the Prime Directive imperialist? Isolationist and elitist, maybe. A way to make laziness and unwillingness to dirty their hands pulling others up to their standards of living and learning, sure. But imperialist I don't see so much. That was even a plot point in 'Mirror, Mirror.' Picard held pretty strongly to it, only ep I can remember whrere they openly interfere is 'Pen Pals,' which was because Data had already got them in fairly deep. Kirk mostly didn't give a shit. Janeway rationalized around it with material necessity and the insane troll logic and bath salts the writers of the show ran on. Sisko wangsted about it and sometimes was thought-provoking while doing so, and seemed to treat each instance individually probably because the show was an inconsistently-written B5 knockoff with writing bad enough to provoke mutinies among the cast. It wasn't around in Archer's time. Care to specify how? Genuinely curious. I mean obviously that one cringey episode from the first season of Next Generation with the black people planet, but what else? I'd say it exposed a lot of the flaws in Federation society and foreign policy, yeah.
Hey Holla Forums, whatchya doin?
This.
Chase Sanchez
The Klingons, the only black looking aliens, are vilolent savages. They don't even have a culture outside of warefare.
A lot of the problems they see primitive civilizations having could be solved if the federation shared tech like the the replicator. That whole idea that people can't handle technology to better themselves is sooooo imperialist.
The prime directive was vilolated if it mean the federation was hurt, otherwise it was preserved. The furigi point this out a bunch in deep space 9. The furigi are one example of a federation race that does get material support from the federation.
Isaac Edwards
Except that's bullshit you fucking fag
Worf talks about the great works of the mighty empire all the fucking time. Klingon opera and Klingon theater, to say nothing of Klingon cuisine, are the cultural envy of the quadrant, you p'tahk.
Connor Price
The technology issue alone has been addressed several times, there was several episodes of Voyager and a few in Enterprise that talked about the dangers of technology sharing. I don't think you understand what Imperialism is really, it's arguably elitist, but that elitism is warranted given the nature of the technologies, how dangerous they can be in the wrong hands.
I think you're reading things that aren't there, it also seems to me you haven't really watched any Trek since several statements you have made are just outright wrong, the Ferengi aren't a Federation race for one, and I dont' know what you mean by material support, the Federation trades with tons of races, that doesn't mean they necessarily share tech, they usually share tech if it's equivalent to technology the race they are trading with already has, or if they believe said said isn't going to be misused.
I really think you should go back and watch the shows, preferably with an open mind this time
Nolan Myers
Worf was the exception that proves the rule. There's even an episode when his son comes from the future to help Worf reject the pacifism he's adopting by being on a fed ship all the time because he losing a tribal war.
Never heard of the opera stuff, but the always depict the planet and the inside of their ships as industrial cluster fucks, highly implying they have no appreciation of aesthetics ,
Camden Russell
Nah, I'll just have to concede to most of your points. I tried to watch TNG awhile ago it has not aged well
Bentley Bennett
Favorite tidbit about F-451, the people voted for their stupidity. The government isn't forcing the books to be burnt, the people asked for it.
I think you should try to watch a curated list of episodes of the various series, DS9 is especially harsh on the Federation with the Maquis, Star Trek is the reason I'm a socialist and an optimistic realist, Garak encompasses many of my beliefs for instance.
Nathaniel Young
and Gorkon, and that lost Romulan penal colony, and the B'oreth monks, and…
Nicholas Anderson
Enterprise covers this a bit.
It's stated in Enterprise that the Klingon Empire was actually a thriving democratic representative monarchy where artists and scientists were respected at the top of society, but then one of the shitty emperors or chancellor or whatever basically created a "warrior caste" and made up all the honour bullshit and ever since then it's basically been a dictatorship by the warrior caste spiralling Klingon society into decline.
Also explains why all the Klingons we see are fucking retard warrior people, but then how did they even build ships?
Worf is probably the closest to what Klingons are supposed to be like. Which is a major point of his character, he's actually sticks to all these vague notions of what a klingon actually is in legend, but nobody else gives a shit and the rest of the warriors think he's a fucking autistic larper.
Oliver Perry
Wow this puts things in entirely different light.
Colton Powell
Damn Deep Space 9 is actually better than I remember it.
Anthony White
That doesn't even make sense you fucking idiot.
Just because Klingon aesthetics differ from your aesthetics doesn't mean they don't have them you sithlord.
Luis Jenkins
TNG is pretty much my ideal Socialist utopia.
If I became a Socialist leader, I would literally base my uniforms off Starfleet as a shoutout. TNG and DS9 would also have prime time TV slots for years on end.
