Definitely some so bad its good things to it. The director was a notorious Hollywood reactionary who was competent at making films at least. It’s not a great film, it’s clearly a propaganda screed and kind of laughable these days.

If you’re looking for other bad reactionary anti-communist films I’d suggest “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” if you can find a copy which was a kind of church/preacher-made fearmongering film about the threat of communism and a hypothetical scenario of what if they won in the US. It has this delightful scene where a communist commissar supposedly trying to indoctrinate a bunch of children prays to Fidel and “glorious Fidel” brings the children “all the candy they can eat” which consists of a guy walking in through a door and bringing a sack of candy the guy proceeds to throw at the children, telling them it is a miracle, not of “your Jesus Christ” but of Fidel Castro. This is a truly bad film unlike Red Dawn, Red Dawn tries and has correct communist iconography whereas the hammer and sickles in Footmen are badly done and everything is cheap.

DS9 IMO is where the revisionism started.

This is directly connectable to two historical events:

1. Death of Gene Roddenberry and control being ceded to other executives who were more liberal.

2. It was the very first Trek show made following the victory of the US in the cold war, the end of history rhetoric and feeling reaching its height. (While most of TNG was filmed after the fall of the USSR, the first 3-ish seasons were written and shot before that, thus setting a tone among the writers, additionally the impact of the fall of the USSR wasn’t really fully felt until the coup in 1994 which was most of the way through the show’s run) Additionally I believe Patrick Stewart held some sympathies as the time that might have pushed back against any attempts to revise the universe, even if they’d wanted to and I don’t think they wanted to make any major changes during the run of the show.

This can be laid at the feet of Rick Berman really more than anything. Gene Roddenberry was weird, he was leering, but he undoubtedly had some much better politics than Berman and those who followed. In the glow of the victory of capitalism and end of history the whole IP took a very dark turn necessarily on the belief that this was it, this was how things would continue and Star Trek would have to exist in some related context with less utopianism.

Voyager continued or at least didn’t revert these problems though given it’s situation being stranded far outside of the communist controlled space their actions and activities can be more or less justified as frontier and war communism tough stuff. What can’t be as easily bushed aside is the black ops section whatever introduced in DS9, the heavy use of fiat currency among the crew in ordinary situations including gambling, and a lot of other shifts in how the federation is defined and run.

So I agree but I disagree in its inclusion in ST “golden age” canon which is basically just TNG. Hence why I think the IP is not worth fighting over, the liberals won long ago and it’s only ever gotten worse since then. By itself in a vacuum or with TOS TNG is a great if somewhat utopian socialist show. Everything that followed has been decay if not outright plundering in a mirror version of what Russia went through in the 90s of shock therapy and terror.

Mini-rant: I dislike Star Trek so it’s not surprising to me to see this. I used to like it when it was only ToS/TNG (mainly TNG) in my mind with Voyager kind of off in the distance with DS9 further off but as a franchise most of it by sheer volume and weight is now so liberal, so anti-communist, so just bad, so grim-dark and anti-bloomer that ST originally was that I can’t say I like it as a property or universe. I enjoy the TOS films, I enjoy TNG and the TNG films, I like a decent chunk of Voyager and some of DS9 but after that… I fell out of love once Enterprise came out and after seeing the J.J. Abrams reboot of grim-dark trek I just walked away entirely and what I hear only encourages me that I made the right choice. I don’t care what they’re doing now. I did enjoy Lower Decks but that was a fan tribute to ToS/TNG/Voy/DS9 that isn’t even really canon so that’s probably why they could get away with some of what they did.

No, only implicitly. Afaik Gene meant for it to be like the Nordic model.

I’ve never seen or been given any sources that really clarify what he was after. I saw several times on left reddit subs over the years people repeat the claim that his wife said on a radio show that “what the Chinese believe in, that’s what Gene saw for Star Trek” or something to the effect. But I’ve never seen a source on this.

It certainly seems at times in places much more than just nordic social democracy extended. The in-universe hand-waving is that it was basically just a nuclear war and not violent revolution that brought about humanity coming together under this (cough communism cough) system. By DS9 the liberals are fully in control, they do things like “oh the wealthy can be shamed by riot leaders being exceptionally decent and not murdering their cops when they take power in an area, and oh being non-violent will get real change” (with regard to Bell Riots).

For one thing the model of ToS seems very militarized but also has people who seem to me like stand-ins even if ones not always portrayed super favorably for Soviet commissars, for planning individuals within a kind of strictly run hierarchy. By TNG that seems to have been dropped.

Thank you.

The great fear we should all have is Trump somehow manages a rapprochement with Russia, a team-up in as you say a new imperialist order, bringing Russia into the club while shoving Europe out to arm’s length. Putin may not wish to allow this but he’s old and if he doesn’t die in the coming years anyways he could be pushed aside.

Should that happen and a few more things along with it that see to China’s encirclement and isolation, it is one of those big things that could lead to the defeat of socialism and locking in of barbarism in a post-climate-change world.

And one of the reasons I am not willing to say the US is cooked or fucked just yet. This is an ace they could yet pull out and the Russian bourgeoisie might let them have it for a mere equal partnership and dividing or profits.

Securing Russia’s cooperation would be enough to enable totally isolating China from the world economy and turning the screws on them. They’d have the island chains, first and second to contain them via sea. They’d have hostile India to the west, instability carefully engineered for decades in west Asia/middle east to disrupt the belt and road with a big assist from their colonial outpost “isn’treal” which despite all our hopes is riding pretty high on success lately with Iran meaningfully weakened, more weak in regional power, friends, influence than they have been in decades. If they lock down Russia as well China has no real routes to ship and receive goods to and from Africa, to and from Europe, etc.

IF the capitalists have them in that position they can fuck their proletariat and their consumer economies by hard decoupling because it won’t matter, because they’ll just exploit their workers at home harder, they’ll ‘friendshore’ to India and some back to the US and perhaps a more desperate and weakened EU that’s gutted all its social welfare. Things won’t be as good, quality will be down, there will be various problems, increased costs but a lot of this can be passed onto consumers and there may yet be no serious falling rate of profit consequences worse than those they were already bearing.

China has a very dangerous path ahead. I really hope Russia doesn’t join with the west. I hope honestly at this point that deranged anti-Russia democrats get back into power in 4 years and ruin any and all progress but given how the bourgeoisie are lining up behind Trump and this shift I have my doubts that they’re not all in on this.

This will also be a moment to test whether theories of imperialism can apply to China depending on their complicity with any such alliance.

This is however absurd. China is not imperialist, they will not willingly be imperialist. They are trying their hardest to free the world of imperialism and they will not be invited to any speculative US-Russia imperialism club or offered a seat there as there are no extra profits to be shared by the western capitalists who are desperate at this point because of the falling rates of profit and collapsing neo-colonialism.

It’s all about threat profile. Unless your relatives are discussing with you or each other organizing a socialist group or something Signal is probably fine if you’re not inclined to self host a matrix.