For decades people have been arguing over whether Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers,” and the Paul Verhoven movie that is as faithful to the novel as “Star Trek: Discovery” is to the Star Trek franchise, describe a society that is fundamentally fascist… and whether they are in fact advocating for fascism. These days most of the debate revolves around the movie (because reading are hard, I guess); the fact that the military are shown to have some uniforms that are directly inspired by Nazi SS uniforms kinda makes the “fascism” detail kinda jump out at you. And so, on one side we have this detailed explanation as to why the movie advocates for fascism:
But on the other hand, we have this video which does a pretty good job of tearign down the first videos arguments:
In short: the society shown in the movie is a democratic one, one that has a strict set of laws that it apparently actually sticks to and applies fairly. It has freedom of speech, including allowing people to publicly argue against not only government policy but also the basic nature of the government. It seems that businessmen can do quite well and get quite rich while still publicly opposing the government. And while it’s fighting a total war against an alien race, the military respect the capabilities of that race; and while the military seems to be carrying out a *genocidal* war against that alien race, the aliens are doing the same to humanity. Yes, there’s not much empathy for the enemy, but then the enemy does not show any personality to empathize *with.* Their sole means of communications with mankind are to wipe out whole cities of women and children and puppies, and to chop up colonists.
In the movie, the humans seem to be fascist *solely* in their choice of fashion. It’s the alien bugs that seem to have the more fascist society.