In the new Battlestar Galactica series, Tom Zarek, sometimes the enemy and sometimes the ally of President Roslin, was a terrorist/freedom fighter, depending on your POV, before the Cylon invasion. He was apparently some kind of nationalist/autonomist for his home colony (forget which one), which apparently was in an inferior and exploited position WRT to the other colonies; he was locked up for his political agitations and acts of terrorism. His books were banned, but idealistic youth such as Apollo managed to acquire them in samizdat form and were impressed by them. Since being liberated from a prison ship and getting elected to the Quorum of Twelve, he has made public statements, difficult to contradict, about how irrelevant pre-invasion social and economic roles are in the Fleet’s current situation. Yet it’s never clear exactly what is the content of his politics. Is he a communist or socialist? A libertarian or anarchist? And if he won the presidency he so obviously covets, what would he do with it?
From what I remember, he once used a guy working on cloud nine as someone who “works at a job there is no use for because the world has changed”. That seems to imply a large change in the economy, but more then that I can’t remember.
Though he also did insist that the colonial goverment be held to it’s democratic responsibilties.
I believe he is, like many idealists in history, taken with the power at this point. When he was young and an idealist, he sought to change things because he saw a moral and societal wrong. After his imprisonment, he seems determined to use his youthful power to catapult him to even greater power – or it could be more the people around him using him as a figurehead for their own power grab.
In any event I believe he is part Castro and part Walensa and like the other great characters on this show, not an easy read.
The fact that we can’t pin down exactly what his political philosophy is, beyond a few sparkling sound bites, probably explains to a large extent his popularity with the people in the show. 