The only Russian novel officially approved by the Soviet Union that I’ve read (in translation) is And Quiet Flows the Don. It was years ago that I read it, but I remember being surprised that it did not glorify totalitarianism.
Maybe more authoritarian than totalitarian, but the Atreides family of Dune seems to fit in the later books, although I haven’t read them so maybe I’m off a bit. Paul and Leto enforce their will to save humanity, but cause millions of deaths in the meantime.
We have to distinguish between works that portray totalitarian or authoritarian systems, and those that advocate totalitarian or authoritarian systems. Nobody argues that 1984 advocates totalitarianism, right? Now, 1984 is unambiguously an anti-totalitarian book. It’s easy to see that a boot stamping on a human face, forever, is bad. But other works don’t spoon-feed the message. Take “Dune”, for instance. Paul is portrayed fairly sympathetically. But that’s a trick. He is a monster, just as much as the Baron, and the author intends for us to see him as a monster. The Baron is a cackling stereotype of a monster. Paul is a sympathetic monster.
I suppose reading the Dune books as a kid I missed it. But the universe of the Dune books is a horrible dystopia, and it’s not intended to be anything else. Paul Atreides is the protagonist of Dune, but he’s no more a hero than Count Dracula is, and Dune doesn’t advocate his rule any more than the book Dracula advocates vampirism.
Philip Dru: Administrator about the armed takeover of the US by a benevolent dictator who cures all our nation’s ills, by Edwar Mandell House.
No different than many other such fantasies, except that House flattered Woodrow Wilson into assuming the mantle of his fictional hero, resulting in, arguably, world disaster.
You did have to voluteer to sign up, but there was no indication that all Service jobs were dangerous. And everyone was accepted, regardless of physical condition, so clearly not all jobs would be able to be dangerous.
REmember, the theoretical blind man in a wheelchair could get a job counting the hairs on a caterpillar by touch. Not terribly dangerous.
But Heinlein, being a proud Naval veteran wrote about the military aspects of things.
You haven’t given an example on your end, why should ANYONE have to give you a counter-example. You’ve made the wild-ass claim, you back it up. I won’t hold my breath for that, however, as it is a ridiculous statement.
The Turner Diaries. The Organization is not only as totalitarian as the Khmer Rouge, but practices genocide on a scale that would have horrified Hitler.
The apocalyptic Left Behind series surely posits a totalitarian Final Victory.
A military that is under civilian authority is not a totalitarian organization by any stretch of the imagination. Nearly every democracy in the world has a military.
This sounds like something taken wildly out of context if it was there at all.
Can you tell us the actual forum or even the subject of the thread? I can’t see it in any of Stirling’s posts on AHDB.
ps Maybe I’ve missed something? I’ve dropped in on that board before and never realised there was a section that only members could see.
That’s what I thought when I saw the pro-Nazi film Saving Private Ryan.
I don’t have the book in front of me, but there was something said in one of the History & Moral Philosophy classes that all service jobs were inherently dangerous, on purpose. Yes, the doctor at recruiting said they’d have to give a blind man in a wheelchair a job counting hairs on a caterpillar, but remember, the doctor wasn’t in the service - he was a civilian employee. So he’s not as good a source on how the service works as an H&MP instructor. Heck, just throw in the occasional poisonous caterpillar, and you’d be all set.
Re: Starship Troopers. It’s not that they made service inherently dangerous, just that there was no guarantee that any job would be safe. You could end up field testing survival gear on Titan. Or you could work at a research lab, which would be perfectly safe until the Bugs show up and destroy it. It’s not like there was some bureaucrat in charge of making sure that a certain percentage of recruits ended up dead, just that there were dangerous jobs that needed to be done, and if you joined the service you would probably be assigned one of those jobs.
It was more than that - if a job wasn’t dangerous, they’d just hire civilians to do it. Dangerous jobs, like working in an electronics research lab on Pluto of all places, which couldn’t have been terribly safe even if you weren’t at war, required people in service.
From Fleet Sergeant Ho, the legless recruiter:
“So for those who insist on serving their term - but haven’t got what we want and must have - we’ve had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will either run 'em home with their tails between their legs and their terms uncompleted…or at least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they’ve paid a high price for it.”
“A term of service isn’t a kiddie camp; it’s either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime…or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof. Not a vacation. Not a romantic adventure. Well?”
From Major Reid, the OCS H&MP instructor: (my bolding)
“And you have forgotten that in peacetime most veterans come from non-combatant auxiliary services and have not been subject to the full rigors of military discipline; they have merely been harried, overworked, and endangered - yet their votes count.”
From Johnny as narrator:
“Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.”
Maybe although he got banned by the Admin for it.
It was either Chat or Non Political Chat you have to be a member for you to see it. After registering go to Stirling’s account (joatsimeon@aol.com) and go to his latest posts.
Julius Caesar was opposed by the *Optimates:
*
*Optimates (singular optimas, The Best of Men, also known as the priests[citation needed] or boni, the Good Men) were the pro-aristocratic faction of the later Roman Republic. They wished to limit the power of the popular assemblies and the Tribunes of the Plebs, and to extend the power of the Senate, which was viewed as more dedicated to the interests of the aristocrats. In particular, they were concerned with the rise of individual generals who, backed by the tribunate, the assemblies and their own soldiers, could shift power from the Senate and aristocracy. They were opposed by the populares.
The optimates favored the nobiles (noble families) and opposed the ascension of novi homines (“new men”, usually provincials) into Roman politics. Cicero, a strong supporter of the optimates’ cause, was himself a novus homo, being the first in his family to enter the Senate, and was never fully accepted by the optimates[1]. During the Civil War of 49BC, Julius Caesar, of a respectable old family, contended against a Senate championed by Pompey the Great, a new man.
In addition to their political aims, the optimates opposed the extension of Roman citizenship, and sought the preservation of the mos maiorum, the ways of their forefathers. …
…
Besides Sulla, notable optimates included Lucius Licinius Lucullus, Cato the Younger, Titus Annius Milo, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus and Marcus Junius Brutus. Though they had opposed him for the entirety of his political career, Pompey the Great also found himself as the leader of the optimates’ faction, once their civil war with Julius Caesar began. Optimates, along with disillusioned populares, who had carried out Caesar’s assassination called themselves Liberatores.*
RAH’s Glory Road sez strongly that a Empress/Dictator is the only way to go.
The US Military, (until the Cold War at least) was anti-totalitarian. We’d build a great citizen army, send it off to whup the bad guys, then disband 90% or so of it.
BTW, I would strongly discourage anyone who enjoys Stirling’s fiction from seeking out his online writings.
(He’s sufficiently out-there as a militarist & general-purpose jerk as to be effectively a troll, even if he doesn’t mean to be. And I for one have been unable to un-read the stuff of his I read on Usenet, which has pretty well barred me from enjoying his books. Not because I think he should be silenced & kept from expressing his views, but because his writing voice is fairly similar both online and in his fiction, and I find the reminders unpleasant.)
Right. The Optimates were aristocrats, but they were also opposed to Caesar, or other generals, centralizing power in themselves. They supported the aristocratic republic.
Agreed. Watchmen, for example, was at least neutral towards the idea of “superheros” controlling the fate the world, and I could never see why requiring superheros to follow the laws rather than being their own style of vigilante was a bad thing.
Isn’t almost any story with a “hero King/Prince” that the population is looking to for peace, salvation etc. pretty much promoting totalitarianism in the form of royal, entitled rule?