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Spoilers Let’s talk about the destruction of Trek utopia…

Godwin’s Law has lost all meaning now that we actually have Nazis back. It’s a sad reminder of how carefree things used to be.

Implying that there were never not people who believed in what National Socialism stood for.

There is not one single political movement, group, or force, that ever went fully extinct in the 20th and 21st Century, not a single one. It's incredibly hard, if not impossible, to extinguish a belief of any kind.
 
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Implying that there were never not people who believed in what National Socialism stood for.

There is not one single political movement, group, or force, that ever went fully extinct in the 20th and 21st Century, not a single one. It's incredibly hard, if not impossible, to extinguish a belief of any kind.
They’ve always been there, but largely in the shadows and dark corners of society. Now they’re out in the open and some are gaining power.
 
The challenge with the issue of Nazism is that it's been so over used that it makes it seem like actual, true believers in the policies of National Socialism are on the rise, or gaining power.

I'm a historian by training (Bachelors degree in History) and it's supremely irritating when people ascribe something as being Nazism, or someone being a Nazi, when they're just using it as a broad catch-all term for anyone on the pure authoritarian side of the spectrum.

Actual genuine true believers in the core of the National Socialism movement?

Exceptionally few and far between
 
The challenge with the issue of Nazism is that it's been so over used that it makes it seem like actual, true believers in the policies of National Socialism are on the rise, or gaining power.

I'm a historian by training (Bachelors degree in History) and it's supremely irritating when people ascribe something as being Nazism, or someone being a Nazi, when they're just using it as a broad catch-all term for anyone on the pure authoritarian side of the spectrum.

Actual genuine true believers in the core of the National Socialism movement?

Exceptionally few and far between
Unfortunately, there is quite the emotional reaction with the term Nazi and it is used catch all, much like a brand name being used for generic things (Band-Aid, Kleenex, etc).

But, this is not the place to discuss such things.
 
The challenge with the issue of Nazism is that it's been so over used that it makes it seem like actual, true believers in the policies of National Socialism are on the rise, or gaining power.

I'm a historian by training (Bachelors degree in History) and it's supremely irritating when people ascribe something as being Nazism, or someone being a Nazi, when they're just using it as a broad catch-all term for anyone on the pure authoritarian side of the spectrum.

Actual genuine true believers in the core of the National Socialism movement?

Exceptionally few and far between

You are right about people mentioning them more than necessary, but unfortunately there are actual believers of the National Socialism, at least of all the wrong parts of it. It is not really the place to discuss this topic, but if you look at italy in particular you will see that in the last elections slightly less than 4% of the people voted for the party that is idolizing fascism in any way possible.
To follow fascism is also forbidden from our constitution but they don't care, they do the nazi gesture and all that stuff, they openly hate people who are not "pure italian race" (lol it's not even a race) and ocasionally they beat up people like it was a street warrior movie from the 80s
 
The federation is not like that of course but again a Maquis and an Admiral would feel very different about what the federation truly is
 
I think the utopianism of TNG is over-sold. If we go back and watch the show, there is clearly a lot of corruption and shady shit within the Federation -- Pressman and the phase cloak in "The Pegasus," the admiral who tried to get Ensign Ro to do some shady shit in "Ensign Ro," Admiral Satie's witchhunt in "The Drumhead," Maddux trying to turn Data into a slave in "The Measure of a Man," the admiral who tried to steal Lal away in "The Offspring," the Federation allowing entire civilizations to die out in "Pen Pals" and "Homeward," the culture of idolization and hero worship built up around elite squads at Starfleet Academy like Nova Squad and Red Squad in "The First Duty" (and DS9's "Valiant"), the Federation's blithe willingness to engage in a war of genocide against the Borg in "I, Borg" and subsequent episodes where Nechayev ordered Picard to genocide them if he got the chance, the Federation's refusal to do anything substantive to help the Bajorans before they drove off the Cardassians in S6, the Federation's willingness to forcibly relocate a Native American settlement after totally ignore their wishes (and their complete blindness to the idea that those folks could just leave the Federation and accept Cardassian rule), and their general attitude towards the Maquis in S7, their willingness to forcibly relocate the Bak'u in INS -- these things all come to mind as examples of how the Federation was far from pure.

I think what PIC has done is, it has changed the tone and focus. Instead of focusing on morally righteous heroes who are always powerful enough to do the right thing without suffering negative repercussions for it and for whom moral corruption always comes from without, PIC focuses on Picard and company as morally imperfect political actors embedded in a morally imperfect society, who are trying to do their best and to redeem their society for its bad choices, but who are not themselves always perfect and who do not themselves always have enough power to make the morally correct choices. Instead of reassuring us that in the future, things will be better and we'll mostly make better choices as a society like TNG did, PIC is challenging us to ask if that will really always be the case and to think about how we can make sure that that is the case when we're faced with problems that are more complicated than TNG presented us with.

I like both types of stories, but I think the second type makes for more complex, higher-quality writing that says a lot more about our society today.

Agreed.

And plus it goes back to the idea in TNG that if you have perfect characters part of a perfect society, it's difficult to tell an interesting story. Some can make the argument that that's why the threats come from the "outside" but even then, our perfect heroes have to deal with it in a believable way.
 
Come on producers! Who's next? Can we make bets on which StarTrek character who will be destroyed next?
Actually, I was thinking of such a thread. Spin the wheel and kill a cast member!
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Finally, FINALLY, we have Trek were we don't know for a fact that any given character will survive whatever peril they are in. Kind-of like GoT, which was a very good show for first seven seasons, one of the reasons being, who da hell knows who will survive!
 
Actually, I was thinking of such a thread. Spin the wheel and kill a cast member. Finally, FINALLY, we have Trek were we don't know for a fact that any given character will survive whatever peril they are in.
It doesn't matter what colour uniform they are wearing either.

Red is no longer the only colour to be seen dead in. :biggrin:
 
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