The Federation is not fascist.
In what ways is the Federation Fascist?
- Thread starter Voodoowoman2
- Start date
Well, You are making the old Canard that Fascism is necessarily Nazism. This is untrue. The father of modern fascism is Giovanni Gentile. He proposed that a Democracy based on individualism, individual freedom liberty was basically selfish He proposed a model of democracy where the individual willingly gives himself over to the control of the state. Sounds like the Federation, especially Earth to me. If Starfleet wants it that' show it is. In Spock's court martial at the end of TOS he doesn't even have legal counsel. In Star Trek Darkness (or something) First Officer Kirk is not merely tried and convicted of mutiny, he is whisked out an airlock to an icy uninhabited world. Only Samuel Cogley seemed to still treasure the "Old Ways" of individual liberty. Yes, in many ways the Federation with it's council of oligarchs that make pronouncements everyone is to obey is fascist in this sense.
Who are you addressing this to? I didn't see anyone saying that Nazism is the only form of fascism.
Except for all the times Picard especially defied the will of the state in defense of individual or group or species rights.
If you are deemed competent, you can represent yourself in an American and other courts today too. The man who represents himself has a fool for a client, as they say, but you can do it. Spock is certainly competent to do so.
I don't think that was exactly standard procedure or totally legal. Felt like super off the books, time of war, Spock emotionally compromised from the destruction of his homeworld, bunch of cadets in charge of the ship, get this cheating stowaway mutineer off the ship ASAP type shenanigans to me.
So, the Federation Council is a bunch of super wealthy business tycoons and robber barons who have leveraged their fortunes into unelected political power? Yeah, no. You're just tossing around sinister political words without following their meaning.
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That wasn't standard operating procedure and Kirk notes it.
"Fascist" is an ajective relating to the National Facist Party in Italy 1921 to 1945.
Since Federation government is not controlled by members of the National Fascist Party the Federation is not facist. The basis o fthe National Fascist party was Italian Nationalism, which seems like a poor idealogical basis for a multispecies interstellar government where Earth humans are a minority and Italians are a minority amoung Earth Humans.
It is irrational to use "fascist" to describe every person, institution, or ideaology which vaguely resembles that of the National Fascist Party.
I peersonally disapprove of using the world "fascist" unless it describes someone or something "Fascist" with a capital "F".
The Federation might possibly slightly resemble "fascist Italy in some ways. But I suspect that the Federation could be described as "American", "communist", "democratic", "free", "tyrannical" "Commanche-like", "Russian-like" or by many other words just as accurately as it could be described as "fascist'.
Since Federation government is not controlled by members of the National Fascist Party the Federation is not facist. The basis o fthe National Fascist party was Italian Nationalism, which seems like a poor idealogical basis for a multispecies interstellar government where Earth humans are a minority and Italians are a minority amoung Earth Humans.
It is irrational to use "fascist" to describe every person, institution, or ideaology which vaguely resembles that of the National Fascist Party.
I peersonally disapprove of using the world "fascist" unless it describes someone or something "Fascist" with a capital "F".
The Federation might possibly slightly resemble "fascist Italy in some ways. But I suspect that the Federation could be described as "American", "communist", "democratic", "free", "tyrannical" "Commanche-like", "Russian-like" or by many other words just as accurately as it could be described as "fascist'.
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I tend to agree. I also don't think it is the utopia of human freedom, either. Like most things, it is somewhere in the middle.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck...
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
- Disregard for Human Rights.
- Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause.
- Supremacy of the Military.
- Widespread Sexism.
- Controlled Mass Media.
- Obsession with National Security.
- Religion and Government are Intertwined.
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Absolutely nothing you said here constitutes an argument that the Federation is fascist. What you're arguing (badly) is that the Federation is authoritarian. But authoritarianism and fascism are not synonyms.
Fascism is a very particular type of authoritarianism. Its defining characteristics are:
- Dictatorial control of the movement by a charismatic leader-figure
- Dictatorial control of the state by said charismatic leader-figure when the fascist movement obtains control of the state
- Division of society into a dominant in-group and out-groups
- In-group identity is venerated as the highest ideals of society
- Out-groups demonized as the source of all of society's/the in-group's problems, and/or as threat to the existence/purity of the in-group (e.g., use of out-groups as scapegoats for social problems)
- Common out-groups include immigrants, Jewish people, and racial minorities
- Promotion of extreme oppression of said out-groups by the in-group and/or the state
- Emphasis on the idea that the driver of history is conflict between the in-group and out-groups (often racially-defined)
- Fixation on the idea of an idealized past when the in-group reigned supreme and had few or no problems (particularly those caused by the demonized out-groups)
- Fixation on the belief in a present state of national decline
- Fixation on the idea of achieving national regeneration through violence
- Assertion of extremist cisheterosexual patriarchal gender roles
- Demonization of people who do not confine themselves to such gender roles (e.g., LGBT people, insufficiently masculine cishet men, insufficiently feminist cishet women, anyone who identifies with feminism, etc.)
- Demonization of intellectuals and of intellectual development
- Promotion of the "cult of action" for action's sake, often again associated with violence as a form of regeneration
The Federation does not have a single dominant in-group that is defined as the ideal to which all of Federation society must aspire/be judged. Humans may be the dominant power, but other Federation cultures seem to define themselves equally highly (e.g., the Vulcans). And no culture in the UFP is a marginalized out-group the way, say, Jewish people in the Third Reich were.
There is no dictatorial figure in control of UFP society. The closest the Federation ever came to that was Leyton's attempted coup in DS9's "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost," and that coup attempt failed.
There were at least some extremists in the Federation in 2373 who believed that the Federation was experiencing some form of "national" decline (the crazy folk in DS9 "Let He Who Is Without Sin...") but they didn't seem to associate it with only one UFP culture since they had Bolian and Human members, and they were just a handful of people out of trillions in the UFP. They did, however, seem to fixate on the idea of national regeneration through violence, so they may have been proto-fascists.
There is no evidence of any similar political movement in the Federation beyond that handful of loonies.
The Federation may not be quite as liberal as one might prefer, but it is not a fascist state by any meaningful definition.
* * *
The idea of the fasces or bundle of sticks as symbolizing the power of social unity has been around for thousands of years, since long before the movement that became known as fascism developed. It's a metaphor that applies to literally every single society, since every single society is comprised of multiple people who recognize that they can achieve more things through solidarity and unity than through conflict.
When and under what circumstances? Describe the legal system that regulates this process?
Again, that's more authoritarian than fascism per se.
I mean, what does "governed by" mean? All travel in, say, New Zealand is "governed by" His New Zealand Majesty's government in the sense that there are broad laws and regulations, but that hardly makes N.Z. a fascist state. From what we hear, Federation regulation of interstellar travel appears quite frankly to be far more lax than the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand or the comparable agencies of most countries today; I doubt the CAA or U.S. FAA would tolerate plans deviating from their scheduled flight paths and crossing foreign borders the way the Federation seems to have tolerated the Hansens' ship the S.S. Raven deviating from its flight path and crossing the Romulan Neutral Zone.
And there's the American Broadcasting Company and the National Broadcasting Company in the U.S., neither of which are owned by the U.S. government. And there's the British Broadcasting Company in the U.K., which is owned by the Crown but is independent of the Prime Minister or Parliament. We have no idea who owns or controls FNN -- it's entirely possible that it's a cooperative firm owned and democratically managed by its employees rather than by the UFP, for instance.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's the Federation News Service, not Federation Space News.
There is no evidence of this whatsoever. We know that the Federation Starfleet owns and operates all of Starfleet's subspace relays, but we have no evidence whatsoever that there are no privately-owned subspace relays.
Ask Thad Riker…
Oh, you can’t.
What the hell does Thad have to do with any of this?
I mean, the morality and logic of the Federation’s ban on genetic engineering and (apart from Data) artificial intelligence is certainly debatable, but even that doesn’t carry a whiff of ‘fascism’.
Yes, it sucks that Thad died. And yes, it also sucks that the genetic engineering that could have cured him was banned. But, hell, it's not like the Federation instituted the ban specifically to kill Thad or anything like that - it was passed centuries before Thad or even his parents was ever born.
And honestly, I can understand why the Federation passed these bans: genetic engineering could give rise to another Khan Singh, and of course AI's were - indirectly - responsible for the attack on Mars and the destruction of the Romulus rescue fleet. (They didn't cause the attack, but they did in some way enable it.) So the Federation moving to ban these things is certainly within the realm of understanding. It may smack of paranoia, but certainly not fascism.
Besides, you'll notice that the Federation actually lifted the ban on artificial intelligence (following the conclusion of PIC season 1). Does that sound like something a fascist government would do?
If the Federation were fascist, would the Rikers continue to serve in its Starfleet, despite their son's death? I think not. Will and Deanna are clearly loving parents, and of high moral principles; if they ever believed - even for a second - that the government they loyally served was fascist, they would never have continued in it. Despite the obvious pain that Thad's death certainly caused. They don't blame the Federation, so why should we?
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It does not appear that you know what fascism is.
Also, I’m pretty sure you’re watching a different show than the rest of us.
Your comment/opinion strikes me as how the 23rd century Federation is depicted. However, I can't help but feel that by the 24th century the Federation is more of a cohesive, unified government rather than a coalition of sovereign planets.
Im reminded of the US before and after the Civil War. When the US first began (for those readers here unaware of US history) it was a collection of 13 independent states bound into a lose confederation where state's rights and sovereignty superceded the national government. The founding document wasn't the Constitution but the Articles of Confederation. This idea didn't work and 13 years after the Declaration of Independence the idea was scrapped in favor of a stronger centralized national government.
Even at that, though, the individual states still viewed themselves as sovereign, at least in spirit. When the Civil War broke out in 1861 there were Generals and soldiers that would state their allegiances and their fighting loyalty to their individual home state. For example, General Lee (as the history lesson goes) fought for the Confederacy because his beloved home state of Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
In the Ken Burns documentary about the Civil War he stated that war changed how the World referred to the USA. Prior to the Civil War people would say the United States "are" doing this or that. Plural. After the war, people said the United States "is" doing this or that. Singular. The US went from a plural collection of states to a singular nation.
To me this is how the Federation feels like. It's as if the UN suddenly became the sovereign power or centralized government that exercised final authority over the member states. Each nation (or planet) may have limited delegated authority over some aspects of their territory, but the Federation exercises final authority over the major governmental, political, or legal issues.
If you can even call that 'fascism' (which I doubt) it still sounds like a highly idealized form to me, unlike any fascist government we ever actually saw on Earth. (Much like the idealized form of communism or socialism that also never materialized in real world history) - such movements didn't accept power from the people, they seized it (even if they had a support group among the people, and tried to make it appear democratic) and weren't prepared to give it back if asked so by the same people. Rather, they were in the habit of brutally suppressing revolts and demonstrations among the populations they ruled. I think the chasm between that attitude and the idealized one you mention is so large we really shouldn't give it the same name (and therefore neither claim the Federation is Fascist).
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Thad's death had nothing to do with the genetic engineering ban, which would have been a non-issue in this case anyway since Dr. Bashir did state the Federation does permit genetic engineering to correct birth defects. Thad died because the ban on synthetics also the elimination of positronic technology, of which treatment for Thad's condition depended on. Which was definitely an overreaction, positronic technology does not necessarily automatically equal artificial intelligence. It would like if we were to ban computers and also ban electricity just because it powers computers. Or blaming 9/11 on the existence of aviation fuel, and therefore banning that to prevent another such attack.Yes, it sucks that Thad died. And yes, it also sucks that the genetic engineering that could have cured him was banned. But, hell, it's not like the Federation instituted the ban specifically to kill Thad or anything like that - it was passed centuries before Thad or even his parents was ever born.
Uhhh... no. If we really were fascist, you would wind up in a reeducation camp just for making a post like that. Or a mass grave.
Me three, such a cross over could be fun
It is indeed most unusual. Did Spock have the actual authority, though to physically eject someone off the ship onto a random planet?
The problems the Butterfly people had with the Federation stemmed from interactions prior to the burn. It's pretty much stated in dialogue that Federation did something to the alshain to be deemed untrustworthy. Ni'Var also considered the Federation untrustworthy. So it's clear that while the Federation was no means fascists, they were at the very least disingenuous in their dealings with both their members and species they were courting for membership
No.
Scotty likely used 'bundle of sticks' as a metaphor for 'together we are stronger' to emphasize that when people come together and unify regardless of their background, race, etc. in an effort to create a better tomorrow by sharing technology, science and resources, they are much better off.
The technology in question was seen and used in TNG and DS9 too.
Even then, it was used only in extreme cases of unintended first contact or some other special case where no other method really works.
Memory engram reading is useful for ascertaining if someone is lying or not... but again, this is primarily used for SF verifying voracity of people's claims for the most part, and its use was rare... I hadn't seen it used by SF in a malicious manner.
Also, SF being willing to use the technology means nothing beyond the fact that they are simply willing to use it if/when it becomes necessary.
Same with their approach to defense and offense. SF (usually) never fires first. Weapons are used for self- defense, and diplomacy is attempted even during combat to try an alternative solution.
First off, what would you suggest the UFP calls its news network?
Just because the term 'Federation' is in the name doesn't mean its controlled by a central government.
In fact, pretty much everything in the Federation thus far seems to be very much so public.
Yes, SF does have higher authority in certain matters to conceal information from the general public depending on the sensitivity of the information, but they are defensive and exploratory arm of the Federation and we do know that eventually, most of this information ends up publically released anyway - there is of course some info which may be deemed too sensitive... for example, the details pertaining to USS Discovery do show the ship existed and was in service until it was reported as 'destroyed' by the crew of USS Enterprise, and they only did this to protect the galaxy... and in the future, it seems everyone of importance now knows what happened and that the ship went through time anyway.
I think you may be assuming the UFP is darker than imagined because you want to think so.
Given the limited information about broader life in UFP, people tend to jump to conclusions, but thus far and from what we saw, the UFP does not appear to be oppresive nor fascist.
Maybe its just your view that's darker because you grew up in a world that told you that anything different cannot possibly work (even though in reality, there are places on Earth that function VERY differently and openly without oppressive regimes).
That could be anything though.
Half the species in the Trek galaxy have different cultures and norms and expect other aliens to behave like they do (which is incredibly self-centric).
SF goes out of its way to remain neutral when negotiating or talking with species, but as we saw, that doesn't always help because most aliens will just make assumptions anyway and fire on you... until of course the conflict is resolved (usually by SF) and things are back to square one (with the aliens who don't always learn the lesson).
Heck, even UFP as a whole has been seen allowing alien ships in without always submitting to intrusive inspections (because UFP and SF do understand that not all species behave the same way).
Oops, spellig error.
