Patterns of Force

[Santa Kang]

At the end of the episode the Zeons and Ekosians make peace and decide to lived the way the Führer intended. They even suggest they might join the Federation. Gill is a bit of martyr now, do you think they'll be keeping all the Nazi symbols he introduced?

 

[Timo]

Yeah, why not? Their previous predicament came from unquestioningly following the influences of an outside agent; if they now decided to take control of the Nazi mythos, rather than let themselves be controlled by it, all the better for them. They could probably disassociate the symbology from the atrocities if they tried - which would be vastly better for their future than not going through that effort!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Outpost4]

After the Enterprise left, everyone drove Volkswagon Bugs.

 

[Plum]

This episode leaves soooo many scary after tastes. What does it mean to go on in peace but as intended by Prof. Gil/Da Fuhrer? So the war is stopped, but how can one just wash away the most extreme of right wing governments - fascism? 'Cause the only other way it happened was far, far, more ugly. What happens to the fascist leaders? Well, Hitler proved himself a coward. Let me tells ya, you don't wanna die like Mussolini. You really, really, don't.

What the hell did Gil mean by saying that Nazi Germany was 'efficient'? And I seem to remember that this was yet another basic trait tagged onto the Ekosians, and thus they took to Nazi ways quickly because they were efficient. Ya-huh.

The thing is, the episode was not well written and was just a fun Nazi episode with a moral at the end. Reading much more into it creates the scary taste I mentioned. Still, it has one of the best lines ever...

Spock; "You should make a very convincing Nazi captain."

 

[Timo]

So the war is stopped, but how can one just wash away the most extreme of right wing governments - fascism?

Umm, fundamentally, fascism was what they had in Italy. And it was a rather functional type of government, and should have remained functional even with the violent, racist and otherwise undesirable aspects of it gone. Indeed, when Badoglio took over from Mussolini, relatively little was changed...

Nazism as such wasn't a form of government - the Nazi government did not rely on any novel or unique economic or organizatory ideas. It was merely a totalitarian framework that allowed a relatively traditional capitalistic-favoritist economy to function at peak efficiency (when Speer got his hands on it for the final two years). With the hate elements gone, there wouldn't be anything specific left of Nazism as such, but the symbols could still be rallied to support some more benign type of totalitarianism.

Nazism before Speer was the antithesis of efficiency, though: Hitler and his top cohorts had designed the system specifically so that it would be maximally inefficient, consisting of nothing but jealous backstabbers with overlapping and contradictory roles and authorities, too busily competing with each other to seriously threaten the top cohorts. Which is why the idea that Gill introduced Nazism as a benevolent attempt at organizing the planet makes no sense: Nazism was only good for concentrating power on a single dictator, and nothing else.

Which basically means that Gill must have been a power-hungry villain through and through. It's just that our heroes desperately wanted to see him through rosy glasses, and put words into his drugged and dying mouth to preserve the positive image...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Plum]

So the war is stopped, but how can one just wash away the most extreme of right wing governments - fascism?

Umm, fundamentally, fascism was what they had in Italy.
<SNIP!>

Er, yes I get that about Italy. I did mention Mussolini after all. Not sure how you missed that?

As for the rest, I believe that might be so but it seems miss out on the human cost of the people who have to live, and die, with this system.

And yes, I get that Nazism is a different thing. But the Nazis were fascists too, that was their form of government. So I don't know what you're on about. Perhaps because the episode seemed more about Nazism? I guess I stuck on Gils 'efficient' talk and I thought it referred to fascism specifically. Of course, that's just my inference.

 

[Timo]

But the Nazis were fascists too, that was their form of government. So I don't know what you're on about.

I respectfully disagree, as do some other folks. Nazis were called fascists by their enemies, much like Americans have been called imperialists, but the derogatory intent doesn't really reflect the facts of the matter. Many of the definitions of fascism have been invented ex post facto to support the framework where Italy and Germany both were fascist, but that was the invention of the Allies during and after the war. Before the war, the so-called "Italian fascism" was the only one in existence (although it had admirers and followers in, say, Romania).

To use fascism as a synonym of totalitarianism is a bit annoying, when it should be seen as a subcategory instead. After all, communism is no different from fascism if one looks at the big picture: a single-party system, an economy based on government-controlled trusts and a police state are the defining characteristics of both. Yet bundling up the two is historically rather misleading...

It's funny that Gill's "talk" about his intentions is limited to two fragmentary phrases, plus a third where he laments that Melakon usurped his power. The rest is Spock's speculation. Gill spoke of a divided planet, and taking a lesson from Earth history; he then said the Nazis were the most efficient. For all we know, he was taking the Nazi lesson about efficiently killing all the people on the other side of the division, leaving only a single population group.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gary7]

I think it's a little more basic than what is proposed. Let's go back to the actual lines:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KIRK: Gill. Gill, why did you abandon your mission? Why did you interfere with this culture?

GILL: Planet fragmented. Divided. Took lesson from Earth history.

KIRK: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.

GILL: Most efficient state Earth ever knew.

SPOCK: Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

KIRK: But it was brutal, perverted, had to be destroyed at a terrible cost. Why that example?

SPOCK: Perhaps Gill felt that such a state, run benignly, could accomplish its efficiency without sadism.

KIRK: Why, Gill? Why?

GILL: Worked. At first it worked. Then Melakon began take over. Used the. Gave me the drug.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So, "efficient" was not about the government... it was about the organization and rallying of the Nazis that bonded a nation to work together towards a common goal. Unfortunately, their ultimate aims were not benevolent. They invaded benign neighboring countries. They turned sadistic and murdered millions.

The idea of the episode story is intriguing, but it is flawed... it does not take into account the unique series of circumstances on Earth at the time. Certainly on this alien planet, you wouldn't have the exact same circumstances. There's little guarantee that introducing the Nazi movement would accomplish Gill's objective.

Remember at the time that the United States had a comparatively piss-poor military. Our first venture into the war was astonishingly 3rd rate. But we had a propaganda machine of our own that rallied the citizens. It was highly honorable to participate in the war effort and give your all. And our nation rose up quickly. It's really impressive when you look at how fast our military grew in skill, resources, and technology.

So, the efficiency was really all about unifying the country towards a common cause. The Nazis were on a path of "taking back what is rightfully ours" and Americans were united on "ridding the world of fascist tyranny". For the American version, there would need to be a facist regime to be vanquished, which there wasn't. For the Nazi version, there needed to be a chaotic nation needing to be united against an oppressor--which there was. So, the Ekosians were a primitive, warlike people in a state of anarchy. The other planet, Zeon, had a relatively high technology, and its people were peaceful but suppressing the Ekosians. Gill sought to rally the Ekosians beyond their anarchy and rise to the capable level of the Zeons to balance things out and achieve peace... but the Ekosians grew too strong for the Zeons and turned the tide. We never got to really understand the nature of the oppression and what Gill conceived in rallying to unite the Ekosians... was it Melakon that invoked the racial purity concept and make the Zeons out to be the inferior race that needed to be wiped out? Unfortunately, the episode leaves many unanswered questions.

 

[Timo]

There's little guarantee that introducing the Nazi movement would accomplish Gill's objective.

Unless that objective was merely grabbing power, concentrating it on Gill's person, and clinging onto it, without any sort of a plan for things beyond that, or any real interest in such things. The personality cult aspect of Nazism would probably be the only aprt that Gill really needed, and the external trappings would be the main requirement for that. So Gill could borrow all those trappings, which had been designed by propagandists more skilled than himself, and then do whatever it took to get the usual "hate-the-scapegoats, trust-the-leader-who-gives-make-work, do-the-funny-salute" thing going. Which probably would require starting out with SA-style gang violence and counterviolence and so forth.

Whether Gill was a master orator when not drugged is unknown. But that, too, is something he could have lifted off wholesale from the original actor: Nazism offered him all the propaganda goodies in one neat packet, a packet that would be massively effective the first time around. On an alien planet, nobody would realize he was a mere copycat without an original thought to his name.

But of course, implementing the American propaganda machine wouldn't have been nearly as interesting and controversial as the Nazi machine.

I'm not so sure about that. But certainly this was an effective choice, even if the US or USSR versions might have been of dramatic interest, too...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Plum]

But the Nazis were fascists too, that was their form of government. So I don't know what you're on about.

I respectfully disagree, as do some other folks. <SNIP!>

WHAT???

Incorrect. That's as far as I go with this.