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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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To be fair, I don't think the original Star Wars or Star Trek are rightist. More the later fits more with the left.

Trek was always openly and notoriously leftist. Original Trilogy Star Wars was non-leftist in a way which makes it an "old book" for the purposes we are talking about here. The snarky way of explaining this is at the level of aesthetics - the Empire was (according to Lucas, explicitly) modelled on the Soviet Union and the scene in A New Hope that is notoriously plagiarised from Triumph of the Will was the final scene where Leia gives Luke a medal while LARPing as the lawful government of the Galactic Republic. The First Order is modelled on Nazi Germany and all the scenes in The Farce Awakens which are redolent of Triumph of the Will are all First Order rallies. Meanwhile the goodies call themselves "The Resistance" and LARP as a real resistance even though they appear to be irregular forces of an actually-extant, non-LARP restored Galactic Republic. The serious way requires a level of expertise in media criticism that I don't possess. The best statement of the argument original trilogy (and prequel) Star Wars is right wing is the one made by David Brin, who thinks this is a bad thing.

To be fair, I don't think the original Star Wars or Star Trek are rightist. More the later fits more with the left.

Trek was always openly and notoriously leftist.

OG Stark Trek was explicitly anti-racist, but it was anti-racist in that colorblind, equality-of-opportunity way that is considered thoroughly and unacceptably right-wing today. You don't hear anybody on The Original Series mention microaggressions or privilege or affirmative action. The narrative doesn't hate white people the way so many modern narratives clearly do.

Other forms of leftism are notably absent. The economic leftism of The Next Generation is nowhere to be seen; Kirk talks about Scotty's pay in "The Doomsday Machine" and human merchants like Cyrano Jones exist. There is some feminism in putting women on a warship, but at least Kirk is allowed to act like a fucking man instead of a cuck. When he seduces the 19-year-old Lenore (played by a 21-year-old Barbara Anderson) in "The Conscience of the King", nobody talks about how problematic and creepy it is for a powerful older man like Kirk to hit on a college-aged girl; it's just normal.

(Of course, it would be even better if Karidian told Kirk to back the fuck off unless he was willing to put a ring on Lenore and insisted on chaperoning their dates, but again you don't have to go full trad to improve on the current situation)