The Political Filter of Starship Troopers
Leftists are pathologically compelled to empathise with literal bugs over their own flesh-and-blood, so should you care that they hate you? Not at all; its a mark of honour.
It’s been nearly a year since my last article here, and nearly 2 years since my last YouTube video. If you haven’t heard, I have returned to making videos, and this is the script to my upcoming one. It took me quite a while to write and will take a while still to edit, so for those who want the preview, please enjoy.
The Beginning
I must have been around the age of 12, bright eyed and without a care in the world, when I first browsed YouTube. This was the era of Leeroy Jenkins, Ray William Johnson, who I’ve just looked up and he is still producing utter slop and making bank from it, and Halo montages in 240p to the tune of Drowning Pool. One day after deciphering some moving hieroglyphics and realising I was watching Master Chief turning aliens into glowing puddles, the algorithm had a cunning idea. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I ended up on a video about a game I’d never heard of called Starship Troopers, and naturally took to it like a moth to the flame.
This game was released in 2005, and was actually ahead of its time if you think about it. Call of Duty: World at War was the debut of the Zombies mode and would be released 3 years later, the same year that Gears of Wars 2 released with its horde mode. I haven’t played this game and don’t imagine it was all the same as this level, though it is an ideal setting for a horde mode style game. But there was one problem for wee little Ceadda: this game was Windows-only, and it would be a good few years until I would reach the next stage of evolution and assimilate into the PC master race. By all measures it apparently sucked, but I didn’t know that or care. My days were already a blur of going to school as an annoying obstacle in-between sessions of burly blokes in sci-fi armour splatting bugs in Halo and Star Wars: Republic Commando, and I only wanted more. In fact, it’s a real mystery as to why I never took to Warhammer 40K when my friend showed the tabletop game to me in high school. I was still in luck however, as this game was based off a movie, and by all measures, the movie was apparently good. I set my little fingers to work on finding out how to watch it, and I think this is when I managed to get my head around what a torrent file is, but one way or another, I succeeded. I watched it, definitely sperged out when I heard the track “Klendathu Drop” for the first time, got what I needed, and that was that. Off to consume the next power fantasy.
As we enter the phase of this story within my adult life, my biases going into this video will be laid bare, so I will say now, if you’re expecting a moderate position on the discourse which so often pops up surrounds this franchise, you’ll be disappointed. And if you expect a left-wing position on it from me, I know where you live, and am rapidly approaching.
Heinlein’s context
Like lots of other people in university, I developed a taste for exploring politics. Not in a “policy wonk” kind of way where these tastes lie in reading Guardian opinion pieces and tweeting about the effects a 0.2% rise in yearly carbon emissions will have on the trout population of Kenya. More in a way that involved sliding into radical libertarian theories that none of my peers shared, so in order to explore that further I had to turn to the internet, a lot like I did to get my fix of bug-squashing back in the day, and that’s how the journey to this channel began. Near the deepest depths of this rabbit hole lies Agorism, which I actually made my second-ever video about, and is a very niche sub-ideology with a bit of a potent identity crisis. Despite this, it has its own small established canon, with a key influence being a science-fiction novel named “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by a very well-regarded author called Robert A. Heinlein. “Who is this chap?” I wondered. Well, there’s nothing quite like Wikipedia for that sort of question. Hmm, a friend of Isaac Asimov, that name’s familiar… Stranger in a strange land, STARSHIP TROOPERS? As in, that cheesy old action movie I obsessed over for a week as a kid? Yeah, it turns out that it was firstly a literary work, and I couldn’t connect the dots as to how an author so cerebral, innovative, and politically complex could write a novel which, when adapted, seemed like little more than a very cool boyhood power fantasy which could genuinely be used by the US military as a recruitment campaign. We’ll come back to the crucial point of how this metamorphosis happened later. After all, this is the author in whose other book has been mentioned featured a key protagonist called Prof who said as follows:
A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.
Heinlein’s political views were complicated, sure, and while the heroes of that novel have clever but certainly straightforward views, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that the author does entirely. Science-fiction is, after all, often an exploration of utopia and dystopia, with highly exaggerated or idealised people & places, and this sentiment could possibly be more of an experimental amplification of a principle he which he actually personally held to more moderately. Heinlein certainly was not a selfish man, a typical libertarian caricature, and believed greatly in people doing good to others so that a rising tide may lift all boats, and in a very similar sense believed in the necessity of civic duty, the other side of that same coin, where all members of a society chip in to make great sacrifices up to and including life and limb for each other. His individualist side, even if it was more moderate than that of his Lunar anarchist characters, might seem at odds with this perhaps more collectivist notion. As I have traversed philosophy very widely these last few years and remain a libertarian to this day, but also now greatly appreciating more qualitative virtues like loyalty, charity, self-sacrifice, and stewardship, I don’t find these balancing scales to be confusing, but a significant weight off of my shoulders as it seems, in some sense, Heinlein gets something that I do which is quite rare to find expressed well.
Like all fictional media regarding conflict in the late 20th-century, the non-fiction context was that of the Cold War. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to suspend the US testing of nuclear weapons after negotiations following a declaration from Nikita Kruschev that the Soviet Union would do so only if all other nuclear-capable nations unilaterally agreed to do the same. They did. These terms weren’t expected to last forever and did eventually fall apart, expiring in August 1961. Two months later in October, the Soviets detonated Tsar Bomba, still the largest man-made explosion in history. I hope that seems to you like an unbelievably short timeframe to develop such a bomb, because it is. Soviet scientists had been operating at full capacity for these two and a half years of supposed amnesty, leaving the West completely embarrassed, sucker punched, and at an existential disadvantage, all because they trusted the Communists.
In-universe principles
Heinlein saw this coming, and Starship Troopers was published right in the middle of this affair in 1959, before the Soviet duplicity had been confirmed so dramatically. In the novel, future humanity lets its guard down and is struck by an intentionally launched asteroid, an obvious metaphor to a nuclear bomb, by a hostile alien species. These aliens are described as Arachnids or Bugs, and are creatures of an intelligent hivemind – do not forget that bit – and fire this asteroid at earth after some ongoing small-scale border conflicts on the edges of their shared territories. The human Federation declared a quarantine in these areas of conflict and forbade humans from creating new colonies there in order to avoid provoking the Arachnids. Some humans continued to, against this command, and this is where the hivemind nature becomes critical. Humans are individual yet social creatures. We require human interaction and cooperation to keep ourselves functioning, and this has an obvious reciprocal result, which incentivises us to operate according to mutual benefit. You scratch my back and I scratch yours. Whilst some humans are prone to predation and violence, such behaviour is unnatural to us and neither the norm, nor sustainable. If we simply killed everyone else then nobody could scratch our backs, so cooperation is our primary natural instinct. That phrase regarding scratching can be called a communal exchange, but there is a critical 1 letter word within it: I. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Like I quoted from Prof earlier, a group of humans is quite simply the sum of the individuals within that group, and the fact of individuals and groups as being real and good symbiotic things shouldn’t be forgotten. It really does create a fascinating synthesis and is the engine of the eye-watering beauty that humans can accomplish together. But the Arachnids don’t just simply not understand this, they cannot even comprehend it. A hivemind has no concept of the word “I”. A creature in a hivemind is not an individual, it is a component. As such, the sum of these components is not a group, but the fullness of the hivemind itself. Some humans disobey the Federation and provoke the Arachnids, or I should say Arachnid as singular from now on to illustrate, and so the Arachnid then views human, singular, as an enemy which must be exterminated. It does not just attack the humans in these dissenting colonies, it attacks human and aims straight for the jugular.
The communal and hivemind nature is a clear allegory to communism, embodied as it was at the time in the Soviet Union. Is that a fair allegory? The writings of seminal communists such as Marx, Engels, and Bakunin include language and concepts that try to frame their ideologies in a way which reinforces the ethos of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”, because they must identify this is critical to human nature, but the fundamental tenet of shared property cannot be separated from that of shared personhood, and the tenet becomes “scratch our back, or be purged”. That’s not how humans operate sustainably. This is the precise reason why communism has so famously failed every time it was tried. The choice of the individual to engage in matters of mutual benefit out of self-interest is removed, and as our nature is that of a social individual, which are two things that compliment rather than contradict, communism can quite simply be understood as anti-human, and so be called in a sense, alien. It is in reality a far greater evil in its essence than the Arachnid, which is morally no different to a hungry lion eating a human child. It has no capacity for morality and so it is not only feeble, but stupid, to hold it to moral standards. Lions should only be treated and judged as what they are. They are simple yet graceful animals who contribute to the balance of the wilderness and ought to continue doing so, but if one comes for your child, don’t try to reason with it, grab a gun and turn it into an exotic rug. How much worse, then, is it as a human, capable of moral understanding as we are and therefore beholden to justified morals standards, to deliberately defy our nature out of choice? That makes the inhumanity of communism more alien to us in principle than an animal, terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. Would it be wise to negotiate with a group such as that? Eisenhower did negotiate with them as equals, and can you say that he made the right choice?
On the other hand, let’s look at the Federation in the novel. The book opens with Rico taking part in a raid against another alien species that doesn’t appear in the movie with which humanity is engaged in a border and resource dispute. This species is an ideological middle-ground between the social individuals of humanity and the collectivist Arachnid, and as such they can potentially be negotiated with. Negotiations fail due to this discrepancy, and the humans defend their legal claim of this property through military action. The raid is swift, surgical, and deadly, an exemplary display of the military term “violence of action”, where speed, strength, and surprise are used to overwhelm your enemy before they can sufficiently respond. The soldiers are ordered to destroy enemy military infrastructure and personnel, and tolerate no resistance so that they can successfully establish their dominance and send the message that they are not to be messed with; it’s much nicer to negotiate with us as rational beings, because you might want more of our carrots than we’re offering, but you’ll have an unpleasant introduction to our stick if you try to take them. We would like to feed you, and it’s in your best interest to accept the mutual benefit, rather than to take what isn’t yours. And the defeated alien race come to see the truth in this. They give up their competing claim and even ally with the Federation shortly afterwards. But a hivemind does not understand mutual benefit, it does not recognise any carrots as belonging to you, and will take them unless, you guessed it, you turn it into one big puddle. The Federation lets its guard down, tries to appease the Arachnid, and like the US after the dissolution of the nuclear testing memorandum, finds its placement of trust to be disastrously naïve.
The Federation itself is a limited democracy where all people have protected rights to freedom of speech and association, and there are no variations in law on the grounds of race or sex. Political office and voting, however, are limited only to serving and veteran personnel of the military, so rather than this state being fascist as is so often accused, it is more likely to be a bellocracy, a political system I’m pretty sure we’ve never actually seen in the real world, but we don’t have enough information to say precisely what kind of government the Federation is. The fact is that all people have a choice at their disposal: you can take on great risk and make a personal sacrifice for this society in order to be able to affect how it is governed, or you cannot. Which is itself a very simple question: do you have what it takes to defend the country and the policies you want to govern, or, do you want to rattle your saber from behind real soldiers and send them to die while you’re too scared to fight? You can critique this style of government, and I have my own thoughts on how, but I wager it’s hard to call it unreasonable or despicable. And what is the result of this system? A brilliantly maintained, trusting, well-to-do, affluent, disciplined, and virtuous society. Oh wait, I forgot, that IS what fascism means to the progressive, because then they can easily bludgeon you as the no-no F-word if you complain about the dysfunctional, dirty, and dangerous society that they now subject us to.
And I think it’s a pretty insane misconception to think that it’s the members of the military who would be the most hawkish, at least in a society built on trust. If accountability is present, and so generals are true leaders, plus are subjected to financial investigation to ward off corruption, you will find very few hawks among them. They’re cautious to retaliate, but when they do, they will make sure to not stop until the job is finished and with as little collateral damage as possible – which is a sticky caveat indeed. Can the same though be said about the politician-led wars we’ve had in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Or the only times large payload nukes have actually been dropped on people, which were signed off by career politicians? Look no further to see this point than Eisenhower’s reluctance to start any sort of fight with the Soviets, but he considered pressing the big red button to end the Korean War if the cost wasn’t too high, which it would be, so he resisted.
The Movie
That’s a lot to mull over and includes a lot of principles which need context and consideration to properly assess. But like I said before, how did this get turned into a silly but really cool macho cheesefest? Wikipedia is actually great for answering this question as each point I’m going to make about the production has multiple valid references for each part. Here’s the first reason how: the director barely read the book. A huge chunk of the novel consists of flashbacks to Rico’s time in high school and military training, where he’d discuss with teachers, instructors, and classmates the principles of this society and what it means to serve, perform duty, fight for survival, and so on. The action itself is few and far between, it’s a book on introspection about war more than it is a war book – but we were given a war movie, plain and simple. The introspective style is perhaps more boring than oorah explosions which Paul Verhoeven clearly had a hard time with, and as a progressive, he wrote off this piece of media examining virtue & cooperation as propaganda for the no-no F-word. Very cool. In his own words, he:
stopped after two chapters because it was so boring ... it is really quite a bad book ... it's a very right-wing book.
He had the lead writer, who was a fan of the book, summarise the plot, and Verhoeven had it adapted, saying:
All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are these people crazy?'"
As I’m making this video, online political discourse about Starship Troopers has just died down, though no doubt it will start once again in six months. This time round, leftists, crowning themselves the gender-non-specific monarchs of Media Literacy™ have taken great joy in pointing at the right and saying “Ha! This movie satirises you! Those incredibly attractive, strong, loyal, cohesive and trusting people are the bad guys! I’m so glad I’m not like that and am more like the Bugs! Bet you feel pretty dumb now, huh?”
Verhoeven himself said:
If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it's only good for killing fucking Bugs!
Yes Paul, what a brave little rebel you are. Being in Hollywood and speaking truth to power by saying fascism bad, wow, that would’ve landed you in some hot water! His admission of cowardice is obviously completely pointless on the face of it, but the funniest part is I can’t imagine a single person ever watched this film without first hearing this context and thought: “Yep! Those people sure are crazy! What a terrible society, clearly the Bugs are the good guys.” But, with how much leftists have now outright admitted that they identify with the Bugs over the humans, I shouldn’t be too surprised, and I cast your mind back to my discussion on human nature and the anti-human principles of communism; these people genuinely are abominations. But, in a time before Breadtube existed to tell progressives what to think, critical reception clearly reflected how terrible of a job Verhoeven had done at satirising fascism, and every critic attacked the film by saying it made fascism look great! As I’ve already established, the Federation is likely not fascist or at least can’t be firmly placed in specific formula without more information, but the bugmen don’t care. It’s a strong & society that works well, and that’s simply not allowed to ever be depicted, lest you question why we no longer have that. It’s the same frame of mind that causes them to go absolutely insane when viewing 1950s style art and advertisements. It shows America in particular as a nice place to live, unlike the modern day, and so this depiction is a threat to the new status quo and must be attacked as heresy.
So, if you saw this film as a kid or just back in the day, did you ever think that these people were insane? I highly doubt it. Is it a good satire? Absolutely not, it has parts which are very on the nose but in the context of no actual wit in any attempts at satire, the propaganda films come across as deliberately cheesy and over the top, but I’m sorry you have to be a real deformed freak to watch literal cockroaches being stomped or a hivemind creature, which as I’ve said has no concept of individuality at all, and think “Wow, that could be me!”
One right-wing bloke made a tweet saying the film wasn’t satire and the leftists clung onto this for dear life, ignoring everything else that anybody had to say. Yes, it was intended to be satire, it’s just a downright awful one and doesn’t come across as satirising anything, just a more self-aware hammy and cheesy take on action films in the Schwarzenegger era. The cope required to say it was clearly a satire, and a good one at that, is red hot and unfit for human consumption. Some have even said that the whole film is itself an in-universe propaganda film, and if you have to reach so hard that you’re pulling theories out of your own backside to try and save face, you can shut up about media literacy and go back to watching Steven Universe. An alien species of literal Bugs attacks earth, and we’re supposed to think that humans are the bad guys for fighting back. Outright insanity and only shows that Heinlein was completely spot on in his choice of setting because you cannot successfully satirise that, you can only end up showing this story and society as he intended, and this petty little vanity project only shot everybody involved in the foot. It left us on the right, who aren’t fascists but get called as such because we’re further to the right than Trotsky, and who are of course the subjects of this crappy satire because of it, looking awesome. It’s been internalised and heralded not just by us terminally online political extremists, but any normal guy who watches this movie thinks “hell yeah, I want to be like that”. But I’m only repeating myself here in saying that they think any normal guy is also a fascist. A relevant point here again from Wikipedia:
The New York Times gave 1,000 tickets for Bean to young males as a test, and recorded that many then snuck into the R-rated Starship Troopers.
Leftist pseudo-principles
But I’ve saved the best and most scathing part until last. It’s something I’ve been going on about a lot lately in examining the “leftist condition” and is a heatmap from the journal Nature Communications by Waytz et al. and visualises the moral importance that “conservatives”, confusingly placed on the left of the chart, and liberals place on people by how closely related they are to themselves. So as you can see, circle 1 is your immediate family, so and so forth up to circle 10 where you leave humanity and go into animals, up to 16 which is just everything else but you. What this graph tells me is that my description of leftism as anti-human honestly couldn’t be more accurate and if there were a harsher term that could be used, it should be; and that being left or right wing is far more of a biological and pathological issue than an ideological or philosophical one. Everyone knows that leftists are ugly deadbeat losers only out to enact revenge on other people for being better than them, but that’s not just because they’re millennials or something, they have always been this way. Marx mooched off of Engels’ family wealth from owning the means of production, all of the leaders of the French revolution were utter ogres, Lenin was a disgraced member of the petit-bourgeoisie hellbent on destroying his own kind, same goes for Mao, and so on. Mystery Grove put it very well, and ties in with the trendy phrase “a system is what it does”, all the words are empty window dressing to disguise the fact that they were always going to identify with the Bugs as the director himself did, and when normal people see their art attacking these issues, they are either disgusted by the crushing banality or how it’s obviously just a complaint that they want to have sex in all kinds of disgusting ways, or they actually think the depiction is aspirational and adopt it as their own.
For all their masturbatory lectures on “media literacy” and grandstanding about how they own the art space but never acknowledging this art is better suited as toilet paper than public spectacle, they have created no art that will last in posterity except for the kind that backfires. After we return to a natural society, Picasso and all the rest of them will be a footnote for that time in history where we ran away with decadence and mutilated ourselves, becoming symbols for what not to do, and this society will probably look a lot like these leftist’s worst nightmares: beautiful, safe, and free.
Conclusion
So, there is your quick A-to-Z on Starship Troopers; the context of the novel, the novel itself, the movie, and the movie’s confused reception. Heinlein was a complicated and multi-faceted writer, and Paul Verhoeven is a self-aggrandising jackass who is incompetent at making his artistic intentions a reality, but fantastic at making his enemies look good to both themselves and to normal people. Leftists are pathologically compelled to empathise with literal bugs over their own flesh-and-blood, so should you care that they hate you? Not at all; it’s a mark of honour and tells you that you are lacking in the severe dysfunctions which make them tick.
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