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Trump mocked over his new design for Space Force uniforms: ‘The evil bad guys from Star Wars’
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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I found the themes of the book putting a light on a fascist society and the individuals in it.
Did you read the book as pro-fascist or glorifying fascism?
pro-fascist.
my father was a big fan. he was always proud of his "German heritage", if that says anything. growing up he attempted to instill in me the principles in the books. of course I was too smart for that and always questioned authority.
the benefit being I was inoculated against fascism at a young age.
I read them as absurd depictions, similar to Lolita where the purpose is to show the reader a perspective far away from healthy, normal or sane.
I read up on Heinlein on wikipedia after my previous comment, and he seemed sincere which is scary. Im looking at it from a scandinavian perspective which is quite far from militarism, and thats probably why I read sarcasm in the text rather than honest philosophy
There's a really interesting multi-part series called Brows Held High: Starship Troopers about the fundamental differences between Heinlein and Verhooven and what each was trying to say, between Heinlein's original and Verhooven's interpretation.
For what it's worth, I don't think Heinlein was fascist or even fascist-sympathetic. If you read more of his fiction and, my personal favorite, his non-fiction book Take Back Your Government, which is about how and why to get involved in democratic politics, you get a much more complete view of a really interesting guy. Some of his views were fair or even highly-progressive for their time. Some were weird and gross. But he's not one could simply stick a "Fuck That Fascist" pin in and walk away.