Franklin: Star Trek in the Vietnam Era
Posted by Mike E on May 17, 2009
Thanks to Zerohour for suggesting this 1992 essay from Science Fiction Studies.
By H. Bruce Franklin
The original Star Trek series was conceived, produced, and broadcast during one of the most profound crises in the history of the United States, a crisis from which we have by no means recovered. Those thirty-three months when the series was first broadcast—between September 1966 and June 1969— were in fact one of the most excruciating periods in American history. In the midst of a disastrous war, virtual warfare in the nation’s own cities, ever-increasing crime, inflation and debt, campus rebellions, and profound challenges to hallowed cultural values and gender roles, Star Trek assumed a future when Earth has become an infinitely prosperous, harmonious world without war and social conflict, a future in which the aptly-named starship U.S.S. Enterprise itself embodied an ordered, self-contained society capable of making traditional American values and images triumphant in the farthest reaches of the universe.
Looming over the mind of every thinking American, the Vietnam War threatened to tear the nation asunder. Indeed, even today the very mention of Vietnam raises the emotional temperature and brings out deep divisions in American society. As a matrix for Star Trek, the war lurked in the background of the serial. The utopian 23rd-century future assumed in Star Trek—never envisioned—is presented as a sequel to the Vietnam epoch, just as the universe of the starship Enterprise is presented as an alternative to the actual world of viewers in the America of the 1960s.
Star Trek was one of the first dramatic series to confront the Vietnam War. Fearful of losing viewers or advertisers, television networks were reluctant to allow disturbing or controversial issues into shows designed for entertainment. So following its usual gambit for dealing with contemporary issues, Star Trek parabolically displaced the Vietnam War in time and space.
The serial was conceived just as the war was becoming an openly American affair. To begin to understand Star Trek in the Vietnam era, highlight and juxtapose a few dates. In early November of 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem, who had been installed by the United States in 1954 as the puppet dictator of South Vietnam, was overthrown and assassinated by a cabal of his generals, whose efforts were coordinated by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. Although President John F. Kennedy had authorized the coup, he was shocked by the assassination of Diem, for Kennedy’s own family had been instrumental in selecting Diem to serve as the U.S. proxy. At this time there were between 16,000 and 21,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, officially designated as “advisers.” Deprived of a figurehead like Diem, the United States now had two possible courses of action: withdrawal or a full-scale U.S. war. There is no evidence that Kennedy was considering the latter course. But three weeks later, President Kennedy himself was assassinated. Within four days of his inauguration, President Lyndon Baines Johnson issued National Security Action Memorandum 273, an ambitious plan for covertly attacking North Vietnam in order to provoke retaliation and thus legitimize an overt U.S. war, all to be cloaked under what he referred to as “plausibility of denial.”
Four months later, in March of 1964, Gene Roddenberry submitted the first printed outline for Star Trek, an “action-adventure science fiction” designed “to keep even the most imaginative stories within the general audience’s frame of reference.”2 In August, the Johnson Administration, pretending that U.S. ships had been attacked by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, ordered “retaliatory” bombing of North Vietnam and received from Congress the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” a blank check authorization for full-scale U.S. war in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Johnson was in the process of winning a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater on the basis of his promise, made over and over again, that “I shall never send American boys to Asia to do the job that Asian boys should do.” In February 1965 Roddenberry delivered the intended pilot episode for Star Trek, “The Cage,” which was rejected. The same month, Lyndon Johnson, a few weeks after being inaugurated as the elected President, began full-scale bombing of North Vietnam, followed swiftly by dispatch of the first openly acknowledged U.S. combat divisions to Vietnam.
By the time the first Star Trek episode was broadcast in September 1966, the United States was fully engaged in a war that was devastating Indochina and beginning to tear America apart. By the time the final Star Trek episode was aired in June 1969, the war seemed endless, hopeless, and catastrophic. Four episodes that were broadcast between the spring of 1967 and January 1969, the most crucial period in the war and for America, relate directly to the war. Taken as a sequence, these four episodes dramatize a startling and painful transformation in the war’s impact on both the series and the nation.
The first of the four was “The City on the Edge of Forever,” which aired on April 6, 1967, one week before the end of Star Trek’s first season. Prior to this date, the most astonishing domestic manifestation of the war was the spectacular growth of the anti-war movement, whose size and fervor were without precedent in the history of America’s wars. In April 1965, just a few weeks after the first overt dispatch of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, the first large anti-war demonstration took place in Washington. In the same period, an intense campaign began to educate the American people about the history of the war, a campaign featuring the teach-in movement on college campuses and the publication of an avalanche of historical books, journals, and pamphlets. Millions of Americans were beginning to learn that the government had been deceiving them about how and when the United States had intervened in Vietnam, as well as about the conduct and current state of the war. They discovered that the war had begun not as the defense of a nation called “South Vietnam” from invasion by the Communist nation of “North Vietnam,” but as a war of independence by Vietnam first against France and then against a dictatorship installed in the south in 1954 by the United States in violation of the Geneva Accords. They read and heard about how the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations had gradually escalated a covert war into what could already be considered America’s longest overseas military conflict. Two days before “The City on the Edge of Forever” aired, Martin Luther King, Jr., threw himself into the burgeoning anti-war movement with his “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam,” a sermon which summarized much of this history and which he gave as a speech two weeks later to a throng of hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Central Park.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” opens with the Enterprise being buffeted by strange ripples in time. McCoy accidentally injects himself with a potent drug, and, in a paranoid delirium, hurtles through a time portal into New York City of 1930. Evidently something he does there annihilates the future in which the Enterprise exists, so Kirk and Spock follow him though the portal to prevent his action and thus reestablish the proper course of history. While searching for McCoy, Kirk falls in love with social worker and slum angel Edith Keeler. But Spock and he discover that for their future to come into being, Edith Keeler must die very soon in a traffic accident. If she is not killed then, she will become the founder of a peace movement that will misdirect the course of history. At the crucial moment, Kirk prevents McCoy from saving Edith from an oncoming truck, thus restoring the history familiar to the audience and the crew of the Enterprise.
The subtext of this episode and its significance are highlighted by the evolution of the script and key pieces of dialogue inserted into the version that was broadcast in April 1967. The original script of May 13, 1966, written by Harlan Ellison, was a poignant tragedy of doomed love. Though using the SF concept that any change in the past, no matter how slight, might radically alter the future, Ellison’s script had no reference to Edith as a peace activist, much less to a peace movement that could misguide history. In the revised script of June 3, 1966, Spock imagines possible futures that might come if Edith were to live. He speculates that her pacifist “philosophy” might have spread, delaying America’s entry into World War II and thus changing its outcome.
In the episode as it aired in 1967, this speculation introduced into the June 3, 1966 script has been turned into a major plot element whose subtext was the growing movement against the Vietnam War. Asked in 1992 whether the makers of this episode consciously intended it to have the contemporaneous anti-Vietnam-war movement as subtext, producer Robert Justman replied, “Of course we did.”3
Spock works feverishly with the available materials from this primitive period to build a rudimentary computer so that his tricorder can actually display the possible futures unreeling from this focal point in time in 1930 New York. He discovers an obituary for Edith Keeler, indicating that she has been killed in a traffic accident in 1930. But he also discovers newspapers with later dates indicating that Edith has become the “founder” of a gigantic “peace movement” that will keep the United States out of World War II long enough for Nazi Germany to develop the atomic bomb, win the war, and rule the world, thus annihilating the future in which the U.S.S. Enterprise exists. So in order for the wonderful 23rd-century of Star Trek to come into being, as Spock ruefully tells Kirk, “Jim, Edith Keeler must die.” And of course it is Captain James Kirk who must take the action to insure her death.
As an embodiment of the dangerously misguided peace movement, Edith is not portrayed as deserving scorn, contempt, or ridicule. She has nothing but the most admirable and worthy motives. Indeed, she is a true visionary, who, in the midst of the miseries of the Depression, offers a prophecy of a magnificent future as inspiration to the homeless and unemployed. The future she describes, in fact, is the very one dramatized by the Star Trek series:
one day, soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies. maybe even the atom, energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds, maybe in some sort of space ship. And the men who reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and to cure their diseases…. And those are the days worth living for.
But this apostle of peace, technological progress, prosperity, and space exploration has the misfortune to be living in the wrong historical time and place.
As broadcast in the spring of 1967, “The City on the Edge of Forever” was clearly a parable suggesting that the peace movement directed against the U.S. war in Vietnam, no matter how noble, alluring, and idealistic in its motivation, might pose a danger to the progressive course of history. The episode projected the view that sometimes it is necessary to engage in ugly, distasteful action, such as waging remorseless warfare against evil expansionist forces like Nazi Germany or the Communist empire attempting to take over Indochina, even doing away with well-intentioned, attractive people who stand in the way of such historical necessity.
At this point in the Vietnam War, the peace movement, though growing rapidly, still represented only a minority of the American people, for it seemed to most that victory in Southeast Asia was not only necessary but also feasible, and perhaps even imminent. This view would soon change.
In the months that followed, the American people, despite the media’s almost universal support for the war, began to get ever more appalling glimpses of its reality. Napalmed children, villages being torched by American GI’s, the corpses of young Americans being zipped into body bags—all started becoming familiar images within the typical American home.
As public opposition to the war kept growing, President Johnson summoned General William Westmoreland home in November 1967 to do public relations. The commander of U.S. and allied forces informed the public that “the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt,” his forces are “declining at a steady rate,” “he can fight only at the edges of his sanctuaries” in other countries, and we have entered the phase “when the end begins to come into view,” a time when the Saigon army will “take charge of the final mopping up of the Vietcong.4 James Reston of The New York Times echoed the official assertions that “the Vietcong now control only 2,500,000 people,” little more than half what they had controlled in 1965, and “it is now merely a matter of time until this trend forces the enemy not to negotiate but to fade away into the jungle.” Hanson Baldwin, the leading military analyst for the major media, reported in a series of articles in the December 1967 New York Times that “the enemy is weaker than he appears to be” and is gripped by “desperation,” that the morale of U.S. troops is “excellent” whereas there is “irrefutable evidence of a decline in enemy morale,” that “the enemy can no longer find security in his South Vietnamese sanctuaries,” and that “the allies are winning” and “there seems little reason to doubt that Hanoi has abandoned the hope of conquest of South Vietnam by military force.”5 So according to the White House, the Pentagon, and the media, the Johnson Administration’s strategy of gradual escalation was on the verge of success, and the American people needed to be patient, rejecting both those who called for withdrawal and those who demanded a speedy end to the war through the use of nuclear weapons.
It was during this period that Star Trek was producing the episode that dealt most explicitly with the Vietnam War, “A Private Little War,” written by Gene Roddenberry from a story by Jud Crucis. The Enterprise visits Neural, a planet Kirk remembers from an earlier visit as so primitive and peaceful that it seemed like “Eden.” However, an unequal war has begun on Neural, with one side—known as “the villagers”—mysteriously armed with firearms, devices far beyond the technological level of any society on the planet. The villagers, who represent the official U.S. view of the North Vietnamese, have been attacking and attempting to conquer the peaceful “hill people,” who represent the official U.S. view of the South Vietnamese. Like the National Liberation Front (or “Viet Cong”), the villagers at first seem to be armed with primitive handforged weapons, in this case flintlocks. But these weapons in fact have been mass produced by some outside imperialist power, which has been smuggling them in and making them appear to be indigenous. Who could this evil empire be? The Klingons, of course, Star Trek’s analogues for the Soviet Union and/or Communist China. Their aim, needless to say, is to subvert and take over this primitive planet, itself an analog for Vietnam, Indochina, and the rest of the Third World menaced by the domino theory of communist expansion.
Thus “A Private Little War” promoted the official Administration version of the history of the Vietnam War—that it had begun as an intervention by an outside evil empire—the Soviet Union and/or Communist China. In fact, as millions of Americans were then discovering, the war had begun as a defense of an existing empire (France) against an indigenous movement for national liberation, and then transformed into a war of conquest by another nation attempting to advance its own imperial interests in Southeast Asia— the United States of America.
This is not to say that the episode implicitly endorses major enlargement of the Vietnam War. Indeed, it seems to suggest that the main danger to be avoided is any form of military intervention that could lead to direct warfare between the United States, here represented by the Federation, and the evil Communist empire, here of course represented by the Klingons.
The Enterprise’s options are presented in a debate between Kirk and McCoy. It is revealing that in the “teaser,” Spock, after issuing a stern warning against interfering in the planet’s affairs, is gravely wounded and spends the rest of the episode recovering on the ship, thus conveniently removing him from all further discussion and decision-making. Perhaps, as Rick Worland has suggested, Spock’s usual role as an objective outside commentator on human affairs “might have made him too dangerous here,” for the Vulcan might “have perceived instantly the illogic of the whole situation and denounced the Neural/Vietnam War.”6 Before McCoy challenges him, Kirk has decided to provide military training to the hill people and to arm them with the same weapons as the villagers. McCoy, appalled by this course of action, points out its hideous potential consequences for the people whom the Federation would supposedly be aiding in a speech loudly evoking Vietnam in the minds of viewers: “You’re condemning this whole planet to a war that may never end. It could go on for year after year, massacre after massacre.” Kirk argues that he is merely establishing a balance of power, and makes the parallel with the Vietnam war explicit:
McCOY: I don’t have a solution. But furnishing them with firearms is certainly not the answer!
KIRK: Bones, do you remember the twentieth-century brush wars on the Asian continent? Two giant powers involved, much like the Klingons and ourselves. Neither side felt that they could pull out?
McCOY: Yes, I remember—it went on bloody year after bloody year!
KIRK: But what would you have suggested? That one side arm its friends with an overpowering weapon? Mankind would never have lived to travel space if they had. No—the only solution is what happened, back then, balance of power.
McCOY: And if the Klingons give their side even more?
KIRK: Then we arm our side with exactly that much more. A balance of power—the trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all—but the only one that preserves both sides!
Kirk here aligns himself closely with the avowed policies of the Johnson Administration and suggests that, although the road may be long and ugly, a patient application of realpolitik will eventually lead out of the Vietnam morass and into humanity’s glorious future. At the time, the growing impatience of the American people with a seemingly endless war was producing an increasingly bitter conflict between advocates of total war, such as Barry Goldwater (who had suggested using tactical nuclear weapons) and Ronald Reagan (who asserted that “we could pave Vietnam over and bring our troops home by Christmas”), and the now huge peace movement, which was more and more demanding that the United States withdraw from Vietnam and let the Vietnamese settle their own affairs. With the logical Spock absent, McCoy is unable to articulate any coherent alternative to the Captain’s analysis and is reduced to mere moral outrage. Kirk’s own moral anguish in making his choice precisely mirrors that being projected by Lyndon Johnson, who presented himself as a realistic moderate, torn by his rejection of seductive but illusory extremes.
The episode ends with a sense of foreboding and disillusion uncharacteristic of Star Trek. When he orders Scotty to manufacture a hundred flintlock rifles for the hill people, Kirk refers to these instruments as “a hundred serpents…for the garden of Eden.” Then, as McCoy tries to comfort him, the Captain says somberly, “We’re very tired, Mr. Spock. Beam us up home.”
Even as it was being produced, “A Private Little War” was anachronistic in its view of the Vietnam War, referring more clearly to the period of covert U.S. involvement prior to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 than to the open U.S. war of 1968. Kirk even points out early in the episode that “keeping our presence here secret is an enormous tactical advantage” over the Klingons. The leader of the hill people has a wife clearly modeled on President Diem’s wife, Madame Nhu, the infamous “dragon lady,” and each wicked woman helps precipitate the event that triggers escalation by the good outside power. In late 1967 and the first month of 1968, despite all official and media reassurances, Kirk’s policy of measured escalation had certainly not led to any resolution, and McCoy’s warnings about “a war that may never end” could not be easily dismissed.
Yet like “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “A Private Little War” suggests that the Vietnam War is an ugly necessity that forms a critical part of the pathway to the glorious 23rd century of space travel and the universe of Star Trek. But two days before the episode aired, an event began that was to challenge even such guarded optimism.
Although “A Private Little War” was produced while the government and media were proclaiming that the United States was nearing victory, it was originally telecast on February 2, 1968, while the nation was in shock from the start of the devastating Tet Offensive, when the insurgent forces simultaneously attacked every U.S. base and over a hundred cities and towns in South Vietnam. This astonishing offensive convinced the nation that the Vietnam War could not end in victory. When the next episode directly relevant to Vietnam was broadcast one month later, it dramatically expressed the effect of the Tet Offensive on America’s consciousness. Completed in December 1967, while anti-war newspapers were debunking official optimism with accounts of the rapidly deteriorating U.S. military situation, this episode suggests that the makers of Star Trek themselves had moved much closer to the anti-war movement.7 Sardonically entitled “The Omega Glory,” it displayed a profound darkening of Star Trek’s vision of the Vietnam War and its possible consequences.
By the time “The Omega Glory” aired on March 1, the Tet Offensive had shattered all expectations of victory in Vietnam. The episode, written by Gene Roddenberry, now examined the consequences of a possibly endless war in Vietnam from a perspective much closer to the grim view McCoy had expressed in “A Private Little War.” Indeed, the main victims of such a war are no longer seen as some alien peoples confined to some remote location like the planet Neural or Southeast Asia, for America itself is imagined as a devastated former civilization reduced to barbarism.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy visit the planet Omega IV, whose dreadful history is gradually revealed to them. The planet is now dominated by a race of Asian villagers known as “the Kohms,” who are engaged in unending warfare against a fair-haired, fair-skinned race of savages known as “the Yangs.” The Yangs, who are so primitive they seem scarcely human, are beginning to overwhelm the Kohms with the sheer ferocity of their hordes. Meanwhile, starship Captain Tracey, a mad renegade, has violated the Prime Directive, directly intervening in the planet’s war on the side of the Kohms, using his phasers personally to slaughter many hundreds of Yangs.
McCoy’s medical research reveals that once there had been very advanced civilizations here, but they had destroyed themselves in this constant warfare. The survivors show signs that they had even waged “bacteriological warfare,” similar to Earth’s “experiments in the 1990s”; “Hard to believe,” he says, “we were once foolish enough to play around with that.” Spock’s logic ultimately concludes that this planet presents a case of parallel evolution: “they fought the war your Earth avoided, and in this case the Asiatics won and took over the planet.” He comes to this conclusion as soon as he and Kirk realize the significance of the names of the two warring races:
KIRK: Yangs? Yanks. Yankees!
SPOCK: Kohms. Communists!
At this point, the Yangs, who have conquered the Kohm village, are being incited by Captain Tracey to execute Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The scene is dramatically punctuated by the entrance of the sacred banner of the Yangs, a tattered American flag, evidently the “omega glory” of the episode’s title. Forgetting all the principles for which they were fighting in their endless war against the Communists, these Yankees have become savage barbarians teetering on the very edge of bestiality. All they have left of the great American ideals are their worship words, garbled versions of the Pledge of Allegiance and the preamble to the constitution of the United States, which they recite as mere sacred gibberish.
In a melodramatic ending, Kirk grabs their holiest of holies, a printed version of the preamble to the Constitution, and recites it, with emphasis on “We the People.” He explains to the Yangs, who now worship Kirk as a god because of the seemingly miraculous appearance of a rescue team from the Enterprise, that “these words . . . were not written only for the Yangs, but for the Kohms as well.” Such thoughts constitute a shocking heresy for the Yangs, but Kirk insists, “They must apply to everyone, or they mean nothing.” The eyes of the Yangs gradually seem more human as Kirk thus awakens them from their eons of mindless anti-Communist warfare, and the thrilling sight of Old Glory and strains of the Star Spangled Banner suggest that this planet too may return to the true path of American ideals.
“The Omega Glory” implies that the war in Southeast Asia, which no longer held any promise of victory or even suggestion of an end, could evolve into an interminable, mutually destructive conflict between the “Yankees” and the “Communists” capable of destroying civilization and humanity. True Americanism is shown as antithetical to mindless militarism and anti-Communism, and the episode rather paradoxically uses ultrapatriotic images of a tattered Old Glory and strains of the Star Spangled Banner to preach a message of globalism. Kirk’s emphasis on “We the People” might even be a suggestion to the American people that they must reassert their own role in the nation’s affairs.
If there were any doubts where the makers of Star Trek now stood on the Vietnam War itself, these were resolved in the pages of the nation’s leading SF magazines. Like other Americans, SF writers were profoundly and bitterly divided about the Vietnam War, and in early 1968 more than a hundred and fifty of them took out rival advertisements supporting and opposing continuation of the conflict. These ads, signed before the Tet Offensive, appeared first in the March issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which came out just before “The Omega Glory.” Not one person associated with Star Trek joined the 72 signers of the ad that stated “We the undersigned believe the United States must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsibilities to the people of that country.” Among the 82 who signed the ad that stated “We oppose the participation of the United States in the war in Vietnam” were Star Trek scriptwriters Jerome Bixby, Jerry Sohl, Harlan Ellison, and Norman Spinrad as well as Gene Roddenberry himself.
Nineteen sixty-eight was not only the decisive moment in the Vietnam War but also the period of the most intense domestic crisis of recent American history. Most of the countryside of South Vietnam was lost to the insurgent forces, and the 1.4 million troops under U.S. command were locked into a defensive posture around their bases and the cities and towns of the south. General Westmoreland was dismissed from his command. The President of the United States was forced to withdraw from the election campaign, and anti-war forces swept every Democratic primary. Massive uprisings erupted in 125 cities within a single week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. More than 55,000 troops had to join police to suppress these uprisings. Washington itself had to be defended by combat troops, while towering above the Capitol rose columns of black smoke from burning buildings. Police and sometimes soldiers battled demonstrators on college campuses across the country. The international finance system reeled from blows to the U.S. economy and its credibility, and the Johnson Administration was forced into negotiations with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Robert Kennedy, running as an anti-war candidate for president, was assassinated on the evening when he had virtually clinched the Democratic nomination. Forty-three GIs, mainly Vietnam veterans, were arrested for refusing to join the 12,000 soldiers, 12,000 Chicago police, and a thousand Secret Service agents who battled anti-war demonstrators outside the Democratic convention in August.8 Earlier that month, outside the Republican convention in Miami Beach, a line of tanks had sealed off the entire peninsula from Miami itself, where police and National Guard units fought rebelling African-Americans in what a Miami police spokesman called “firefights like in Vietnam.”9 In his acceptance speech, Richard Nixon, after noting that “as we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame,” vowed that “if the war is not ended when the people choose in November,” “I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.”10 Nixon won that 1968 election as a peace candidate.
On January 10, 1969, ten days before Richard Nixon’s inauguration and four years before the end of official U.S. participation in the Vietnam War, Star Trek broadcast an aptly titled episode: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” This episode views the racial conflict of the 1960s in a parable about two races on an alien planet, each half black and half white, who annihilate each other in an increasingly violent struggle between oppression and revolution. The master race, white on the left half and black on the right, has enslaved and continues to exploit the other race, black on the left half and white on the right.
Enraged by millennia of persecution, the oppressed are led by a fanatic militant. In a clear allusion to the disproportionate deaths being suffered by African-Americans in Vietnam, he asks crew members of the Enterprise: “Do you know what it would be like to be dragged out of your hovel into a war on another planet, a battle that will serve your oppressor and bring death to your brothers?”
The ultimate end of the mutual hatred of these races is spelled out when the Enterprise reaches their home planet. Spock reports there are now “no sapient life forms”: “they have annihilated each other totally.” As the last representative of each race continues their fight to mutual doom, behind them flash actual footage of scenes from America’s burning cities. The vision of global disaster projected as a possible outcome of the Vietnam War in “The Omega Glory” has now, less than a year later, literally come home.
The first of these two episodes, “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “A Private Little War,” had suggested that the Vietnam War was merely an unpleasant necessity on the way to the future dramatized by Star Trek. But the last two, “The Omega Glory” and “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” broadcast in the period between March 1968 and January 1969, are so thoroughly infused with the desperation of the period that they openly call for a radical change of historic course, including an end to the Vietnam War and to the war at home. Only this new course presumably would take us to the universe of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
NOTES
1. This essay is developed from the script that I wrote for the “Vietnam” section of the National Air and Space Museum’s 1992 exhibit entitled “Star Trek and the Sixties,” for which I served as Advisory Curator. As co-author of the full script, Mary Henderson, Art Curator of the museum and Curator of the exhibit, also contributed to the Vietnam section.
2. Allan Asherman, The Star Trek Compendium (NY: Pocket Books, 1989), 9.
3. Interview with Robert Justman, February 26, 1992.
4. New York Times, November 22, 1967.
5. Hanson W. Baldwin, “Vietnam Report: Foe Seeks to Sway U.S. Public,” “Vietnam Report: The Foe Is Hurt,” “Report on Vietnam: Sanctuaries viewed as a Major War Factor,” New York Times, December 26, 27, 28, 1967.
6. Rick Worland, “Captain Kirk: Cold Warrior,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 16 (3), 115. My own analysis owes a considerable debt to Worland’s exceptionally insightful essay.
7. For an account of the profound contradictions between views of the war in the establishment media and the movement press, see H. Bruce Franklin, “1968: The Vision of the Movement and the Alternative Press” in The Vietnam Era: Media and Popular Culture in the US and Vietnam, edited by Michael Klein (London and Winchester, MA: Pluto Press, 1990), 65-81.
8. Thorne Dreyer, “Know Your Enemy,” Liberation News Service, August 30, 1968.
9. New York Times, August 9, 1968.
10. Nixon Speaks Out: Major Speeches and Statements by Richard Nixon in the Presidential Campaign of 1968 (NY: Nixon-Agnew Campaign Committee, 1968), 235.
Abstract.— Star Trek emerged from a specific cultural matrix: one of the most profound crises in the history of the United States. At the center of this maelstrom was the Vietnam War, which was radically reshaping the American consciousness during the months when the series was first broadcast between 1966 and 1969. In some senses the war was the subtext for the entire series, with the universe of the aptly-named starship U.S.S. Enterprise serving as both happy sequel and alternative to the actual world of viewers in the America of the 1960s. In Star Trek, the prewar faith in a triumphant future for 1950s American values is displaced from an historical Earth to the enclosed world of the Enterprise and an imagined space. Star Trek was also one of the first dramatic series to confront the Vietnam War explicitly. Four episodes in particular express a swiftly changing vision of the war, part of the metamorphosis of American society as it faced defeat in Vietnam and disintegration at home. (HBF)
Green Red said
I have not yet seen the new Star Trek.
About the old ones though, few revealed facts:
In Next Generation, Robots got respect and DATA was anounced an intellegnet being.
In Deep Space Nine, at last a Black was the Capitan
In Voyager, a woman was the Capitan and, even a Black Vulcan was shown to appear fair.
In all Star Trek people were actually paid a sort of a Credit paycheck. There still was pay check of course.
Rodenberry and lots of the writers were Jewish folks and, not progressive ones at all.
Parallel to movies, there is a large paper books and lots of writers are also Jews. For example read the biography of the writers of Spock and Vulcan stories. Both writers are Jews and one of them also did in particular Jewish writing.
I personaly related Klingons with Palestinians, not as Communists. And Romulans with Christians for that matter.
Deep Space Nine was shown along other series such as Babylon Five. During that period interesting namings were chosen for bad guys. In Babylon Five, Zahadum (or Zahadoom?) were the evil enemies and, Jem Hedar were the crazy terrorists in Deep Space Nine. more than one Arab have angrily expressed that such namings were direct immitation of their language. And even having Doctor Bashir was a cover up for movie makers’ inner agenda. Another Arab said that though he liked some aspects of original Star Trek, but he desired to make Palestinian alternative for it. I only wished him good luck since, be it Goldwyn Mayer or or Scrooge and Mayer. (the former Movie corporations, the latter business in Christmas Choral of Charles Dickens – who also wrote Oliver Twist that places him next to Victor Hugo as greatest humanists of their times)
Sure, Star Trek is entertaining. and always was, but with very reactionary producers and fooling religious propaganda filled in it. Though Uhura’s name was stolen from Uhurah sentiment of ’60s, but at best she was occasionally a singer and a woman interested with playing with pets of which, one of them filled up the whole starship.
Starship names started with USS that is quite self explanatory.
But it is important to state that words like Venture, Enterprise and so forth are words totally capitalist nature. I look forward things like Starship Cooperative, Commune, Granma and so forth. But first we need revolution.
Miles Ahead said
Green Red:
Where is this coming from, and what does it have to do with either the price of tea, or the Franklin piece?
nando said
There seems to be a rather crude racist implication that Jewish people are not progressive, or even can’t be progressive. And that if the writers of a book or a film are Jewish, it can’t be progressive.
Part of me assumes that we must be misunderstanding Green Red, but I would be helpful if he cleared this up.
Miles Ahead said
Good idea Nando, clarification is called for. But here’s something even more ludicrous…Roddenberry was a Baptist until he abandoned that religion for “agnostic atheism.”
Green Red said
There seems to be Nando. Marx was a Jew. Many people standing across the Israel consulate, women in black, many others are progressive Jewish. I was told, by a Jewish friend that Roddenberry was a Jew. If i am wrong, fine. I have the guts to stand sayin i was wrong. But in particular, i am talking about book writers right now. For reasons that are not necessitated to be discussed at this moment (unless you have a reason for that.)
Part of me assumes that we must be misunderstanding Green Red, but I would be helpful if he cleared this up.
On this you are right. that is an “impression.”
To make it simple, due to dire and agonizing times the Jews have gone through (From living into ghettos, not allowed to have preferable jobs….. up to putting them in water to die …. ….and, due to another fact, that by keeping faith transfering to kids from the mom’s side rather than father, which, when one looks at the statistics and figures out that in all societies what great numbers of others had happened to be the original fathers of the child….. some say that they have genetic characteristics that by statistic gives higher level of successful hard wroking dedicated fellows in every arena. They can be the best in many fields. That makes them happen to be both the worst, and the best in the world. What i am not in favor of is Hollywood manipulation and double standards. But even Star Trek, within itself, although i hated the Coms vs Yangs episode, and some others, still i have to admit i’m labled by some as a trekkie and, once in a while watch old videos. to be honset, beside Star Trek (all versions except Enterprise series) and, news were the only things i occasionaly watched on the US TVs sometimes ago. (cannot afford Cable!) But back on Clearing it up for friend Nando,
i don’t mind calling Stalin whatever and the Soviet Union imperialist. Still, my heros are Rosenberg family, George Koval, etc. so that the US would not remain the one and the only Nuke possesser.
Interseting to read are Einsteins stand on Nukes, matter of Robert Oppenheimer and allegations against him, etc.
I am not saying i agree they’re genetically superior or special. I just know that (perhaps socially determined,) many people, Freud, Neil Armstrong, etc. were Jewish fellows.
And for those not familiar, according to independent observers and even anti communists, Kibutzes of early Israel as long as late comrade Stalin was alive was perhaps the most likable collective living areas.
And i also have a friend that condemns Lenin for annihilating Bunds into the party. She claims that if certain level of independence were granted to different faiths socialist activists and workers, then Party revisionism would not hurt their part and, by keeping their principles they would not let Khruschov destroy socialism. I respect S’s opinion but, ifs are in the past. I simply don’t know enough to imagine what could have happened.
I hope matter is cleared up friend Nando
Jaroslav O. said
Ka GR:
1) It’s cleared up that you aren’t thinking Jews are not progressive; however the rest of your comment is quite unclear as to what it is that you are saying.
2) Some tips for less costly viewing… Netflix is way cheaper than cable (in my area it is anyway), you can rent TV shows as well as films. Plus no commercials. For more current shows, with some commercials, you can watch on internet at hulu.com or TV stations (nbc.com, fox.com, etc). Al-Jazeera English is at youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish
* * *
Anyways about the article, is the author the same Bruce Franklin who was in the RU?
m.g. said
Yes Bruce Franklin was a founder of the R.U. and later Venceramos.
http://www.fancast.com is another good source of free videos and movies as well as tv shows.
Green Red said
Is that you mean, Ka M.g., the same fellow who made the Franklin group and one of the red papers or whatever they were called that was about his group?… i think there was a mention of him on the congress related report on left radicals as well.
Re movies, etc., thanks for the info. One: dial up internet is not the best place for TV watching. two: to watch what? Reading news directly and by choice on say from washington post wires to …. is enough productive. TV practically is the average people’s big brother.
Wasn’t through same TV, media that a whole nation believed in some weapons with massive destructive effects?
Ka Jaroslav. the rest of that statement is to say that we could have the worst capitalist and best communist comrades in the world from Jewish folks.
In my homeland, best dictionaries are supplied by Haiim family. I wouldn’t be surprised to know if Websters are theirs too. I am saying they can be genius. So, we’d rather have more of them on our side. Actually looking at it, every religion, cultural backgrounds, brings up certain especialty talents in certain fields. the most important thing is to have them together, next to each other, with proper movement/party’s means they for example keep the same pole together and say Palestin, Israel, Vatican, they’ll all become socialist.
nando said
Thanks for responding Green-Red, and thanks for clearing up some misunderstandings and being willing to lay out your views. And thanks for giving us a chance to discuss these things.
I have to say, pressing forward the discussion, that there is more to dig into. There is a lot of assumptions in what you write that dovetails with rather classic anti-semitism.
Now, because this can be misunderstood, i would like to be very clear: I am obviously aware that Green-Red does not uphold Nazi race theories. And my point is not to cast down on Green-Red’s revolutionary politics or intentions. But on this matter of “how to view Jewish people” — I am trying to dissect what was said: to point out ways that it goes outside materialism, and how it flirts with 19th century race theories that (if you examine them closely) were really ways of giving a pseudo-scientific veneer to old Christian prejudices (with of a colonial kind toward “inferior” peoples, or of an anti-Jewish kind).
1) GR writes: “Some say that they have genetic characteristics that by statistic gives higher level of successful hard working dedicated fellows in every arena. They can be the best in many fields. That makes them happen to be both the worst, and the best in the world.”
The “some” who say such things are antisemites. Materialists who explore genetics and human history know that there are no common “genetic characteristics” that define Jewish people. In fact this assumption is the classic unscientific “race theories” of the 19th century (which made hierarchies of inferior and superior peoples). These are the race theories that justified Nazi views of Jews. (REading Gould’s “Mismeasure of man” is a good place to dig in.)
For example, Green Red suggests that Jews are (somehow, by their special nature) concentrated at the extremes of good and bad. Is this true? Let’s take for example the statement that Jews make “the worst capitalists.” Worse than who? Citigroup? Shell? General Motors? DeBeers? Worse than the non-Jews Bush and Cheney?
The argument that “capitalists are bad, but Jews are the worst capitalist” is a central tenet of German National Socialism (it is concept that makes it not socialist at all). So you must understand if I stick a finger into that remark.
2) GR writes: “What i am not in favor of is Hollywood manipulation and double standards.”
This assumes that Hollywood (and “the media”) are controlled by “the Jews.”
In fact the whole reason this discussion has come up is that we were discussin a progressive TV series (star trek) and one of your friends falsely said “Roddenberry is a Jew.” (In fact Roddenberry came from a conservative Christian background and became a anti-religious, pro-science humanist-agnostic.) In other words, we talk about films and TV, and some people think a relevant thing is to uncover who are the Jews in the operation.
What kind of politics is that?
Several things are wrong with this:
It assumes people are defined by the groups they emerge from. And it assumes that if a jewish person makes a movie (or acts as a producer) then that film is made by “the Jews.” And it assumes that Jewish people (as a people) have some common conspiratorial agenda. (“Protocols of Zion,” anyone?)
3) Also the assumption that Jews have some special genius is part-and-parcel of classic anti-semitism. (Read the “International Jew” — the classic anti-semitic work by Henry Ford that was widely circulated among Muslims in the Arab world in the 1950s and 60s, and then among African Americans by Louis Farrakhan.)
And following that thesis, suddenly we get lists of successful people (Freud etc.) and an ascribing of their success to that genius of “the Jews.” Even stating that Neil Armstrong is Jewish (uh, isn’t Armstrong Scott-Irish?). And speculation that Noah Webster is one of “theirs too.”
(Think about that for a second: Why would materialists speculate that Webster is Jewish? Because dictionaries require a special Jewish “talent,” because if he was so “clever” he might well be “one of theirs”? Is there any materialist evidence that this is based on…. and if not, what kind of methodology is this?)
This all assumes people are defined (ultimately genetically, in a permanent and unalterable way) by their ethnic group, that ethnic groups have highly developed “traits” (this group is clever, that group is lazy, this group is moral, that group is industrious, this group is brutish, and so on). And we see who you are (and what you are) by what group you emerge from.
Also these supposed compliments toward Jewish people (the fact that they are supposedly especially intelligent, or “good with money” or “they stick together” or whatever) are part and parcel of the same theory that THEN implies that they have a whole sinister set of characteristics (clannish, greedy, sneaky, subversive, anti-nationalist, cosmopolitan, anti-christian, and so on). In other words, this argument doesn’t move you outside the classic anti-Jewish theories. It is an integral part of that particular anti-Jewish mythology that arose in Europe during the Middle Ages and was then concentrated in the racist pseudo-science of the 19th century, and then spread worldwide by the Nazis.
In fact Jewish people are (as you also seem to acknowledge) very diverse (including both culturally AND genetically!) And their influence in Hollywood is not monolithic Jewish “manipulation” but rather diverse too.
The Jewish religion (and its Talmudic tradition) gives rise to a certain kind of scholasticism and generalized literacy (though not as much in the Russian Pale, where life was often rural and very backward). And the general exclusion of Jewish people (in Western and Central Europe) from agriculture and land ownership forced them into other trades (merchant, artisan crafts, banking, etc.) There is a caste-like quality to the occupations that were allowed to Jews. And the traditions and skills that emerged like that not “genetic” nor they are not universal among Jews In other words, this is a very specific experience and not generalized. And (as i noted above) the experiences were rather different among those Jews of the Russian Pale who were allowed to be farmers. And there are rather different cultural characteristics common among Israeli Sabras (born in Palestine) — exactly because they arise from different experiences and a rupture with the ghetto life in Europe.
4) Many of the people you mention are non-religious. Is a non-religious communist with Jewish parents still Jewish? Culturally? Ethnically? Is a non-religious communist Iranian still a Muslim? These are things that need some unraveling, and vary from country to country (and even from person to person).
For example, Green Red asserts (again assuming it is a compliment to Jews) that “Marx was a Jew.” But what are the assumptions underlying this simple statement?
Marx did not practice Judaism. He was, obviously an atheist communist. His parents did not practice Judaism. His father, Heinrich Marx, was born Jewish (in a family with a long rabbinical tradition), but Heinrich himself was a Lutheran Christian. And part of this is that Heinrich and his family (including Karl) considered themselves German (and not Jewish). So, it is factual to say that Karl Marx descended from Jewish people.
But I want to drill down: what are the assumptions (about Jewishness) would lead someone to state that “Marx was a Jew”? What is the analysis here? What is the line? It is an analysis that asserts a view of Jewishness that is defining. It is essentially a genetic view of race. Jewishness (in this view) is not mainly a matter of culture, or religious belief, or even ethnicity/nationality. People are defined as Jews, even if they don’t practice Judaism, even if they convert to other religions, even if they are assimilated into another nationality.
Is this a communist view on this question? Or a race theory?
I don’t want to focus this on Green-Red, and certainly don’t see this as pressing a personal criticism. But I do think that such statements need to be dealt with when they are raised. And i think it can help us understand more deeply the difference between communist materialism and racist pseudo-science.
nando said
Yes, this is the same H. Bruce Franklin who helped found the Revolutionary Union — and who then quickly split from the RU to pursue a Weatherman-like line of urban guerrilla warfare.
Within months, the new group Venceremos was shattered by arrests and (rather predictable) disasters.
Franklin has worked as a radical professor and literary critic since, writing several useful books (including one exposing the Vietnam era MIA/POW mythologies.)
Jaroslav O. said
Yeah the whole special cleverness thing is, well, not an especially clever theory. It is the same thing as saying Afro-Americans are all good singers & dancers. It may seem like a compliment but it’s just falsehood rooted in racist or at least racialist worldview.
I try to use ‘Jew’ in the religious meaning but ‘Hebrew’ in the ethnic meaning. Not that ‘Hebrews’ are monolithic either, as Ka Nando discussed there are many different communities (with their own specific names like Ashkenazi, Sephardi, etc). Because, I think it would be inaccurate & liquidationist / melting-pot-ist to deny specific ethnic identity to non-religious people.
Another interesting historical episode of German vs Jewish identity is the story of Dr Fritz Haber. He was born Jewish but converted to Protestant Christianity. As a patriotic German he developed poisonous chlorine gas for the military for use in WWI; his wife committed suicide because she opposed this & was so angry & ashamed. Although his ethnic background was enough for the Nazis to persecute him so he ran away into exile, it was Haber’s invention Zyklon B that was the gas used in the death camps.
Miles Ahead said
Stereotypical thinking, in its various forms, is not the kind of thought we, as revolutionaries/communists want to embrace.
While anti-semitism has become mostly associated with and propagated against Jews, Semites include those of Arab, African, Asian descent. Semitic languages include such a wide array as Arabic, Phoenician, Akkadian (ancient language of Babylon), Hebrew, Tigrinya (Ethiopia and Eritrea), etc. There is great diversity amongst not only the Jews per se, but among Semitic peoples. Certainly, and mostly in terms of the Western world, we can see a resurgence of anti-semitism against Muslims.
While Nando’s points are very important to note, he/she was mainly referring to Ashkenazi Jews—those of European (and in particular German) descent. But there are also the Mizrahim who are mainly from the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucuses, whose nationalities include “Persian,” Syrian, Afghani, Indian, Pakistani, etc. The Mizrahim’s religious practices are similar to the Sephardic Jews, who mostly originated from Iberia, Spain and Portugal (where they were expelled), as well as North Africa. And then we have the Ethiopian Jews, sometimes referred to (pejoratively) as the Falasha, or Jews of Arabic/African descent.
And the persecution and anti-semitism against the Jews in particular, and as recently as the 20th century, has included the USSR, including Stalin (The Doctor’s Plot, anti-Trotsky, “Night of the Murdered Poets” come to mind), as well as some U.S. icon like Charles Lindburgh.
Think it would be best, if we feel some compelling need to categorize Jews in particular, we take heed of the political differences between Jews en masse vs. the Zionists and Zionism. And while Israel poses as the homeland of the Jews, the bringing together, absorption and assimilation of the Jewish diaspora, when thousands of Ethiopian Jews migrated there, mainly throughout the 80s-90s, those same Ethiopian Jews faced racism, many obstacles, were treated differently in terms of their ethnicity, by sections of the Israelis (mostly the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe and Brooklyn).
And I would hope that we as revolutionaries/communists are about the liberation of all humankind, while at the same time respecting cultural, ethnic and, yes, even religious differences.
Green Red said
Thanks Ka Nando,
Re: Marx was a Jew; ex SWP friend, later IWP, working on Chile Solidarity, etc., generally known as Earl Own was a person i as a foreigner had some times to spend with. He himself is Jewish born, communist and, i had no reason to doubt his claim that Marx was a sort of Jew decendant. Marx’s writing on Jewish question, sorry. haven’t read that yet. For reasons not sharable, reading takes time for me and if you suggest it, i might as well.
True. on genetics there are lots of theories. what has supposedly kept Jewish Born people (not ideologically,) in their complex diaspora trips together is that through mother’s side their faith is – in general – heredited. This matter, has a particular importance within my under-scholastic, self gathered/presumed and absolutely un academic / professioanl revolutionary nature about roots of family, and religion. My sort of (hardly paying rent though for lack of licsence, etc.,) everyday life unwantedly often pulls me into socio/economical disputes among Iranians and, Jews among them happen to be a good portion. And through which, unbelievable stories (by Jewish woman mature writer summing up ups and dows her life oppression by her spouse, that for example less than 5 decades ago having eye glasses was forbidden for women, etc.) are.
These Jew clients tell me things and, due to severe mistreatments in Iran regime, i have to at least give them relative respect and belief of what they tell me through work / helping association.
Re severity of their mistreatment, it is enough to check Amnesty/other human rights reports to gather how Jews, Bahaiis, later become christians (renegade moslems) and so forth go through (of course communists are inherently evil, unless acting as agents for the regime against revolutionary communists…)
Perhaps they are wrong when telling me that due to severe mistreatment by Christians, they were left with nothing to do but hard unwantable jobs like tax collecting, businesses, etc. and so they know numbers betters. Thence, to respect their self respect, i have to presume they might be right unless proven to be wrong. So, i gather people can project steriotype about themselves…
Ka Nando’s saying
There is a caste-like quality to the occupations that were allowed to Jews. And the traditions and skills that emerged like that not “genetic” nor they are not universal among Jews In other words, this is a very specific experience and not generalized.
is what i hear from them. okay. now i’ll doubt it and, when possible take more advanced dialectical stand. Let’s say that when a people say their being chosen made them better, only leads me to ask them okay, if you’re better, so can you become some darn better communist and lead me/self/friends to organize a movement, make a revolution and prevent human’s decay to be left over with republic of rats and cockroaches due to capitalism careless nature?
Nando, as soon as i get back access to particular paper novels about who are the specialists who invent Vulcan people’s novels, (not TV series,) i’ll be able to provide you what those authors write in addition to what they project Vulcan life was before Mr. Spock.
On Hollywood, what stars have said about Palestinians, (Check for What Actors had to say – re war in Lebonan, Palestine…) what it generally taught through it is what is really taught and enforced on the world’s mind. Define it as you desire everybody.
All that aside, it would have been more fair to – present more fair and general data about Roddenberry’s background.
Beside Baptist church in their family, what else was he?
Was he a sacred LAPD police officer?
Was he a bombarding air force pilot?
Did he find a Police Officer’s paycheck (with all its Police Union back up that pays them full cash when on suspension) enough for his family or what did he say when he resigned?
I’d rather stick to Spock’s saying (approx quotation) that welfare of the many outhweighs the interest of the few.
Thanks anyway Ka Nando and, keep your sharp, clear and educational language alive. A blog is a blog. What i see in life is prodcutive comrades write the correct text for us the small soldiers to distribute to the masses. Keep writing good stuff.
Mike E said
Yes, GR, Roddenberry was (a) a baptist, (b) a cop, (c) part of the U.S. military before he became a radical, atheist science fiction writer. (He was also a creator of the series Paladin, about a quirky lawman in the west, where he developed skills and ideas.)
Are you suggesting that because he was a cop and a part of the U.S. military, that this reveals that his art can’t be progressive?
My view is that you basically judge an artist by their art.
Similarly, you have to judge Heidegger’s philosophy by philosophical standards, not backwards by the argument “Heidegger’s rightwing politics sucked, so on that basis his philosophy can be simply dismissed.”
nando said
Miles writes:
I have heard this argument often. But i don’t buy it. And i think it rests on a linguistic trick.
Mainly in discussions with some acquaintances who are Arabic they say “I can’t be anti-semitic, because Arabs are semites.” Really it is a word game to avoid the issue — which is that even among some progressive people from Muslim countries, there has been an often casual adoption of classic anti-semitic thinking (global conspiracy etc.)
In fact, in English, anti-semitic has a very specific meaning. It means hatred of Jews. It does not mean generalized hatred of all the various semitic peoples.
And in general, expressions in language do not mean what the words taken individually literally mean. Racism means hostility to black people and other non-white peoples. It does not mean “seeing race” (as the Republicans insist, using a literal analysis). Those who apply literal thinking to the word racism, insist that Black people are racist when they talk about “the problem with white people” (because it is, supposedly, seeing things in racial categories.) And so you have conservatives insist “black people are just as racist as white people” etc.
In shorts, words have historically-developed meanings that often don’t jibe with literalism.
So, having anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiment is not being “anti-semitic.” These (currently common) hostilities are being called anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.
While we are talking….
Miles ahead writes:
This relates to our discussion of Jewish people (and the assumption that Jews as a group have certain genetic traits for intellect, handling money etc.)
But i would be careful about targeting stereotypical assumptions about people.
In liberal American thinking and mores, it is considered wrong to “stereotype.” The reason is that (according to good old American logic) every person should be seen “as an individual” — and it is therefore wrong to view people as groups. It is also rooted in a denial that Black people ARE a distinctive group.
Often this goes against reality. Let me give you an example: In Europe it is widely understood that (as Lenin and Stalin also said) different nationalities have distinctive psychological traits (that are cultural and historically developed). It is not a myth that Germans have a mania for order, authority and thoroughness. It is not a myth that there are nationalities who are more family oriented than others. Or that white Americans have a “can-do attitude” and tend to underestimate both necessity and long range planning in a pragmatic way.
These are historically developed cultural traits that do characterize national communities of people (and often the individuals within those communities.) Cross the borders in Europe for example (or go from China to Japan) — and some general differences marking nationalities will jump out.
When i spent time with different Native American peoples, i was surprised to see that there really WERE differences of psychology and worldview that were embedded in their different cultures. For example, the Lakota people had a rather aggressive view of the world, and openly mocked nearby peoples who were less belligerent (calling the Anishinabe “rabbit chokers” etc.)
So in some ways, it is the liberal American world view that says “the problem of racism is stereotypes about peoples and the solution is to set aside such pre-judging and view each person as an individual.”
Clinton fired Loni Guinier for making proposals based on the assumption (from within Clinton’s government) that black people are a people distinct from white americans in interests, culture and history.And when he did, he made it clear that to him there were black Americans and white Americans — but that any suggestion that they were two distinctive peoples sharing the same territory was beyond the acceptable arena of discussion for the establishment Democrats.
For communists, historically, one of the signs of a nation (one of the signs of a distinctive historically constituted community of people) is the development of a common psychology in this sense. And such psychological traits are (often) the basis of so-called “stereotypes.”
green red said
Hi Mike, how are you, i hope you are doing well.
Progressive? true, it was way passed progressive in contrast with Babylon 5 and, his own later star related thing.
Interspiecy relations was fabilious. But they still had credits of a sort for their working in Starfleet, and many, many characterstics of capitalism continuation.
Regarding going to stars, so many UFO’s come and go (X Files, etc.) but don’t contact with us since, we cannot even get along ourselves. The key to go to stars (and many other major breakthroughs in the possible future of humanity) in my humble opinion is first to gain its own unison with itself and habitat. And to do that in my humble opinion, production, creativity and inventions of the knower people, i.e. scientist, needs to be based on the need of all, rather than want of some, of any sort. True, wars may bring about lots of inventions, but for what usage?
Star Trek itself has its positive elements. But that is not all. And, in next generation’s war against Jem Hadar, and, in tens of books (used to be my friends those paperbooks, to see what fits in the imagination of human kind) i see many, many indirect politial hidden agendas.
Anyhow, thanks for everybody’s opinions, corrections and so forth. my aspiration would be writing, making progressive Star Trek… Star Trek, peace, harmony and serving people’s generation. Anybody likes to write that one?
Miles Ahead said
I have to admit, I really don’t understand what Nando is getting at. And coming off of what I wrote, how Nando went from historically developed cultural traits to some reactionary promotion of individualism is really beyond my scope.
What I was trying to convey was, that Jews are not some monolithic block, but they are treated as such, and are generally stereotyped. (Two examples: you are either a money-grubbing Shylock, “trying to Jew someone down” or an inherent genius like Einstein, Franz Kafka, Freud or Marx.)
As mentioned, there are historical and cultural divisions amongst the Jews, e.g. Sephardic, Ashkenazi (actually interesting the last four letters of Ashkenazi), Mizrahim, etc. And certainly there are, often times sharp, economic, political and ideological divisions amongst the Jewish people.
Prejudice, persecution, racism, anti-Semitism (national chauvinism and notions of superiority), in the ideological sphere, and amongst the people as a whole, is based on ignorance (and from that ignorance also comes the by-product of stereotyping an entire community of people). There is little, if any, appreciation for cultural and historical differences, nor moreover, the multitude of contributions to humanity from all the various ethnicities. And racism and anti-Semitism have served the ruling classes well. For starters, the old divide and conquer.
Personally I am not at all trying to gloss over cultural differences between various peoples, but am saying that those differences should be respected, much upheld,in terms of humanity as a whole. If one wants to talk historical and cultural development of a people, and its contributions to the development of human society, how about the Mayans (who are part of other Mesoamerican pre-Colombian cultures and civilizations), and are often labeled by the ignorant as a bunch of primitives running around in loin-cloths. Meanwhile, the Mayans managed to fully develop a written language, architecture, art, mathematic and astronomical systems.
I fail to see a particularly “scientific”, historical or materialist analysis in what Nando wrote below. And “white Americans”—what does that mean?:
As far as anti-Semitism goes, and among mostly Western/European societies, it is true, anti-Semitism has directly and blatantly come to mean hatred of Jews. But I don’t think that pointing out the historical development and the origins of Semitic peoples is some linguistic trick. Nor do I believe in the reactionary view of “reverse racism.” Where does racism come from and who does it really target? As well as, who does it serve?
And I question, or at least don’t understand, why
While Nando did say “one of the signs of a nation”, seems to me, taking African Americans as example, what constitutes their being a nation is their overall national oppression, economically, politically, socially and culturally. And a common psychology of many oppressed people, including the Jews, and often what binds these people together (psychologically if you will), is that even with and despite differences, they are “one” people when it comes to fighting their oppression.
nando said
Miles:
The distinction I’m making is between a nation and other historic communities (ethnicities, religions, tribes, etc.)
There are oppressed groups that suffer national oppression but are not nations (in the sense the independence is a viable political issue.)
So, for example African immigrants in New York suffer national oppression, but they are not a nation.
Historically, communist analysis makes a distinction between those oppressed people who constitute a nation, and those who don’t. Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico are a nation. Independence is an issue for them (in fact it is central to their revolutionary process). Black people have historically been a nation in the U.S. (forged as a nation in reconstruction, then dispersed after WW2. Whether they are still a nation (after fifty years without a common territory) is a major political and theoretical issue that needs discussion.
The issue is how do you end the structured national oppression (racism) facing various groups within a multinational state like the U.S.? Where is independence a viable option? Where is equality and assumilation the issue? Where are degrees of political autonomy the solution?
Star Trek Hichhiker said
Yo… due to transmission problems and inconvinieces, I had to …
Talking ’bout Puerto Rico …. how’s couragous Lolita Lebrón doin’ after getting out of prison (so much for Franklin’s way) and, what Geronimo Acoli done after getting out prison, can we get Mumia Abu Jamal out there through the same procedure? and of course Leonard Peltier…. sorry, galaxy distortion…gotta go, Live Free and Peaceful pal!
nando said
I’m not sure your point STH, unless it is a cynical one that former politcal prisoners don’t meet your expectations after they are released.
Lolita Lebron has (in fact) remained active in Puerto Rico — including in the struggles around the Vieques U.S. military testing range.
Geronimo Acoli left the U.S. for Africa. I believe he (and some others in his position) often had a difficult time after release: First, he comes from the Cleaver trend of the Panthers, associated with the political line of the Black Liberation Army. It is a politics which is particularly unviable now. So people expecting him to take up that thread of politics were inevitably going to be frustrated. And he was inevitably going to be put on the spot.
There is also a history of very high expectations for revolutionaries emerging from prison (including Huey Newton…) — that they will somehow (by force of personality and insight) solve a stack of accumulated problems within the revolutionary movement. It is a very high burden, especially for someone like Geronimo who “went in” to prison in one world and who then emerged in a very very different world.
It also goes to the question of leadership (line vs. personality).
What we need are political solutions — which can emerge from collectivities or from individual insights. But looking around for a key personality to solve the problems of a movement is not a great method (historically).
Star Trek Hichhiker said
…she’s active then universe bless her…
expectations? not really… how are they doing since, their value for their courage inspires many all over Beta Quadrant as well.
didn’t know Acoli related with hardcore radical fellow who some say became republican at some point
cynicism? no way, from beta quadrant to … even France, Itraly, people have sought Abu Jamal out and, one out, we got x many more to work upon tanx for supplying Mr. Data, of course solutions are not one person’s job but, some in dungeon still manage to write and sum up matters like no incarcerated human has done before. keep carrying their freedom kampaign going on so their next generations off springs through studying their lives learn to be new democratcially compatible warriors and…. just clean up universe from Frengie manipulation…sure, line, not personalities but, still when fulfilling tasks re prisoners of war and fabricated humans, work within the campaign, not above it or, imply to other first worlders that to be assimilated enough they must eat their suger free synthesis and puke revisionist doctors’ mass oriented natural fructose. with inner galaxy revolutionary hug, STH!
nando said
YOu can’t sum up Edridge Cleaver by saying “he became a republican” (any more than you can define him by his early statements on rape).
Eldridge was a rather remarkable agitator and propagandists, who played a very key role in shaping the panthers and popularizing them. He then (at a key crossroads at the end of the 60s) put forward “going underground” in ways that we could call “armed capitulation,” while Huey called for retreating into electoral and “survival” forms in ways that we could call “unarmed capitulation.”
These are complex matters. And it is not helpful to dismiss people lightly by pointing out “where they ended up.” (And this is true for Geronimo, and Lolita Lebron, and Eldridge too.)
Jaroslav O. said
Miles Ahead, I agree that Nando’s response is somewhat odd. I hypothesise that he is having a habit from RCPUSA where one either ignores or gives cursory reply to things others raise, then take a tangent into depth (albeit a genuinely related tangent); whether intentional or not this gives an implication that the tangent discussion somehow proves your original point wrong. By the way it is perfectly legitimate in my view to go on a tangent or try steering the conversation in a different direction, I just have a problem with implying that something is wrong when it isn’t. Like maybe you think the existence of Semitic language family is irrelevant to the issues at hand, but please don’t refuse to ‘buy’ the truth.
Here MA has raised that ‘anti-semitism’, if we are being accurate, is prejudice against all semites, including Arabs, Hebrews, & others. To me this is a great thing to point out. Folks who use ‘holocaust’ & ‘anti-semitism’ as excuses for Israel’s horrible abuses often have no clue about other holocausts or other Semites. Pointing out the meaning of ‘Semite’ highlights the ignorance of the anti-Arabs who cry about anti-semitism, as well as highlights the common origins of Arabs & Hebrews. Nando I don’t understand how you ‘don’t buy it’. What does that even mean? When you say it like that, it sounds like you not only think the common meaning of anti-semite in English is anti-Jew (which is of course a correct observation), but that MA’s point is actually not true (but it is, & I think you actually know this). Where would this logic take you though? The common meaning of ‘communism’ in English is totalitarians who share toothbrushes. Well I don’t buy that, & I know that neither do you.
That said Ka Nando, I do agree with the spirit of your discussion on shared cultural traits. However I would not call those ‘stereotypes’. A ‘stereotype’ is in essence an over-generalisation, often negative (but not always); i.e. it is not an accurate description. If there is some shared trait which actually exists, it is not therefore a stereotype. For example, saying Black people always show up late (or Jews are greedy), or Black people are great singers (or Jews are clever) — these are stereotypes. Of course there are Black singers who show up late (& clever but greedy Jews) in the world, but this is not how an intelligent person describes the entire ethnic group.
However MA, your observation of last 4 letters in ‘Ashkenazi’ is off-base. Firstly, the first 3 letters are ‘ash’… what’s the point here? Secondly, they don’t sound the same. ‘Nazi’ as in the German fascists has the sound [na-tsi], whereas the last two syllables of Ashkenazi are [na-zi]; if you spell Ashkenazi in German it would be ‘Aschkenasi’.
Star Trek Hichhiker said
Tankx and RPG 7s in your soldiers’ hands Mr. Data Nando.
Re rape… that Mr. Cleaver was the one who said what… raping white women evens up their raping our mamas?…. I have been told but, not seen the resource. Mr. Ice (Slim?)…’s book called the Pimp puts it in must more analytical justification than such mere saying though.
While doctor Huey P. Newton, the true founder and platform producer’s latter services seem to be still much more appreciated than Cleaver. Many ex panthers, their kids and their kids’ kids and others give much more credit to breakfast and education… (I wasn’t born then so….)
Nevertheless, great journalist Mr. Abu Jamal’s dedicating his book to both parties goes along your quick thinking. Saying what he did later is not summing such facts. Those who make no mistakes are the ones who do nothing. alright? And Cleaver aside, G Jackson and what great CP ite – Committe of Correspondence I meant Angela Davis has done … cannot be compared with for example SLA (nothing to do with South Lebonan in Gamma Quadrant) whose positive part was only give some grocery to people in exchange of this…
Please define armed capitulation, or lead us to resources.
In fact why don’t you in Kasama starfleet do … something better than what strange MIM fellows, Commemorator, etc. did like, open a box, parallel to your Asian thing (that’s not all that matters), [when you have times off current course] for second hand citizens, peoples of colour and all that? What’s left of …Machateros?… when acting on Survival what happened. I ain’t putting down the better actions of mentioned people’s revolutionary reps at all. But, admitting a negative is fair to in fact make it possible talking about them. That regardless of what’s been written about Franklin Group, Whether people etc. by Avakianists, MLM scholars, etc., valuing their sincerety With criticizing their immature activities sounds much more educational than almost considering them as simply calling them wrong. Fair enough Mr. Nando?
…. re tangant going … that’s not exactly how it goes I think. Expanding readers’ horizons by touching matters that aid others to go and read new things and differentiate Ashkanaz peoples’ social features vs Mr Green Red that we still don’t know if he is a semite by definition, or not and, only searches to find a faster way to give them commie banner poles. By Jaroslav’s saying (that is correct) about what semite exactly means though, he has made a lots of sense.