The Origins of Liberal Fascism

From the Wikipedia page for RoboCop:

The character of RoboCop itself was inspired by Judge Dredd^[4] as well as the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man (one of these comic books can be seen during the convenience store robbery). Iron Man was conceived by Stan Lee as the alter ego of Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist working as a military contractor. During the original run of the comic, Iron Man was mostly occupied battling communism. In this light, RoboCop is seen as a subversive take on this classic Marvel character. Although both Neumeier and Verhoeven have declared themselves staunchly on the political left, Neumeier recalls on the audio commentary to Starship Troopers that many of his leftist friends wrongly perceived RoboCop as a fascist movie. However, on the 20th Anniversary DVD, producer Jon Davison referred to the film's message as "fascism for liberals" - a politically liberal film done in the most violent way possible.

It's strange that Davison, as a liberal, is unaware that "fascism for liberals" is redundant. After all, liberalism just is fascism. How could a movie be fascism for fascists? The whole thing's puzzling.

Comments

I'll admit it's been many, many years since I used to read "Iron Man" comics...but wasn't Tony Stark actually just a *millionaire* industrialist?

But nowadays, with decades of high inflation and also the hugely disproportionate growth of economic inequality and stock options, a millionaire is just a junior-level I-Banker or a pretty lucky Silicon Valley secretary. Not very impressive...

It's like that great movie scene in which Dr. Evil decides what his worldwide ransom demand should be.

Posted by RKU | January 6, 2008 2:50 PM

I think this means that Ronnie Cox is the Jew of liberal fascism.

Posted by JB | January 6, 2008 2:51 PM

The very first time I saw "Starship Troopers" it seemed clear to me that the film itself was a satire of a fascist-styled, pro-war movie. A lot of darkly ironic humor, including the moment when all the big talking tough guy new troops finally walk out of the ship and the 'bugs' come streaming out and simply dice them apart. Also, the subtext about who invaded & displaced whom. But my view was apparently invented entirely in my own head.

Posted by El Cid | January 6, 2008 2:51 PM

"Neumeier recalls on the audio commentary to Starship Troopers that many of his leftist friends wrongly perceived RoboCop as a fascist movie. "

I own that DVD, and have listened to that commentary track multiple times.

Neumeier is a god.

Posted by Petey | January 6, 2008 2:52 PM

"The very first time I saw "Starship Troopers" it seemed clear to me that the film itself was a satire of a fascist-styled, pro-war movie. A lot of darkly ironic humor, including the moment when all the big talking tough guy new troops finally walk out of the ship and the 'bugs' come streaming out and simply dice them apart. Also, the subtext about who invaded & displaced whom. But my view was apparently invented entirely in my own head.

Posted by El Cid | January 6, 2008 2:51 PM"

I felt pretty dump when I found out the director was showing what in the source material was reminiscent of his childhood in Nazi Germany. When I saw it, I just thought it was an incoherent movie like most action movies where they really didn't expect the audience to pick up on plot points and subtlety because those aren't action movies' strengths anyway. I just comfort myself knowing I was like 12, but still.

Robocop is the overman of liberal fascism.

Posted by Reality Man | January 6, 2008 2:58 PM

"Also, the subtext about who invaded & displaced whom."

If you haven't watched it since Operation Iraqi Freedom, check it out again. It's pretty surreal.

The bugs are Iraq-nids, it's all desert fighting, it's preemptive war for natural resources sold to the home public with lies, there are embedded media with the troops, they start the war with too few troops, and on and on.

It's fucking eerie to watch it in the post-2003 environment.

Do you want to know more?

Posted by Petey | January 6, 2008 3:02 PM

Jon Davison referred to the film's message as "fascism for liberals" - a politically liberal film done in the most violent way possible.

Crap, I actually have something serious to say about this.... I don't see why violence has to be associated with fascism and set in opposition to liberalism. Obviously fascism is particularly violent, but liberalism isn't a pacifist ideology and plenty of violence has been carried out in its name.

Modern American liberalism's association with less aggressive foreign policy is, in a lot of ways, a reaction to the extremely violent foreign policies of liberal presidents Kennedy and Johnson. And the term "liberal hawkishness" isn't an oxymoron, it's a description of an aggressive school of thought that's entirely consistent with the liberal tradition.

So I don't think action movies are inherently illiberal. Liberals and conservatives can watch people murdering each other without violating any of their deeply-held principles.

Posted by JB | January 6, 2008 3:03 PM

Jonah Goldberg, face red and tears streaming, throws away his "Robocop" DVD and retroactively hates the movie.

Posted by Woody Bombay | January 6, 2008 3:14 PM

It's called "Linksfaschismus" and has been an important term and concept in discussions of the radical leftist movements of the "1968 Generation" (especially in Germany) since Jurgen Habermas introduced the phrase 40 years ago.

So, turn off the TV once in a while, do some reading and reflecting...and recognize that fascism has as much appeal to the Left as to the Right.

Posted by Steven Karmi | January 6, 2008 3:20 PM

Matt we still need your full length take-down of the Goldberg book.

Posted by otto | January 6, 2008 3:32 PM

Yeah, Steven, and old Stalinists used to describe democratic socialism as Social Fascism. This is entirely meaningful in any way whatsoever to what Fascism means.

Posted by Ed Marshall | January 6, 2008 3:51 PM

It's worth noting that Tony Stark is one of the few comic book heroes I can think of who's consistently depicted as a member of the political right. (Cases like Batman and Captain America, say, vary to a degree depending on who's writing them and when, and there are weird outliers like the Question or Hawk and Dove. But Stark is a millionaire industrialist whose origin story has him being tortured by the Viet Cong, and he's been depicted since day one as a resolutely hawkish anti-Communist Republican; the only other character I can think of in a similar mold is Hawkman.)

Posted by Steve | January 6, 2008 6:26 PM

Love the rightwing thinking. It's really approaching the status of "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Posted by leo | January 6, 2008 8:24 PM

Starship Troopers, is terrific satire. One way to subvert a fascist order is simply to exagerate it's most salient psychological features. Too many well-meaning liberals don't get it, which is weird. The book isn't taught enough for the same reason (they think it's fascist), but it's a classic, and it should be taught next to 1984 and Brave New World.

Posted by MMMM | January 6, 2008 8:53 PM

If I remember correctly, Heinlein was and is considered to be a fascist right winger. Whether he was that or perhaps more of a libertarian in some sense, I'm not sure. Certainly it always seemed to be that most of his stories were about rebels against the established order, whether that order was a American theocracy or a Chinese invasion.

As for "Robocop", I never thought of it as being either liberal or fascist. Clearly you could make the case either way.

On the one hand, you've got the typical cyberpunk storyline of "corporations run the country for their own benefit" creating cyborgs to oppress the population - until one turns on them.

On the other, you've got the "criminals are really bad people who don't deserve any rights" line. I mean Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker was probably the nastiest criminal ever brought to the movies (and definitely Smith's best role ever). He has most of the great lines in the movie ("Well, give the man a hand!")

As for Tony Stark, well, he's been anti-Communist when there was a Communist menace ("Black Widow" before she became a hero, various Russian villains in mechanized suits like his).

But he's also been at odds with the US government numerous times because he felt too much of his technology had been appropriated and used for bad purposes by them and others. He's fought the primary government secret agency S.H.I.E.L.D. several times over that.

He's also been shut down by the US government a couple times over suspicions they've had about him or his technology getting out of hand.

So it's hard to declare any of these characters to be one thing or another, since the writers and story lines change focus depending on external events.

Look at Doctor Doom - the premiere Marvel villain for the last forty years. Yet at one point he was arguably the hero of the entire 2099 line of comics - and all the rest of the "heros" in the line were seriously flawed in some way. The same applies to Thanos, who's been the second primary Marvel villain in recent years, yet has been featured in his own comic and others helping to save the universe several times - for his own reasons, of course.

Playing around with concepts of who's the REAL "bad guy" is a common theme in comics. Like Magneto said in "X-Men 2": "This dorky-looking helmet is going to protect me from the REAL 'bad guys'." - who were rogue government agents led by someone who could remind you of Dick Cheney or some of the neocons.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 6, 2008 9:46 PM

Funny you mention Iron Man. In the recent Marvel Civil War event, apparently he sets up a fascist Patriot Act to the max policy and divides the superhero community into two. Captain America dies in the end.

Posted by Quietus | January 6, 2008 10:08 PM

All I remember about Robocop? Stupid robots that can't walk up stairs

Posted by Rob | January 6, 2008 10:48 PM

Worse, they can't walk DOWN stairs.

Heh, heh.

Reminds me of the movie "Deal of the Century" where a corrupt war profiteering corporation makes a drone combat aircraft. During the demo, they hose it down to clean it, which fogs the electronics and makes it go wild, shooting up the neighborhood. The CEO screams at the techs, "Haven't you ever heard of RAIN?"

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 6, 2008 11:04 PM

Bitches leave!

Posted by UofAZGrad | January 7, 2008 12:58 AM

"... Heinlein was and is considered to be a fascist right winger."

It's easy to draw this conclusion if you examine a very small portion of Heinlein's writings and political activities. If you look at the totality of his career, he was anything but.

He attended the US Naval Academy and served for a number of years prior to WWII, and his favorable attitudes toward voluntary military service inform much of his writing. However, he was a staunch opponent of conscription, and a frequent theme in his books was the struggle against various forms of government tyranny.

He was extremely critical of organized religion, and his beliefs on this subject play a central role in many of his novels, notably his Future History series in which he posits a United States government run by fundamentalist religious zealots, and describes the struggle against it by a small band of renegades.

He was one of the earliest science fiction writers to include minorities and women as leading, sympathetic characters, and his attitude towards women and sex were as far from conventional right-wing fascism as you could hope.

If you're curious, the best thing is of course to read his stories. Wikipedia has a decent summation of Heinlein's life and career as well.

The movie Starship Troopers is a cartoonish distortion of the novel, and director Paul Verhoeven apparently accepted the common view that it was nothing other than a paean to fascism. What's revealing about Verhoeven, though, is how he chooses to distort the story in the simple act of casting the lead role of Johnny Rico. In the movie, Rico is a South American caucasian played by Casper Van Dien, a completely no-talent actor perfectly suited to play arrogant but dumb white frat boys. Ironically, in Heinlein's novel the lead character and hero Johnny Rico is Filipino. I can only surmise that casting the role accurately would have weakened Verhoeven's caricature of the story as nothing more than advocating traditional elite-group fascism.

If you're really interested, don't take my word for it, read the story. You may not agree with anything Heinlein says, but you'd have to agree that the movie bears only the roughest of similarities, albeit with great special effects.

Posted by bluestatedon | January 7, 2008 1:58 AM

Verhoeven is probably the last artist working who owes much of his characteristic style to Nazi aesthetics. Verhoeven has talked about how much he loved the Nazi propaganda movies he saw as a small child in Occupied Holland. Thus, he has an obsession with blondes (e.g., Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct," or having Heinlein's Tagalog-speaking Filipino hero Juan Rico played by Casper Von Diehn [sp?] in "Starship Troopers"). Verhoeven often tries to cover up his Nazi-art leanings by claiming that his movies are "satires" (such as his tendentious and tiresome claim that Heinlein was a "fascist," when the charge is much more applicable to Verhoeven). But what makes Verhoeven interesting (as well as annoying) is that he really is deeply excited by twisted fascist aesthetics.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 3:10 AM

Of course, Verhoeven claims to be a leftist politically.

Does Jonah's book talk about Verhoeven?

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 3:13 AM

Jodie Foster is another Hollywood figure, like Verhoeven (with whom she has competed to bring to the screen a biopic of Nazi directrix Leni Reifenstahl), who is much more interesting than her boring liberal / feminist public image. In reality, she's a lesbian obsessed with eugenics.

Jodie, who is named after her mother's lesbian lover, learned to read at 18 months old and graduated with honors from Yale, tends to see herself, not wholly without evidence, as a genetically superior human being.

She spent months finding the perfect sperm donor for her children: a handsome scientist with a 160 IQ. Her production company is called Egg Films and made a film about in vitro fertilization, and the first movie she directed was "Little Man Tate" about a 7 year old intellectual prodigy. She has spent many years trying to get off the ground her "Leni Reifenstahl Project." But opposition from Jewish groups has slowed development.

Reifenstahl herself, who died recently at 100+ years old, claimed Foster wasn't beautiful enough to play her, and had long wanted Verhoeven's muse Sharon Stone for the role. Verhoeven tried to get his Reifenstahl film off the ground early in this decade, but he hasn't been as persistent about trying to make it as Foster has been.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 3:37 AM

The basis of Verhoevens story is a society where its people have to contribute something ie service in order to gain citizenship and voting rights instead of getting handouts paid for by people who are already paying their way through life, plus carrying the financial burden of supporting a section of the population who won t support themselves and continue to vote for (left wing)politicians who will jack up taxes on the real WORKING CLASS,I see no valid reason why someone who does not pay taxes should have voting rights,he who pays the piper calls the tune.How about " No representation without taxation".

Posted by Cliff Thompson | January 7, 2008 4:05 AM

I personally don't think of Heinlein as "fascist", and I've read much of his stuff, especially the Future History series. However, a lot of people do think his politics was "fascist". Of course, a lot of people think Libertarians and Ayn Rand are "fascist", which objectively makes less sense than even accusing liberals of being fascist.

Steve, I'd take a good deal of that info about Jodie Foster with a grain of salt. I've read all the bios about her, and she's clearly got issues with her mother, her career, and much else. She's basically an over-achiever due to personal doubts instilled by her mother's weaknesses and her father's abandonment. (Her mother reconciled with her father, but Jodie never has.)

I doubt she's all that obsessed with "eugenics" per se. Although she did spend a fortune having her kids bedrooms sterilized, supposedly.

The bit about her being artificially impregnated with some scientist's sperm is hearsay. My suspicion is that, despite being allegedly lesbian (I suspect she's actually bi-sexual, despite having lived with the same woman for some years - most bi-sexuals have a specific preference), she got impregnated the old-fashioned way. I have suspicions as to who the father is, but that would get me accused of "conspiracy theory", so I'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that she says she likes "jerks", and you can try to guess.

The Reifenstahl film is mostly about the woman as a director. I can see Verhoeven not comprehending the subject, since he's pretty much known for producing incredible crap movies with bizarre themes (neither "Basic Instinct" nor "Starship Troopers" were Oscar material.) But I think Foster is far more interested in Reifenstahl as a successful female director in unusual circumstances than anything else. The Nazi connection is almost non-existent.

Egg Films, by the way, is named after Seth Green's character "Egg" Berry, in the movie, "Hotel New Hampshire", which is the film Foster most enjoyed being in.

Yes, I'm another Jodie Foster "obsessed fan" - except I'm never a "fan" of anybody, obsessed or otherwise, in the sense of some uncritical acceptance. The fact is Foster is probably one of the best actresses of the last thirty years, and an undeniably smart woman, if not necessarily all that rational. Her main claim to interest is her physical, emotional and intellectual intensity.

Ironically, she has claimed that she "never wanted to be an actress; I just was one." I tend to doubt that claim, as she's been too damn good at it and clearly too interested in everything behind it and around it to be down on it. She just hates the publicity part.

She and others have claimed that personality-wise she'd much rather be sitting in some library translating French literature as a writer. Of course, that profession doesn't give you a $30-million-plus fortune.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 7, 2008 4:15 AM

The most impressive thing I've seen Jodie do is show up in the middle of the fine French movie "A Very Long Engagement" playing a French woman ... in French. I've never seen a native-born American actor give a performance in an acquired language before, and to do it for the French, who aren't very accepting of accents, is doubly brave.

The story about Foster looking for months for the 160 IQ sperm donor was in many English newspapers. The American press is much more hamstrung in its celebrity coverage by the power of press agents to deny access to popular celebrities. Ironically, due to regression toward the mean, the boost in the child's expected IQ from using a 160 IQ donor rather than a 100 IQ donor is probably only 12-15 points. I suspect Jodie may find her children a little disappointing when they (likely) don't grow up to have 160 IQs.

Basically, all lesbians who want to have children get turned into practicing eugenicists by the necessity of picking out a sperm donor on some rational basis about what hereditary traits you want in your child. David Plotz of Slate's 2005 book on the sperm bank industry, The Genius Factory, is very clear on this.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 5:54 AM

Somehow my own IQ was lowered by this discussion. Better go check my genes again.

Posted by El Cid | January 7, 2008 10:29 AM

Wikipedia has a liberal bias.

What does Conservapedia say about RoboCop?

Posted by libarbarian | January 7, 2008 10:50 AM

If you haven't watched it since Operation Iraqi Freedom, check it out again. It's pretty surreal.
The bugs are Iraq-nids, it's all desert fighting, it's preemptive war for natural resources sold to the home public with lies, there are embedded media with the troops, they start the war with too few troops, and on and on.
It's fucking eerie to watch it in the post-2003 environment.

Yeah, I guess it would be. There are several other movies like that. Air Force One: terrorists hijack an airplane, president with military (air force, even?) experience refuses to negotiate, instead fights them off personally. I saw it once around when it came out, and then for the second time in 2004 with a Republican friend who hadn't seen it before — that was more awkward that I expected when we put the DVD in. Or Wag the Dog: a president who fakes a war with a harmless country to get reelected, instead of actually invading it? We should be so lucky.

Posted by Cyrus | January 7, 2008 12:11 PM

Uh, Heinlein was actually an anti-communist socialist, he ran for the California Assembly as part of Upton Sinclair's EPIC movement.

Posted by Litch | January 7, 2008 12:37 PM

As for "Robocop", I never thought of it as being either liberal or fascist. Clearly you could make the case either way.

I dunno... One of the central plot points slams privatization, which would seem to be a liberal point of view. One might go so far as to say the pitiful condition of Old Detroit under the guidance of OPC presages the deterioration of Irag under the guidance of Haliburton.

I don't quite see where the fascism comes in, or might come in. For me, this movie was always about the triumph of the individual when everything -- including his own body -- was rigged against him. (That's why the final line is Murphy saying his own name.) Seems to me that is the essence of liberalism, or at least the antithesis of fascism.

Plus, as an action movie, it kicks ass.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | January 7, 2008 1:20 PM

It's worth noting that Tony Stark is one of the few comic book heroes I can think of who's consistently depicted as a member of the political right.

Most prominent during the recent 'Civil War' story arc, in which the Superhuman Registration Act was spearheaded by Stark.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | January 7, 2008 2:55 PM

Steve: "I've never seen a native-born American actor give a performance in an acquired language before, and to do it for the French, who aren't very accepting of accents, is doubly brave."

Steve, Jodie has been speaking French since before her teens. Her mother was a Francophile and they watched French movies all the time. She is a nearly perfect French speaker. She attended a French-American school in Los Angeles, and graduated as the French Valedictorian.

She is the only American actress allowed by the French to dub her own voice in her films.

She even recorded a song at the age of 15 in France and performed it on French TV (check YouTube for the video.)

She has done regular interviews in France entirely in French. Even at age 15, when Taxi Driver came out, she participated in the Cannes press conference and translated the questions from the French press for the panelists, causing Roger Ebert, I believe it was, to say, "This is a remarkable young girl."

In fact, one of her sisters was a teacher in France, and Jodie maintains a residence there, I believe.

I still suspect that she never went the sperm donor route, although I could be wrong about that. I think the background of her kids is much stranger than a mere artificial insemination, which is one reason she's been mum about it.

The whole dance she did about exactly what month did she become pregnant with the first kid was quite strange, although it was partly to fool the press as to when the kid was due, in order to avoid a press mania like Madonna had gone through earlier.

The story was that the kid was due in September of that year, when she actually had him in July. She played the "Hunter Tylo" trick of being sufficiently trim to fool people into how far along she was. However, she had dropped out of a film early in December of the previous year, citing "medical reasons", so it was clear to anybody who was following the story that she had gotten pregnant some time before the official line. The only reason to do that was to cover WHO she was with at the time.

And the only reason to do that is because who she was with was a married man.

As far as I know, no gossip columnist has followed up on that. I know of only one person who explicitly asked the suspect whether he was the father - and he had a rather flustered answer to the question.

I suspect the whole story will come up someday.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 7, 2008 8:53 PM

"Uh, Heinlein was actually an anti-communist socialist, he ran for the California Assembly as part of Upton Sinclair's EPIC movement."

True. However, (at least according to Wikipedia) by the late 50s Heinlein took a turn rightward (Asimov attributed it to Heinlein's third wife, Virginia), and with her formed the Patrick Henry Society in 1958 to encourage the continuance of US atomic weapons testing. In '52-53, Heinlein and Virginia traveled around the world by boat and plane, and in his account of the tour, Tramp Royale, he wrote two lengthy apologia for the McCarthy Hearings. Heinlein later worked for the Goldwater campaign in 1964. It's fair to say that much of what appears at first glance as conservatism in Heinlein is more appropriately put in the libertarian wing of American politics, but in truth it is very difficult to securely pigeonhole Heinlein in any single category.

Posted by bluestatedon | January 8, 2008 2:29 AM