Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

A description I've often seen people use for Long was "a social democrat with the latter part".

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 16th 2019 at 8:22:47 PM

The irony that Americentrism is the reason of why a site is filled with Right Wing Dystopias is too strong to be ignored.

I guess is also because no one of the World Changing Powers can be called Left Wing. China is the safest bet and they are pretty much In Name Only, Russia is clearly Right wing nationalist and America is...America, Center-Right country overall whose biggest issue is it's crazy right that keeps dragging them down. I mean, sure, you can write about the horrors in a small communist country...but who cares for a small country with no influence.

Add that China and Russia, who had the most plausible histories for a POD creating a Left Wing apocalypse are too distant for the average Westerner. Is easier to feel horror when you read how, for example, Afro Americans are genocided than when...dunno, I don't even know about Minority groups in Russia.

If I want to read a interesting Left Wing dystopia. I should overthrown the current goverments

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 16th 2019 at 2:14:04 PM

Left-leaning dystopias aren't all that uncommon. In fact, the Trope Codifier for the dystopia genre is arguably the Soviet Union (or at least, many of the books that codified the genre, such as We or 1984, are based on it).

I'd actually say the far left typically makes for a good dystopia (an anatgonistic society the protagonists live within), whereas the far right typically makes for well-written evil empires (foreign conquerors). This is because evil leftist ideals can often come across as Tall Poppy Syndrome, which creates a perfect set up for an individual vs. society conflict.

I'm talking about Alternate History tho. Scenarios like 1984 are far too removed from reality that if you told me that they exist in a different universe, I'll believe you.

Plus, this is USA and is the Trump era.

I think that the era of the Leftist dystopia is over because extremist Leftism is dead (thanksfully) and well...it don't makes sense kick a corpse.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:01:31 AM

This makes me wonder what defines a 'Leftist Dystopia' as opposed to a generic non-ideological authoritarian one. Take 1984 - despite being inspired by the Soviet Union, Ingsoc was very up-front about its true intentions - namely, Despotism Justifies the Means. At least from my estimation, there's nothing especially communistical about it, which probably helps the book to be a general critique of totalitarianism as a whole. Then again, I never did read the book all the way through. :V

I can imagine Rightist Dystopias are defined mostly by rampant racism, fantastic or otherwise, along with other forms of institutional discrimination, coupled with reactionary appeals to old heritage or traditions, which may be religious or secular in nature - Columbia from Bioshock Infinite springs to mind.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Apr 16th 2019 at 1:59:45 PM

• Harrison Bergeron
• Brave New World
• The People's Republic of Haven (Honor Harrington)
• Any communist-inspired dystopia
• Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Twilight Zone)
• The Obsolete Man (Twilight Zone)
• (vomit) Atlas Shrugged (vomit)
• Bioshock 2
• Equilibrium

Generally, Leftist dystopias both in real life and fiction tend to be built on the idea of "The Collective justifies everything." As right leaning dictatorships rely on fascist rhetoric, the concept behind the Left leaning dystopia is that the individual doesn't matter and everything can be rationalized if you serve the "Greater Good" but in practice it's all just being a Tautological Templar. Anyone who resists the state or defies it is evil because the State is all/The Many is All. The fact the Many is made up of the one is never brought up.

They're also usually anti-religion, anti-belief with all "superstition" punishable by death or oppression.

In effect Leftist Dystopias are Utopian idealists who refuse to acknowledge that their vision for the future requires people to have freedom to dissent or that they flat out don't work. They will generally be depicted as either being classless but everyone in poverty or having a very horrific class system but based on the Party/Ruling Class.

"Everything would be fine if everyone just did what they were told."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 6:08:37 AM

When you put it like that, seems like the chief difference between Leftist and Rightist Dystopias is that the latter doesn't even try to pretend that it's serving anyone's benefits but a select group, in a horrifying application of 'At Least I Admit It'. :V ...Reminds me of the whole Athens and Sparta trope, actually.

Then again, I suppose they also try and push a 'greater good' narrative, except in their case it's strictly the greater good of whatever demographic they've decided is the best one.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Apr 16th 2019 at 2:21:56 PM

There's also the fact Right Wing dystopias look to the past for justification as a general rule while Left Wing dystopias tend to claim futurism will justify them. Right Wing dystopias often claim they're restoring "traditional" values, claim a belief in God (or try to co-opt traditional beliefs or imagery), and often speak of romanticized pasts that never existed. We see this, obviously, with Hitler and the Nazis but with Franco and Petain as well.

Left Wing dystopias claim that everything will be awesome after a transition period (i.e. now) that will require a lot of sacrifices or actions to fix things. Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Leftist dystopias notably often have a "I'm smarter than you stupid hicks" justification for ignoring democracy as the small elite will lead the masses to a new paradise if they just obey. Mao, of course, wanted to obliterate traditional Chinese culture and is arguably a better example of the Left leaning utopian despot than Stalin himself.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:14:20 AM

The only reason Athens and Sparta is put forth as the struggle and tension between equally valid ways of life (or equally dystopian, I guess), is that Ancient Sparta has been unduly shilled by Western European historiography. Yes, their one positive over Athens was the near equal place the Spartiates had in their society for women — but as participants in and enablers of a society that was completely insane and self-destructive.

The central element of a left-wing dystopia is, in my opinion, a dominance of the Know-Nothing Know-It-All personality. Actually communist states tend to exterminate intellectuals extremely quickly during their peak ideological years. You're framing it as though there's a cabal of genuinely intelligent people lording over the masses, but there really isn't a left-wing example of this happening. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, the Kims, they all purged intellectuals. They actually exalt the working man, in a backhanded way, as the embodiment of their ideology while being too stupid to question them.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Apr 16th 2019 at 10:20:40 AM

I liked how one history professor of mine used Sparta to explain the Confederacy.

"The thing they had in common was, in their own centuries, they were considered crazy extremists."

He also pointed out the Spartans are the definition of really shitty conquerors. Because they couldn't acclimate the lands they conquered into their warrior society, that meant they were constantly in fear of slave revolt, had to regularly conduct The Purge, and could never move beyond their relatively small Empire. This versus all the successful ones that had to bring people in.

I rather like that observation.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:16:56 AM

Sparta was pretty bad for its time, which is saying a lot.

Both also have a tendency to gun down intellectuals.

The rightwing dystopia does it because the intellectuals are all "the past wasn't that great" and "it's not the immigrants' fault it's due to complicated economic factors"

The leftwing dystopia does it because the intellectuals are all "this idea won't work" or "this idea has already been done and it failed back then"

Can't have actual facts get in the way of their vision, after all.

Edited by M84 on Apr 16th 2019 at 10:55:16 PM

I recommend people check out the last two novels of the Expanse regarding Sparta. The Laconians are a great deconstruction of their society and why it was a dysfunctional mess.

I don't really need fiction to deconstruct a society that an honest reading of primary sources tells me was completely bonkers, but thanks.

I just enjoy they didn't do Nazis again for their "inspiration for fictional baddies."

That Sparta has managed to become glorified in our culture despite how fucked up it was in reality sends the message that we've got a lot of soul-searching to do.

Part of the problem is a complete lack of focus on the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War — Athens loses the Battle of Aegospotami and then the better American world history textbooks jump straight to Alexander the Great. The Thirty Tyrants are never mentioned, so when someone learns that Socrates was executed by the Athenian assembly, it's decontextualized from the politics of the time. Socrates was the teacher of Critias, one of the Thirty who was noted for being exceptionally cruel. His essentially unmolested presence in Athens during their reign of terror and his role in educating many of the men meant he wasn't loved by the people, and the assembly that sentenced him to death had probably each lost a loved one or a friend to the Thirty's purge.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Apr 16th 2019 at 10:42:12 AM

Let me guess, Critias was not only the root word for "Critical" but the dude was also one of the namesakes for the Atlantis dialogues?

In general, I'd say you can spot a leftist dystopia by themes of surrendering an aspect of one's human identity, usually to create an illusion of utopia. Equilibrium (give up emotion), The Giver (give up anything that leads to choice), that sort of thing. The main antagonists of my own work are a pseudo-anarchist dystopia, and the system works primarily by being set up in a way that one has to adopt a mob mentality in order to survive-allowing little individuality.

A rightist dystopia is not necessarily a card-carrying dystopia. An obvious example would be Rapture from Bioshock. Having said that, rightists by definition view society having relative measures of prosperity as necessary or desirable, so they can't honestly claim to be helping everyone equally (even if they perceive it as the greater good).

A rightwing dystopia usually hard codes a social hierarchy and glorifies it.

So does that mean the dystopic wings correlate to the (false) dichotomy of Liberty and Prosperity?

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:54:09 AM

Though sometimes I wonder how much of this glorification is a backlash to how Athens' been whitewashed for centuries in combination with how Sparta's been idealised for basically over a millenium.

Athens' been often glorified as "the cradle of democracy" - while people often conveniently ignore that if you weren't a rich male living in the polis itself, you were shit out of luck.

Then there's the Delhian League which was basically a protection racket and the Athenian government secretly misappropriated the funds they collected - the money was ostensibly to build up a fleet to protect against future Persian invasions - to build lavish temples in their own territory.

And then there was the Siege of Melos where they essentially conducted a genocide on the local population during the Peleponnesian War.

Some authors noted that the main difference between the two city-states seems to be a case of At Least I Admit It on Sparta's end. Both city states were slave-driven imperialist powers, but only one of them pretended not to be one.

I think it's also partially to do with ignorance. People focus a lot on the "they were all badass warriors" and "women had a place in society" bits, and less on the horrific structural mechanisms that facilitated a state where all the men could be warriors, rather than farmers, craftsmen etc.

Aren't Spartans also were brutal slavers EVEN by brutal slavers standarts? Like they even have "boy becomes man" style trial, where to "fully become adults", boys have to kill a slave without that slave's master noticing.

How do people miss that details? Or most of them know about Spartans only from "300" movie, which Zack Snyder (its director) argued about being "historically accurate"?

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Apr 17th 2019 at 1:37:17 PM

Never mind that even in-universe, the story told in 300 is Spartan propaganda meant to inspire the Spartan troops. The narrator is an Unreliable Narrator.

Frank Miller pointed out that Dilios isn't the kind of person who lets facts get in the way of telling a good story.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2019 at 6:38:42 PM