Transcription
Two years ago, when a trailer dropped for Star Trek: Discovery, we finally got a look at what the first Trek show in over a decade would be: a stylized, intense, grittier-than-usual, space-faring adventure with a cinematic feel common to the era of Peak TV and, of course, being Star Trek, it had a diverse cast. The reaction from the darkest edges of the political far right was that of outrage and immediate condemnation. For all of the right's talk of left-wing “snowflakes” being offended at the slightest infraction, nobody launches into frothing, hateful convulsions like a right-winger whose pet obsession is the myth of “white genocide.”
It's a paranoid conspiracy theory among the far right that denounces immigration and racial integration as tools to eliminate white people. It's also – apparently – been appropriated for discourse about popular media having diverse casts as a means of eliminating white people, particularly white men, from representation in media. The right spewed their venom again when the first episode debuted. The Klingons spoke of keeping their species pure and fighting against the comparatively “diverse” Federation.
Star Trek has always commented on the times, and the Klingons' desire to “remain pure” is a reflection on the rise of white supremacy and far right politics that have ramped up under the Trump administration. This is not idle speculation. One of the executive producers said that Trump's 2016 campaign was “front and center” in their minds when developing the series, and Jason Isaacs, who played Captain Lorca, went even further, adding "We're living in monstrous times, let's not dance around it. Hideous, divisive times, when all sorts of stuff we thought was long buried is coming to the surface, and being encouraged by the most powerful people on the planet. We're living in disgusting times."
That's not say to no one on the left can be racist or sexist – that would be absurd. Of course an individual who is aligned with political left could be either of those things, but the ideology of the left is anti-racist and anti-sexist whereas the ideology of the right couches its racism and sexism in code words and dog whistles like “traditional values” and “law and order” – but is still nonetheless racist and sexist. Those espousing these racist and sexist beliefs in reaction to Star Trek: Discovery used the terminology of the right in more explicit terms. Modern canards like diversity or feminism as a “cancer” and other fear-mongering, hyperbolic verbiage that appeals to the aggressive, the angry and almost always from white men who can't see past their own entitlement. When one is accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression. The backlash was immense, prompting Discovery actor Jason Isaacs to tell racist Star Trek fans that they can go fuck themselves.
Right-wing Star Trek fans were angry that Trek had been “taken away from them” by the “radical left” or the “SJW's” or whoever their boogeyman is this week. And everyone else...kinda laughed? Because Star Trek has always been diverse, at least by the standards of its time. It's always been steeped in left-wing talking points and ideology. Everyone balked at this and said that these right-wingers, these Trump supporters, these, well, flat-out racists could not be “real” Star Trek fans. Because how could Star Trek appeal to the political right in the first place? No, seriously, we need to answer that, and the answer might be surprising.
What people consider “the left” can be fluid, especially over time, but generally speaking, the left supports social and economic equality and is often in opposition to hierarchies that create disparities contrary to these goals. “The Left” should not be confused with “liberalism,” which is a fairly centrist political position in most of the world. In America, liberalism is considered the left only because it is in opposition to conservatism, which is to its political right. Liberalism is more progressive than conservatism, but liberalism still supports capitalism.
Both the narrative and philosophy of Star Trek do not support capitalism, which is why it is often considered a show for leftists. Star Trek is always a little vague as to how the economy of the future works. This is deliberate because the intricacies of economics do not make for exciting television and because with so many writers over so many decades, keeping track of such things would be a headache. Also, not everyone involved in Star Trek over its history has had the same politics as Gene Roddenberry. Producer Rick Berman once said "What Gene wanted me to do was basically carry the ball for him, and to try to maintain his vision. He saw that I had respect for his vision--not because it's my vision. I don't believe the 24th Century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed. But if you're going to write and produce for 'Star Trek,' you've got to buy into that."
Earth is free from poverty because it rejected the current economic system. What was put in its place? All we can do is guess based on the evidence, and since Trek is fictional and we're not excavating a real society, no actual conclusion can be reached because no actual conclusion was ever written. You can't treat fiction the way you would the real world. However, we also can't discuss why Trek appeals to leftists without examining its economic system in as much detail as we can, so here are some semi-reasonable guesses based on hundreds of episodes of Star Trek and its movies.
The Federation economy decouples labor from reward. This concept frightens capitalists and capitalist apologists because they believe that without the coupling of labor and reward, people will stop working and society will suddenly grind to a halt and that capitalism, which is a scarcity-based system, is still preferable to the incredible scarcity this would create. However, with the rise of automation, the potential for a post-scarcity society may be possible. We already have a surplus of food, for example, we simply do not distribute it to the whole world. It's not a matter of scarcity, it's a matter of organization.
In the future, a small number of humans or other aliens living among humans could produce all the food, energy and other requirements. Some people would choose to do this, and some people would choose other things. This might seem utopian – Star Trek is often labeled this, sometimes as a bludgeon – but this does not exactly seem like simple wishful thinking given our current trends. In Star Trek, these advances are helped along by visiting aliens – the Vulcans – but the real world humanity could realistically become self-sufficient in such a way that capitalism and even labor as we know it need not exist. That's not to say that this will happen, only that it could happen, and Star Trek shows us a future in which it does happen.
Star Trek shows people to suddenly be absolutely in love with their humanity and more willing to lend a helping hand than in the real world present. People call Trek's vision of how humanity behaves to be utopianl, but the removal of hierarchical systems like capitalism would change the way we see each other: no longer in competition. The removal of economic competition among ourselves would remove alienation, the estrangement of people from their own lives due to living under stratified social and economic classes. The elimination of our alienation under capitalism could have the side-effect of greater harmony related to gender and race. This is because those classifications are often coupled with labor and economy. Imagine never having to worry about money – never having “economic anxiety” that is so often coupled with racism. Nobody could say “They're coming from another country to take our jobs!” because labor as we know it would not exist, thus reducing the “othering” of different people.
The Federation, a coalition of various species, works because these species are not competing with each other. Gender relations are often strained due to labor and economy as well. People still argue about the “gender gap” in wages, and “women in the workforce” as a boogeyman phrase even today. Sexual harassment in the workplace that goes unnoticed because women are sometimes too afraid of losing their jobs to speak up, causing men to not realize how prevalent sexual harassment actually is. In a society where nobody needs to worry about losing their job, harassment would be better enforced and reduced.
Eliminating competition will not eliminate all racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., but as Sisko once said about actually caring about people, it would be a start. Bigotry has not completely been eliminated in Star Trek. Captain Kirk admonishes one of his men about his prejudice in the original series episode, Balance of Terror. In the Next Generation episode The Drumhead, Captain Picard defends one of his men who is on trial at least in part due to his having Romulan ancestry. Worf is occasionally sexist, such as in the episode The Outcast, and so on. But progress has been made, and a lot of that is due to completely changing the economic system, thus eliminating our most alienating hierarchy.
In the TNG episode, The Neutral Zone, Captain Picard tells someone from the past "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things.' We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions." How this is done is not explained in great detail, but based on how our future might actually unfold, we can guess that it has something to do with the loss of capitalism. At this point, we enter a guessing game – mere speculation – on how the Federation functions economically.
In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard tells Lily Sloan that there is no money in the future. In Star Trek IV, a time traveling Kirk tells Spock that the people of the 20th century are still using money, suggesting that the Federation does not. In various episodes, Starfleet officers “pay” their bills with Federation credits. Based on the fact that there is no economic hierarchy, one assumes that everyone receives the same amount of credits at the same intervals, but this is never explicitly stated. Also, based on the fact that there is no poverty, one assumes that everyone receives Federation credits regardless of employment status.
There are many ways this system is contradicted over the course of the series and movies. There is a “Bolian Bank” even though the Bolians are members of the Federation, for example. The Federation also trades with other governments, which means that Federation “credits,” whatever they are, must have some worth to people outside the Federation. The Ferengi primarily use latinum as their currency, but Quark routinely accepts Federation credits from Starfleet officers. The fact that the details are not explained does not invalidate a future that Star Trek proposes. It's more a matter of narrative convenience and different writers. Some writers will present a future that is deeply regressive, and some writers will have Rom quote Karl Marx.
Star Trek more explicitly rejects capitalism through its introduction of the Ferengi as antagonists in The Next Generation and various other anti-capitalist and anti-disparity statements throughout the franchise. Regardless of what we call the economic system of the Federation, it is definitely something to the left of what we have now and therefore appealing to leftists. Sci-fi futures more often than not still showcase capitalism as its economy, an inescapable economic system even in the distant future.
There are a lot of other aspects to Trek that appeal to leftists as well. Trek was “woke” before “woke” became a punchline. The Original Series attempted to tackle racism during the civil rights era, perhaps clumsily but nobody ever said Trek needed to be subtle. So many episodes across all series are like this. Trek attacks social issues with the bluntness of a hammer, everything from racism to homophobia to the AIDS epidemic.
For all of Star Trek's leftist ideology, it has also attracted right-wingers and reactionaries among its fanbase. What could be so appealing about Star Trek to these people? Well, part of that could simply be that Star Trek is so ubiquitous that everyone has seen some of it and also that it's so well-made (sometimes) that people love it across political lines. But there is something more here. Something that might directly appeal to the political right.
Starfleet is often euphemistically called the “exploratory wing” of the United Federation of Planets or the “trade organization” or a number of other cop-outs to what it is: the military. That's not to say that it's only military. It escorts ambassadors on diplomatic missions, it negotiates with other planets, it does...a lot for the Federation. But it is also the military. When the Borg strikes, the Federation sends Starfleet to fight its war. Ditto for the Dominion and every other conflict that the Federation finds itself in. Starfleet is many things, but one of those things is the military.
Anti-war fans of Star Trek don't always want to acknowledge this, but the text of the series and films are right there. They even have naval ranks and often speak in terms of military hierarchies. Star Trek tries to paint Starfleet as inherently benevolent and therefore not what we would call a “military,” except for all the times when it functions as a military and even outright is called just that. In the 2009 Star Trek movie, Captain Pike called it a “peacekeeping and humanitarian armada” instead of the word “military,” but no matter how hard Star Trek tries to call Starfleet something else, it is what it is. If one wishes to call Starfleet a different term while still acknowledging that Starfleet fights the Federation's wars, then such a term is a matter of semantics only and therefore unhelpful in classifying what Starfleet actually does.
One political position common the right is that of having a strong national military force to both “defend” its borders but also as a means of interventionism. Protecting the nation's “interests,” often meaning wealth. In Star Trek, the Federation may not care about wealth, but that's a detail that the right would probably ignore or not care about when presented with this awesome, galaxy-sized military force. Starfleet is not only a powerful military due to its size but also due to how it functions and how much power it has consolidated under its banner.
In the real world, intelligence agencies within a country are sometimes divided into military and civilian. America, for example, has the Military Intelligence Corps, which is a branch of the United States Army. America has also the Central Intelligence Agency, which is a civilian organization. The CIA has performed a great number of paramilitary operations over the years, but there is still some separation of power here. Starfleet, among other things, is the military for the Federation, but it is also the intelligence organization for the Federation. Starfleet Intelligence is the only intelligence organization for the Federation. There is no official civilian intelligence agency. Section 31 is officially part of Starfleet Intelligence in Discovery but a rogue organization in other series. It's never both official and civilian. It's always one or the other. This means that Starfleet has untold autonomy that goes beyond even the wildest dreams of the most hawkish military fetishist.
But that's not all. Leftist ideology seeks to reduce hierarchies and to create something resembling a horizontal leadership. In Star Trek, the Federation's government may be more left-wing in its economy and tolerance of other people, but it is more right-wing in its structure. The legislature of the Federation called the Federation Council is unicameral, not bicameral like in America, and it only seems to contain a few dozen representatives. That's a few dozen people dictating law for over one hundred and fifty worlds and trillions of people. The Federation President is democratically elected but is also given powers beyond that of most representative republics. The Federation President serves as both the head of state and head of government, chief executive officer, the individual who determines most of the Federation's foreign policy and economy in a moneyless system somehow, and most importantly, serves as supreme commander of the Federation's military force: Starfleet. And if the Federation President has final say in Starfleet, then said President is also head of Intelligence for much of the galaxy. Starfleet has consolidated both military and intelligence powers, and the President presides over all of it. There is a Federation Supreme Court, but it is rarely shown to act against the wishes of the president or legislature.
This does not mean that Gene Roddenberry and later Rick Berman intended to show a psuedo-authoritarian space organization as the best possible outcome for Earth. Starfleet and the Federation are what they are for narrative convenience. A series about people living in peace on Earth is not exciting, so Star Trek is about Starfleet. And since the shows are about Starfleet, it is presented as doing a bit of everything. Yet, it's possible that this focus on an all-powerful military being the best arbiters of justice throughout the cosmos may be at least one reason why so many right-wingers love this otherwise left-leaning sci-fi franchise. You could argue that Starfleet is benevolent, and it mostly is, but that is how the right always sees its military no matter what it does: as a force for good. That's why Starfleet is appealing to them. It's the fictional justification for their real world military.
This does not, however, invalidate Star Trek as a leftist narrative. In addition to everything already mentioned, Star Trek is explicitly anti-fascist, as evidenced by so many episodes in which Starfleet fights the Nazis or stand-ins for Nazi ideology. It is also anti-interventionist, as evidenced by the admittedly inconsistent prime directive. Star Trek does not provide a blueprint for how we achieve its future because there are no Vulcans coming to save us. We have to figure that out for ourselves.