Rev Left Radio - Empire in the Stars: Science Fiction, Ideology, and Colonialist-Imperialist Realism (Feat. The Left Page)

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

In this episode, Breht goes on The Left Page podcast as a guest to explore the role that science fiction plays as part of the cultural superstructure of empire: a genre born in the shadow of British and American imperial power, shaped by colonial assumptions, and increasingly haunted by attempts to critique the very structures it once blindly reproduced. From early invasion fiction and dreams of space conquest to modern works like Dune, Blade Runner, The Expanse, and The Three-Body Problem, Leon, Frank and Breht examine how sci-fi imagines the future through the unresolved contradictions of the present: capitalism, colonialism, racial hierarchy, technological domination, corporate sovereignty, and imperial war. Along the way, they discuss the role of Rome in the Western political imaginary, especially for reactionaries and fascists; extend Mark Fisher's concept of capitalist realism into colonial and imperialist realism; and ask why science fiction can so easily imagine interstellar travel, artificial life, alien civilizations, and cosmic catastrophe, yet so often struggles to imagine a future beyond empire and capital.   Check out The Left Page podcast HERE 

Hey everybody, just popping on really quick to introduce this episode in which I was the guest. I went on the Left Page podcast with Frank and Leon to discuss science fiction, the role it plays in the cultural superstructure, the psychology and the use of science fiction by reactionary and fascistic minds and movements, the liberatory potential of science fiction, a development of Mark Fisher's idea of capital. realism talking about colonial and imperialist realism and how that manifests within science science fiction. And this conversation takes fascinating roads to roam to the future, to aliens, to artificial intelligence, and, you know, kind of uses science fiction literature and film and TV shows and art as an anchor to explore the human mind, political economy, historical materialism, the past, the president. in the future. So this is a really great conversation with Frank and Leon, and I highly recommend if you enjoy this conversation,

go check out the Left page, links in the show notes. That's a great podcast. Frank and I have been friends for years and years and years, going back to the early days of Rev Left. And I played a small, perhaps, role in helping Frank get to the creation of the left page and to see after all these years me coming back on as a guest once again, reconnecting with Frank, connecting with Leon and having this really fascinating conversation. It's really cool. It's really rewarding. And this is just a very deep and insightful conversation

all around and I think you will enjoy it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with the Left Page podcast hosted by Leon and Frank on science fiction and everything related to it. Enjoy. Frank, Leon. What episode yesterday? It's one of mine. It's one of mine. It's one I've been. crafting for a little bit, although you've been very, very insightful with a couple of things. First of all, our guest, welcome back, Brett, from Rev Left Radio. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

I'm happy to be back, happy to be in discussion with you again. And I love that the pot is still going strong after all these years. And I'm excited to be back and to talk about some really interesting content that is, I think, increasingly relevant as we spiral into some sort of future. Probably dystopian, but we'll see. Yeah, maybe it's fun to just very quickly, briefly, explain what the history exactly is between Left Page and Refleft. That was before my time, so you guys go ahead.

No, of course. So it was like, I think before I started the podcast, right? Like I remember talking to Brett. I listened to a lot of Revlift Radio. It was one of the podcasts that got me into listening to podcasts. and, you know, at one point, like, just reaching out and whatnot, I remember helping with transcription and translation of a couple of episodes, which was very fun and very interesting to do.

And, you know, just reaching out to Brent talking about, you know, activism and creating content, so to speak, or just being on the left and help sharp the idea of, like, you know, maybe I could do a podcast. Maybe that could be interesting. and you know I was thinking about different ideas and like there was the niche that you know wasn't as you know as represented

as directly represented I think which was talking about literature and you know then I brought Bruno in and it all it all spiraled out from there and then there was there were many different iterations there were many different forms the previous episode with Brett is on Don DeLillo's White Noise which I will link in the description as well it's a very good episode and yeah

one of the people responsible for the podcast existing, you know, there are a couple. There's John, a good friend John, a litigrant guy for Hore Vanguard. And another one is, you know, Brett, Brett from Red Menace and more. So yeah, thanks again, Brett. And always lovely to have you here. Yeah, no, it's awesome. And it was a long time ago. I think we were first in contact years.

I mean, Greve left's almost been on the air for 10 years. So I think that was around the first, second year maybe, that you and I made contact. So this has been a long developing relationship. And I remember kind of talking with you about filling a sort of niche on the left where you could examine, you know, literature through the prism of like, you know, a sort of principled socialist or Marxist perspective. And to see that that project is continuing to unfold and, of course, evolve over the years is awesome. Awesome to see. Shout out to John as well. A good friend and, you know, friend of the show, friend of mine as well.

So it's really cool that all three of us are still kind of doing our own thing. no definitely yeah I believe I mean Frank told me about it that actually Rev Left helped them a lot with finding their political situated if I may say so Frank Oh yeah

Correct me Yeah no it's it's Rev Left It's John because it was before the horror vanguard And it's the Magnificast With Matt and Dean who released a book Oh yeah absolutely It's good work Because otherwise

Was it again Frank You would still be in I can't see an idealist I think I would well yeah no I think I would have broken away but it would have taken a lot longer

you all helped me a lot faster that's a great way to put it that's awesome that's awesome so yeah I I brought Chalall here today so we can talk about

one of my favorite things and you know it's science fiction yay I love to talk about science fiction but with a rather obvious intersection but one that, even looking at the scholarship,

of course, people talk about specific cases, but there aren't that many works that try to be large and comprehensive about the relationship between science fiction and empire. Right? It's both in representation, both with relations to, you know, imperial projects and whatnot. There are a couple of papers. I will link to a few of them,

at least one which I think is insightful in looking or at least mentioning different early novels from late 19th, early 20th century which are their imperial apologia but it's interesting to mention those but

basically there are not a lot of people who talk specifically about that relationship and obviously we're not going to write a book here but I want to bring that discussion of like how do we think about science fiction empire? How do we encounter it? How do we find it done? and so on, and a couple of more questions about it,

which will guide our discussion as we talk about different things of science fiction, and that connect or talk about or critique or represent empire. So the easiest place to start, I think, is what are both of yours first things that come to mind when you think about, you know, science fiction and empire, right? like what book, what film, what TV series, what game even for Leon, comes to mind when when thinking about those things together. Well, Burkos first. Sure, well, yeah.

First things first is like sci-fi is one of his favorite genre straight up. You know, whenever a new sci-fi film comes out, I'm going to go see it regardless of if it's good, bad or ugly. I'm going to give it a shot. I'm fascinated with the ways in which humans wrestle with the possibilities of our own future. and often sci-fi is made in a moment in which a given culture or society that produced that work of sci-fi is wrestling with something, right? Whether that's AI, whether that's space travel, you know, and all these other things we're

going to get into throughout the conversation. I love the terrain of sci-fi that wrestles with things from different directions. I'm a huge fan going all the way back to 2001 of Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick. You know, I love the Dune series, three-body problem. I read the book and then I watched the series. We'll talk about the expanse in a little bit. You know, arrival is another one. I could list them, you know, all day long.

All of them doing different things, coming at it from different perspectives. We'll talk about the ways in which they're all kind of still confined within a certain superstructure. But as I was preparing for this episode, one of the things that I was thinking of is like, how could I kind of neatly articulate what we're going to talk about? today and sci-fi in general and the limitations perhaps of sci-fi and the word i came up with kind of a play on mark fisher you know from capitalist realism is capitalist imperialist realism colonial realism especially in our context of a colonial and imperialist society generates and narrates certain visions of the future that even though they're exploring different things and even though they might intentionally be progressive in some way, as with the expanse, still can't break out

of that framework. And the irony of being able to imagine, you know, the, the, the, the, the, magisterial, imagine faster than light travel, imagine different types of aliens that we could encounter, imagine what that would do to our social structures, imagine AIs that become increasingly human, et cetera, and yet we still can't imagine a future liberated. I mean, from class society or from, you know, the imperialist and colonialist urge to colonize, dominate, extract, and also the fear of the colonizer, right? When you have a master slave or colonizer colonized dynamic, the master or the colonizer always have these subconscious fears that the object of their oppression will in one way, shape, or form turn the tables around. and the role that aliens often play in science fiction coming out of the imperial core is to do exactly that. And what you get to see in that moment is often a subconscious cultural fear of that happening manifest itself in a particular narrative or story, which I find interesting.

So there's much more to say here. I want to make also a point about historical materialism and the moment in human history when sci-fi becomes a genre. Perhaps we can get to that in a second, but I'll hand it over to Leon for his thoughts as well. Oh, yeah, no, totally. I think we are already arriving at right away is kind of like the importance, once again, of like Jamesonian thinking.

Sci-fi by a, you know, all genres are important. All genres have interesting contradictions within them and so on. I think sci-fi is unique in that aspect, as in it is the most poignant at times or it has the ability to be in contrast to others. It can, like, almost very straightforwardly articulate those anxieties. As a social scientist, I'm also very grateful to sci-fi and, like, fantasy

because they are such clear objects in which we have, like, this imbueing of politics and psychology. It's like this personal situateness of, like, this anxiety for the future, like Brett just said, the things that we are dealing with right now and, like, our broader political understanding as well. Something that's very valuable to me, that's also why I felt comfortable enough to take up Frank's offer to come on this podcast because even though I don't have any formal media analysis training or I'm not like Frank who studies like sci-fi history I have some understanding of like how media as an object

can be used politically and so on and so on and you know sci-fi is you know a clear go-to for like again also people like Mark Fisher for instance you know to talk about it in such ways I think that this is very interesting for me I would say also again fan of all the things spread already said. Of course. Of course, Leon mentioning Star Wars yet again. Was it good or not? Not important. But once upon a time, Star Wars was about getting fascist and finding your found family.

And that was nice, I guess. I don't know. Not quite sure what it's about now. It's like a focus tested AI critter. I don't know. That's like, has to be on screen. Merchandise. That's also very important. Not as wholesome, but I guess.

Also, once again, this change in Star Wars itself, very interesting, very hard. articulates a lot of tensions right now and as in how capital and media relate to one another, like this expansion of like, you know, real consumption and so on. I think the sci-fi, again, is very poignant example in that, in my humble opinion. And right now, John and I both, a good friend John ever mentioned, are both writing about a very interesting cultural object called Warhammer, in which there's a lot to say there about empire and how, that serves for a very interesting group of predominantly men as a libidinal object.

So I'll put some of that in there. I hope throughout the episode, no promises. We'll see. But yeah, there you go, sci-fi. Yeah. I mean, I think it's obviously one of my biggest sci-fi influences is Star Trek. I've talked about it endlessly. I am writing about this. I'm also researching it as well because it's great.

and even when it's trying to not be imperial, it's still imperial. And therein lies a very interesting tension, which we can get to later. But the place of sci-fi is interesting because we, one of the earliest examples of science fiction, right, we think, what are the worlds where we have this main element of, you know, imperial fears, imperial violence, right? external towards us and it's almost hilarious how one of the

text that's in the description talks about a novel that came shortly afterwards which was like oh Earth invades Mars as like a revenge story and it's just like yeah no we need to destroy them we need to commit this genocide and that's great yay we're powerful we're Earth but we're not really Earth

we're just the British Empire again we're doing out part yeah and I think the thing about sci-fi that allows it to both represent those tensions, represent those expectations and, you know, rub with them is how it exists in time, right? Like how it projects things towards this future. This playing with the future a lot, which from, again, Leo knows a lot more about fantasy than I do. But fantasy, even when it's playing with time and whatnot, it has this separate reality where a science fiction tries to posit itself in the future.

or in these alternate kinds of future, which are, you know, in a horizon, so to speak. Be it positive, be it negative. And I think that gives it a lot of potential, right? I, just for the sake of reference, in utopian fiction, there is a turning point when utopian novels, instead of focusing, like, a different place, started positing a different future or a different time, right? is Louis-Sebacian Mercierge's the year 2770, I think.

It's a French Revolution era novel. Very, very interesting. Talked about by historian Reinhardt Kazalek. That's his name. I can try and link the description if I'm able to find it separately. But I just mention all of this because what Empire

is in science fiction is fundamentally a lot of the time, it's a a continuity, right? It's more of the present or realities of the present. And that present can be, you know, 19th century imperialism or early 20th century imperialism or it can be, you know, like the expanse, a continuity of the imperial relations of power that we experience or live, you know, today or in recent history. So I think that is interesting because it establishes this connection between, you know, present and future and positing this future as this very focused extrapolation.

And that doesn't necessarily is like, oh, we are just putting that again or just recreating that again or just sometimes, yeah, that is the case. Sometimes a lot of this science fiction can just like, oh, how about we talk about empire again in this particular way that I write or am trying to do this? A lot of the time I feel, and the expense I think is a good example. how does that look continued, right? How does that look expanded into the solar system, expanded into the asteroid belt? And I think that is important because it's not just about, oh, let's talk about empire again.

It's like, no, there's a reason to continue to talk about empire. Definitely. I think what's very interesting in what you said is to very briefly focus on indeed world of worlds. Yes. A lot of people would argue, and they're not necessarily wrong. but rather, as we always say, it's not good. You're setting itself a little bit back if you focus too much on linear explanations when it comes to art. You're just setting yourself up for eventually bumping into something. In this case, a lot of people say that, like, oh, the tradition of sci-fi comes from pulp fiction.

Kind of like the 50s, 60s, the guy in a spacesuit on a planet with like the green men. But if we take 1898's World of the Worlds as a text, The imperial, the empires, the empire that struggles, the empire that's large and invades and so forth and so on, is a much older sci-fi tradition than the big, big strong guy in a suit who, like, stays a damsel in distress, or it's just funny or whatever. The Star Trek's or whatever. So, yeah, that's, I think that's interesting to point out that, like,

that this is a really old tradition. And maybe, like, you know, it precedes a lot of, from a perspective for the general audience, a lot more truer sci-fi. are more identifiable sci-fis. And that kind of bleeds into one of the points I wanted to make, and maybe I'm kind of ignorant about how far back this genre extends, or maybe we can talk about how it changes over time.

For me, I see at least the proliferation of sci-fi as like a genuinely large and well-engaged with genre of literature, art, film, etc., coming at a certain time super structurally, where you're sort of post-industrial and technology is really beginning to develop. up. Like, it's hard for me to imagine feudal Europe being able to produce works of literature that are about space travel and faster than light, you know, travel and meeting up with aliens in large part because those concepts weren't able to fully emerge and become enraptured in the popular imagination because of the basic base of society. And, you know, things that we look out

to the stars for people back then would have used religious mythology and iconography to make a lot more sense of, right? Even to try to imagine, just theoretically, hypothetically, there was some sort of alien visitation in feudal Europe or whatever part of the world at that point. They would almost certainly interpret it as angels and demons or some message from God or something. They wouldn't be able to think about other planets with other forms of life, biological evolution, all the scientific things that came out of the Industrial Revolution ultimately that are able to inform even the possibility of thinking in those terms. So I find that very, very interesting. And then just from a broader Marxist perspective, these are super structural products, meaning that they are, you know,

manifestations of cultural superstructure of a material base. And so sci-fi as a genre really, you know, comes into its own at a certain time in humanity's material. development where technology is on the rise. In many instances, it's accelerating very quickly. That gives rise, as in our own time, to a lot of anxiety about what the implications are for that technology and for our lives going forward. And sci-fi emerges as a way that our societies and our cultures try to wrestle with those fears, consciously or not. And you know, you mentioned the expanse. I think what they were trying to do, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is they are, in ways that used to be subconscious, they are consciously projecting the present

state of affairs into the future in order to critique it. Isn't it gashly to think that, you know, capitalist imperialism, colonialism can continue into the space age and manifest itself across the entire solar system? Isn't, you know, just from a baseline level, aren't you repulsed by that? And then we can go in and we can start, you know, doing social critique based on that. They're still confined, of course, by the capitalist. imperialist, you know, realism in some ways as the article that you sent over and perhaps we can link to articulates very well. But they're trying to do something that in previous iterations of science fiction would have been sort of subconscious. It's not something they're, they're intending to do consciously

as a mode of critique, but they're literally just imagining the future and are unable to even think about the ways in which their own assumptions are being, you know, pushed forward into that future. So I think, you know, that's still in advance within science fiction, that, which is, you know, common. I mean, I think Blade Runner does that in its own way. You know, as science fiction evolves, that becomes more and more common. And so you can kind of see the evolution of sci-fi in that way, which I think is cool. And also opens up the door in the horizon to the continued evolution of science fiction and what, you know, other artists coming up might be able to do with the genre that still has not quite been done yet,

which is fascinating to think about. No, absolutely. And I think that's poignant to say about putting things to the forefront, critiquing this and presenting this, even with its limitations and its flaws, both in the TV show, as the paper itself mentions, and as Leon and I have done it before, in the book series in our previous episodes.

And at this point, I have an approved and soon-to-be-published paper on that. Nice. Just a matter of time. it's, I've just given the final pass on the layouted version, so that's very fun, but it's very interesting when we compare what empire means for, you know, the expanse in comparison to something like Asimov's foundation, where like, you know, it's been well tread at this point, but Asimov has said, like, oh, one of the big inspirations is Edward Gibbons the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Yeah. So, of course, a lot of. lot of science fiction when representing empire still goes back to like, oh, the Roman Empire, the columns,

all that's still being retread. But it's interesting to see like what model of empire was more often represented or idealized and what more recently

that kind of empire starts shifting in position and representation, right? And I think for all its flaws, the expense represents late 19th century, early 20th century imperialist capitalism, right?

Like that is the structuring form. That's the representation we're talking about. And, you know, it continues and expands upon that. But even those forms of empire are still different, right? That other paper that talks about a lot of different early novels goes over different examples, right? Of, oh, we're talking about the British Empire.

Oh, we're talking about the anxieties for what the American nation is going to be versus the British Empire. Oh, they work together. Oh, they benefit the United States. Or no, there's a tension, a rivalry there. Oh, no, there's a fear of China. So it captures a lot of that,

even when representing empire, a lot more subconsciously there, but it's still able to navigate kind of those tensions, even when it's like, oh, but this is the idea. This is the goal. The goal is empire, right? And that shifts a lot. Sorry, I think I said a lot in a little.

No, that's good. Yeah, I think kind of bouncing off of that and going back to those early forms that you were just talking about in that first article, those early forms of science fiction literature that were more sort of subconsciously projecting empire, not really ready for the evolution of the critique itself, kind of externalizing the desires and fears and anxieties of a culture at a given time. One thing that manifests and that we can see in our own present time very clearly, and one of the points of the article, makes is that, you know, empire through these cultural forms narrate their own aggression as necessary, as, you know, protective. Even when they go on the offense, it is framed as defensive, if preemptive. It's about security, safety, or in often cases, and this is the liberal spin, some sort of humanitarian rescue. And, you know, some sort of, you know, we need to save these people, whether that's the old colonial white man's burden idea or the more liberal like we see it all the time with iran and palestine like we got it like women's rights are you know gay rights are the reason we're helping genocide these people like it's it's insane and and you know that's as progressive as you can make

liberal uh you know imperialism and colonialism dressing it up in liberalism and trying to give it a humanitarian facade while it's you know anti-human to the core but those dynamics are live and well And one of the, all over, but particularly in what people are really most presently aware of is, is the genocide in Palestine and the way that Israel behaves regionally. And what Israel stands out as in so many ways is like this old 19th century brutal colonialism that was just par for the course ushered into the 21st century. And so, you know, whereas we would read about a lot of these brutalities in history, books, Israel is just like doing it now in the 21st century. And people are like, oh my God. And it gives us a look at them.

That's what manifest destiny look like in the United States. Those exact same things that you recoil from when you see it happening in 2025 in Palestine are the exact same dynamics, the exact same form of brutality, minus the technological advancement to really, you know, the post-industrial ways in which you can do genocide. But that exact same dynamic, the insanity of an entire society of colonizing. That is what America, the country that I'm speaking from right now, was literally built on. And so Israel is like this harsh, modern form of something that we would hope or sometimes we think naively should be in the past while it's shoving in our face that it's alive and well in the present. And it does the same thing, right? It presents itself as the victim as it aggresses, right? As it slaughters children, as it invades other countries, it is always projecting out that this is necessary.

for the security, not just of our colonial project. That's too barbaric. It's for the security of Jewish people. And here comes the liberal twist, right? If you are not for us doing this, brutalizing these people, you know, you must hate Jews or something like that. And at the same time, it's playing on these colonialist tropes of the savages, the Arabs and the Muslims. They have a religion and a way of life because of who they are that is backwards and uncivil. And we are trying to elevate the region into civilization, even as the most barbarism and the most savagery comes from Israel itself. So not to make this about present political issues, but I think it speaks well to what that article is exploring in those early forms of science fiction and kind of connects up to that topical issue today. And we can see those exact dynamics in stark relief.

Definitely. I mean, I think just to get one thing to make sure one thing, Brett, you didn't read the books? You just watched the show of X-Fans? Yeah, in that case, I just watched the show. Yeah. No worries. Then I won't talk about Duarte. Don't worry.

I should read the book, so yeah, I'm interested in that. I think what is really interesting to tie some of you things that both you two have said together is exactly this kind of like insanity kind of we are playing about like lying like, oh, it's for this, it's for that. and as a Jewish person by itself, I always have collected these statements from figures like Thero Herzl or Boroshov or Jophenzky, these kind of like crucial early Zionist settlers who directly say it's colonial. There's no way the Arabs will forgive us for this. We have to murder them. And actually all the other Jews that supposedly if you're anti-Zionist, you're anti-Semite, But the Zionist's most anti-semitic creature that I have ever, as a Jew have experienced,

as in, oh, my culture is wrong. I am a self-hating Jew, but I don't want to change anything about myself. They do, which is funny when you think about it. But yeah, this unwillingness to just call it by its name. Once again, we have the historic record. We have the source, we have the everything. But you would need for a generic standard templates, logical arguments to have.

We can discern the truth by just looking at what they wrote, but like the letters that they exchanged, the text that I wrote, the statements that they made, and so on and so on, and we don't do that. And it's very interesting then that because, yes, I agree that like the expense kind of tries to deal with like these broader narratives at play, that a narrative onto itself,

despite not being real, is a powerful thing. An empire, what is empire? Well, it's a way to control narratives, I would argue. as I wrote earlier my first text on Warhammer which is sadly not my last text there's more to say I'm so sorry

but it's empire but in the attempt to like make humanity all march in the direction that you want that specific entrenched ruling class like the upper echelon of ruling class want us to march into again sci-fi is very interesting

to explore exactly that creation of those of mythos so what kind of like broader political function and psychological function does this type of like Raysant-Tetre, there's this reason for being articulate, like what does it represent and so on and so on. But I just wanted to comment on this, and we immediately move on, don't worry.

But you mentioned the fall of the Roman Empire by Givens, which is not a very good book, I would. But talking about being responsible for, like, a meme, a thing that, like, stays behind and informs things irresponsibly. It's very interesting. In these moments, I haven't read them. You have read some of these books, I believe, Frank. But in this moment, space room is a really popular thing in sci-fi literature. Yeah. We have Red Rising.

Once again, I haven't read it. I don't want to. Every time I ask what's awesome about it, they just like give me the lame as shit. I'm sorry. Anyway, the most irresponsible statement I will make this entire episode. We can immediately move on. Empire of Silence, I believe. Once again, I have not read it.

And even expense, up to a point. Duarte at the end, book 7 to 9. Laconia, it's called it's just Greek reference, but it is Rome. He calls himself High Council, which is Rome. Yeah. It's, you know, desperately trying to go back to this kind of archaic, sacred time,

and this separation of sacredity and profanity is very interesting, which is always something that pops up in Empire when it creates mythos. Maybe we can circle back to that, I don't know, about, with no promises. But, yeah, I think it's very, I don't think it's

entire coincidence that we want to do Rome as an empire because it's like so far removed from our current aesthetics. It's it is this interesting political object for me because it's this recoil of I don't want to talk about politics.

Talking about bad sci-fi movies that recently came out that we have to watch Parsley Hill Mary. Andy, we are going like oh yeah, I don't want to talk about politics. It's just embarrassing. It's just to say a grown-ass man often just saying that straight up

without even being prompted, without even like... Oh, yeah. That's mind up. But yeah, I think that is interesting to then do Rome, because that is something that's slightly desensitized for them and they get to world-built instead of articulating their anxieties. Which is why we always, like, you know, they're confrontational towards this tradition that is loosely called world-building.

Because what is world-building other than cheating fiction as an object in and of itself instead of a way to articulate broader and more high concept things. It's kind of centers its own building, its own base materials as a thing onto itself,

which is not what's, you know, kind of like against the golden rule of fiction, I feel. But anyway, people can have a different opinion about that. But yeah, I'm fascinated, but it's,

I didn't click until you said it, Frank, And it has been, right? If we think Asimov's foundation, there's like, there are two moments to that series, one in like the 50s and 60s, but the Roman thing is from the early one. So I don't remember the dates, but presumably the 30s and 40s, if I'm not mistaken, I'll have to double check. But I wonder, and like this is some speculation on my part, I wonder if Rome presents a kind of legitimacy, right? like, oh, we are accompanying the Roman Empire. Nobody disputes,

maybe they should, nobody disputes the legitimacy of the Roman Empire as you know, this important mark of like power and strength and civilization. And it's better to say than just like, oh, we are trying to do modern imperialism or modern colonialism.

So it feels, exactly as you said, Leon, it feels both out of reach. It feels like, oh, we're desensitized to that particular violence. and that kind of oppression, while also being, you know, oh, it's not as intense.

It's not as brutal. It's for the growth of the collective empire, right? It's about organizing. It's about standing against barbarism and brutality and savagery, you know, arguments that will continue to be retreaded in modern imperialism, but that feel or appear to be more sanitary, more legitimate, I think. This is pure speculation. I'd have to properly read into it.

And as you said, rise and follow the Roman Empire. From what I take notice and what I've read about it, it's a decent narrative, terrible history. Yeah, and it's interesting, the role that sort of Rome, as both of you are alluding to and even explicitly stating, the role that Rome plays in the imperial imagination going forward and how so many specifically Euro and Euro extended societies think of, especially when they're on the, imperial march think of themselves in terms of of you know sort of roman uh patterns i think of nazi germany that you know nazi germany then turns into this sort of expansionary fascist political project trying to build a sort of new aryan empire and and what does it adopt as its salute the roman salute which is now synonymous with fascism but is from their point of view a conscious hearkening back

to something that in one way or another they see them themselves as a continuator of in a very weird and historically messy way because you can think about the German barbarians and the actual relationship with Rome. But the U.S. also, the founding fathers, are self-consciously thinking of themselves as the perpetrators of this ancient civilization. Yeah. And their doctrines and their architecture is, and even the name, the Senate, is a one-for-one copy and paste. from the Roman Empire indicative of the self-consciousness with which they are imagining themselves as the extenders of that or as like the torch bearers of that, even though they're more seriously

coming directly out of British imperialism in the British Empire, which itself sort of, you know, has this interesting historical actual relationship with Rome, but this pan-Europeanist sort of posture that allows them to take that on board to some extent in their own historical and cultural narratives. And then you see Rome kind of come back, not just in science fiction, but I would argue more broadly culturally, just like last year, there was

that, or a year or two ago, there was that whole meme about how many times do you think about the Roman Empire, right? And like, girlfriends are asking their boyfriends this. And like, you know, nobody really knows shit about it. Like, nobody's like studying Roman history. It's like a few tropes and like this hazy aesthetic idea we have

of Rome from like film and TV shows. But still, there's this interest in it as sort of a internally as a form of like, I'm serious, I'm into history. You know, I'm into history. I know about World War II and I know about Rome. But also there's this infatuation, I think, with Rome in a moment in which modern imperialist societies, and in this case, the American hegemon, finds itself at least self-consciously or at least it's interpreting itself, whether this is ultimately true or not, as in a state of decline,

that we are living through another fall of the Roman Empire. Even these ideas that you see on the reactionary right, we need a new Caesar. You know, Caesarism. You know, Curtis Yarvin talks about this, and then the dark enlightenment ideas in some ways are evoking. So interesting that imperialist societies, in moments of decadence or decline,

often their fascist right wing are looking over and incorporating Roman material to make sense of their own. moments and to give new life into their politics because fascism is ultimately reactionary and as ultimately, as all right-wing politics do, they point to a past golden age that they want to return to. And they're not literally saying, let's return to 2,000 years ago, but they're saying that there's something great about the West. The West is in decline.

And once it was wonderful and powerful and great. And so in these moments of imperialist crisis, right-wing fascist reactionary movements reincorporate Roman aesthetics and Roman ideas into their own politics as a way of hearkening back to something great and trying to revive something that's dying, when actually they themselves, which is an interesting point I like to make here, the fascist reactionaries are the decadence of the West, right? Nazi Germany is not some peak form the West takes for a moment and washes away. It is its most grotesque shadow side manifesting brutally and disgusting.

in a way that undermines itself and accelerates its own obliteration, accelerates its own explosion. So I always find it fascinating that you have these right-wing fantasies about the decline of the West and the needing to revive the West and the further we go down their political road, the more the decline accelerates. Trump is saying, make America great again. Under the banner of renewal, he is accelerating the decline. And that is a hallmark of like fascist reactionary movements in imperial societies, I would argue. Definitely. I think this is definitely one of the interesting things

in which sci-fi precisely is very useful to understand our current moment. It's exactly this moment, or this phenomenon that we both have all been articulating, which is what I believe Romanian historian, Nirke Aliad called the Ilut Tempus, which is just less and forth that time. At that time, which is the time of where gods created,

the earth and this was good back in the good old days is really the older story in humanity that used to be better but of course in the hands of the fascist is something that this is what Rome means to them it is this group

of a couple of Greek exiles that settles on an Italian mountain and from that conquered the world because they had better rationality and the will to fight I think that is very interesting to keep in mind, namely that this idea of arcaning back is also what, again, same historian argues for. It's this content of Axis Mundi, the world access, that this is what an empire is also there to facilitate.

It is there to provide this identifier for this is the center of the world, which used to be, you know, Western Europe is now the United States of America. and in order to facilitate this readiness to perpetuate violence on behalf of these class interests, we have to then harken back again to what was so clear within the fascist movement, that is that violence is an end in and of itself. So we have this kind of like nice jacket of like, oh, we are Romans, live Erickson days,

we are all Vikings as well, if that's the like stigmatization of politics you want to go with. You can pick the Vikings as well, that's fine. and don't worry about it. But eventually, these stories that serve, this idea of becoming this Axis Mundi, this one again,

this world access. I don't have it in me to make an excess power joke. You guys can go ahead if you want. That's the obvious one there. But yeah, no, I think that this is so clear in a lot of sci-fi stories. Again, I'm so sorry, but like Duarte in Expans in book 7 to 9.

It's no coincidence that he goes back to, oh, we need to go back to the old Marsha way of doing this. Which is then informed by Roman aesthetics and so and so on. And yeah, I think this is important just a final addendum to why Rome is so

interesting. And why despite sci-fi beings are critical of these type of people, it doesn't matter because violence is in and in of itself. A lot of people are surprised by that there are reactionary warhammer fans. Once again, what use does a reactionary

have for truth? they never had. They never, for proper understanding of things, they don't. That's not how they operate. And second is because they get to be violent. They get to fantasize about violent, which is in and of itself the goal. Yeah, this is how they demarcate their own eternal anxieties and so,

and so on. Because when I'm violent, I can, like, keep away this, this unwashed horde, that being, like, women who want to vote or who are sexual or immigrants or whatever, like all these things that make me insecure. is this thing that does violence upon my ego because I'm very fragile. It's nothing wrong with being fragile, obviously, but it is when you make the whole weirdo, a reactionary ideology. Yeah, well said. Well said.

Yeah, no, exactly. I think that's a solid capstone on that idea of the rule of my empire and that both the stetticization of violence and politics, as you said, you know, very Benjaminian and for good reason, but also that that is the extent to which the imagination of the future goes towards, right? And then we see Empire as the only possible form, and that exists more broadly. But Empire then becomes, no, that's the ideal form of organizing a large, complex society.

Like, that is the best way, that is the only way, right? Like, that is one of the things that we see. And I just wanted to briefly mention, right, that, you know, we're talking about these very, various anxieties, and you mentioned war of the world. And, you know, it's one of the early examples and it portrays like, oh, there's this fear of invasion, right? That is fundamentally what the book is about. But even in the victory or in the triumph, there's the insecurity that, you know, they could come again. Maybe there's someone else. And of course, in the book,

it's an external violence, right? Like, it's an external force. But such threats also exist widely upon the literature and not just science fiction, internally, right? Like there's this threat, you know, as you said earlier as well, Brad, like, oh, there will be these enslaved people's revolt, right? The fear of Haitianism, right? If there's what happened in Haiti will happen elsewhere, which is, we're not over that. We're still not over that in 2026. That's still a fear. And one wonders why, oh, why can't the Haiti national soccer team wear a reference to San Lavorteur? Oh, but because, well, you know, it's violent or something.

Sorry, I couldn't, I could not mention that when I started that point. But on War of the Worlds, there is this insecurity, right? We end on insecurity. They can come again. And so much of other subsequent literature counteracts that insecurity, right? We have these tensions at play. Even, you know, H.D. Wells, very strange guy politically and in his literature, Utopia novels, there are others which completely reinvent history,

but he wasn't, you know, a complete imperial apologist. Not entirely, but in parts, maybe. Story for another time. It's in the works, maybe. But in this story, we see it's like, oh, there's this fear of invasion. It's like, this is not settled, right? Like, they're still unstable. And that is a tension, right?

the tension that what exists is in peril, be it for the best or for the worst, right? And then we can think about splitting that. We think about critiques to empire or self-defences of empire in desperation. And then there's what follows, which is, you know, no, empire can protect itself and will be victorious. It may be risky. There may have costs. There will be sacrifices. But empire will emerge. Empire is the form. And I think that is what is most decisive. about a lot of science fiction as well in present day, that, you know, yes, the critique of empire is important. Yes, the critique of empire is significant and it is valuable. But what next, right? To give a different example that Leon and I talked about one, but there's another one,

it's a memory called Empire by Katie Martin. Good book. Leon read the sequel, I didn't. Good book, but what does it do meaningfully beyond? that, beyond the critique of empire under somewhat different frameworks, but still not entirely. Not that much. There's an episode to it. I'll link it in the description as well. But again,

I can't recall it moving forwards that much beyond, you know, empire is a threat, empire is a problem, empire is overreaching and consumes and makes all of it into itself, all part of itself. You know, that's the totalizing nature

of empire. But what then, right? Like, oh, we, we resist, we fight, what then? What more can we do with it, right? Like, I think that is one of the valuable critiques that exists in that expanse paper that, you know, what more can we do with empire, right? Like, if I have some disagreements with how they frame that conclusion, I do think that is, you know, what can we do with empire in terms of, you know, fictional representation? It's an important question to be asked and prodded towards, I suppose. This might be a sort of product of the sort of dialectic of critique and the dialectic of thought, which is that you move from, as science fiction itself has, you move from a position of having a lot of subconscious material that is projected outward onto a thing that you're not really wrestling with or understanding. You're just sort of replicating in new and maybe imaginative ways, but you're still fundamentally

regurgitating or re-reifying a certain pattern mode of being societal structure. And then you go into, and this might even be definitive of the postmodern era, which is you go into the mode of deconstruction. You eventually grow up and you begin critiquing. I feel like atheism is, you know, is this. It's a reaction to millennia of religious authoritarianism. Irony as a cultural vehicle and affect is fundamentally deconstructive. right these are things that challenge they tear down but they still struggle to offer any positive

vision in lieu of what they've destroyed and so we we kind of live in that cultural moment you know going back to frederick jameson and you know postmodernism is is that we're living in this moment where we can dismantle everything we can ironize everything we can deconstruct everything and then what we find ourselves with is just like a sort of abstract pile of ashes and we're lost to be able to articulate a positive vision. So if that's true culturally, and we're in that moment of like bumping up against the limitations of deconstruction of critique itself, that is a dialectical brick wall, sort of speak, in which we are being asked, provoked to now move beyond that. Okay, you've seen the thing. You've, you've articulated the thing. You've critiqued the thing.

You've deconstructed the thing. You've seen through the thing. And now can we vision replacing it with a new thing. And science fiction has so much potential here because it's precisely, it's precisely not wanting to, I mean, to go back in form, if not in content. It doesn't want to go backward. It opens up the horizon of the future, but it's still often very limited. It harkens back and tries to pull the past into the future or something. But the potentiality of articulating a new future of breaking out of capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist realism and offering something new is ready. We are ready for that. But we haven't quite, you know, we haven't quite broken through there culturally, broadly. And so this specific manifestations of the cultural superstructure like science fiction hasn't quite done that either.

There are attempts, you know, and even the expanse could be seen as an attempt. It's a critique, but it still can't see beyond. It still can't provoke a new thing. And that's the core idea behind capitalist realism. Even as we realize it's failing, even as we realize that this is no longer a sustainable way to live on this earth, more and more people are waking up to that. There's still a huge question mark about like, how do we move forward? What could we build instead? And in lieu of any articulated positive vision that people can rally behind, there's a de facto gravitational pull back into the replication of the old forms, of the old patterns.

So there's this amazing potential with sci-fi and also deep limitations that were still as a species really struggling to move beyond. Definitely. I think it's interesting then to very quickly, just be the assana and asshole that I truly am, to talk about where exactly these specific moments in sci-fi where it failed, exactly to do that. I think that's also very interesting mainly because a popular example is like Fever Vendetta, which is just like, oh, we topple the Fashist government and that's it. But it has the dignity to end there where it becomes a bit more embarrassing is once again, is Star Wars, for instance.

Star Wars defeats the empire at the end of movie 6 and then like kind of like as this kind of ugly capitalist recoil from thinking we go and do the empire again. We even have a Death Star again. We do the exact same thing again because we are so afraid of imagining what could come after. I think that's very interesting.

And arguably, even though once again, I love it. But the expense can also be, from a certain point of view, conscrued to do this as well. Namely that at the end of book five, at the end of six, sorry. And at the end of season five, I believe there were five seasons of the TV show, I'm not quite sure, I'm sorry.

Regardless, not important. But it has this supposed solution to dismantle sort of kind or at least limits what we could generally call neoliberalists supernational structures, like an EU or a, well, the EU is perfectly fine, I think. Let's go with that one. But it solves that through what is a very brief,

articulated and very vague and very abstract, one big union. Don't worry exactly what kind of executive powers they have. We don't want to get into that. And, oh, look, the fascist empire is here again. We stop thinking about what this future would look like when we personally and consciously try to move away from this, once again, neoliberal, hegemonist agenda. And, again, we can be critical about how they formulate that.

and can they truly move away from this neol agenda without like getting rid of class entirely? Sure, sure. So there's a lot of interesting communist debates to be had here, but just to stay on point out for the sci-fi stuff. Yeah, it struggles entirely with like, not really daring to articulate what there's one big union at the end is. I believe it's called the union as well, Frank.

The transport union. The transportation union, right, right, right. And, but yeah, so it entirely feels to like, pursue that in any meaningful way. And, okay, you can say, this is the same thing, although I'm cautious with this historicity, but this is the same thing

in this interbellion period between World War II, Biomer Republic, didn't deal with, like, its neoliberal dimensions, and therefore racism. And therefore, we didn't deal with the space gates responsibly there for a space Laconian Empire, which is fascist empire.

Sure. It's fine. I think that's okay. But I think also, still, it is a failure to reconcile these anxieties and so on. So we go back to just toppling the fascist empire, which is what most people can agree with. It's safe. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I mentioned it earlier,

and I think that's one of the reasons why I continue to be interested, even when it fails really spectacularly. But I think that's why I find Star Trek so valuable, right? Even the 1966 show that has episodes which are just like, You know, we're blatantly doing imperial extractivism, and that is it. We maybe a little bit try to remember something else, but that is the theme of this episode, and we're not going to talk about that. Or, oh, we need to continue to replicate Cold War proxy wars.

Best solution we have. But even when it's doing that, even when it's failing to do that, it's still trying to articulate a different kind of structure, a different kind of operation, even when it continues to rub up against that. And I think as time goes on, and I'm not going to qualify sci-fi talking about empire. The way I qualify dystopias,

there's a reason why the first episode of the podcast was on dystopias. And I think that's cemented, like, there is value in this. This is not insignificant. It's important to reconcile and recognize this. Also, let's talk about something else, anything else, which can actually We help us articulate a new, an oven, if we will, from Bloch and Darkosuvian.

And his block, you know, talking about hope and utopianism and Darko Suving, one of the main researchers of science fiction. Still alive. And what a brilliant name. Truth be told. But it's, I find these articulations that try to, you know, what next, right? Is there something beyond empire? Can we think of not empire, beyond empire?

And, you know, will likely fail. Well, one, they're not going to, they can't be any kind of historical projects or political project, right? Like, these are flights of fancy, if you will. And that's okay. But they are representing or pushing against tensions, which, you know, how can we have a different territorial relationship outside of a colonial extractivist one as, you know, an institution, as an organization?

Is that possible? Is that achievable? Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe it's important to tension those. Oh, to think of something that has appeared when dealing with Ursula Le Guin's science fiction of the Hanish cycle, right? You have this supragalactic institution of the ecumen, right, which is equivalent to the Federation, right? That's why I call them federations. But if in Star Trek, we think, no, we cannot interfere. You know, we are advanced, we are utopian, but we need to keep a distance between all these less technological.

psychologically developed and, you know, we cannot interfere, you know, the prime directive of non-interference. What exists in LaGuin is that we are, by existing, interfering, right? In our observations, in our understanding. And, you know, there are limits to what we can do. And, you know, she pushes that further by the Acumen, not having a standing army or a Navy, which is an advancement or an interesting exploration. But there will be those who will want to question certain states of things. Are they wrong? Are they not?

The contact fosters interference. And that interference is back and forth. And sometimes that interference, you know, to claim that, oh, we cannot interfere, denies local agency. And that is something, which is not present that much, unless you properly go in for the critique. But that Star Trek doesn't really offer, right, at least not up to a point, right? I'm aware of the Deep Space Nine onwards that starts to becoming present.

But earlier on, that is basically non-existent. Also, disregard it right after Deep Space Nine, but don't worry about it. No, good to know. That's important to know. So basically, what I'm trying to articulate with this long-winded example is that even in these failed and necessarily failed, right? I think Jameson definitely talks about this of, it's important to imagine these future projects,

even acknowledging they're wrong, even acknowledging that they will not be accurate, they will not be correct for the sole purpose that those questions will be answered after, through, we cannot predict those circumstances beyond after capitalism.

We need to get there, and then we will create different ways of doing that if we do, hopefully. But the point is that even in those articulations, we are answering or looking at different questions. right? Like, oh, what does interference mean towards one another, towards different peoples, nations, cultures and so on? Can there be a way of doing these cultural connections without fermenting a hegemonic cultural power? For example, right? That's just one of them. But I think that

pushing towards, that creating those tensions, even in the limitations, even if it fails, even if, ooh, you're still recreating, knowingly or not, imperialism, that is still more valuable, I think, or that can be more valuable than just, well, it can certainly be more valuable than just, oh, we need to fight the fascist empire again. That is important. That's good to critique, but still. I think what's then interesting. To put my money where our collective mouth is, it was important to maybe stipulate is exactly

what are some assumptions? that leads to this bumping into or recoiling away from imagining his future. And I would argue that there are a couple of things if you want to go about creating of sci-fi. You need to keep in mind a couple of things. And I've told the story before about it, but it was very informative. So I will tell again, I remember in my first year of political science, there was this, I forgot where she was from. I'm sorry about like they.

woman from the global south who just blatantly said like well the western imagination begins and ends in fascism and although i don't agree with that i i get where she was coming from and that stay with me forever because when i look at these moments in sci-fi i that that's that's echoing in my mind that the beginning in the end of western imagination is fascism and ultimately okay so how do we steer away from that and i would like to do roughly summarize that as as Walter Benjamin did in his thesis on philosophy of history, is that to keep in mind

and this is talking about the first series of Star Trek hyper-relevant, because yes, it's an extraction, but there's also another more subtle notion at play in every episode in the original series in my own opinion, which is that there is this obligation of being civilized.

Don't keep in, don't center in any meaningful policy making this notion of civilization. To me, I don't believe in contaminated ideas. I think that's a bit reductive, but as a shorthand for now, I'll allow myself to say it, but I think this is kind of rotten fruit. As in this idea of civilization is so informed by our colonial past, by our fascist moment, so and so on, don't center any meaningful way this idea of civilization, because as Benjamin says, there is no document of civilization, which is

not at the same time also a document of barbarism. So like, again to harken back to Rome to tidy all these things together Rome brought civilization supposedly but they did it at the end of like the point of Decladius, there are swords and so forth so on. They committed genocide, large skills in France and

over the Mediterranean. So like, you know, this idea of bringing civilization at the end of mass murder is beyond the pill for irony, right? There's nothing to really say about that. And I think that was then important to

keep in mind, which is what he says in the same text, Benjamin, which is that as a story materialist, we cannot do without a notion of a present, which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop. For this notion defines the present in which he himself is writing history. And I think, like, you should think of yourself as, despite being at the act, at the business of writing fiction, you are also writing history. I think that's very important to keep in mind. And if you want to steer away from that, think of yourself as writing history.

Because that's what you're doing. And I think that's a very powerful notion. That's accessible for everybody. You don't have to go back to doing the fascist empire again. It's fine. We can move. We can try and fail. Like you said, Frank, Jameson is entirely correct.

And we need to imagine it. And even though it is wrong, it's, of course, Jameson with his theory of, like, using art objects as an understanding of an epoch, has an invested interest in saying that, and so do I as a social scientist. So, you know, I totally agree. Please do that. Please be little objects of history yourself. That's very useful. But it's also the way, in my opinion, for a way for, to keep those two things in mind.

Yeah, you guys have thrown out so much. I have a few points I want to make, just kind of picking up on some of the stuff you've already put on the table. The argument about civilization is inherently sort of fascistic and perialistic is because the notion that we're civilized and they're not creates a hierarchy of human. humanization. And, you know, this is hyper present in colonialism. Anytime you're going on a crusade for civilization, it can only be ironic. It can only end in anti-civilizational bloodshed because in the very core of the idea is an unjust and wrong hierarchy about you being on the superior side and somebody else being on the inferior side.

So that's a great point. The Star Trek thing is really interesting because it imagined itself. and I think Frank did a great way of articulating this, as actually like taking sci-fi in this really fascinating direction where it is trying to break out of the present realism and it sees itself several centuries in the future. It sees itself hyper-egalitarian. This is where the idea of like post-scarcity, space communism kind of originates from.

We've transcended that wealth is the main driver of our life. We're going out to explore for ostensibly for exploration's sake, for scientific curiosity for the construction of knowledge. The prime directive is this moral, you know, prevention of us interfering, even though they do interfere. And so if you stand back and look at the general idea of Star Trek, it is trying to do the impossible in a lot of ways.

And then you go into the actual episodes and it can't quite do it. Right? Like it can't quite actually stay to that because it's hitting against those imaginary limits over and over again. And so these patterns sneak back in, these things that they're explicitly. trying to overcome still come back in through the back door, which is fascinating. I think speaks to this broader discussion that we're having. One more point than I want to throw a question to both of you. When you were talking, I was kind of thinking like, well, you know, sci-fi is in this impossible situation. Because imagine somebody in the 18th century trying to imagine 21st century life. There's attempts. They're grasping. But a lot of times they're taking what they know insofar as that, you know, 18th century, maybe bump it up a little bit. Let's say the 19th century. Industrial Revolution, even the 20th century. Look at like, you know, early Soviets and their ideas of the future and their optimism about the future. It's still trying to see something you can't

possibly see in the same way somebody born in the 1800s can't literally cannot imagine life in the 21st century. Us in the 21st century literally cannot imagine life in the 23rd. So it's almost like a sci-fi is almost an impossible project in that regard. But the attempt is really fascinating. One of the examples that jumped to my mind. was the Jetsons. It's like so, you know, it arose in the 60s in America. It is so clearly this, this attempt to understand the future through the prism of like New Deal suburbanism. You know, like, like, you know, the new technologies, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, the little robot that goes around and serves you. And he still goes to work in his little flying

car from suburbia into the city or whatever the Jetsons, analog of that is. But it's so quaint. It's almost cute in how it is like trying to articulate a few. future, but it literally can't break out of its present. But it also is a reflection of a certain sort of optimism of that era of American life for the white middle class, you know, where there is this huge massive post-World War II jump in your quality of life. There are new technologies, new products, mass culture coming online. And the Jetsons is one of the ways in which that society sort of grappled with that and projected itself into the future. And look at the actual future that is created.

We can talk about neoliberalism and Reagan and the dismantling of the New Deal and the compromises of the New Deal itself that were racial to its core, that, you know, compromise with Southern Democrats and their racism. And also FDR himself said that his greatest accomplishment was saving capitalism. I'm not sure if that's apocryphal, but people talk about it a lot. And I've heard that said over and over again that he wasn't trying to usher in socialism or communism. The reactionaries and the fascists said that he was.

You know, they called him Franklin Delano. Stalin or whatever, you know, because they were scared of that sort of thing. But he was seeing himself as reforming capitalism so that they could save it. So, you know, that's neither here nor they're just a historical oddity and an interest. But the neoliberal project was the dismantling of the New Deal and the re-entrenchment of corporate power proving that any reform under capitalism is always subject to recall by capital. The moment it becomes less convenient for them, you know, the profit or the crisis and the rate of profit in the 70s, stagnation. you know, our stagflation, et cetera.

Capital says, okay, the historical moment when we could give you guys more pieces of the pie, that's over. We're scraping that back. And we're living, you know, in the 50-year wake of that political project on behalf of Capital, you know, food for thought. But I kind of want to shift over here and you can go back and say anything you wanted to say about any of that. But there's three, three sci-fi films that I think all of us are familiar with are sort

of worlds. There's books associated with them. as well, TV shows, all that. Three that we're familiar with that most of it in our audience will be familiar with. And they all do something different with technology because sci-fi in one way, shape, or form is trying to grapple with the extension of technology and its implications. Those three are Dune, Blade Runner, and the three-body problem. These are three of my favorite.

And I think, you know, I think if we're being ushered into any sort of sci-fi dystopia, it's probably something like Blade Runner, if you can imagine that. Like, that's what I kind of think is like, you know, on this path is really going in that direction. But Dune has this fascinating idea where you have the butlerian jihad, where there's the rise of thinking machines of AI. And it's so disruptive, they turn against their creators. There's a huge war. And so what's necessitated is technological suppression, right? Dune has to suppress a technological advance, which in Marxist terms are suppressing an advancement in the productive forces.

and that suppression produces a sort of perpetual neo-futalism. You know, like the political economy and the mode of production stops evolving in doom. It's still high-tech. You can still travel and all these other technologies that are very futuristic, very much deep in the future. But the basic political economy and motive production is this sort of neo-futal one, where land is dominant. People own planets, own land, spice makes the whole system possible.

So there's this extractive process going to, on regards that. So Dune is really about technological suppression and its implications. Blade Runner is technological hyperdevelopment. It's the opposite of suppression. You know, and kind of what we're in right now, this sort of accelerationist, tech oligarchic, let AI rip, take off the guardrails, no regulation. You know, we have to defeat China. This is a new arms race. And in the context of corporate neoliberal capitalism, it's producing the world's first trillionaire. It's producing huge monopolies. It is producing a lower quality of life for regular people. The social relations in which this technology is emerging guarantee that for the masses of us, our quality of life is going down.

We're being pushed down into this Blade Runner-esque permanent underclass is the fear. And at the top of this system is a sort of, you know, a conglomeration of tech oligarchs or corporate monopolies or whatever it is. And what Blade Runner does really interesting as a side note is it maps that spatially in the context of a 21st century city. The permanent underclass is this crowded street, grimy situation that most people live in. And then you elevate through these flying cars up to the upper echelons of these skyscrapers where the real people in power sit and look over there increasingly dystopian world. So anyway, Dune is technological suppression.

Blade Runner is technological hyperdevelopment. And the three body problem is like unevenness, technological unevenness, trying to grapple with that. in regards to another civilization, you bring in an alien civilization to grapple with the idea that you're on the wrong end of a technological developmental arms race, not as a country, but as an entire species. And the fears and the sort of, you know, the authoritarianism and the politics that emerge from that fear of being descended upon by something greater than you and the technological unevenness, kind of putting themselves in the position of the colonized in an interesting way. So I don't know what you think about all of that. But again, this is the wrestling with productive forces, technological development, and how to navigate it. And all three of those classic sci-fi iterations kind of take a different path of that exploration.

You go ahead, Frank. I mean, I think Blade Runner is just so such a good example, right? I think that Philip K. Diggs and his writings of science fiction and the future are just really poignant. And I do think the movie carries that rather well. well, the sequel as well has some interesting developments Leon and I were talking about that, and it did make it into the previous episode, but it's still in our minds most recently. But I think it's just, it shows that in Blade Run in particular, I think that the scaling of that because, okay, we do have these corporate overlords that live in like the higher areas, the high

rise and whatnot in a specific part of the city, but there's still not enough. there are those who are outside of the planet, right? Like those are the ones that even more made it. Like you have the ones that made it on Earth, but there's still the level of, the rate of acceleration is that intense that even amidst the highest possible echelons on the planet, you've expanded that hierarchy further outside of the planet. And I think that is a very interesting grappling with, you know,

what this acceleration should. under these frameworks can mean, right? And I think that, I think Dick is most useful in asking that technological question and putting those portrayals. I think he was very insightful about that most of the time, or at least from what I've read. Dunn is such a brilliant experiment in political theory. I'm sure Leon has more to say. We've done episodes on that. And, you know, the first time around the Red Doon, I liked it, but I didn't get it. It had to take another reread for, you know, oh, this is actually what we're talking about. These are the political frameworks.

These are the technological structures and background here. And how it informs the power structures, the relationships, the dynamics, the ecology of it, right? Like, you know, it is one of the big things about doing, right? The ecological relationships and whatnot. But that's still just a part. And, you know, I saw a lot of critiques when I read the first one. It's like, oh, the sequels don't carry that ecological point further very much.

Oh, that's sort of focused more on this. book and whatnot. Yeah, because right alongside, like if you turn slightly to the left or to the right, you see the colossal political framework and discussion at play in Dune, and that continues over the next couple of books,

at least a few of them, if not all of them, as Leone has accurately reported to me. I do want to read at least the second book. But the free body problem is interesting because I've read a couple of things about it. I haven't actually read them yet, or watch the show. I'll let

mid here, my failing. But I do like that idea of unevenness, right? And that's, you know, as much as the suppression is an interesting development, an interesting point, especially when you contrast the social relationships to it, and, you know, the hyper development in Dick's work and Blade Runner more specifically. But to portray how that gets broken up, there are different levels to that technological development that can create this kind of conflict, especially with an external power, it's, it is fermenting a different kind of representation. And I feel that even in, you know,

this authoritarian reaction to it, right? Like this threat and these concerns are like you have, you know, this restructuring political. Again, there's a tradition of doing that in the fiction and whatnot. But I do like it as a different way of thinking that, that sometimes there are other elements to this equation that will develop, right? Be it a development in productive forces, be it this external agent, be it this realization politically, economically and socially as a species, or be it just like, oh, we need to go back in front of this and, you know, the, but Larry and jihad. So I think they are all asking good questions about the relationship with technology and offering

different answers, right? And from what I know, at least from the free-body problem and what I'm familiar with the others, they are giving interesting and navigating those responses with, you know, their political frameworks and how they are familiar with it historically, right, under those limitations. But also like, okay, but if we push this further, what are the different pictures that we see, right? Because even as they are, I don't know, when they are unified works, right, we take the Android dream of electric cheap, but we take the Blayrunner film. This is a solid, cohesive work.

Or we get most of the do novels that are by Frank Herbert. These are relatively cohesive works. But they are trying to wrestle with that, pushing that idea further under their own terms, right? They're not just like, oh, and I think that's what I am thinking that Leon mentioned earlier about the world-building stuff, that it's not just about, oh, how do I make my little universe with the pieces moved together?

It's like, how do I express these things or these manifestations of technology and this political structure under different terms? How do I structure politically from my own background or from my own historical conditions or from my own concerns about technology? How do I express these in a compelling and interesting way and navigate stories in this, right? I think fundamentally that's why these free bodies of work are compelling, right? that they are asking these questions and they are, even when you know, when we are still reaffirming aspects of empire in June,

not positively, of course, that's the point, but even when we do that narratively, we are still putting that in question, right? And even when we show these reality collapses in technology with Blade Runner, so to speak, we are still continuously

reframing that question of how do we relate to technology. And I think that is, you know, even under empire, even in empire, even in representing empire, we can still be, not in, you know, communist terms, but we can still be radical, right? We can still be inventive. We can still be creative.

We can still do flights of fancy instead of just like, oh, I'm going to build my little world with these little pieces and they're going to go burr. Yeah. Definitely to maybe slightly irresponsibly, try and slap it all together when we talk about the regression of technology in Dune it is such a prolific notion

because we can read into it something very straightforward which is like it is just an explanation on why there are mantats and there are guys who could like do calculate all the numbers in pie or whatever and that's like super cool and whatnot and then there's a broader historical perspective of like oh this is because

in the 60s and 70s especially the western sphere of things was hyper-obsessed with like the human unta potential which is like so everywhere this nonsense idea comes from of like oh you only lose 20% of your brainpower and you know that that whole thing

it also significantly more dystopian ideas of like mk ultra and like all that whole thing my favorite declassified document of the CIA is that they once tried to create a portal in a woman's body specifically a woman because it had to do with

the womb as an organ you can look that up I would appreciate it and I'm not hallucinating but yeah no that's the thing you know there's this broader social historical idea behind it

but if we were to like filter through this paradigm that we have loosely created in this episode I think what that moment was the Balerian jihad was exactly if we understand it from this imperialist fascistic idea

it is to break away from what would be called in fascistic terms, the progress of like the modern men, of the current man, of the quotidian idea, this repudiation of that. We are also now subservient, dependent on these technology, technology and so forth and so on, through which following this life, this current life, this profane life, if you will, facilitate by machines, we now should go for passionate violence and break away from this. And instead, we should understand which is, what empire and fascism both understand so well, which is that the human body is a place for

them, is a place for political ethos. The human body is something that can be governed and identified and given shape in such a way, which is always something that shows up, being that in the colonizing European powers of whiteness, being that in the broadly informed continued Nazism idea with an extra school of anti-Semitism and anti-blackness and so forth and so on. I find that very interesting that you can understand the Badlian Jihad maybe as this kind of, this limiting of technology that they see and they identify as breaking away from a linear pattern in which only one future is possible. And which is funny because June is then, I think, a very cleverly written sci-fi novel,

as in Frank Herbert, I want to dare and say understands that this is exactly what subject them to broader deterministic notions of like buying into the fascism of the body. It is this like development of human body again as a political, object of political ethos. You can also see within it this very interesting idea or this synthesis even between the Benjaminian illusory aesthetics of expression, the aestheticization of politics and so on and the batai-esque idea of this ritualistic power. There's this idea that like there's this metaphysics of sovereignty and transgression going on,

which he called heterogeneity, I believe, in one of his texts, in which, like, we repudiate the quotidian worlds and lift us back into this kind of broader, sacred time, this,

the time of gods, and now we, we are no longer being controlled by being in the machine, being a Jew, being women, being woke, being whatever.

So I think that's, that's, the, but there is my personal favorite and the only examples there because it is such a well-crafted moment in fiction because we, and again, utilizing the power of what sci-fi uniquely can do to, again, arc and all the way back to the first point that I made.

The Badlian jihad is, again, great, great idea to bring up. Because exactly here we can see how potent these notions are within sci-fi and how sci-fi has this unique iteration of, like, driving home these readings in which we can better understand our society and our current contradictions and moments of anxiety. No, absolutely. I think that is a rather brilliant point. Is there any other points or things that we fail to mention that you'd like to bring up?

Or, you know, I obviously had a lot more written down for this exact reason, right? Because I knew we'd get into a lot of things. Yeah, no, I mean, anything else I would bring up would just open a page and a path to a whole new hour-long plus discussion. Exactly. I do like ultimately maybe my final point kind of playing on the Dune idea is like it sounds like a platitude. It sounds like a cliche. Fear is the mind killer. But it actually is a profound point.

I always think about it when I feel fear. And from a Buddhist perspective, the ego, which is, you know, the core, I think of fascistic sort of expression is driven forward by fear. The reactionary mind is a repressed fear apparatus that manifests in that way. insecurity is a type of fear. And, you know, the machismo on the right and the denigration of women and trans people and gay people is a manifestation of an egoic insecurity that is rooted in fear. So time and time again, whether you want to trace back the psychological core states of fascism or you want to have a phenomenological critique of, you know, the ego and the personality structure as such and its own neuroticisms, were led back to fear time and time again. And I always remember that line from Dune. There's real depth to it.

It is not just a platitude. I try to teach my kids how to navigate fear in a healthy and responsible way, not suppress it, because the suppression of fear gives rise to all these other political and psychological neuroticisms. And that harkens back to an earlier part of our discussion. But I think it's also a nice place, perhaps, to end on from my perspective. But again, this conversation could go on for hours and hours. and we could take all these ideas

and down a million paths, but yeah. No, I got nothing. Just in case, John, if you're listening, I had this whole idea to bring a blog, but we didn't engine it in there. You can write me an angry letter. It's fine. Oh, you're very passionate about it.

I'm sorry. I want to personally apologize. That's all. Yeah, no, I'm very pleased with how we went and the angles we talked about. I feel like it was a great and very fun exploration of Empire Science fiction and just like implications of Plans Fiction and implications of empire and implications of both of them together.

So I deeply appreciate you both for this. Before we head off, we said it multiple times, but where can people find you, Brett? Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I just want to say also, like, huge props to both of you. Brilliant, genuinely great insights throughout this conversation. It was a genuine pleasure. And I think people listening to this will get a lot out of this discussion. So thank you for having me on.

I really appreciate it. You can find everything I do basically at Rebus. LeftRadio.com. It's both Rev. Left Radio and, of course, Red Menace that I co-host with Allison Escalante. And I'm also in the final stages of publishing my book, my first book ever through Iskra Publishing, titled a letter to Young Revolutionaries, where I'm weaving together existentialism, Marxism, Buddhism, Virtue Ethics, to kind of give hopefully a philosophically rich and spiritually meaningful and politically active path. that specifically young people blossoming in to political consciousness in the 21st century might be able to take to have, to generate a life of meaning and genuine contributions to the development of our species. So be on the lookout for that. It should come out perhaps by this winter.

More information. If you follow Rev Left, I'll be sure to promote that when it comes out. I'm very excited. I'm also vulnerable in the ways that, you know, writing a book and putting it out in the world makes you. but I'm also proud of sort of synthesizing these ideas and putting them out there and I'm really looking forward to hearing people's feedback. Oh yeah. Looking forward to it.

Absolutely. We'll definitely, definitely check it out. And yeah, thanks again, Brett. Thanks again, Leon. For our part, you can find us on Patreon.com for it slash left page. There we go. We've been doing these episodes and we are working on some extra video stuff that's staying on Patreon for now.

And yeah, anything else I miss, Leon? So I can say, check out Reflect. I can especially recommend their episode on Myr-Hackard, which will be a nice episode to listen to, given what, hopefully, somewhere within two weeks going to publish on a Patreon. So if you want to prime yourself for thinking about Gothic, mystic systems and so forth and so on, talk about Warhammer. I would humbly recommend it as a starting point to check out Revlap. So I think it's a good episode, and it will go nicely with our Patreon content as well. Appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. Go check those out, all those links in the description, and I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.