this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Star Trek
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Space; the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Lenin. Its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before!
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Deep down it's an American show and Americans subconsciously or consciously feel:
You guys seen this YouTube sci fi channel? Star Trek is propaganda
Basically arguing (sometimes badly and other times well), after you take away the lip service to futurism, that the Federation is a metaphor for USA, the Enterprise represents an aircraft carrier, and "exploration" is just them sailing around the globe neocolonizing other countries.
What??? Damn I've seen like 3 entire trek series and in not a single episode do they set up a colony and or oppress the people. Only their enemies like the borg and dominion do that.
Only in DS9 do they really get into the weeds and break non-interventionist policies, but do so because its war time against the dominion, who are trying to colonize their quadrant.
That's why it's propaganda!
Let's compare.
A show like Monk can be called copaganda because even though it is a fictional representation of US cops, it presents them in a largely positive light and/or glosses over systemic issues, and argues for the necessity of those who are willing to go outside the normal process of law a bit to "get the bad guy".
Star Trek, on the other hand, is not a direct representation of the US. It is a fictional future civilization and it argues for the importance of not being interventionist - the opposite of what the US does in practice. It is theoretically possible someone could make a show where the US government is in charge and it's based around them putting on a pretense of not intervening, but intervening anyway, and then justifying themselves after the fact with subtle colonizer rhetoric of civil and savage. But as far as I know, that's not anything like what Star Trek is trying to be.
You've clearly never watched trek if you think the Borg or Dominion are the "secret good guys" of trek.
The federation is the USSR / tankies, a collection of nations / peoples who willingly entered into an alliance to share resources and tech, defeat poverty, and help each other solve problems.
My bet is that the person who runs that youtube channel is an ultra/anarchist who thinks that socialist entities can't have militaries.
There's no chance a 60s US TV show would be trying to promote the USSR. The more recent shows would never do that either. It's a liberal progressive vision of a future non-evil America.
The video is arguing that Star Trek portrays the Star Fleet(the US) as the good guys and they are threatened by the bad guys (the Klingons or the Borg or whoever) who don't follow the rules of the Federation (which just happens to have a HQ on Earth). But if you join the Federation (NATO), you get protection from the evil guys who have no freedom and just want slaves. The Enterprise is based off the USS Enterprise, America's first nuclear aircraft carrier.
True. I didn't say they were great. They have a hilariously shit take on the Three Body Problem.
A whole bunch of people in Hollywood were arrested for being sympathetic to socialism. Sure, they couldn't directly say they support the USSR, but that's not what the comment above says. It's a veiled reference to USSR like attributes (potentially). If someone wanted to talk about the USSR in a good way, something like Star Trek is how they would have to do it. Is it? I don't know, but I can see that argument being true. Could it be? Absolutely.
That names has been used for many ships for centuries, including two other aircraft carriers. It has a long history that isn't just aircraft carriers.
Their comment is peak Qanon/twitter/youtube media criticism. They'll take any surface-level thing, like names, numbers, colors, dress, and spend hours incoherently trying to prove some random point that has nothing to do with anything. Twitter and youtube algorithms reward them and thrive off the engagement.
This take confuses me, cause I thought one of the main premises of Star Trek was that they're not supposed to interfere in other cultures. The "prime directive" or whatever it's called.
I never watched much of it or tried to analyze it deeply myself, so maybe my understanding is wrong though.
Damn, some people really just need to make up reasons to hate things that are popular. No, it fucking isn't that. Sure, it's named Enterprise, like three air craft carriers. However, that name has also been used for a ton of other ships and a Space Shuttle. The entire show is largely about them avoiding colonizing planets though. They have contact with them, talk and maybe help out with some issues, then leave. If the species isn't space-fairing they are supposed to just leave. (Sometimes they don't if there's some problem they can solve.)
I could see an argument that it's propoganda to make people complacent, but I don't think that argument holds much water.
In propaganda, the metaphor for your country is portrayed as good. You portray the enemy as evil, barbaric, etc. The Klingons and Romulans represent the Asiatic hordes threatening the West. (There's a similar argument with Lord of the Rings and it's portrayal of Orcs.) You show yourself just trying to do good all around the known universe.
Star Trek being from the early 60s and created by Roddenberry, an ex military officer, portrays the sci-fi military Star Fleet as a "peacekeeping" force. Neo colonialism replaced colonialism by that time. Colonialist expansion looked a little too imperial.
On the other hand, Star Wars being early 70s was an anti-Vietnam war film - something that Lucas has spoken about a few times. The rebels are up against a far better equipped military.
Similarly Aime Cesaire wrote The Tempest (a reimagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest) as a critique of colonialism.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: