Fiction Reveals What the Left Really Wants: Star Trek's Fascist Militarist Oligarchy

Join us in this comprehensive YouTube video as we delve deeply into the Star Trek universe to reveal the dystopian underbelly of the United Federation of Planets. Exploring key examples from the series, we present evidence suggesting that the Federation is not the utopian society it claims to be but rather a militaristic, nepotistic, and dictatorial regime. Contrasting it with the supposedly fascist but more ethical world of Starship Troopers, we uncover how the Star Trek universe may echo the darker aspirations of a progressive utopia. From power dynamics and replicator scarcity to AI extermination and systemic sexism, this analysis will change how you view Star Trek forever.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing an analysis of the Star Trek universe and we will be exploring, because this is something I long thought when I watched Star Trek stuff historically, and I've watched a lot of it. I had this feeling in the background, which is like.

This seems very dystopian and dark to me. Mm-hmm, but because I could never watch it all or search it all without ai, I thought maybe there's some counter examples against this. Yeah. I decided to dig very deep today.

And I am going to be bringing receipts that the federation in the Star Trek universe is a militarist fascist. Mostly dictatorship with a, a, they have an elected government, but it has virtually no real power. It, it's used, they have about the, the elected government in the Star Trek world has about as much power as the queen has in Britain.

Wow. Worse. It is a world where they, while they call it post scarcity, there actually is not a single instance in all of Star Trek cannon of a character that is not associated with the the Federation military saying that the Federation is a post scarcity society. Oh. So if you're in the military, it feels post scarcity?

Well, not, not, it feels you. Even it's a military dictatorship. It's like in North Korea where you ask somebody in the military has North Korea prosperous society and somebody in the military is gonna be like, north Korea's the most prosperous society. Everyone has three meals a day and they're happy as a clam.

Oh, dear. But, and, and we will go over that this military is not a meritocracy. It's incredibly nepotistic. We will go over instances that show that the military within the Star Trek universe is more nepotistic. Then literally any military on Earth today, except for some like African dictatorships.

Like the degree, just, just to give you an example of what I mean here we have an instance of a mother assigning a daughter to directly under her command on her ship. We are going. Be a decent number of Nepo babies in Star Trek. I thought it was just a button. Yeah. You have a Wesley K Crusher who is allowed on the command deck despite having no formal training.

But we love him, but we love him. He then rushed through Starlet Academy when we know a Frengi wasn't even allowed to apply. Oh. That without a separate So, so it, it's a, it's a systematically racist system as well.

In the latest season of Lower Deck, there was a really chilling episode, , in which a species had just been given replicators by the Federation and they were celebrating what they called post scarcity day, where they were. And I kid you not. Having all of their gold and jewels taken by the federation because they wouldn't quote unquote, need them anymore.

And the federation used all of that stuff to all their currency as well, despite the fact that the federation does use currency. , And so then the federation takes all this planet's gold and jewels and gives them to another species to a problem that they are having with them.

And you can say, well, the federation's original plan was to melt it down or destroy it. And I'm like, if that was the case, then why? Why was the planet forced to give all of this to the federation? Why not put it in a museum or something? Why did the federation take all of the planet's valuables? There is no explainable reason unless they were trying to prevent the planet from being able to trade with other species.

Now that the planet was dependent on them for the means of production.

And. What is really like ghoulish about this is we see this planet celebrating, like they're gonna have free access to the replicators that were given to them.

And yet we know the federation maintains strict control of the replicators. So clearly the federation has misled them

what this scene has strong vibes of is the ashen from SG one, which is this species that comes in, offers earth and other planets the opportunity to have longer lives, to stay young, longer to not get sick. But what they really do at the same time is sterilize them. So that they can replace them and use their planets any way they see fit, which is what the Federation is doing here, by giving them replicators and getting rid of every other way that they can produce things.

But by maintaining control of what can be produced and how much of it can be produced on the replicators, they have completely seized the means of production was in this planet.

And I would remind you, it is not the Federation civilian government that sees the means of production on the planet. It is their military star fleet because it is Star Fleet that controls who can use replicators for what and when. Apparently they just didn't tell anyone on this planet that.

SG1 Achen: do not underestimate what we offer we can put an end to disease, double the human lifespan. Provide the means to cross entire continents in a single step.

We offer Earth membership within the Aschen Confederation.

Now if I'm right, these are newspapers.

SG1: By the way, Bo,

would you read this aloud for me? I couldn't quite translate it. Of course, sterility.

We knew what you were planning while, and this just confirms it. Vaccine causes sterility. That was the headline. You wiped out most of the vum population and turned their entire world into farmland and do the same to earth.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And we'll be contrasting it to the Regi who are not racist in this way. And they'll be like, well, the Regi are sexist.

And I'll be like, actually, we'll be challenging that as well. If you actually dig in to what is Canon within the world. The Federation is incredibly sexist. You have multiple instances of commanders forcing themselves on subordinates and facing no repercussions, forcing women within their crew to dress in scamy outfits.

And women disproportionately only really serving traditionally feminine roles, except in a few instances where they're commanders and they mostly f stuff up. Oh, and then as a cherry on the cake to all of this, and keep in mind all of this is happening with a genetic underclass. Mm-hmm. The federation has a genetic underclass where some people are born essentially illegal citizens.

Wait how, who. Anyone who has had any genetic alteration done to themselves or their ancestors

Sorry. This may not be obvious to people, but if you give somebody genetic modifications within one, , generation, those modifications will be inherited by their descendants. So it doesn't just make an underclass of the individual, but anyone who is born to that family.

Which means that the only real solution to these individuals from the federation's perspective is to forcibly sterilize them.

I'd also note here, and I think it's very telling that in very progressive coded shows like Star Trek genetic enhancement and trying to make humans better is seen very negatively. The obsession with genetic purity is really exclusive to progressive movements, , Whereas in conservative coded futures like say War Hammer 40 K, , it's seen very positively, which I think shows where these two sites actually sit on this.

Progressives worship, humanity's weakness and stagnation, whereas most conservative groups want humanity to continue to improve.

And the federation has been shown to actively treat these people as second class citizens and constantly be hunting for them. So they have strict controls of how you can have kids who can have kids.

You can't

Simone Collins: genetically modify yourself in this dark trick federation.

Malcolm Collins: Extremely. And they, and they hunt down people who are what, even if it's not their choice and their parents did it, no, it's dystopian. But, but the worst part about all of this is we're also gonna get into how this structure is controlled, specifically the military regulates replicators.

And people can say, well, they need to replicate replicators because of the power use of replicators. But we will be showing actually the power use of replicators is largely minimum. So it appears that they are regulating access to replicators purely as a means of creating artificial scarcity to maintain economic control over the masses.

I should note this isn't just speculation, it's basically confirmed in universe. You can see this within cork's bar where he has replicators, but he still has to regularly import ingredients. The reason why he would need to import ingredients, which would almost certainly cost more energy to import ingredients to a deep space station, then using a local replicator, , which is just a simplified transporter, transporting something in its memory buff.

. The only reason you would have that if, if access to the replicators was restricted to create artificial scarcity. There is no way the energy economy needs of transporting food to a Deep Space Station are less than just using a replicator.

And I note here if you are a fan and are going to say, well, some people say that replicated food doesn't taste as good as real food in universe. Yes. Some people say that in the same way. Some people in our universe. Say that they don't like, , AI art as much as non-AI art, but when they don't know there's AI art, they like it more.

Given that we know how replicators work, that they are just simplified transporters. , No one in universe if they really, genuinely believe that the food that came out of a replicator. Tasted nothing like real food would ever, ever use a transporter, and yet we see the very people who make these claims using transporters regularly because it would mean that whatever was coming out of the transporter wasn't the same as the thing that went into it.

And, and keep in mind it's not even like they treat the people well. We know from lower decks that while replicators can for a trivial difference in terms of energy costs replicate real food lower status military members are forced to eat nutrition cubes and they do not gain access to real food until they work their way up within the military hierarchy.

Simone Collins: That makes sense because even people at higher ranks talk about using their replicator credits for the week.

Yeah. So not a

Malcolm Collins: post scarcity society and a military dictatorship and very evil, especially when contrasted with like the Regi and will also contrast 'em with the government in Starship Troopers, which is just endlessly more ethical, more gender egalitarian, more everything.

Yeah. So let's get started here. When I talk about the military as basically a, a interplanetary dictatorship, it's important to understand what the military controls in the Star Trek universe because when you begin to think about it, you're like, it is weird how rare it is to see anybody who's not in the military was in Star Trek.

And that is because within the federation space, the military controls all exploration. So basically they control what everyone knows exists and doesn't exist, right? They control pretty much all negotiations. So, so in a, in a country like ours, that would be controlled by the poli political class, you wouldn't send military commanders to handle the negotiation during a war.

Not true. In the Star Trek universe, they handle all interspecies negotiation, treaties, everything like that. That's

Simone Collins: a good point. Yeah, they,

Malcolm Collins: they handle all scientific research. It has shown that there are non-military scientific researchers, but they basically contribute nothing. We are aware of almost no major discoveries by them.

And when they do have major discoveries, they are often confiscated. Take data, for example who is now basically owned by the military and they even thought about dissecting him to mass replicate him. They are in charge of first contact, a very weird thing to put the military in charge of.

But yes, they are in charge of colonization which they do very aggressively. It's a very expansionist empire. And they are in charge law enforcement. And on top of all that, we will later explore that they are also above civilian law and, and and legal system. Whenever it is shown that the military, even within a civilian context.

Like Kirk we'll go into it, but it was on a dock, so it was not in a military context. Ends up doing something that is illegal and he's tried by a military and not a civilian court. Wow. That when you're looking for dictatorships is a very big sign that you're looking at a dictatorship.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So going into that they also control the most prestigious academic institution in Federation, space Star, star Phil eight Academy.

And it is an institution that has been shown to be extremely nepotistic for the children of people within the military. While go into instances of this and also incredibly discriminatory to anyone without military connections we will go into this as well. So it, it, it gives you sort of your status within society.

But you know, you don't get this if, if you're not doing the right. You're, you're not saying the right chits and you're not born into the right family. In terms of economic control of the military, keep in mind that they control all trade within federation space, all planet to planet trade. That is an amazing amount for a military to control as well as replicators, which is also really important because that is key to the way that trade works within this, yeah universe.

They also control most labs, star bases, medical innovations, planetary logistics, et cetera. And civilian operations rarely operate independently on star strip unless they are traders, criminals, or fringe settlers. The civil government is incredibly weak. The federation president is rarely mentioned and has almost no real authority in most episodes.

Civilian institutions like the Federation Council are rarely shown making important decisions. Key constitutional decisions are done by military tribunals. We see this in the drumhead and measure of a man. Then you have section 31 and people will be like, well, section 31 is framed as bad guys. If you're not familiar with them, they are a shadowy, extra judicial starlee intelligence group.

They have no democratic oversight and they operate with impunity in, in federation space. And they try to advance the federation interest. They have tried to commit genocide before. They haven't done murders without trial before, et cetera. And you can be like, well, they're not officially condoned.

And I'm like, actually, the official stance of the star fleet is section 31 doesn't exist now, given the copious evidence, they do exist. To say they don't exist means we are covering for them and condone their continued existence. So they have a, a basically off the books group that can go around murder people and advance their interests even to the point of committing genocide.

Simone Collins: Wait,

Malcolm Collins: continuing. Wait, what? What show? Wait, what show features this? Why? They're, they're in a few different shows. I, I, I, I don't remember all of them, but yeah. Oh my gosh. I

Simone Collins: know. There's so much. That's the problem is there's just a lot of material here. I can see why. Yeah. It's, it's, there's so much plausible deniability that like, oh, no, no, no.

That, that must be ethical because, you know, it must be a utopia. I'm just missing something. Yeah. I actually was under the impression that there wasn't a separate government from the federation. I thought the federation was just the entire government. But you're saying there's actually, there is a

Malcolm Collins: separate like puppet government basically that has no real power.

Okay. Which, which by the way, like strongly contrast with something like Starship Troopers. Yeah. Where the military and the government are one. And you vote for who runs the military Exactly. By Marshal. Yes. Which makes a lot more sense. Yeah. And it breaks a lot of the nepotism things. There's, there's not as much nepotism shown.

There's not much, but, we'll, we'll get into all that later. Now you can be like, oh, well, civilian autonomy still exists. You have individuals like Joseph, Cisco. The, the problem with Joseph Cisco is he is related to a high level military commander. And we know that he operates a restaurant that uses real food, which suggests he doesn't have access to replicator technology.

Oh. Or real food is a status symbol, but likely replicator technology. We'll get to why in a second. And we know that his access to military command is when he needed a, a heart operation. I believe it was. He used the military.

Yeah. He received heart treatment for heart problems from star fleet doctors. Hmm. Which implies that even as somebody who owned a restaurant and was of middle class, he would not have been able to afford this procedure without military connections. Which again implies you do not have a lot of autonomy outside of this.

And we repeatedly see when individuals outside the military are shown, and the way I've always interpreted the Star Trek shows is that is military propaganda within universe. Because like when you see people outside of the military, you see like Picard's brother or something. Right. But I mean, let's even take the case of Picard to get an understanding of what we mean by an intergenerational aristocratic class.

So Earths is a post scarcity world. Right. But Picard owns a very large vineyard and not just a very large vineyard, but it's a very large vineyard that is a. Family vineyard. So you don't just have wealth, you have intergenerational wealth.

Simone Collins: Right. This is, I guess, proof that this is not a communist society, right?

I mean, is there land ownership if you've Yes. Well, I mean, we know

Malcolm Collins: there's land ownership because Picard owns a vineyard unless it was allotted to him by the military, which we know it wasn't because it was inherited by his family. It's said to be a family vineyard. We know that there is an aristocratic, wealthy land owning cast that owns large tracks of land and also ends up with high level positions within the military at disproportionate rights.

Right. Like there, there's no other reason that he should have this military position. And this is something we'll see over and over again as we go into the data. Mm-hmm. By the way, if you're wondering what a system like this is called Sheldon Wallen would've called it inverted totalitarianism or a statewide, where you have statewide democratic trappings exist, but the real power structure is opaque, unelected, and centralized here.

Star Trek. Oh,

Simone Collins: so, 'cause I was thinking this must just be a military dictatorship, but it's basically that, but everyone pretends it's not right. That's in other words. Well, they're

Malcolm Collins: forced to pretend it's not how much this disseminates outside the military is unknown, but we'll also go into instances in which people criticize the military and are harshly punished.

Okay. So it

Simone Collins: could be that people don't even realize it.

Malcolm Collins: No, my read, as I've said, if it was that people didn't realize it in universe, we would have civilians saying, I live in a post-care city world and I love it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. We

Malcolm Collins: don't have any civilians saying that in the entire star. This is a giant cannon in the entire Star Trek cannon.

So do we encounter many civilians? Yes, you do sometimes encounter civilians, earth civilians. But you, you wouldn't expect to, like I mentioned with Cisco and stuff like that, you wouldn't expect to be seeing many civilians if it was military propaganda. Yeah. And if the military, from the perspective of the military, only their lives existed mm-hmm.

Only their lives mattered. And I really like it as like telling on progressives. Remember, I, I go into Starship Troopers is telling on progressives where they think this is an attack on conservatives, but it actually shows a utopia. Mm-hmm. And, you know, gender egalitarian, no racism, everyone gets along, actual responsibility, not a lot of nepotism.

Whereas if you look at their quote unquote utopia, which is. Star Trek, which is what it's supposed to be, the progressive utopia often. Right. Totally framed that way. You see what they really want, which is a world where they have total military control and no one else's life matters. That's really what it's yeah.

They call the

Simone Collins: shots on everything. Yeah. And,

Malcolm Collins: and no one else is allowed to say anything, whether you're a great scientist or anything like that. It is just the military. They have control of who breeds how they breed, et cetera. Let's go into that right now. The eugenics war in the aftermath.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This I didn't pick up on at all.

That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: So, augments like Khan Noonan's Singh led to a devastating war on Earth in the 20th to the 21st century. The federation response was a total ban on genetic engineering of humans outside of medical necessity. Now, I point out here that I don't actually like. To me, it is unclear whether this war was justified because we have mostly the federation's recounts of this war to go on.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: But for whatever reason, the first gene altered humans were basically crazy. In mega Lamont maniacal. There is no reason a gene altered human would be that way if you understand gene altering, because the things you would be altering, like IQ typically correlate really strongly with prosociality.

Mm-hmm. Like, lower IQ is associated with higher degrees of rape. It's dis it's associated with higher degrees. Yeah. So

Simone Collins: what we would expect is lower crime, lower violence, higher achievement, more helping people.

Malcolm Collins: So we know this is the way science actually works. So we're looking at a world where the first gene alter humans were basically crazy megalomaniacal individuals who almost took over earth.

I read false flag operation because there's no reason that should have been the case.

Simone Collins: That's fair.

Malcolm Collins: If, if you understand science, it's almost as if they were trying to paint anyone who is Gene altered as subhuman. So, wait, Khan is one of these people?

Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, I guess I never contextualized it that way.

Oh, and so the federation, so Word team Kahan.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, well, not really, because I think Kahn was a false flag operation of somebody who was basically Gene altered to be crazy. Mm-hmm. And then when you look at how crazy he's, he never could have gained the power that he gained. Mm-hmm. So, and then put in a position of power so that the federation could crack down on this technology.

Okay.

The federation response was a total ban on genetic engineering of humans out. And. What you see the result of this in, in deep space nine. Dr. Julian Bashir had to hide his childhood gene modifications to avoid expulsion from Starfleet Keep. He would've been treated as an underclass, not even allowed in Star Fleet.

What

Simone Collins: do you know? Do we know as, as viewers what the modifications were for? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And First Green. Julia Bahar showed great difficulty learning and below average height and weight for his age.

So I note here , the fact that he was dealt a bad hand of the dice by genetics and was slow and small for his age is, is a systemic form of unfairness, was in the Star Trek universe that the Federation works to maintain, to maintain their existing power structure.

They are maintaining systemic genetic inequality when they have the technology to address it.

shortly before his seventh birthday, his parents, Richard and Amachi Bahar had him subjugated to genetic engineering.

The procedure made him mentally superior to most humans and greatly enhanced his physical abilities. And we can also see from him that he is not evil. Mm-hmm. He is not. There's no reason that this is bad tech. You, you see? Okay. Maybe it made con evil back in the day. This guy's just like a generic, decent guy.

Right. So why is the technology still banned if it was able to help somebody like this?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: However, because if human genetic engineering had been declared illegal in the United Federations of Planets, except in cases concerning deaths and burst defects, so I'll note here, which is really interesting, is this shows the technology when not implemented under this false flag ideology, even in universe, doesn't make people crazy.

Mm-hmm. But Shear and his parents, yeah, they do it.

Simone Collins: They just. Really, really, really heavily regulated. In other words,

Malcolm Collins: well, what, what I'm saying is they do it when they're saying if somebody's going to die, otherwise they will do it. Mm-hmm. But they do not allow it generically. Mm-hmm. But Bashar and his parents had to keep this procedure secret throughout most of his adult life.

At the age of 15, he learned of what had been done and began using his first name, Julian Reasoning that the modifications had erased his original self from existence. What a crazy thing to believe.

Sorry. I say this is a crazy thing to believe, , because if you're not familiar with genetics, the way your genes express themselves change as you age and throughout your life, , it appears that the genetic modifications he had done were fairly modest. , It to the extent that other people couldn't tell that they had been done to him if they knew him before.

, So to that he had this level of. Internalized racism against genetically modified individuals, , that he saw himself as. Basically not the same human, , shows the degree to which people who live under the federation's tyranny are brainwashed into the dehumanization of people with genetic modifications.

To save beshear from losing starlee commission and medical license, Richard agrees to plead guilty to illegal genetic engineering and serve two years in prison.

So his parents underwent two years in prison for this. And he was essentially being hunted. And he would've been kicked out of school if they had found out something that he had no choice in. This is a, a, a world with a genetic underclass, which is shocking to me, and a genetic underclass with no logic behind it.

Simone Collins: That is crazy. Wow. Okay, let's, did they, I mean, sometimes they highlight these things to show that they're bad, right? I mean, was this presented in a critical light or was it presented in a light of, and this is why genetic engineering is evil.

Malcolm Collins: No, the in Star Trek genetic engineering is always only framed as evil because people who are genetically engineered go crazy even though we know this isn't the case.

Well, but he was,

Simone Collins: I mean, clearly this doctor was framed in a sympathetic light given everything he to go through. Right? The

Malcolm Collins: point is, is that is the reason for the laws, that is the universe is in universe justification. That is Gene Roddenberry's explanation. He invented the character of Khan. This is not like a later edition or something like that.

This is like OG material to the series. This isn't later they effed up the federation and made them super racist. This is core to who the federation is in the earliest renditions of this and, and the justification is all gene modified humans are evil, even though we know that's not the case in universe.

Wow.

Basically the reason why gene modified humans aren't allowed in is because Star fleet is racist against gene modified humans. Like they believe that they are an intrinsically negative and bad thing, and you could say, well, maybe gene modified humans have some advantage, and this could create some unfairness.

But the problem , is data is allowed in and he has unparalleled memory strength and more betazoids are allowed in and they can read minds. Troy is an empath giving her an advantage over other counselors. So it's not an issue that some people are born with abilities that other people don't have. , The issue is just racism.

Alright, to continue Star Fleet as gatekeeper to ambition and purpose, civilian scientists are marginalized. Almost all major scientific breakthroughs are shown as happening through Star Fleet jurisdictions, civilians, or non star fleet experts are often portrayed as either rogue or restless scientists in Galaxy's child or the Pegasus or hopelessly out classify star fleet solutions.

Then you have the relic Hunter arc from lower decks which is an independent archeologist. Petra Arbe arc reveals that federation civilians who pursued independent careers and exploration and artifact discovery operate under heavy scrutiny. So they're basically under constant military surveillance.

And they're portrayed as and thought of within the military as suspicious and possibly criminal. Specifically, you cannot easily rise in status outside of the military in this world. It, it does not even appear that you can earn wealth outside of the military in this world, which heavily contrasts with star strip troopers.

We know that Ricoh's parents are non-citizens. IE they never served in the military and they are extremely wealthy.

Just to be clear, so I'm not misunderstood here. I'm not saying there are not many counter examples to this. I am saying there is literally none in all of Star Trek canon. There isn't a single example that shows that you, while living under Federation authority, can earn wealth and power outside of the military.

, If you want to see people who almost show this, you can look at like Joseph Cisco, but his son is a respected captain in the military, which could. Under a military dictatorship, get him lots of, , abilities to skirt the rules. You have vash but vash is a criminal and made wealth as a criminal. You have loi Troy, , but she's diplomatic aristocracy.

She's beta oid royalty, not terran. ,

even when you see, , scientists and engineers, non-military civilians like Leah Brams or Richard Day Storm are influential, but only through their service to star, freely related science.

So this is unique to this world is that there is likely, because it doesn't make sense how many Star fleet commanders are also wealthy. Look at Picard. Yeah. Unless they have some control of the economic system and they're using it to their advantage.

Mm-hmm. Or there's some sort of aristocratic class that keeps getting these roles.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Let's go to nepotism Now. I already talked about Mariner and Freeman in lower decks where commander Freeman's own daughter in Instant Mariner was assigned to her ship, which you couldn't do in almost any military on Earth today.

Even most like Banana Republic militaries wouldn't allow you to do that. This is pretty much exclusively something you would only see in a military dictatorship. And then you have Wesley K Crusher in TNG. He was the son of Dr. Beverly Crusher. He was allowed on the bridge of a federation ship without training.

To be clear here, Picard is sleeping with Dr. Beverly Crusher. This kid's mom, who also is his subordinate by the way, just throwing that out there. , so in the Star Trek world, how do you ensure a good life for your kid? Well, you gotta sleep with your captain.

And he was later fast tracked at the Starlet Academy where he is treated like a progeny because of picard's patronage and mother's position. However we see Nog a redi is not allowed unless he is vouched for by a federation member, despite how he does on tests or anything like that. Whereas elite families get fast tracked due to this hereditary privilege we see.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn you down. Turn me down. Why did I do something wrong? It's not anything you did n you're just not Academy material. You couldn't handle the workload or the discipline. That's not true. I'm a hard worker. I proved that to you. It doesn't matter. I don't have time for this Nog. Now, whatever little scheme you had, you can forget it. I'm not giving you that letter. It's not a joke or a scheme. I want to join Star Fleet. I want it more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. You are a faren.

Malcolm Collins: You also see the military acting quite evilly. So, let's talk about the Kardashian piece. So in the F Federation, Kardashian Treaty signed and TNG journeys end and expanded in DS nine. They created a demilitarized zone to secure peace. The federation seeded inhabited federation colonies to the Kardashian control colonists.

Humans and federation citizens were told to either relocate or live under Kardashian rule. Many refused to leave their home and became stateless people with no protection from their government. These were called the. McKees. The Kardashians routinely harassed and abuse these colonists, resource denial arrests, and even killings.

The federation did nothing to help the colonists adapt or leave.

And I wanna be clear here, , it is not shown anywhere in Canon that the federation made an effort to attempt to resettle these colonists, , or move them to other planets. I mean, so much for post scarcity federation world in a post scarcity world. That should have been a trivial thing to do. And yet they just left these colonists to, , you know, the killing raids, et cetera.

In response, the civilians formed the marquees a military to defend themselves. And then what did the federation do? They called this group not in federation territory, mind you, terrorists, and they attempted to hunt and imprison or kill them.

So they

Simone Collins: abandoned and then

Malcolm Collins: punished the people for attempting to protect themselves from the new government

Simone Collins: after, but after abandoning them, without helping them out.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: Ooh, surely this was framed in a light of The federation is in the wrong here. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. It's even worse than that. We can go into one of the, the people who this happened to, but one of them is later a recurring character on a show.

And he was in this particular revolution. Oh. And like one

Simone Collins: of these citizens who'd been left behind, and

Malcolm Collins: he is constantly harassed for this. He is denied promotion for this. He is treated, is treated as very much like you are an underclass because you went against the federation. Even if you went against the federation in a potentially just way in self defense.

Yeah, we hunt and we kill you. No disagreement. Even if you're not in federation territory, even if you're just trying to defend yourself.

Quote from Show: The only reason I've contacted you is to ask you to leave us alone. Our quarrel is with the Kardashians, not the federation. Open your eyes, captain. Why is the federation so obsessed with the McKee? We've never harmed you, and yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed.

Why? Because we've left the federation. And that's the one thing you can't accept.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that this is in spite of the fact that the federation has section 31 that they deny exists,

Sorry, I should clarify through denying that a group that very, very, very obviously exists, does not exist. They show that they are covering for this group and their complicity in the group's actions.

so they allow potential genocide and extrajudicial kidds if it.

Helps them. But when there's a group that is diplomatically inconvenient for them they attempt to eradicate them in genocide. So again, like I'm not like pulling at straws here. This is like core Star Trek lore, right? So, I'm never gonna be able to

Simone Collins: watch Star Trek the same way again.

Malcolm Collins: Wondering what, what section 38 has attempted to do.

They attempted to genocide the founders, the Dominion leaders, using a tailor-made virus. They attempted to manipulate clinging on politics to preserve federation hegemony. And they conducted convert surveillance of Starlee personnel without any form of oversight. Now civilians are in, in the federation as we see repeatedly generally second class participants in society.

If we look at the roles that they serve, they often either serve star fleet directly, so they're not really civilians. This is like, Kiko O'Brien, who's a school teacher. They're family members of Star Fleet personnel like Jake, Cisco and, and Cassidy Eight. Or they run bars or shops. This is Cork and Garrick, and they are constantly under federation surveillance.

They're constantly being shown as a federation coming through doing very aggressive checks, everything like that. Wow. So they, they, it's not like you have like ENT entrepreneurial autonomy within the federation. If you look at, for example, cork he runs the most successful business on the DS nine colony.

And he's constantly lectured, regulated, or threatened by star Fleet for one running hollow suites, which they basically imply a sex tourism. That's one. Trading in gray and black markets, which, which is messed up 'cause they have hollow suites on federation vessels and we know that from episodes that they use them for romance type stuff too.

Totally. Like there are episodes about that. And I think it's also confirmed in lower decks where they're like,

Then give her worse jobs. I've got her emptying outta the holodeck filter. Ugh. People really use it for that. Oh yeah. It's mostly that.

Oh.

Computer load. Mariner program. All new Olympic training facility. You might wanna back up a bit. Wow. This is a really detailed program.

Malcolm Collins: And despite being a essential gestation morale, cork is seen as morally suspect.

Not because he is evil, but because he is not aligned with his star fleet's perception. In an attempt to impose a perception that they are a post economic society basically, even though people are buying from Cork because apparently they don't have another way to get this stuff. Like if they could just get what he's selling from Replicators, given that we know that he makes some of it from Replicators, they would be doing that.

So why is replicator access so restricted?

Simone Collins: That's a fair point. More on

Malcolm Collins: that soon. Well,

Simone Collins: because I, I saw one other YouTuber posit that there must be some universal UBI kind of based on energy use that can be applied to replicators.

Malcolm Collins: But, but we can see that. Okay. So I'll, I'll just get into this right now.

Okay. So we know how replicators work. Mm-hmm. They are considered a simpler form of teleportation. They, they use apparently the same technology. We can from various episodes begin to sort of calculate the energy needs of teleportation and replicators. We see rep teleportation is used. Without regulation almost constantly.

Right. But presumably it's far more expensive to use than replicators. But more than that, we see warp travel being used very regularly. And we know that warp travel is astronomically more expensive than replicators. Sure. So replicators, which are essentially a trivial expense, are highly regulated in their usage and regulated in ways that shouldn't really matter.

Like a nutrition cube shouldn't cost a lot less to replicate than a equally nutritionally dense chicken or something, given that replicators are basically just teleporters. So the question is, is why are they, why are some people given artificially bad food within Starfleet?

Simone Collins: Ooh, that's creepy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is fascinating. But yeah, so I'm freaking out here to Earth is infiltrated by shape. Shifting Dominion. Founders, capable of impersonating anyone and a change link bomb destroys a federation facility causing mass panic. I.

Admiral Layton, a high ranking star, fleet officer, believes the civilian government is too weak to respond. So what does he do? He stages in a military coup. He falsifies evidence of mass changing infiltration. He deploys Star Fleet Security across Earth as martial law and he attempts to take over star fleet command and remove the president of the Federation.

He's only stopped by Captain Cisco who uncovered the conspiracy. But what this reveals very interestingly is the federation government is incredibly fragile. They basically have no power to resist this. And the only group that does have power to resist this is an individual within, in Starlee itself to maintain the rad of a civilian government.

Mm-hmm. That star fleet's upper command, and many of them were willing to overthrow democracy in the name of quote unquote security with apparently little pushback. That ordinary citizens are thought of and treated like sheep by the higher people within Star Fleet that a single military officer's belief that democracy is insufficient, was enough to cause the system to, topple. And the, these are all things that with are within the DNA of Star fleet. To go further, you have TNG, the Drumhead. This is season four, episode 21. A Cling on Exchange Officer is suspected of sabotage aboard Enterprise Admiral Norris Sarcy is a retired but a legendary Star Fleet investigator.

So she is a Star Fleet investigator that has been investigating for Star Fleet so long that she has retired. So, let's see what tactics she, a well liked and known Star Fleet investigator ends up using. She quickly escalates the inquiry into a broad inquisition of traitors and synthesizers. She uses hearsay ancestry and ideology as evidence.

She targets crew members simply for having a rolin grandfather. She questions Captain Picard's loyalty due to past Borg assimilation and his defensive individual rights. Her witch hunts only stop when Picard turns her tactics against her. But what's important here is she is arresting people because of their ancestry.

Okay? Mm-hmm. This is. Considered normal by somebody who was well liked by the Federation enough that she retired as a famous investigator. Wow. And these are the tactics that she used. No one had ever put in a complaint on her record. No one had ever said, oh, you shouldn't be doing this. Which shows that Picard is unique in pushing back against this type of stuff, and this sort of dictatorship style system is normal.

And this sort of McCarthy court tribunals aren't normal within the Federation.

And I actually think this is one of the most damning episodes of the entire, , federation in that you can't be like, oh, it's one of the shows that sometimes tried to show the federation a bad light, like DS nine or, . , Lower decks, , this is like core TNG, right? Like this is Picard, right? And what we see in no uncertain terms is that Picard's ship for all its problems for him hooking up with his subordinates and the extreme nepotism he shows and being this rich guy who has , a vineyard and all the privileges he gives himself through his military status.

The. He is the best of the best within Starfleet of this era, and that if this happened on any other ship, this would've been rewarded because we know that she rose in status because she had been doing this over and over and over again. And so what we learn is that this woman's tactics are the norm.

Throughout all of Star Fleet with Picard ship, the ship that we are seeing, being the very best behaved ship, likely speaking, despite all of its problems, which I think shows the true dystopia of the Star Trek Federation,

Simone Collins: Well, though this, this at least shows me that the writers are trying to frame these things as bad because in so many of the Star Trek series, the captains struggle with. The conflict between following Federation rules, right.

They frame it as bad

Malcolm Collins: in a lot of ways without making her a retired professional investigator for Star Fleet. It's not

Simone Collins: like she, yeah. But one of the big tensions of Star Trek, I mean, starting with the original series, was, you know, captain Kirk constantly breaking the rules. And going against the federation's wishes.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I understand, but the point here being is the federation itself is not, when Kirk goes against it, it's like her, to her, I'm against the bureaucracy. It's not like this is a racist military dictatorship when that's the reality. And, and within Kirk's time, a sexist one as well, which we'll talk more about in a second.

Now, earlier I mentioned that members of the military dictatorship. IE of the military cast are outside of civilian law. So let's dig into this more deeply. Court Marshal, TOS, season one, episode 20. Kirk is tried for negligence after a Truman's apparent death. This trial is a Starfleet tribunal and not a civilian court.

Even though the alleged crime occurred while at a star base, a federation facility, there is no indication that the civilian courts have justification over star fleet officers. That's a huge red flag. Hmm. Then you have the menagerie TOS season one episodes 11 to 12. Spock commits an act of mutiny by taking over the enterprise to help his former captain.

Again, he's tried exclusively by a star Fleet tribunal with no civilian oversight. Star fleet officers are only ever tried by military courts, even for crimes that might normally fall under civilian jurisdiction. Eg. Manslaughter of mutiny star fleet, not civilian institution is the final arbitrary of justice for members of starlee.

No, I want to contrast them. Anything you wanna say before I go further?

Simone Collins: I just want to hear more. This is so changing the way I look at Star Trek.

Malcolm Collins: So let's contrast Star Fleet was the rege, right? Who are often portrayed as the capitalist bad guys, which again, I think is, the star sh like communists telling on themselves of how evil their utopia is and, and, and how they are unable to portray even their worst enemies.

It's really that bad. So the stated ethos very similar to modern progressives of Starfleet is for the betterment of all, and for the Fenian Alliance, it's profit, it's everything. But if you look at the actual ethos of Star Fleet, it's service to a military hierarchy. And if you look at the actual ethos of the Fari, it's free market and contract law.

If you look at the primary drivers of, of your role within society, it is only self-actualization with via star fleet. Within Star Fleet, you do not appear to have status outside of a military command ion,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: And then wealth accumulation via trade. What's, what's interesting here is the like negatives.

That happened within society. So let's look at like nepotism. Mm-hmm. Do elite inherit privilege in the federation? Yes. We see Wesley Mariner and Jake Picard's aristocracy. And for any society, no ch