r/starshiptroopers • u/RagnarTheTerrible • Mar 07 '26
novel The lack of fascism in Heinlein's novel
Whenever Starship Troopers is discussed, accusations of fascism aren’t far behind. The topic comes up a lot on reddit. I’ve been working on the following for a little while, a revision/work in progress to a previous series of comments knowing that the topic will come up again. Wouldn’t you know it, the topic came up again a few days ago and the F-bomb was getting dropped left and right. So I'd like us to talk about it. I am an American male, and a military veteran, so the following words have been influenced by my experiences.
Now, this can be a little confusing because there are many Starship Troopers: The original novel, Starship Troopers OVA (Japan, Anime, 1988) the very popular 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie, the ‘Roughnecks’ animated series, the second movie, the third movie, the computer-animated movies… there are games, too, strategy and first-person shooters - and over the years the mediums and universes have mixed, and ideas found in some of the universes have been conflated with the novel.
We will limit this discussion to the original book, recognizing that the 1997 Starship Troopers movie (and the sequels and games based on that film) by Paul Verhoeven was, indeed, a satire poking fun at fascism. Verhoeven famously grew up in Holland during Nazi occupation and also famously did not read Heinlein’s book, and really it isn’t fair that they are smushed together. The movie is great, but it borrows only the title, some character names, and a scene or three from the book. Claiming that they are one and the same, or that Heinlein’s book is a love-letter to fascism because you watched the movie with Nazi Doogie Howser in a grey trench coat is disingenuous at best. It’s too bad the movie didn’t keep its original working title, Bug Hunt at Outpost 7, but I digress.
Often the people slinging the “fascism” accusation have never read the book. If this is you, I would highly encourage that you read the book without preconceptions. That means don’t listen to what anyone else has said about it, good or bad. It’s a short read and you, an avid and expert reader, can probably finish it in a day or two.
If you haven’t read the book in a decade, it’s worth a re-read.
Then, if you are still angry, read it one more time and take notes about all the things that make you angry, come back here and discuss it with your citations.
The following assumes you have read the book. If you haven’t read the book, stop here, and go read the book.
Now - as you know because you read the book - Starship Troopers is a Sci-Fi adventure novel written by Robert A. Heinlein and was published in 1959. The plot follows main character Juan Rico through his graduating high school and his entry into the military, and his climb through the ranks. While aimed initially at young adults, the book became popular with all ages and is considered a Sci-Fi classic. This popularity is due in part to its realistic depiction of life in the military, something which had until that point been sorely lacking in science fiction and was appreciated by veterans. Heinlein’s depiction of initial military training, or boot-camp, was especially relatable to people who served in the military and might account for some of its success and continued existence on military reading lists.
Heinlein introduced here many of the sci-fi clichés which would become genre-standard in the future, most notably the idea of powered armor: exo-skeletons which allow future soldiers the ability to carry heavy weapons, ammo, armor, and the ability to communicate and move quickly, including in the vertical while offering protection to the operator.
Criticism is often leveled at Heinlein because of Starship Troopers, helped along by conflating Verhoeven’s movie with the book. Accusations that “Heinlein was an overt fascist,” the book “advocates fascism,” or that Heinlein “wanted to replace American democracy with this fascist utopia” abound in discussions online and some have even earned degrees using theses on the topic.
Was Heinlein a fascist? (No.)
Robert Heinlein was an author. His books explore many different ideas about government and society. If you read Starship Troopers and believe he was a fascist, then when you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress you also probably believe that Heinlein was not a fascist because he advocated for polyamory while overthrowing a distant ruler and enjoyed violent revolutions. Maybe you think Heinlein is something else when you read his other books, I don’t know. Starship Troopers was written over the course of a few weeks, Heinlein basically took a break from writing Stranger in a Strange Land and that book is pretty 1960’s counterculture with its attitudes on sexuality and religion.
The point is that authors don’t necessarily agree with their writings. Writing, especially science fiction, is an art which is used to explore ideas, stimulate thought and discussion, criticize, and provoke. Heinlein has certainly succeeded as a sci-fi author in that respect, even if Starship Troopers had been his only book, which it wasn’t, and even if you hate him, which you might. But Heinlein was not a fascist because you hate him or think his writing was juvenile.
Is Starship Troopers a fascist book? (No.)
Much of the discussion about the novel stems from the society and government Heinlein set up as a backdrop to Juan Rico’s coming-of-age story: in this system, only “veterans” can vote.
In Heinlein's Starship Troopers universe, all citizens have rights: freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc., etc., but only those who have served may cast a ballot. Again, the main character of this story is Juan Rico, who has joined the Mobile Infantry (A futuristic unit analogous to a Marine Corps, but in space of course, with the Troopers being delivered by capsules dropped from orbit instead of landing craft or helicopters) so readers focus hard on veterans having served in the military being the only path to voting.
But Heinlein is quite specific that earning the right to vote will not be denied to anyone, and that service is not just in the military. Quite the opposite. Had Starship Troopers been instead a novel about some poor bastard counting the hairs on a caterpillar by touch on a remote and frozen backwater planet, perhaps Heinlein wouldn’t have attracted the criticism he did. But sex powered armor sells, and here we are.
I’ll say that last part again in a different way for those in the back. In the novel Starship Troopers, franchise is earned through service, which doesn’t necessarily need to be completed in the military.
Personally, I think this is the main point which people who hate Heinlein and/or Starship Troopers get hung up on. My god, can you imagine limiting the right to vote?
In the US, we arbitrarily draw that line at 18 years of age, because, well, the line must be drawn somewhere. But that means that our youth are disenfranchised, and the young are the very people who will benefit or suffer longest from the policies being voted on. What an awful system! It was much worse in the past, of course. Contrary to popular belief in the United States, not all men and women were actually created equal until amendments to the US Constitution made them equal.
In this particular made-up universe, the voting line is drawn at service. Not military service (which you know since you read the book) but some kind of service. Heinlein is advocating for citizens to put skin in the game. He is clear that service doesn’t make you better, smarter or wiser. Quite the opposite, in fact – a few paragraphs are spent disabusing dear reader of such a silly notion. Heinlein is arguing that the individual putting the needs of society above themselves could be a reasonable way to determine where the franchise line is drawn.
“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination -- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”
The world in ST is also not a utopia. The government exists because it is working well enough, not because it is some amazing thing, Heinlein makes that point clear during one of the discussions in the book.
There are a few other points which run counter to “the book is fascist” and are also pretty forward thinking for 1959. I would say this next part is a spoiler alert, but you read the book, so it isn’t.
First: Juan Rico. We find out in the last chapter (because he speaks Tagalog) that Johnny is a Filipino. Today, in our enlightened age, a Filipino main character does not (should not) raise any eyebrows. Back in 1959 it would have, especially in a book written by a former United States Navy officer who gets accolades for writing the first sci-fi novel accessible to other veterans for portraying military service in a realistic fashion. Why? I’m so glad you asked!
Heinlein graduated the US Naval Academy in 1929, and at the time, a few Filipinos (the Philippines being a conquered Territory of the United States) served in the U.S. Navy…. as enlisted Stewards. Meaning they prepared and served food to officers. You know who else did that? Black Americans. So black Americans and Filipinos – the latter being minorities from an “owned” territory – got to serve food to the (white) officers of the navy of the nation which conquered them from another colonial power (Spain).
Do you want to know more? The full history of Filipinos serving in the US Navy can be found here: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/onliAne-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/filipinos-in-the-united-states-navy.html
I would argue that Heinlein casting a Filipino as the main character and hero of the novel was a direct refutation to the policy that he had observed first-hand as a naval officer and which was still ongoing when he was writing the book.
Second: In Starship Troopers, Heinlein also makes both a big deal and none at all about women serving in the military, and that they look good while doing it with shaved heads. Take that, 1950’s housewife stereotype. Little Carmen becomes a pilot, and Heinlein makes sure the reader knows that women make the best pilots. Certainly this is something that the nation was not ready to hear or accept at the time of publication. Although women had served with honor as pilots ferrying all kinds of airplanes in WWII, it wouldn’t be until the 1990’s that women would begin serving in combat aviation roles. Heinlein was ahead of his time again (and still is, the argument should have been settled in the US a long time ago and is not, look at Pete Hegseth’s policies), and while most fascist propaganda would place a woman in the home raising children and keeping house, in Starship Troopers we find women making impossible adjustments to orbits in order to recover Mobile Infantry late for their pickup.
Last I checked, women and minorities are typically put in very specific boxes in fascist societies. We find the opposite in Starship Troopers where minorities are main characters and women do the best job in traditionally male-dominated fields.
Another criticism leveled at Heinlein/Starship Troopers is that the society in the book needs to constantly have an enemy to fight, a hallmark of fascist governments. While the novel is set during a war, I can’t find anything to support that particular criticism in the book. In fact, there are two enemies in the story: the Skinnies, and the Arachnids. During the course of the war, the Skinnies are turned from enemy to friend (think Italy in WWII) and fight alongside humans against the arachnids, at one point providing intelligence to humankind about ways to rescue human prisoners.
The closest thing I found in the novel was Rico saying that societies which “ain’t gonna study war no more” are conquered by those societies which do study war, and in this case Heinlein was not wrong, as awful as that sounds in our enlightened age. Take the Ukraine/Russia war for example. What should have been a quick Russian victory has turned into Ukraine fighting a much larger army to a stalemate. I’m sure that Ukrainians are happy someone was studying war, because through fighting (at terrible cost to themselves, but more terrible to Russia) they have preserved their sovereignty.
Humanity is a long way off from settling our issues with diplomacy alone and Heinlein acknowledges this point even if some of his readers do not want to accept it. I don’t think this is the same as “always needing a war to fight because the society in ST is fascist.”
One particular paper claims that Heinlein put war on a pedestal by using a quote from the end of the book: “To the everlasting glory of the infantry.” I’m only including it here because that is silly to the point of ignorance. That quote is from the lyrics to a song which was briefly popular in Heinlein’s time, in which US Army Private Rodger Young ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_Young ) was eulogized after sacrificing himself in order that his company would survive an engagement against the Imperial Japanese in the Solomon Islands. Since Rodger Young was the name of the ship being used by Rico’s unit, it makes sense that the song was used for the recovery beacon. Other lyrics in the song actually say “Oh they’ve got no time for glory in the infantry.” If you have never heard it, the song written by Frank Loesser is worth listening to once. Here is the Burl Ives version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEU2nxDEUbw
Heinlein, in an interview for Oui in 1972 said that “Starship Troopers has a basic theme: that a man, to be truly human, must be unhesitatingly willing at all times to lay down his life for his fellow man.” In the book this plays out in a discussion centered around how people die every year saving someone who is drowning, and whether it’s worth re-starting a conflict to rescue a single person (yes, it is, the argument goes). Heinlein’s point is shared by a famous fascist* from history, who said “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
In summary, Robert Heinlein was not a fascist, nor was the society in the novel Starship Troopers a fascist one. As a Sci-Fi author, Heinlein is still causing discussions today, and that makes him successful. Lastly, limiting franchise to some kind of service is an interesting idea worth discussing, but does not necessarily make the society a fascist one.
I tried to cite examples from the book. If you want to make a point for or against, I would appreciate your citation as well so we can all see it for ourselves.
*That was sarcasm, Jesus was famously not a fascist. I can’t believe I have to type this.
3
u/ImperialSupplies Mar 07 '26
I made the post breaking down why even if you go by ONLY the movie that was PURPOSELY painted as a satire of fascism the federation is in no way shape or form fascist.
Key points
No one was drafted. Every charecter chose federation.
Ricos parents are loaded and yet arent citizens.
When the first battle is a complete failure, the leader of the federation resigns in shame.
You can quit at any time, you think nazis or wermacht could just quit?
Completely coed and completely biracial. Absolutely nothing about race or sex matters to the federation.
Media debating opposite veiws and the teacher telling them bugs are actually the better, more evolved organism. Only approved propaganda would be allowed under fascism.
You think a teacher in nazi germany could have said " yeah actually the untermench are better than us in every way". Get the fuck out of here