Why do people tag Heinlein as a . . .

[Storm Raven]

Fascist?

I don't get it. I've read almost everything he wrote, and I just don't see it. This came up in an article about the centennial of his birth, and a book store manager said "I don't recommend him because he was a fascist".

I can see a lot of things to criticize him for - he tends to write too many of his stories centered around the rugged frontier individualist, his attitude towards women tends to be rooted in the 1930s/1940s, and is consequently often patronizing. In his later works he gets a bit too much into his sexual fetishes.

But a fascist? I just don't see where that comes from. I've seen people point to Starship Troopers, but that just tells me they don't know what fascism actually is. And that is only one book out of dozens - and most of his other books are decidedly libertarian in outlook if anything: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, If This Goes On . . ., Methuselah's Children, and on and on. I can't think of any book of his where greater state control is advocated by the protagonists - most of them end up like Beyond This Horizon, where a plot by those who want to impose rule by the "superior" is vigorously opposed.

I'm just wondering if this tag comes from a misunderstanding of Starship Troopers alone, or if there is something else that people are seeing in his other works.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Well, here's a bit from Wikipedia's entry on his politics:

Heinlein's writing may appear to oscillate wildly across the political spectrum. His first novel, For Us, The Living, consists largely of speeches advocating the Social Credit system, and the early story "Misfit" deals with an organization that seems to be Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps translated into outer space. While Stranger in a Strange Land was embraced by the hippie counterculture, and Glory Road can be read as an antiwar piece, some have deemed Starship Troopers militaristic, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, published during the Reagan administration, stridently right-wing.


Starship Troopers cover
There are, however, certain threads in Heinlein's political thought that remain constant. A strong current of libertarianism runs through his work, as expressed most clearly in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His early juvenile novels often contain a surprisingly strong anti-authority message, as in his first published novel Rocket Ship Galileo, which has a group of boys blasting off in a rocket ship in defiance of a court order. A similar defiance of a court order to take a moon trip takes place in the short story "Requiem". In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the unjust Lunar Authority that controls the lunar colony is usually referred to simply as "Authority" which points to a clear interpretation of the book as a parable for the evils of authority in general, rather than the evils of one particular authority.
Heinlein was opposed to any encroachment of religion into government; he pilloried organized religion in Job: A Comedy of Justice, and, with more subtlety and ambivalence, in Stranger in a Strange Land. His future history includes a period called the Interregnum, in which a backwoods revivalist becomes dictator of the United States; Revolt in 2100 depicts a revolutionary underground overthrowing that religious dictatorship. Positive descriptions of the military (Between Planets, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Red Planet, Starship Troopers) tend to emphasize the individual actions of volunteers in the spirit of the Minutemen of colonial America. Conscription and the military as an extension of the government are portrayed in Time Enough for Love, Glory Road, and Starship Troopers as being poor substitutes for the volunteers who, ideally, should be defending a free society.
To those on the right, Heinlein's ardent anti-communism during the Cold War era might appear to contradict his earlier efforts in the socialist EPIC and Social Credit movements; however, it should be noted that both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were very active during the 1930s, and the distinction between socialism and Soviet communism was well understood by those on the left. Heinlein spelled out his strong concerns regarding communism in a number of non-fiction pieces, including "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?", an anti-communist polemic published as a newspaper advertisement in 1958; and articles such as "Pravda Means Truth" and "Inside Intourist," in which he recounted his visit to the USSR and advised Western readers on how to evade official supervision on such a trip.
Many of Heinlein's stories explicitly spell out a view of history that could be compared to Marx's: social structures are dictated by the materialistic environment. Heinlein would perhaps have been more comfortable with a comparison with Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis. In Red Planet, Doctor MacRae links attempts at gun control to the increase in population density on Mars. (This discussion was edited out of the original version of the book at the insistence of the publisher.) In Farmer in the Sky, overpopulation of Earth has led to hunger, and emigration to Ganymede provides a "life insurance policy" for the species as a whole; Heinlein puts a lecture in the mouth of one of his characters toward the end of the book in which it is explained that the mathematical logic of Malthusianism can lead only to disaster for the home planet. A subplot in Time Enough for Love involves demands by farmers upon Lazarus Long's bank, which Heinlein portrays as the inevitable tendency of a pioneer society evolving into a more dense (and, by implication, more decadent and less free) society. This episode is an interesting example of Heinlein's tendency (in opposition to Marx) to view history as cyclical rather than progressive.

 

[Remus Lupin]

And here's a bit from Wikipedia's entry on Starship Troopers:

Another accusation is that the Terran Federation is a fascist society, and that Starship Troopers is therefore an endorsement of fascism. These analogies have become so popular that two of the corollaries of Godwin's Law state that once Heinlein is brought up during online debates, it is inevitable that someone will compare the book's society to that of Nazi Germany.[47] The most visible proponent of these views is probably Paul Verhoeven, whose film version of Starship Troopers portrayed the Terran Federation wearing Nazi-like outfits and using fascistic propaganda; but Verhoeven admits that he never finished reading the actual book.[48] Most of the arguments for this view cite the idea that only veterans can vote and non-veterans lack citizenship. It should be noted though that Federal Service is not necessarily military, although it is suggested that a certain hardship and discipline is pervasive. Very few of the citizens who perform Federal Service, and are therefore granted the right to vote, actually serve in combat units. According to Poul Anderson, Heinlein got the idea not from Nazi Germany or Sparta, but from Switzerland.[9]
Defenders of the book usually point out that although the electoral franchise is limited, the government of the Terran Federation is democratically elected. There is freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of conscience. The political system described in the book is multiracial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic. The protagonist Juan Rico is Filipino and others in his training group are American, Armenian, Japanese, German, and Turkish, Australian or Arab, and one or two have recognizably Jewish last names. Many also argue that Heinlein was simply discussing the merits of a "selective versus nonselective franchise."[38] Heinlein made a similar claim in his Expanded Universe.[49] The novel makes a related claim that "ince sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility — we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life — and lose it, if need be to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert."[50]

 

[Storm Raven]

Well, here's a bit from Wikipedia's entry on his politics:

Well, that doesn't really answer the question though. (And I question the accuracy of the entry - I read To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and calling it "stridently right-wing" seems ludicrous.)

However, the one book of his that I have not read is For Us, the Living (I have not been able to find a copy), so maybe there is something in there.

And, like I said, even if the government in Starship Troopers could be construed as fascist (which I don't think it can, but just for argument's sake let's say it could), that is one book out of dozens. I just don't see how that adds up to "Heinlein was a fascist, so I don't recommend his books".

 

[Rykion]

Heinlein is best know for Starship Troopers. The government in that book isn't fascist, but is militaristic and denies citizenship rights to people who have not done government service. Many people use the term fascist to describe anyone or anything they consider to be too militaristic/nationalistic. So they apply the term to Heinlein because he wrote a book featuring a militaristic government they assume he considers to be ideal.

 

[Pyrex]

And I suspect that many of the people who use ST do decry Heinlein as a fascist are doing so not based upon the book, but on the movie...

 

[Storm Raven]

Heinlein is best know for Starship Troopers. The government in that book isn't fascist, but is militaristic and denies citizenship rights to people who have not done government service.

Well, sort of. The book makes explicit that the only difference between those who have done government service and everyone else is that those who have served can vote. Everyone enjoys all of the same other rights. It is a little utopian to expect a system like that to actually work, but no one has trouble with lots of other books (by Heinlein and a host of other authors) that have utopian assumptions similar in scale.

 

[Remus Lupin]

I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for. You seem to know exactly why folks categorize Heinlein as a fascist. You disagree with them is all, and no doubt for good reason. Where do you want this discussion to go?

 

[Storm Raven]

I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for. You seem to know exactly why folks categorize Heinlein as a fascist. You disagree with them is all, and no doubt for good reason. Where do you want this discussion to go?

I thought I was pretty clear: is there anything other than a misreading of Starship Troopers that people hook on to in order to support the tag?

 

[Meowzebub]

Its weird, in that I always saw Starship Troopers as an anti-war book. Sure it has a militaristic government. But Rico sees the horrors of war, loses his hometown, comes to see through the propaganda, and eventually learns the government started the war by intruding into 'bug' territory.

I thought the message behind the veterans only have the right to vote, was that the veterans would be less hesitant to find a new war glamorous and refuse to fall into lockstep with the drums of war. It has been awhile since I read it, but that is what I still carry around from it.