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Poster for Dune movie showing a sandworm. Text says: Space Fascists and Sand Penises (smaller text: Also worm poop is cocaine or something, IDK)
Don’t forget the psychic space nuns
Looks more like a sand Fleshlight which, if you think about it, is also terrifying.
Gettin’ dat abrasive sussy
So I’m going to argue against Paul’s reign and Leto IIs reigns as “facism.” Facism involves a lie, and a focus on identity. It forces you to do ineffective governing on the actual underlying issues.
Paul and Leto II were more like “Absolute Theocracy” in the way that their mysticism was observable and they had god like powers. It was also not Paul directing the subsequent crusades against the imperium, it was the fremen, who were zealot warriors.
It was also not Paul directing the subsequent crusades against the imperium, it was the fremen, who were zealot warriors.
Actually he did - because he saw in a vision that not directing the Jihad would lead to even more death and destruction
Both Paul and Letos reigns defy categorization in a lot of ways simply because a lot of the reasons behind their rule and mechanisms behind their government rely on fictional things (mainly prescience)
I do agree though that Fascist probably isn’t the best label here - certainly it was a flavor of totalitarianism in any case
Generally speaking the political system pre-Paul is feudal, and the Arteides happen to be one of the good royal families, ruling Caladan with benevolent technocracy and power which they don’t really have to use. Contrast that to the Harkonnen who bleed their fiefdom to the bone, imagine North Korea but competently profit-oriented. Both approaches are considered perfectly fine as far as the Emperor is concerned.
The Bene Gesserit have more important things on their minds than giving a fuck about how the serfs live and, just like the Spacing Guild, are a religious/scientific cult (having, respectively, a messiah prophecy and a goddess. And Norma seriously out-powerlevels Leto and yes Brian Herbert is worth a read even if the prose sucks fite me IRL)
Arteides happen to be one of the good royal families,
You already lost me, the Atreides aren’t “good”, they’re just populist and spend more energy on PR than the Harkonnens.
Their plans with the fremens is a pretty good example. Their plans with the Fremens was to turn them into a private army to use against the Emperor. They were going to use the fremens hatred of the Harkonnens as a recruiting tactic, but they weren’t helping the fremens by any means. They were planning to trade fremen lives for Atreides power
There are really no “good guys” in Dune. Paul isn’t a hero, he’s a warning against the concept of heros
There’s no Fremen on Caladan.
…and yes feudal rulers recruit armies, news at 11. Still doesn’t even compare to the Harkonnen.
There’s no Fremen on Caladan.
I know? What does that have to do with what I said?
Like 99.9% of what we know about how Arteides rule is Brian’s descriptions of Caladan before the family moves to Arrakis, it’s by and large a quite tranquil world. Quite agricultural but the people certainly don’t seem to mind their rulers, on the contrary they adore them.
And yes of course feudal rulers draw their armies from their fiefdoms. Everyone of them does, that’s not what makes a feudal ruler better or worse than another feudal ruler: You become a Harkonnen soldier because you like the opportunity to abuse others, you become an Arteides soldier because they’re just so fucking noble and just, that is what makes the Arteides better. The Fremen situation was not really any different, though of course boosted by the Bene Gesserit. Or, let’s put it this way: It takes an amount of nobility to actually trigger a messiah prophecy. The Fremen are not without agency, here.
I mean that was Paul’s whole point wasn’t it?
The Bene Gesserit thought that a Kwizatch Haderach would be able to redirect humanity to a “more human” golden age. Paul saw it, saw the future, saw the violence it would lead to. He didn’t want to do that, but he realized that intergalactic reliance on a drug, concentrated ultrawealth, concentrated Supreme power needed to be detroyed by itself, and only then could individual humam freedom return. So he tried it without becoming an inhuman entity, and failed. Leto II saw the golden path and Paul’s failure, and said “ok fuck it. I have to become a monster, a mass murderer. Inhuman. But I will break what we have to restore individual freedom to humanity.”
It worked, but took what, 7500 years?
Of course, its all a science fiction story pointing out the inability of Supreme authority from being able to fix the problems of society, and how dependance on a single resource leads to the destruction of humanity.
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the sequels don’t even try to hide it. lucilla flexing her pussy stats is peak.
Frank with the inside source on that brown acid
Space Jihadists and Space Oil
I’m kind of interested who you would call fascist in the Dune universe?
Most of the leaders, really? Paul was a fascist, and Leto II after him, most prominently
In my head Paul (and the Fremen) are more similar to the Mongol Empire, violent and conquering but not fascist. But I stopped reading after part 2 and it has been a while
They would be considered fascists, yeah.
They are dictators in a despotic government; but what about the Atredies was fascist? They famously listened to their people. They literally incorporated people that were not part of their race, religion or species and treated them as equal. That’s not fascism.
Do they do something in the other books that’s fascist? I’ve only ever read the first one.
The genocide, literal imperialism, and holy warring doesn’t count as enough for you?
I was more talking about the Mongols, personally, who famously killed anyone that resisted, but idk, I don’t think you need to be talking about converting everything to the state to be fascistic.
Leto II probably
This looks like a lost dnd 2e sourcebook
It’s a nostalgia fave, it’s got things in there I like (I’ll never get over that ritual where Stilgar chants out the terraforming plan for Arrakis), but damn if the best parts of it aren’t almost footnotes. To me, it works really well as the Tragedy of the Ecologists Who Almost Got the Point Across.
RIP Liet Kynes, may they put you out of earshot of your dad in the afterlife.
Where is this with worm from? It looks terrifying, I love it.
It’s Dune, sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert.
Edit: This poster is for the 1984 film adaptation.
