It's just so peak 
Uncritical support to the Fremen Jihad in their heroic struggle against the illegitimate cracker empire
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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Isn't Dune much better in this regard because Paul ends up being far from a savior? The story is pretty aware of the trope and even plays into it by making him humble and try to shy away from the white savior role, but if anything by the end of the second movie it shows that there's a problem with making your national liberation movement revolve around a noble foreigner who has an ulterior motive. I haven't read the books so I don't know exactly where the story goes so maybe you're right in the end.
It does, but then that narrative cuts against the Fremen being the good guys, which they absolutely are. Herbert attempts to subvert the white savior trope by going “well akshually the white savior could lose control and the religious crazies will be even worse than the evil imperialist empire” which is where the problematic part comes in in Messiah.
The story is actually more anti-imperialist if we accept the white savior trope and accept Paul as a good guy, cause otherwise we have to accept Herbert’s reactionary narrative that de-colonial movements are bad and go too far and might be worse than colonialists. That well intentioned and noble movements are easily coopted and used towards nefarious ends. This is the Liberal view of communism, that the stupid masses get manipulated into doing the will of the leader that has little to do with the goals of the movement. Making the Muslim stand-ins dumb and impressionable is pretty sus.
Basically Herbert put us in a double bind where either way it’s problematic, because he is fundamentally a liberal and has that Liberal brainworm where there can never be a justified liberationist good guy that improves the world. Any attempt to change anything makes everything worse.
The timing of Dune 2 and the visuals of an Islam-coded guerrilla force in the desert destroying technological imperialists has lead to a lot of its appeal, people love seeing these evil scumbags getting blown up and eaten by worms. People associated that with Palestine vs. Israel and thus really connect with Paul’s Fremen plot line.
That’s going to get real awkward in Messiah where the plot is basically “the Muslims got out of control and went too far and killed billions, and in fact the Israel stand-ins were the lesser evil”
I don't think Herbert was making the point that decolonial movements are bad. Going on a galactic killing spree isn't decolonizing. Liet Keynes was the environmentalist decolonialist. Paul however was another imperialist.
If you read the books its clear Herbert is a die hard historical materialist. Paul and Leto II will literally give lectures on it.
Well that’s why the whole series falls apart for me personally after the first book, because it doesn’t make any sense how the Fremen from one planet could overpower the entire galaxy - especially considering most of the fighting is no longer in deserts but in space or on other planets. The population from one desert planet could never defeat the entire galaxy.
The Fremen invading everywhere else makes no sense from their perspective, they just wanted Arakkis back, or from a realistic strategic perspective. It reads to me like Herbert got upset that people liked Paul so much after first book so he laid it on really thick that he’s space Hitler and killed billions and invaded everywhere - despite that not making any sense. He contrived the plot device that the scary Muslim hordes killed a hundred billion (sound familiar to any anti-communist propaganda you may have heard?) to own his readers. It doesn’t make any sense within universe, it was a meta device.
White people’s boogeyman fears of decolonial movements are that they will invade everywhere and kill everyone in bloody revenge, which almost never happens in reality but it’s what Herbert made his Muslim stand-ins do. You are right that jihad against the entire universe isn’t decolonial, but it is the white reactionary’s idea of what a decolonial movement is
The explanation that would make sense to me is that there were contradictions all across the empire held in stasis but not resolved by the Imperial throne. When Paul ascends he basically triggers them all at once.
Slave and peasant rebellions. Great house feuds. Ethnic and religious tensions. The Fremen turn up to places and find people fighting already using supporting or opposing Paul as their excuse.
Like you couldn't rebel (good) or kill your rivals (neutral) or ethnically cleanse a minority (bad) without Shaddam and the Sardakaur possibly intervening, but now you can if you're quick enough to raise the banner if Atreides.
That would have been very interesting indeed if Herbert ever set that up or incorporated it into the plot, but he did not! Sand ubermensch just go on an undefeated killing rampage unopposed and people from one sparsely populated planet take over the whole universe by being really good at knife fights.
And if those "billions" of deaths throughout the universe were slavers and feudal lords getting got, can't say I think it's the great tragedy Herbert tries to paint it as.
I'll go back and time and get Frank to fix it.
I don't think it would be all righteous terror. We see historically when some empires collapse (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian etc) some people in the chaos decides it's a good time to do a pogram or genocide.
The only people described as doing pogroms and genocides are Paul's own Fremen troops
I agree the books have scant details and could be much better, and less eugenist.
I think that with limited methods of communication deciphering the specific circumstances of all the conflicts on an incomprehensibly huge number of world's, after the fact would be difficult.
Have a great day. I'm out.
But they have spice
The other great houses would also have large spice reserves for dealing with fighting against an oncoming genocide
I guess an argument that could be made on Fremen being able to solo multiple planets is how with Herbert's eugenics fascination, the Fremen by all accounts were the apex of humanity from years of harsh Darwinian experiences. They survived planetwide pograms and genocides on several planets for settling down on a rather unforgiving place.
Ok but how does that have anything to do with space battles? Fremen have no advantage in space warfare, no spaceship manufacturing capabilities, no ability to create nuclear weapons at scale and generally should have lost immediately to a gigantic imperial navy when they abandoned their home base and spread themselves thin in a logistics nightmare across the galaxy
As far as I recall, this is all handled by Frank Herbert never explaining literally anything at all about their space battles
Which is, again, where the rest of the books start to lose me. I started to realize all of the first book took place planetside because Herbert is incapable of writing Sci-Fi or taking all of his universe seriously. He just handwaves over things that should be major parts of the plot.
They have a monopoly on spice, nobody but Paul's forces can travel through space en-masse.
The other great houses have large spice reserves, enough to fight a war of survival in the short-term
What space battles? What logistics nightmares? Paul usurps the imperial throne from Shaddam IV. The empire, its holdings, the monopolistic agreement with the spacing guild as well as control over significant CHOAM shares are all his by the end of Dune as universal monarch.
If the Palestinians took Biden hostage and then proclaimed themselves leaders of America, do you think that would do anything when they decide to all get into captured helicopters and fly to America to kill everyone in the USA? That's the level of absurdity he expects me to believe.
If the Palestinians had the sole global supply of gasoline or whatever and were able to blackmail everyone else on earth into accepting their legitimacy or else they will crash the global economy and cause billions of deaths, yes.
That's aside from the fact that Paul is operating within the imperial structure. Shaddam IV abdicates, and Paul is instated on the throne. This is done by the rules of their feudal structure.
This is all explained textually by the spice monopoly / Spacing Guild / feudal empire relationship.
The Fremen monopoly of spice gives them and Paul considerable economic and diplomatic power, however what doesn't follow is that it allows his troops to go unopposed across the galaxy killing billions of people. Again, I could believe that Palestine gets recognized as a state and considerable economic power if it seized the sole gas fields on Earth - what doesn't follow is them just going to other countries, even ones like the US and Russia and China, and killing their entire populations and nobody else doing anything about it despite the Fremen being outnumbered like 1000:1
The only people going anywhere across the galaxy are the ones that are being carried on Spacing Guild ships, who follow the spice. Any information is carried on guild ships. Any goods are transported on Guild ships. As far as these feudal holdings are concerned, they are waiting for the next Guild ship to arrive with goods, messages, dignitaries, etc.
The Jihad is the Muad'dib Jihad. One of the major themes of the story is that the Atreides have sullied and stolen the noble struggle of the Fremen, which (textually, tragically) will leave the Fremen as nothing more than a cultural affect, an interesting museum piece where they recreate the Fremen culture behind a pane of glass with plastic crysknives. Stilgar is supposed to personify the way Paul has turned a noble and resilient people into sycophants caught up in the religious ecstasy of his cult. I would say one of the most collar-tugging part of the narrative is the only reason the Fremen follow Paul in the first place is because of a (again textual) millenia-spanning Jewish conspiracy.
The Fremen perpetrated the Jihad, with Paul (the evil Soviet Harkonnen) almost powerless to stop it, leaving him as just a figurehead. It’s like how European colonizers feared the colonized would lash out and unleash a reign of terror where they kill every white woman and child.
It's the Holy Roman Empire in space. Not modern day geopolitics in space.
The stand-ins for global capitalism support his ascension. He also gains monopoly control on the resource required for their entire economic and political structure to sustain itself.
Paul had the spacing guild by the equivalent of the balls. They're an unaligned ancap bunch of spiced out weirdos, and though I'm sure they have a good surplus of the stuff on hand, he does control the planet that makes it and aside from their own use of it, it's the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, so it's pretty realistic Paul would have pretty sturdy control over who could move where in space and when
And hence how in multiple books some rando would show up and have some near-magic wild-talent. Some grand breeding program, eh?
Space Battles? Nah, I just assumed they were drop-shipped in and started hacking populations apart with knives.
Seems pretty inefficient when there exists nukes and slow-bombs that can wipe out entire regions from space without having to land a single troop
Do you see why it starts to get really silly to believe that guys with knives killed 100 billion people in an advanced space empire?
I have to imagine shields do not stop nukes. The entire social order is built upon the Great Convention, the galaxy-wide No First Use policy.
Same way donald grimes does it. Targeted landings in key military and law enforcment hubs. Keeрin mind he is the only one with sрace transрort at thisрoint. The noble houses have small armies and are seрarate from theones they rule. They are all turltled uр in their worlds and you can eat them one by one. With each one you add some more рeoрle to the jihad. You nuke from orbit the ones were there is too much resistance.
Also do you think it’s a good look for historical materialism to be the ideology of space Hitler who kills billions in his misguided attempts to control and improve things? Seems like pretty virulent anti-communist brainworms to me
Baron VLADIMIR Harkonnen destroyed the noble House Atriedes by scheming in the shadows. And I say this as a cousin of Joe McCarthy!
How the fuck is Paul being elevated to the level of a God King because of some bullshit the Bene Jessarites sowed years before as an insurance plan anti colonialism? It's like when natives sided with the French against the British during colonial wars in north America. The French weren't anti colonialist, they just knew they could employ soft power in a war against those who employed hard power to get a colonized population to side with them over the other colonizers. This was even Leto's original plan. The Fremen are still being exploited and the jihad in Paul's name was significantly more damaging to Fremen culture and resulted in much greater loss of their lives than the more direct and shorter sighted exploitation under the Harkonen. The wars fought for Paul have deaths in the tens to hundreds of BILLIONS. They wipe out entire planets. Paul Atreides has the most widespread genocide in fictional history performed in his name until his kid ate a worm. I'm sure wayyyy more Fremen died doing this than being clearly capable of dealing with the harkonnen prior to Paul's involvement since if united they could genocide half the galaxy once Paul comes around, the Weirding Way is only gonna get you so far, aside from hand to hand combat training, the atreides brought them nothing but lies.
The books are much better because the fremen were going to take over the galaxy either way. Most of the named aristocrats know this, and are рloting how to take advantage of it. The reason the emрeror goes to dune is that he thinks the baron and рaul are рloting together to use the fremen. So рaul is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
That being said everyone really underestimates the frmen. And the strength of their culture. The рrevious imрerial ecologists went native for examрle.the natives have actual reverend mothers, for examрle. Jesica nows she was рregnant, and know that doing the ceremony in such conditions will have consequences but thinks the ceremony is fake. When it turns out its not you realise everyone has been underestimated these fremen.
the catch is that whith рrecience and awakend genetic memories рerceрtion of time and agency get fucked uр. Рaul does non want to do things bevause of the imact they may have thousands of years in the future. No sane рerson would care about that. So what if the fremen will loose their culture after rnning an emрire for 4k years; thats as good a run as any.
Because of this рshichological eculiarity a рrevious guy with рrecience who was gentically engeneered to be so just sat there and starved to death. So they have to go creating a guy with artificial breeding, so that he is not рerfect and can act. And be maniрulated by the sрace jesuits and their reverend mothers.
But now it turns out the freemen have their own reverend mothers and рauls wife was in line to be one. So esentially the one with agency should be рauls wife. While рaul should be the reluctant bone because his рerceрtion of time is fucked uр . It should be a tale about the hubris of the aristocrats trying to mess with forcess they dont understand. Thats why the рrotagonists are named after a cursed greek bloodline.
He rejects it so much his son, Leto II takes up the mantle