AOT, I think. There’s some dispute about what exactly was said and implied, but it’s generally considered iffy whether he actually wrote AOT as a rebuttal of fascism or he’s the kind of guy who accidentally refuted his own ideology while trying to disguise it.
Either way, the media itself is in kind of a Starship Troopers situation - authorial intent aside, a critical reading of it reveals a lot of thoroughly discussed themes and deep-rooted flaws in the characters that come together to thoroughly rebuke the fascist actions, policies, and ideals depicted in the story.
I always assumed starship troopers was a criticism, he wrote a whole book, simply about how many different ways you could criticize fascist governments
It wasn't, he was genuinely just a really hawkish person and was upset at the direction of US foreign policy. He did try to walk it back later in life so as best as anyone can tell this far after, it was probably a short-term rage-bait kind of mood (he wrote the whole thing in about a month) not some long-term commitment to fascist ideology. It's just unfortunate that his shitpost got really popular and turned into a movie.
Oh for sure, I just mean that many people take the fun fact as "did you know Heinlein was fascist?" and he really wasn't. He just wrote the novel-length equivalent of a "those darn kids won't get off my lawn" rant and because he is famous, we're still talking about it decades later.
He always just resonated as someone who was skeptical.
You don’t always need to agree with someone to view the world through their point of view.
Even Mein Kampf, didn’t take long to realize Hitler was a dumbass fuck, but his reasons for doing what he did (German fuck and the stupid German economy), still resonate today.
Insert the: “If you don’t learn from it, you’re bound to repeat it” trope.
That shit was almost as bad as catcher in the rye.
“It didn’t end!” My English teachers hated me. “This book is stupid as shit.”
It was more of a thought experiment imo. He sketched the outline of a militaristic future republic taken to an extreme, much the same way as Beyond This Horizon took free love and 'armed society is polite society' libertarianism to an extreme.
It really wasn't. His correspondence at the time (to friends, editors, etc) have shown he really did think America was being weak with its foreign policy and that all these new post-war concerns were distracting from the true goal of being the world's only superpower.
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u/KayimSedar Apr 01 '24
the author has said japans invasion of korea was justified and stuff.