The Federation Is Not Fascist
Exploration is bad.
The second point made by the video can be summed up as exploration equals imperialism. The makers of the video never really come out and say imperialism, but whether they realized it or not that was the point they were trying to make. The video’s creators say that because the Federation is exploring, has colonies, and contacts other civilizations it’s imperialistic, and therefore fascist.
The creators of the video look at exploration through the lens of the European exploration of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. They claim that to explore is to exploit, which is just not true. First of all the whole point of Star Trek is that humanity has moved on from its barbaric past, which imperialism would be included in. And secondly the exploration of Star Trek is like the exploration being done by NASA now, it’s for science and the advancement of knowledge, it’s not for claiming territory.
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Yes the Federation does welcome in new members, but they also turn away species that they see as not ready to join the community of worlds known as the Federation. If this was an imperialistic venture the goal would be to bring in as much territory and as many resources as possible, consideration for where those worlds were at as a culture would not be a concern.
This also ignores a little thing called the Prime Directive. The very purpose of the Prime Directive is to prevent Starfleet (which the video constantly interchanges with the Federation) from even unintentionally harming other species or affecting their development. The Prime Directive is there to prevent imperialism.
As far as Federation colonies go, again the video makers are looking at it through the lens of European imperialism. The Federation colonies are not exploiting the territory of others, in fact the Federation moves colonies so that they don’t encroach on the territory of others.
Scientific exploration doesn’t mean imperialism, and imperialism doesn’t even mean fascism. So while interesting this argument also fails.
Let’s move on to the third argument put forth by the video…
Next: The Federation controls everything