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I stopped when the author wrote that "Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) — wove [his] worlds with far-right, reactionary, and even outright fascistic themes and he

I stopped when the author wrote that "Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) — wove [his] worlds with far-right, reactionary, and even outright fascistic themes and heroes." This is just not at all an accurate read of Ender's Game. The later books, sure -- i.e. the character in one of the Shadow of the X books who says that the purpose of life is to reproduce and that he himself suppressed his homosexuality to fulfill this purpose (???) -- but Ender's Game's themes, while religious, are downright anti-fascist. Thiel actually has said the thing that you quote [0] (though perhaps I'm misunderstanding you). [0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."

stevenwoo 9y ago
Orson Scott Card's speaking outside of the books makes clear he is a far-right reactionary. Some of his books make it clear that he is gay curious and I'm not talking about Ender's Game. I have no idea what to make of this.
- Kluny 9y ago
  He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual. There was also a lot of homoeroticism in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, made especially troubling by the fact that those characters were prepubescent children.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    "He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual." You know, I've heard many people make that claim over the years, but I've never seen any evidence for it (there are anecdotal cases where someone who was extremely anti-gay was later outed as gay, yes, sure, but I've seen no evidence that this is always, or even often, the case). People can be racists without being "secretly black", and misogynist without being "secretly women", right?
    - tty7 9y ago
      https://gayhomophobe.com https://gayhomophobe.com
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual. Or, you know, someone that is just anti-gay (e.g. for religious reasons, conservative tendencies, or whatever). For one, lumping people who make anti-gay statements as "repressed homosexuals" makes it like there's something wrong with their lives/mental state (as opposed to just with their ideas). There might be, but not for that reason. It deprives them of real agency. Second, it makes it like it's specifically gay people who are fascists when they are repressed. Why would repressing their desires (something that straight people do as well) make them have a specific trait such as that? Some people who repressed their desires (sexual straight or gay, career ambitions, love interests, etc) did good (became missionaries helping people, sacrificed themselves to save others, etc), and actual fascists (like, real Nazis, in actual 1933-1945) repressed few of their desires. If anything, they over-indulged in them.
- jholman 9y ago
  I haven't dug incredibly deeply into Card's political statements outside of his fiction, so unlike my other comments in this thread, I'm shooting from the hip here, but... My read is that Card (like a few other Mormon SF writers I can think of) is: 1) seriously invested in religion, especially but not exclusively his own religion, and absolutely unwilling to simply dismiss it 2) genuinely interested in social justice 3) struggling to resolve this conflict This comes out strongly in questions about the tension between collective action and individualist conscience. And it's also pretty tightly-wound in the tension between churchly homophobia on the one hand, and on the other, compassion and empathy and respect for the sovereignty of the individual whenever possible. I suspect that when one says that Card "is [clearly] a far-right reactionary", you're likely to be oversimplifying to the point of uselessness. Indeed, I suspect that in general, that description is unlikely to tidily fit very many people in the world. But on the other hand, I believe it's useful and accurate to say "some of Card's beliefs seem consonant with a deep connection to a reactionary ideology".
jholman 9y ago
Regarding Card, yeah. I mean, I'd word it differently from you, but I think we agree. The Ender's Game series collectively are constantly looking at fascistic themes. And these are invariably brought up for the purpose of looking at the drawbacks of that worldview. (Although they're occasionally sympathetic to the virtues of that worldview, too.) The main way that Card is demonstrably "right-wing" or "reactionary" is that he has an abiding sympathy for the social mores of the religious right -- but even there, he does a lot of second-guessing himself too. But far-right or fascistic? Hah.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
What is anti-facist about Ender's Game? From my perspective, they come out as the massive winners in that book. The caricature of a sociopath even ends up emperor.
coldtea 9y ago
>but Ender's Game's themes, while religious, are downright anti-fascist. Is it though? https://fabiusmaximus.com/2010/09/12/21238/ https://fabiusmaximus.com/2010/09/12/21238/
- setgree 9y ago
  I haven't read this, thanks for bringing it to my attention. BIG ENDER'S GAME SPOILERS AHEAD. EG as anti-fascist text: Buggers represent a perceived existential threat. Humanity gets together and forms a single government which lives on past the threat. The first criticism of the new world order is in the very beginning, in which you learn that Ender is the son of parents of a persecuted religious minority sect that wants to have more than the allotted number of children (I read this as a libertarian viewpoint). The biggest anti-fascist gut punch comes when you see things from the Queen's perspective: "'The humans did not forgive us,' she thought. 'We will surely die.'" It turns out that the entire coordinated militaristic response was premised on misunderstanding and inability to communicate. Had only the humans had empathetic, loving leaders like Ender, they would have understood the Buggers, and vice versa, and no war; I read the book as being about tragic misunderstanding, and how reasonable responses to those misunderstandings can lead to Xenocide. But I do not think this functions as an argument for a stronger state. I also don't want to defend Card's out-of-book positions or much of the Shadow series. I just think Ender's Game itself holds up really well as a stand-alone piece of fiction. My 2 cents, the books are symbolically rich and I appreciate that there are pieces of evidence I've ignored or forgotten about that would put it in a very different light.
- jholman 9y ago
  The parts of the article you linked that are about how Card is sooooo right-wing, and so pro-facist, are pretty... insubstantial? I'm attempting to write obliquely to limit spoiler effect. But yeah, of course #2/#3 is the reason Ender's Game is so massively popular. But also notice that's not what the author thought he'd written (ha ha, so much for genius). I mean, notice that Card thinks that SftD and Xenocide are the natural sequels to the important themes of Ender's Game, but 99% of his commercial audience (including me at the age when I first read SftD) thought they were unrelated and unrelatable, and preferred the Shadow sequence. But Card took over a decade to go for it and write the first Shadow book, Ender's Shadow (1999, 13 years after SftD, which only took a year after Ender's Game). Ender's Game is pro-facist the way Robocop is pro-police-state. (And yeah, when I saw Robocop in my teens, I thought it was pro-police-state. sigh.)
maxlybbert 9y ago
I never got the feeling that Card wanted a strong military government, just that he believed it would be inevitable if the world faced a violent alien invasion. There was a time that "fighting a war" meant that nearly everybody was involved. The US government rationed food during WWII to make sure there was enough for the troops. They rationed other things as well, such as cloth and metals that were needed for uniforms and supplies. If the world were facing destruction on a larger scale, I have no doubt the military would get whatever people and materials it wanted as quickly as possible, regardless of any official legal limitations. But that doesn't mean I want to live in that world. And, if course, nearly every civilian in "Ender's Game" does seem to resent the military in some way.

stevenwoo 9y ago

Orson Scott Card's speaking outside of the books makes clear he is a far-right reactionary. Some of his books make it clear that he is gay curious and I'm not talking about Ender's Game. I have no idea what to make of this.

Kluny 9y ago
He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual. There was also a lot of homoeroticism in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, made especially troubling by the fact that those characters were prepubescent children.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual." You know, I've heard many people make that claim over the years, but I've never seen any evidence for it (there are anecdotal cases where someone who was extremely anti-gay was later outed as gay, yes, sure, but I've seen no evidence that this is always, or even often, the case). People can be racists without being "secretly black", and misogynist without being "secretly women", right?
  - tty7 9y ago
    https://gayhomophobe.com https://gayhomophobe.com
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 9y ago
  >He's made some very strong anti-gay statements, which is usually a sign of a repressed homosexual. Or, you know, someone that is just anti-gay (e.g. for religious reasons, conservative tendencies, or whatever). For one, lumping people who make anti-gay statements as "repressed homosexuals" makes it like there's something wrong with their lives/mental state (as opposed to just with their ideas). There might be, but not for that reason. It deprives them of real agency. Second, it makes it like it's specifically gay people who are fascists when they are repressed. Why would repressing their desires (something that straight people do as well) make them have a specific trait such as that? Some people who repressed their desires (sexual straight or gay, career ambitions, love interests, etc) did good (became missionaries helping people, sacrificed themselves to save others, etc), and actual fascists (like, real Nazis, in actual 1933-1945) repressed few of their desires. If anything, they over-indulged in them.
jholman 9y ago
I haven't dug incredibly deeply into Card's political statements outside of his fiction, so unlike my other comments in this thread, I'm shooting from the hip here, but... My read is that Card (like a few other Mormon SF writers I can think of) is: 1) seriously invested in religion, especially but not exclusively his own religion, and absolutely unwilling to simply dismiss it 2) genuinely interested in social justice 3) struggling to resolve this conflict This comes out strongly in questions about the tension between collective action and individualist conscience. And it's also pretty tightly-wound in the tension between churchly homophobia on the one hand, and on the other, compassion and empathy and respect for the sovereignty of the individual whenever possible. I suspect that when one says that Card "is [clearly] a far-right reactionary", you're likely to be oversimplifying to the point of uselessness. Indeed, I suspect that in general, that description is unlikely to tidily fit very many people in the world. But on the other hand, I believe it's useful and accurate to say "some of Card's beliefs seem consonant with a deep connection to a reactionary ideology".

jholman 9y ago

Regarding Card, yeah. I mean, I'd word it differently from you, but I think we agree. The Ender's Game series collectively are constantly looking at fascistic themes. And these are invariably brought up for the purpose of looking at the drawbacks of that worldview. (Although they're occasionally sympathetic to the virtues of that worldview, too.) The main way that Card is demonstrably "right-wing" or "reactionary" is that he has an abiding sympathy for the social mores of the religious right -- but even there, he does a lot of second-guessing himself too. But far-right or fascistic? Hah.

boomboomsubban 9y ago

What is anti-facist about Ender's Game? From my perspective, they come out as the massive winners in that book. The caricature of a sociopath even ends up emperor.

coldtea 9y ago

>but Ender's Game's themes, while religious, are downright anti-fascist. Is it though? https://fabiusmaximus.com/2010/09/12/21238/ https://fabiusmaximus.com/2010/09/12/21238/

setgree 9y ago
I haven't read this, thanks for bringing it to my attention. BIG ENDER'S GAME SPOILERS AHEAD. EG as anti-fascist text: Buggers represent a perceived existential threat. Humanity gets together and forms a single government which lives on past the threat. The first criticism of the new world order is in the very beginning, in which you learn that Ender is the son of parents of a persecuted religious minority sect that wants to have more than the allotted number of children (I read this as a libertarian viewpoint). The biggest anti-fascist gut punch comes when you see things from the Queen's perspective: "'The humans did not forgive us,' she thought. 'We will surely die.'" It turns out that the entire coordinated militaristic response was premised on misunderstanding and inability to communicate. Had only the humans had empathetic, loving leaders like Ender, they would have understood the Buggers, and vice versa, and no war; I read the book as being about tragic misunderstanding, and how reasonable responses to those misunderstandings can lead to Xenocide. But I do not think this functions as an argument for a stronger state. I also don't want to defend Card's out-of-book positions or much of the Shadow series. I just think Ender's Game itself holds up really well as a stand-alone piece of fiction. My 2 cents, the books are symbolically rich and I appreciate that there are pieces of evidence I've ignored or forgotten about that would put it in a very different light.
jholman 9y ago
The parts of the article you linked that are about how Card is sooooo right-wing, and so pro-facist, are pretty... insubstantial? I'm attempting to write obliquely to limit spoiler effect. But yeah, of course #2/#3 is the reason Ender's Game is so massively popular. But also notice that's not what the author thought he'd written (ha ha, so much for genius). I mean, notice that Card thinks that SftD and Xenocide are the natural sequels to the important themes of Ender's Game, but 99% of his commercial audience (including me at the age when I first read SftD) thought they were unrelated and unrelatable, and preferred the Shadow sequence. But Card took over a decade to go for it and write the first Shadow book, Ender's Shadow (1999, 13 years after SftD, which only took a year after Ender's Game). Ender's Game is pro-facist the way Robocop is pro-police-state. (And yeah, when I saw Robocop in my teens, I thought it was pro-police-state. sigh.)

maxlybbert 9y ago

I never got the feeling that Card wanted a strong military government, just that he believed it would be inevitable if the world faced a violent alien invasion. There was a time that "fighting a war" meant that nearly everybody was involved. The US government rationed food during WWII to make sure there was enough for the troops. They rationed other things as well, such as cloth and metals that were needed for uniforms and supplies. If the world were facing destruction on a larger scale, I have no doubt the military would get whatever people and materials it wanted as quickly as possible, regardless of any official legal limitations. But that doesn't mean I want to live in that world. And, if course, nearly every civilian in "Ender's Game" does seem to resent the military in some way.