Star Trek Federation

[Rockstar]

was it a fascist state :06:

https://youtu.be/P4KBPaS-1PU

[Betonov]

You mean it will be a fascist state.

Not xenophobic enough though, but is xenophobia a definition of a fascist state, were Italy and Germany just an exception ??
The Third Reich would remain fascist even without the untermensch mentality. Jews, gypsies and Slavs would be a cog in the machinery and not vermin.
Would fascism have a negative intonation today if the Third Reich would have been an ally against Stalins USSR and not the enemy.
The Citizen Federation from Starship Troopers is a confirmed fascist state and it has a more gender/race/sexual orientation equality than modern western democracies.
Another example, the Tau from Warhammer 40k are defined as fascist and they always work towards the greater good. Federation is also based on cooperation for the greater good.

This video has some merit. But in the end, the Federation is not fascist, but a system that has not yet been named nor defined. A collection of mistakes and lessons from history to create Utopia.

[Oberon]

Compared to other races in the series, I think the Federation is probably the lesser fascist, but let's have a looksie. Exploration for scientific and resource gain, that's a fair point although bringing people under the umbrella of the Federation is usually done through soft diplomacy rather than hard and if a planet refuses to join the Federation then it's usually not forced to...look at Bajor, probably one of the most strategic planets in the Alpha Quadrant being right next to the Wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and yet it was not forced at gunpoint to join the Federation, and indeed, was discouraged at one point, fortunately.
That being said, it's a tactic that's paid off for them, looking at charts you'll see that the Federation is one of the largest 'empires' in the galaxy, covering most of the Alpha Quadrant, although it is possible that the Klingons and Romulans have more space in the Beta Quadrant which isn't covered by most Federation-centric maps.
Transportation wise, the video is a bit incorrect, other members of the Federation do have their own vessels primarily transport vessels, even as recent as TNG you see Vulcan transport ships, and there's plenty of random freighters floating around depending on what the episode needs...and that's before we even get started on the Ferengi. In 'Little Green Men' when Quark, Nog and Rom go to Earth so Nog can enroll in Starfleet Academy they don't use a Federation vessel, they use a Ferengi shuttle from Quarks cousin Gaila (which is, naturally, being used to smuggle contraband).
Communications...now that's a bit more of a fair point, the series rarely goes into much focus on the subspace relay network (except when it's not working) but as far as I can tell, there are few, if any, privately owned subspace relay stations. Likewise the monitoring and interception of messages sent via these stations is something that is definitely done, and certainly people who exist within the Federation can easily be monitored.
Does this mean that they are? Not always, and if they are there are ways around it. The Orion Syndicate are an example of an organisation which exists within Federation space but are able to avoid the all seeing eye of Starfleet Intelligence.
The Judicial system of the Federation, Matpat makes a fair point although he's mixing up 'The Federation' and 'Starfleet' which are two things, Starfleet is the naval arm of the Federation, and thus in the episodes of TOS that he uses it's military law that Kirk violates when he disobeys orders, much as any member of an armed forces would face consequences for disobeying their orders, Spock jettisoning Kirk in the Abrams Trek...yeah, that's sucky...but it's Abrams, so I tend to take that with a runabout of salt.
Section 31...oh yes...now this is a juicy topic. Perhaps the most effective special operations network in the Alpha Quadrant, better than the Obsidian Order and the Tal'Shiar...why? Because hardly anyone has heard of them whereas everyone knows (or in the Orders case 'knew') of the intelligence and security operations of the Cardassian Union and Romulan Star Empire.
Section 31 are smart, and have very limited oversight...they are what the KGB and Gestapo deeply wish they could have been, a force unto themselves, dedicated to seeing the continued survival of the Federation.
It's never truly mentioned who Section 31 report to, and how many within Starfleet and the Federation are aware of their existence. It's not as if the President of the Federation can ring up a Section 31 agent and order the head of the Romulan Senate taken out. Certainly there are Section 31 sympathisers within the Starfleet chain of command as well as Section 31 agents themselves, however Starfleet itself has little to no control over the actions of Section 31. Sometimes the two agencies overlap in their interests, other times they do not. Perhaps it started as a black-ops section of Starfleet Intelligence, but it's evolved far beyond that into a seperate organisation since then.
And the economy...ha, another juicy topic...and Matpat makes a valid point about the lack of money within the Federation, however the Credit system and Ferengi Latinum mean that there is still some element of a barter system in place, however the primary objective is the goal that if every citizen has access to a replicator then they can create whatever item they wish to use. Of course, this breaks down in Star Trek Voyager because the replicators require power and matter that the ship doesn't have, so they have to impose a replicator credits system, however back within the Federation were that's not an issue then the goal is less of imposing a particular goal on the populace and more encouraging them to look beyond the desire for material gain by giving them access to anything they wish.
Let's face it, if you were given access to whatever you wanted at the push of a button, food, water, recreational activities (to an extent), you'd be absolutely ecstatic for a set amount of time, however eventually you'd want to go beyond what was available and do something different, be it explore beyond the comforts of Federation space, or design something to be used to other people, or try to unravel mysteries of the universe. Alternatively, if you're a good cook, then you might get your reward from cooking for people using non-replicated materials, making you unique and the praise from these people and their repeated custom might be the reward you need when you can get material satisfaction whenever you want it.

Now, ideology...emphasising the state over the individual...now that's an element that's common in not just fascism but also socialism, and indeed 'The Needs of the Many outweigh The Needs of the Few' is probably more leaning towards communism than it is fascism, but when you look at Hitlers Germany you can see some small elements of socialism within it.
Unfortunately during this section, Matpat uses a lot of references to Abramsverse Trek...and to be honest, I don't consider the Federation of Abramsverse to be the same thing as the Federation of the Prime Universe, when Abrams was making his Star Trek films it was pretty clear that he wanted to be making Star Wars, if you look at the uniforms with the hats that they wear in some of the films it's almost a direct expy of uniforms from The Empire in Star Wars...and sure enough when he made a Star Wars film it was superior than his Star Trek ones because that's what he wanted to do all along. That being said, the script for 'Beyond' was written by Trek fans, but by then the damage was already done.

The Federation is by no means a perfect thing, it was envisioned as an attempt at such by Gene Roddenberry but even in the Original Series we had examples where the Federation was unable to prevent atrocities committed within it, such as the massacre of 10,000 colonists on Tarsus IV, or experimentation and torture at the Penal Colony on Tantalus. However, as it matured over the years, the Federation has become more socialist than fascist. Take the 'Articles of the Federation', which affirm the civil rights and liberties of all sentient individuals existing under its jurisdiction. One of the better episodes of early TNG explores the idea of quantifying this intelligence when a Starfleet Commander, a renowned cyberneticist wants to disassemble Data to see what makes him tick, initially Starfleet rules against Data, but Picard objects and eventually Data is given the right to choose if he wants to submit to the experiment or not, and when he refuses then no more is made of it.
Certainly though a fascist state would have more control over its internal security, and it's shown pretty clearly in Deep Space Nine that the Federation has very little internal security against determined threats, even on the homeworld of Earth. The Federation might have turned fascist if Admiral Leytons coup has succeeded in 'Homefront' and 'Paradise Lost' but it didn't.
Robert Hewlett Wolfe, who wrote the two aforementioned episodes, commented:

"If the United States became a fascist state to fight fascism, would that be worth it? I would say no and most Americans would say no, and that's a special thing about the United States and a special thing about the Federation. We really wanted to explore the idea of whether or not you would destroy the village in order to save it. We know that the Star Trek answer is no."
"[Becoming reactionary] is something that all democracies have to be eternally on guard against. What's the greatest danger to democracy? What happened to the Roman Republic? Things got bad and Caesar decided he would save the Republic by ending it. And that's not the only time that has happened in history. That's where we were coming from [with the Federation]."

Now these were episodes written and broadcast in 1996, talk about prescient, Wolfes comments could very much apply to the state of the world today, twenty years after.

So...to sum up, Matpat has put forward some very well made points, and I can see why my wife likes his videos so much, however I don't think his theory is quite right in this instance, however it does show that there is some overlap between communism and fascism when it comes to authoritarian regimes, however the Federation itself eskews that authoritarism where it can and prefers a softer approach.

I'll leave it to the experts in this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hdiuRMK3UQ

Treknerd out. :salute: