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Comment by timmytokyo | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is in refernce to Banks's stated purpose for writing the Culture series.

>He first conceived the Culture in the late 60s, and has developed it ever since. “It’s basically a lot of wish fulfilment, I write about all the things I would like to have,” he says. “I’d had enough of the right-wing US science fiction, so I decided to take it to the left. It’s based around my belief that we can live in a better way, that we have to. So I created my own leftist/liberal world.”

[1] https://spikemagazine.com/iain-banks-interview/

Given Musk's red-pilled foray into right-wing culture war discourse, it is indeed ironic that he would revere these books.

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Plenty of right-wingers apparently enjoy Star Trek, despite it being an expression of everything they stand against, literally a universe where humanity abandons capitalism and nationalism for a one world government of woke space communism. They just can't see the progressive subtext (unless it's obvious like "black female captain" or "gay relationship"), it's all just spaceships and pew-pew laser adventure to them.

There's no cognitive disconnect in believing that pre- and post-scarcity societies would (or should) be substantially different.

We're getting into the weeds of semantics but I do think there is some cognitive disconnect in a right-wing/conservative mindset believing a post-scarcity society is even possible, much less desirable.

They see the Federation as Space USA using their superior pew-pew spaceships to enforce Freedom on the unwashed Aliens, many of whom are based on racial stereotypes. Because every planet only has one culture on it, doncha know.

I'd say from a right wing perspective, Star Trek more than makes up for the lack of traditional nationalist and wealth-class hierarchies by featuring an overt all-encompassing military hierarchy. If you think hierarchy is necessary and good, then making it singular, explicit, and mandatory is utopian!

Starfleet isn’t all-encompassing nor mandatory.

Not for the universe, or even all the humans in the universe, sure. But for most shows I'm familiar with, Starfleet encompasses all of the main characters that the audience identifies with. And even though authority is often bucked for many reasons, that hierarchy is still in the background setting the interpretation of social interactions.

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