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  • The movie is so satirical, but in the US that behavior is considered common so many didn't see the satire

  • Heh, called it few years ago. Pretty soon they will search for condotieri and maybe even foederati.

  • I watched this in the cinema with about 5 or 6 friends when it came out. All of them thought it was terrible because it was "praising of militarism" or something. None of them got the satire dripping from every frame. I was dumbfounded.

    In later years I found out that this is a phenomenon with not only the movie, but the book too. There's some kind of cognitive disconnect, some inability to see, for what is glaringly obvious to others, the bald fact of the sarcasm and parody of the USA and fascism going on here.

    Look at the top review on goodreads!

    • Oh yeah I've noticed this as well, and the fact that people don't see this really underscores how fascist US is in practice.

    • The book was actually problematic and praised fascism, anti-communism, and militarism. Only the movie was the satirical piece. It’s because the director read the book, and because he grew up in Nazi-occupied Holland, he was disgusted and decided to satirize it as much as possible as a joke.

      • Aha! I never read the book and assumed this applied to it too.

        Definitely is a weird feature of the movie interpretations. Wildly different takes and a blind spot for the satire.

  • So firstly haven't they offered citizenship for service for a while? Are they just ramping up the recruitment?

    Second... This is really a surreal thing to see them pushing. I mean, has there not been a growing amount of fascist/supremacist movements with military personnel? Seems like those groups would be fighting something like this pretty hard.

    Third, isn't this kind of what led to the fall of Rome? Or at least one of the symptoms of a failing empire? They filled their armies with soldiers from conquered lands. Taught them their strategies and trained them up. Then those "outsourced" armies just turned around and said "thanks for the training and weapons, we are going to go to war with you now."

    • Not sure if they've been doing this already, but yeah looks like they're trying to ramp that up. And interesting point regarding the military being full of white supremacists. I'm sure they're not going to be thrilled by this. And yeah, this is absolutely following the path of Rome in decline.

13 comments