V For Vendetta and the vengeful authoritarian regimes to come under collapse

My forthcoming book discusses the dominance of dystopian visions of the future, which is hardly surprising given the multiple, overlapping environmental, economic, and political crises we face. In the book, I use nine classic sci-fi movies to discuss various aspects of the coming dystopia. One of them is V for Vendetta (2006).

Welcome to the England of 2028. America has been fractured by what sounds like a second civil war. A pandemic, the St. Mary’s Virus, has ravaged the planet. High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt) leads a white supremacist, theocratic police state controlled by the Norsefire party, a successor to the Conservative party. Disease and war enabled it to seize power.

So too in our most likely future: authoritarians will use fear and insecurity to promise order at the cost of freedom.

One of the complacent assumptions on the left is that, in wanting to build a better, even a ‘new’ society, the left is much more future-oriented than the right. But as I discuss in the book, the right’s politics far more effectively exploit the scarcity and social conflict driven by early collapse (and they should do, because they created them). As Chancellor Sutler says, “I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos. I want everyone to remember why they need us!”

Depictions of apocalypse, however dramatically interesting, actually distract us from the ‘long emergency’ – of ongoing failing systems, environmental, economic, social, and political crises – one we’re going to have to face, and are already in. More likely than irradiated wastelands, collapse reveals the truth of right-wing politics: hollowed-out states that are unable to provide for or protect people in crises, replacing this weakness with cult leader authoritarianism – as V For Vendetta starkly dramatizes.

This suggests the truth about the right’s endgame – what it is, how they’ll seize power, and how they’ll hold onto it. Such regimes thrive on chaos. They might even engineer it.

But for more on that, you’ll have to read the book.

Come With Me If You Want To Live: The Future as Foretold in Classic Sci-Fi Films, is out in November from Lexington Books. You can read more about it here.