I don't know how you could look at a dude who space nukes several million people, most of whom were probably poor and on basic income based on previous depictions of Earth in the show, and who had probably no real control over how they belt is treated, and call him anything other than a terrorist.
To me Marcos is a right wing populist. The class struggle of the belt is co-oped as a way for him to consolidate his singular power. The attacks on earth were less about revenge and more about forcing the belt's factions to merge under his command as the factions fear either being attacked by earth/mars or the free navy themselves.
I don't know how he is treated in the show but Inaros in the books is an absolute monster. The authors may be libs but they managed to show how a movement is coopted by a charismatic narcissist really well. And the asteroiding the Earth - he literally killed billions of innocent people. This is text book terrorism. And he ain't in it for the liberation of the belters or anything, but for his own personal aggrandisement. Y'all Americans need to learn to read subtext.
I think a common criticism, and the frustration that I have with the later seasons/books is not that Inaros actually a saint and being wrongly smeared. It's that, for any fiction produced under liberal ideology, any actor who seeks to radically alter the status quo to achieve a specific vision of the future, rather than promoting careful incrementalism, always has to be a cynical monster working out of self interest and fooling people into supporting a cause they don't really believe in.
It's hard to imagine that the series could have the place in media that it does if Inaros were written as a different character that accomplished changes on a similar scale, but kept violence to a minimum and really cared about raising the quality of life of all belters.
Agreed. I've been thinking a lot about this, like in almost all media the people who want to change things are always the bad guys. And I think we are taught from very early on that big changes are bad, that you can't just change things overnight. Basically the entire culture we live in explicitly teaches that change is wrong, and whoever does it is selfish or evil. Which means that everyone is super docile and super resistant to anything that might deviate from status quo. The funny thing is that this actually limits a lot of productivity and is bad for the bottom line of capitalism itself. The sad thing is that it leaks in personal life as well and hurts relationships because nobody ever wants to do the work or hold others accountable when all they offer is platitudes.
At first I was struggle seshing it a bit, but yeah he's a complete narcissist piece of shit once they start showing how he uses his son and Naomi.
It's not Amazon. Its the authors of the books. Marco Inaros is how those libs view any lefty leader: cult of personality that uses the excuse of liberating an opposed people to to seize power and commit genocide. Marco is a belter nationalist/supremacist who seeks to cripple earth so Belters can rule over them from the atmosphere and totally control the future of humanity, leaving earthers to wallow in the wreckage. Marco cannot be a good leftist simply because the duo James S.A Corey don't know what that looks like, they do not have the imagination to write it. Marco is nothing but a distillation of how a civility lib sees someone like Fidel. Evil lefty narcissistic dictator trope nothing more.
From what I remember from the books they were terrorists and there wasn't really a plan beyond the initial attack
I liked the protomolecule stuff in the early seasons as it's unveiling an eloborate plot with a shadow government controlled by a corporation. I too am glad they're not doing it so much in this season.
Oh I'm expecting this whole season to be a giant 9/11-war on terror allegory. Mars (soviet union/second world) collapses. The belt, third world, does a terror attack on earth, the literal first world.
The correct projection would be Inaros literally expects the asteroids to make earth compliant but instead earth goes insanely fascist and occupies most of the belt. But then Inaros just ghosts while the occupation goes sour because earth still thinks all the violence and resistance is from Inaros when its really a bunch of belter factions infighting over earths corrupt occupation.
But I don't think the plot will actually that way. I suspect they will make earth leaders into actual heroes and all the earth jingoism will be adored. Meanwhile Inaros' grip on the belt will just crumble on its own (or from holden) because he's not a competent revolutionary (evidence is him being an amazon production).
I've read the books, and the ending is even more :LIB: than you can imagine
I'm only a few episodes into the show. The books did a decent job with having the three factions have different cultures/politics. Belters are definitely represented as auth-soc adjacent, but the OPA is a psuedo-fringe terrorist group that's kinda broadening in appeal up to book 5 when more lines start getting drawn. It felt fairly organic instead of this master plan, which I appreciated.
Also Marco is a huge piece of shit.
I meant to revisit this but fell asleep. It's obviously not something anyone here would consider socialism, but I do think it is a portrayal of collectivism that's not trying to be utopian or painted as naive. Which is about as good an effort as I expected from a mainstream book.
From what I get the OPA starts as a bunch of different groups with different tactics and ideologies, that kinda get forced into unification by Marco
They are accurately showing how Earthers set up an extraction economy in the Belt, how this is produced by and perpetuates class antagonism, how the OPA is struggling to decolonize. This anti-colonial, class-driven struggle has always been portrayed as a just cause in itself. Where it falls flat isn't the analysis of the status quo. The show is correct in that regard and in agreement with leftist critiques of neo-colonial structures and the problems inherent to late-stage capitalism - such as the need for constant expansion of opressive and coercive systems in the face of a falling rate of profit, Earth struggling with mass unemployment due to automation and how UBI is nothing but a band aid for that etc. These are reasonable and accurate takes.
Where it becomes lib shit is precisely at the point where we ask ourselves what is to be done.
Marco Inaros Faction is clearly set up as a strawman coralling the audience towards the conclusion that too much militance damages just causes. If the millions of civilian casualties and the unsavory character of the manipulative, cruel narcissist Marco Inaros haven't made it clear enough, the point is driven home further by the fact that every episode is full of Inaros supporters saying something racist about Inyalowdas.
The Belters should clearly have stuck to Holden's way of doing things, which is to operate on movie brain, stand back and leave everything to a select group of Great Man and Women who just magically stumble into faithful events that will solve everything without a need for organized revolutionary struggle.
This critique doesn't only apply to The Expanse. It applies to almost all contemporary entertainment and this is almost inevitable as long as we have writers who do not know any revolutionary theory that goes beyond Fight Club or V for Vendetta.
It's an op. The current season is nothing but anti-Belter propaganda for the imperialist UN and their running dogs.
I'm half way thru the new season, I actually liked season 4 a lot. Harsh colony politics and sociology between corp mercenaries and hard luck pioneers was interesting to me although the end was kinda weird. Yea I just wanna give the belters some theory. I mean it is kinda fucked that because of their gravity intolerance they are essentially forced into a teamster / working class by nature of their biology. I wish they explored the implants and mechs/battle suits more and did less of the protomolucule
I find it funny that the amazon seaons use a lot of fancy visuals not for fantastical things that exist in the universe but of visualisations of things on their phones. Very capitalist realism that even in this actual future scifi world the biggest innovation took place towards making better simulations.
Abit lib yes but i like how, Even the more "liberal" OPA under fred johnson realises that armed deterence with a fleet is needed for the belt
I've read the books and so far season 5 is following very close to Nemesis Games . The authors are basic libs and you can't expect much out of them. Inaros is very much a narcissist and a fascist in the books.
Another thing that bothered me was Amos's comments about how society turns violent after a disaster, when the opposite is often true .
There is a certainty and teleology in the show that I didn't see in the book In Nemesis Games you knew something was about to go down but didn't know what and from where or who was the ultimate mover. Contrast that to not only knowing that specifically marco is up to something but that it's an asteroid attack. It's easy to see it as a wink to book readers however it significantly alters the narrative I think. The inners aren't caught off-guard by some belters who weren't on their radar but they were foiled by a master terrorist because they didn't listen to the hawks and failed to provide the military industrial complex with what it needed.
I'll hold out a final judgement until we see how they introduce Laconia though.
Marco didn't target military or government, he indiscriminately bombed civilians 🤔
I can imagine leftists groups in the future having struggle sesh over marcos
Yeeeah. I saw the way the wind was blowing in the first episode and haven't watched it yet. I now hate you for confirming my suspicion and ruining my favorite show.
If I have to hear that British cunt screeching in bad cockney again I'm gonna skip ahead, straight to the air lock with her, that's what we get for letting Canadians make scifi
