The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism

by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D

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"One and only one person can give steering and engine orders at any one time....The commanding officer may take over the deck or the conn...In taking the conn from the officer of the deck, the captain should do so in such a manner that all personnel of the bridge watch will be notified of the fact."
--Watch Officer's Guide, A Handbook for all Deck Watch Officers, Revised by K.C. Jacobsen, Commander, U.S. Navy, 11th Edition [Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1981, pp. 68-69]

I have always liked Star Trek. I watched the original show in the 60's, waited eagerly for the first movie in the 70's, and then later in the 80's got hooked all over again on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It has been good television, good science fiction, and occasionally even good film. Some things, nevertheless, have driven me crazy: (1) Picard and Riker both giving commands, in tandem, on the bridge is absurd. One person has the conn or has the deck on a ship, and it is dangerous to have any confusion about that (see quote above). As Executive Officer, Riker wouldn't even be on the bridge in ordinary circumstances. (2) There doesn't seem to be anything like a regular watch on the bridge. In one show a big point is made that only a full commander can have bridge command, but nothing is more common on the show than to have scenes where all the senior officers of the ship are in some conference or other, leaving who knows who directing the ship on the bridge -- unless there are full commanders who aren't part of the regular cast. The writers don't seem to know what naval lieutenants are for -- to be the officers of the deck. And (3) Star Trek has never known what admirals are for. The first Star Trek movie has a farcical conflict over whether Admiral Kirk or the newly assigned captain will assume command of the Enterprise. One wonders what Horatio Nelson and Captain Hardy were both doing on the HMS Victory. Later, Star Trek: The Next Generation refers to the Enterprise as the "flag ship" of Star Fleet, without apparently realizing that a flag ship is a ship with a "flag," i.e. a flag officer, an admiral. A Star Trek admiral seems to be some kind of shore officer.

These absurdities, however, can be easily forgiven. Less easily forgiven or forgotten are the more troubling messages about the nature of the future, the nature of society, and even the nature of reality. Star Trek typically reflects certain political, social, and metaphysical views, and on close examination they are not worthy of the kind of tribute that is often paid to Star Trek as representing an edifying vision of things.

In a 1996 newspaper column, James P. Pinkerton, discussing the new Star Trek movie (the eighth), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), quotes Captain Picard saying how things have changed in his day, "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force; we work to better humanity." Perhaps Picard never stopped to reflect that greater wealth means greater material well being, which is to the betterment of humanity much more than any empty rhetoric. But this is typical of Star Trek. A first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "The Neutral Zone," has Picard getting up on his high horse with a three hundred year old businessman who is revived from suspended animation: The businessman, naturally, wants to get in touch with his agents to find out what has happened to his investments. Picard loftily informs him that such things don't exist anymore. Indeed, poverty and want have been abolished, but how this was accomplished is never explained. All we know is, that however it is that people make a living, it isn't through capitalism as we know it. Stocks, corporations, banking, bonds, letters of credit -- all these things seem to have disappeared. We never see Picard, or anyone else, reviewing his investment portfolio. And those who still have a lowly interest in buying and selling, like the Ferengi, are not only essentially thieves, but ultimately only accept payment in precious commodities. In the bold new future of cosmic civilization, galactic trade is carried on in little better than a Phoenician style of barter, despite the possibilities of pan-galactic banking and super-light speed money transfers made possible by "sub-space" communications.

Too much of Star Trek has always reflected trendy leftist political sentiments. It was appropriate that John Lennon's "Imagine" should have been sung at the 30th Anniversary television special: Capitalism and religion get little more respect from Star Trek than they do from Lennon. Profit simply cannot be mentioned without a sneer. The champions of profit, the Ferengi, not only perceive no difference between honest business, piracy, and swindle, but their very name, the Hindi word for "European" (from Persian Farangi), seems to be a covert rebuke to European civilization. At the same time, one can find little in the way of acknowledgement of the role of religion in life that, whether in India or in Europe, would be essential. Although exotic extraterrestrials, like the Klingons and Bajorans, have quaint religious beliefs and practices, absolutely nothing seems to be left of the historic religions of Earth: There are no Jews, no Christians, no Moslems, no Buddhists, no Hindus, no Jains, no Confucians, and no Sikhs, or anything else, on any starship or settlement in the Federation. (Star Trek is, not to put too fine a point on it, what the Nazis called "Judenfrei," free of Jews [see endnote], a condition that Marx also anticipated with the death of Capitalism -- though Leonard Nimoy did introduce, subversively, the hand sign of the Hebrew letter "shin" to signify the Trek benediction, "Live long and prosper.") With no practitioners, there are no chaplains for the crew -- no ministers, no priests, no rabbis, no mullas, no brahmins, no monks, no nuns. The closest thing to religious advice is the tedious psycho-babble of counselor Troi. The absence of traditional human religions stands in stark contrast to the more recent, shortlived science ficiton series, Firefly.

Why there is this conspicuous absence of religion is made plain in a third season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "Who Watches the Watchers?" It concerns a planet of people who are still at only a pre-industrial level of development but who are related to the Vulcans and, presumably because of this, are so intellectually advanced that they long ago ceased to believe in anything so absurd as a God (so some races are just smarter than others?(!?) -- sounds like some kind of racism). Because a Federation observing post and its advanced technology is inadvertently revealed, one of the natives mistakenly takes Captain Picard to himself be the God of ancient belief. He spreads the word among his people. The rest of the episode is then taken up with how this folly can be undone without otherwise distorting the natural development of the natives. In the end, they realize that Picard is not God, and they continue on their previous path of atheistic wisdom.

Such a story is so blatantly hostile to theistic religion, that it is astonishing that it provoked neither comment nor protest. Perhaps the messages contained in science fiction television are simply not noticed. Movies have a somewhat higher profile and, indeed, the futile quest for God in the fifth Star Trek movie, The Final Frontier, provoked the comment from Michael Medved, a political conservative and devout Jew, that it was the same old "secular humanism." Even the aforementioned religious beliefs and practices of the Klingons and Bajorans seem to consist of little more than ritual and mythology, and one is left with the impression that respect for such things is motivated more by cultural relativism than by a sense that they might contain religious truths of interest to others. The Star Trek universe is one without religious truths -- where the occasional disembodied spirit can be explained away with talk about "energy" or "subspace."

If daily life is not concerned with familiar economic activities and the whole of life is not informed with religious purposes, then what is life all about in Star Trek? Well, the story is about a military establishment, Star Fleet, and one ship in particular in the fleet, the Enterprise. One might not expect this to provide much of a picture of ordinary civilian life; and it doesn't. One never sees much on Earth apart from the Star Fleet Academy and Picard's family farm in France -- unless of course we include Earth's past, where the Enterprise spends much more time than on the contemporaneous Earth. Since economic life as we know it is presumed not to exist in the future, it would certainly pose a challenge to try and represent how life is conducted and how, for instance, artifacts like the Enterprise get ordered, financed, and constructed. And if it is to be represented that things like "finance" don't exist, one wonders if any of the Trek writers or producers know little details about Earth history like when Lenin wanted to get along without money and accounting and discovered that Russia's economy was collapsing on him. Marx's prescription for an economy without the cash nexus was quickly abandoned and never revived. Nevertheless, Marx's dream and Lenin's disastrous experiment is presented as the noble and glorious future in Star Trek: First Contact, where Jean Luc Picard actually says, "Money doesn't exist in the Twenty-Fourth Century."

So what one is left with in Star Trek is military life. Trying to soften this by including families and recreation on the Enterprise in fact makes the impression worse, since to the extent that such a life is ordinary and permanent for its members, it is all the easier to imagine that all life in the Federation is of this sort. Not just a military, but a militarism. In the show, this actually didn't work out very well. In the beginning, Star Trek: The Next Generation wanted to remind us of the daily life, children in school, etc. on board; and more than once the "battle hull" of the ship was separated from the "saucer" so that the civilian component of the crew would be safe from hostile action. This cumbersome expedient, however, was soon enough forgotten; and we later forget, as the Enterprise finds itself in desperate exchanges with hostile forces, that small children are undergoing the same battle damage that we see inflicted on the bridge -- unless of course it is brought to our attention because there is a story with a special focus on a child, as with Lieutenant Worf's son. In Star Trek: First Contact, crew members are being captured and turned into Borg. Does that include the children? We never see any. Do Picard's orders to shoot any Borg include Borg who were human children? This disturbing situation is completely ignored by the movie. Star Trek, therefore, cannot maintain its fiction that military life on a major warship will be friendly to families and children.

In the 20th Century there has been a conspicuous political ideology that combines militarism, the subordination of private economic activity to collective social purposes, and often the disparagement of traditional religious beliefs and scruples: Fascism, and not the conservative Fascism of Mussolini and Franco, who made their peace with the Church and drew some limits about some things (Franco even helped Jews escape from occupied France), but the unlimited "revolutionary," Nihilistic Fascism of Hitler, which recoiled from no crime and recognized no demands of conscience or God above the gods of the Führer and the Volk. Certainly the participants in all the forms of Star Trek, writers, staff, producers, actors, fans, etc., would be horrified, insulted, and outraged to be associated with a murderous and discredited ideology like Fascism; but I have already noted in these pages how naive philosophers and critics have thoughtlessly adopted the philosophical foundations of Fascism from people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger to what they think are "progressive" causes in the present day.

This danger has come with the corruption of the idea of "progress" away from individualism, the rule of law, private property, and voluntary exchanges -- in short the characteristics of capitalism and the free market -- into collectivist, politicized, and ultimately totalitarian directions. Star Trek well illustrates the confusion, ignorance, and self-deception that are inherent in this process. Dreams of Utopia have turned to horror in this century so often, but the same dreams continue to be promoted just because they continue to sound good to the uninformed. As Thomas Sowell recent wrote about the determination of many to find Alger Hiss innocent of espionage, regardless of the evidence:

"Hiss is dead but the lies surrounding his case linger on. So do the attitudes that seek a cheap sense of superiority by denigrating this country and picturing some foreign hell hole as a Utopia."

Star Trek has a Utopia to picture, or at least a world free of many of the ills perceived in the present, but it doesn't have to deal with anything so inconvenient as the experience of history. Star Trek is free to disparage business and profit without the need to explain what would replace them. Star Trek is free to disparage religious belief and ignore traditional religions without the need to address the existential mysteries and tragedies of real life in ways that have actually meant something to the vast majority of human beings. And it is particularly interesting that Star Trek is free to do all this with the convenience of assimilating everything to the forms of military life, where collective purpose and authority are taken for granted. Captain Picard does indeed end up rather like God, come to think of it.

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Postscript:
Note that this discussion is based on aired episodes and movies, mainly those of the original series and of Star Trek: the Next Generation. Other materials that have been published or posted for Star Trek enthusiasts may address some issues, like whether there are always children on the Enterprise, but it is the message presented on the screen, whether on television or in the theater, seen by most casually interested viewers, that I am addressing.

Several correspondents have pointed out how the Enterprise of Star Trek: the Next Generation was destroyed in one of the movies and that the next ship was not built to contain families and children. Two points about that: (1) the movie was made after the entire series was over, so the idea of removing the families and children comes a little late to be taken too seriously; and (2) the idea that the next Enterprise to be constructed doesn't contain families or children isn't actually stated in subsequent movies but has been added in the external lore that has accumulated around the series. This can hardly be taken too seriously either. It is certainly a half-hearted response to criticisms like those voiced here. Other correspondents simply don't like capitalism and write, not to defend Star Trek against charges of being anti-capitalist, but to defend it for admittedly being anti-capitalist.

Copyright (c) 1996, 1998, 1999, 2005, 2006

*The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek, Note
To be fair, science fiction historically has really never portrayed familiar religious practices as surviving into the future. Isaac Asimov treated the situation of the Jews only indirectly by transforming all of the inhabitants of Earth into Jew-like pariahs in Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. Star Trek, however, has special problems. A big point is made in the original series, with Scotty and Chekov, that ethnic identities, even ethnic accents, survive into the future. One "oy vay" from a character wouldn't have cost them much. Perhaps this would have been regarded as too ethnic -- reminiscent of the kinds of stereotypes and hostilities that are supposed to be absent in the future. The hostility to religion implicit in traditional science fiction, furthermore, Star Trek ends up making explicit, at least in Star Trek the Next Generation, as detailed in the text. Thus, Star Trek has a little more explaining to do for the people who are missing than most other science fiction.

[This article was originally published here. Thanks to the author for permission to reproduce for Trekdom.]

Comments and Discussion

Star Trek and Religion: From Iconoclasm to Tolerance

by Jared B.

In a 1991 interview with The Humanist, Gene Roddenberry spoke candidly about his views on religion:

"It was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense, largely magical, superstitious things… I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious."

In many ways, Star Trek: The Original Series reflected Roddenberry’s skepticism and lack of faith. His envisioned universe of the future centered on man alone as the ultimate authority, in complete control of his own destiny. With unlimited potential, human beings could become godlike, utilizing science, reason, and technology to explore the unknown and explain the phenomenal. There was no higher authority that the crew of the Enterprise must bow down before. There were no theological truths, only universal and secular humanistic ideals. Everything in the Trekverse could be explained through reason and rationality. Just as there was no “absolute evil,” there was no “absolute benevolence.” In short, the Star Trek universe was godless.

In its evolutionary view of human progress, Star Trek disposed of religion and superstition as relics of the past. Any alien society that worshipped deities was deemed inferior and less enlightened. Indeed, Captain Kirk became the ultimate iconoclast and destroyer of false gods. For example, in “Who Mourns for Adonais,” Kirk and crew encounter the Greek God Apollo, who demands their worship in exchange for providing a lush paradise. Kirk is very clear: Apollo is an artifact, interesting from a scientific point-of-view, but in no way to be treated as a deity. Worship would be servitude and blind obedience, the very negation of the most cherished of human values: freedom and self-determination. With his ship and crew in peril, Kirk destroys Apollo’s temple, which is the energy source of his godlike magic tricks. Thoroughly defeated, Apollo admits, “the time is past; there is no room for gods.”

“Who Mourns for Adonais” is but one example of a recurring theme in Star Trek: evolution, freedom, and self-determination require the destruction of gods, whether in the form of aliens with godlike abilities (“The Squire of Gothos,”) or supercomputers that pretend to be divine (“The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”) When Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy raise questions about the Prime Directive of non-interference with the natural evolution of these cultures, Kirk’s justification is always the same: These people, in being forced to worship and obey, are no longer evolving naturally; their culture is one of stagnation. They must be forced to know the truth: that their god is a lie, and it must be destroyed for their own good.

Were there exceptions to this theme? In “Bread and Circuses” the worship of “The Son” (Christianity) is presented in a positive light. Former slaves embrace this new religion and rebel against the injustice and barbarity of Roman rule. The Enterprise crew admired and supported that rebellion. Yet, this did not mean that they admired Christianity. Instead, they valued the rejection of authority within the natural “parallel” evolution of the planet’s culture, which, reason suggests, would eventually overthrow “The Son” as 24th century humans had done ages past. There is also the infamous line in “Who Mourns for Adonais” when Kirk states, “We have no need for Gods; we find the one quite adequate,” which endorses a monotheistic view of the universe. However, it could be argued that Roddenberry allowed this line because he was placating the audience, just as he had done in Have Gun, Will Travel. As he admitted years later, he could never fully say what he wanted in the late 1960s, due to network interference and censorship.

With Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roddenberry’s atheistic vision of the future was expressed in more forceful ways. “The Chase” made it clear that all humanoids had evolved from a common species that roamed the galaxy dropping the primordial building blocks of life on different planets. In other words, the origins of humanity were anything but divinely inspired. Other episodes, such as “Devil’s Due” relished the dethroning of false gods. Yet, by far, the most explicit rejection of religion and faith came with “Who Watches the Watchers.” When the Mintakans, a primitive yet enlightened culture, mistake Captain Picard for “an Overseer” (a deity discredited long ago as myth), they begin to revisit those false beliefs of the past. Picard is explicit about what this means for the Mintakans: If they continue to believe in a god, then their culture is “de-evolving.” Re-introducing religion into their enlightened society represents the ultimate violation of the Prime Directive. The unintended, yet immense damage caused by religion must be undone, even if it required Picard to sacrifice his life to prove that he is not divine.

Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation were Roddenberry’s Treks, explicitly atheistic while espousing the absolute truth of secular humanism, a belief system that worships man and science, not magic or alien parlor tricks. Even when Roddenberry was not directly involved in the writing and production of episodes or films, many writers stayed true to the original “spirit” of Roddenberry’s iconoclasm:

Kirk: Excuse me. I’d just like to ask a question. What does God need with a starship?
Voice of a false God: Bring the ship closer.
Kirk: I said, what does God need with a starship?
McCoy: Jim, what are you doing?
Kirk: I’m asking a question.
Voice of a false God: Who is this creature?
Kirk: Who am I? Don’t you know? Aren’t you God?
Voice of a false God: You doubt me?
Kirk: I seek proof.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier concludes with yet another death of a god. Arguably, this film was a more deserving dedication to Gene Roddenberry’s legacy than was its successor, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Roddenberry’s legacy didn’t survive intact after his death. Perhaps it began in executive producer Rick Berman’s office, where a small bust of Gene Roddenberry’s head was sometimes blindfolded during creative discussions. Whether Berman and others were consciously “retuning” Trek to be less critical of religion is debatable. It may have happened unconsciously, with many writers unaware that Roddenberry was turning in his grave. Yet, Berman-era Trek’s attitude towards religion, faith, and spirituality was extremely different from Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation. Deep Space Nine explored Bajoran spirituality fairly open-mindedly, and the lead character, in the end, embraced his role as a spiritual emissary to the “Prophets.” Instead of lumping all religion into the category of bigotry and intolerance, Deep Space Nine distinguished between good and evil religious figures, as well as healthy and harmful forms of worship. Characters also became more open about faith. Although Deep Space Nine’s believers (Kira and Quark) tended to be outside of the “godless” Federation, Voyager’s first officer Chakotay was a man of intense spirituality. Faith and religion now had a place on the bridge of a starship. Additionally, post-Roddenberry Trek began portraying “gods” who could be downright benevolent. The wormhole aliens protected the Bajoran people, and they even took sides in the Dominion War. In Voyager, the Caretaker clearly loved the Okampa, and his most inhumane actions occurred in efforts to save his “children.”

Post-Roddenberry Trek displayed a reverence and respect for religion and faith that had been largely absent from the Star Trek franchise. Regardless of one’s judgment of how this change affected the franchise, it is a definite part of Rick Berman’s legacy. It is also telling that when the reins were handed to a TOS fan, Manny Coto, during the last seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, the episode “Chosen Realm” suddenly brought the franchise full circle, back to Roddenberry’s hostility towards gods.

Were these changes good for the Star Trek franchise? It is unclear. On one hand, Berman’s Trek showed a tolerance and respect for faith that fit well with Star Trek’s embrace of diversity and IDIC philosophy. One of the central contradictions of Roddenberry’s beliefs had been resolved by tossing out his intolerance for “superstition” and “idiotic primitive beliefs” while leaving in proclamations of tolerance and diversity. On the other hand, perhaps something inspiring was lost in the mix of cultural relativism. The intense faith in humanity’s potential to be its own god, the comfort of universal scientific truths, and the crusade to bring freedom and self-determination to the enslaved and stagnant were inspiring parts of Gene Roddenberry’s vision. Although it bordered on the fanatical, Roddenberry’s atheism was still a hopeful vision of a future in which humans controlled their own destinies in a mature and enlightened way.

Star Trek’s depiction of religion and faith could also be seen as a reflection of its contemporary context. In the late 1960s, many intellectuals thought as Roddenberry, espousing faith in science while preaching classic values of the Enlightenment. Yet, by the 1990s, Trek took the postmodern turn as academics and other intellectuals struggled to adopt a more subjective outlook on other cultures and religions. Where the franchise will go in the future is unknown. Star Trek is now in the hands of J.J. Abrams, whose previous work on Lost explored the deep tensions between faith and reason. It will be interesting to see how Abrams’ perspective influences Star Trek.

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Sources consulted:

Porter, Jennifer E. and Darcee L. McLaren, eds., Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture (1999)

Kraemer, Ross S., William Cassidy, and Susan L. Schwartz, eds., Religions of Star Trek (2001)

Comments and Reviews

Gene Roddenberry's Atheism: In his own words

Trekdom invites readers to read and react to the following quotes from a 1991 interview with Gene Roddenberry. Is Roddenberry being fair to religion or Christianity? Are his criticisms valid? Did the Star Trek universe reflect those beliefs?

Gene Roddenberry's Atheism: In his own words



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My family was from the South. My mother was very religious. Every Sunday we went to church, Baptist church. I didn't really take religion that seriously. It was obvious to me, almost from the first, that there were certain things that needed explaining and thinking on, but why bother about them? I was a child. Life was interesting and pleasant.

I think the first time I really became aware of religion, other than the little things you do as a child because Mom says to do it (it was mostly Mom) was when I went to church. In my early teens I decided to listen to the sermon. I guess I was around 14 and emerging as a personality. I never really paid much attention to the sermon before. I was more interested in the deacon's daughter and what we might be doing between services.

I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?

I guess from that time it was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense, largely magical, superstitious things. In my own teen life, I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious.

I don't remember ever being serious about any of those things. When I sang in the choir, we made up cowboy words to the choir songs. The rest of the choir would be singing "Holy, Holy Jesus," and we would be singing something entirely different.

At five years old I was serious about Santa Claus, but at five and a half I learned it was nonsense. Writers often write these as weighty moments, but in my experience they're not. Santa Claus doesn't exist. Yes, I think back now that there were all sorts of reasons he could not exist and maybe have a little sadness that he is gone, but then I think the same thing about Jesus and the church.

So my thinking about religion sort of stultified at that time and I just decided not to pay any attention to it. I stopped going to church as soon as it became possible for me to do things on my own as a teenager. I made up my mind that church, and probably largely the Bible, was not for me. I did not go back to even thinking much about it for years. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you and you can go on with your life.



I can't say I didn't care about it or examine it; I just let it pass lightly over me. Religion was so full of inconsistencies that I could see no point in arguing each inconsistency out. It was background noise that you ignore.

I've been thinking about how I said that religion seemed pretty foolish to me for most of my life. Indeed, it did, but then comes the question of why didn't I take a stand against it? I used religion several times in Have Gun, Will Travel. Once in a penitentiary where a pastor was trying to keep a fellow from being hung, I wrote that the pastor grabbed a hacksaw blade, was cut by it, and was bleeding. I had him make some comment about blood and salvation. It's not that I actually believed in blood and salvation being connected, but that was the way the audience believed and I can remember going out of my way not to deal directly with what my thoughts were for several reasons.

There will always be the fundamentalism and the religious right, but I think there has been too much of it. I keep hoping that it is temporary foolishness. Some of it will always be around because there will always be people who are so mean-spirited and such limited thinkers that their religious beliefs seem so logical: that there is a god, and so forth, that nothing else in their limited concept can explain what the existence of a god can. There's been a lot of it lately: Youth for Christ and that sort of thing. I'm hoping that this is just a bump in time.

Of course, the only thing that will keep such things from continuing and growing is education. Dewey was right about that. Unless we have an educated populace, there's no telling what may come along. The pressures of life are so great that a certain percentage of all these uneducated people will come up with strange ideas. Strange, violent ideas. They seem to have good answers for all of our problems. I don't think life's problems are such that we have to rely on simplistic answers instead of thinking things through. I think these things will be found in proportion to and in reverse order of how well we educate ---populace.



Source: Humanist 1991 interview by David Alexander.

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