this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Do you have a link to that claim? The last time I saw a similar claim it said she said it on a radio program or something. So is there any documentation I can bookmark or is it just hearsay? Because while early ST (ToS, TNG especially) definitely had some vibes, I kind of been under the assumption lately that Roddenberry was an idealist who wasn't any more communist than some turn of last century bourgeoisie who imagined mass communal projects and a peaceful futurist transition to a kind of very regimented social democracy.
I don't have the original source, I only found a few others online that repeated her statement.
After the red scares and anti-communist purges in the US the 30s-40s, no writers or anyone in hollywood could come out and say they were communist or socialist. Many of them like Roddenberry were only able to push communitarian values and do societal critiques of racism, nationalism, and selfishness via sci-fi.
Star trek is unique among US media for telling a hopeful story about a communist / post-capitalist future, but these already had a long tradition in the USSR. This article gets into it a bit more: