Situation in Paris

[Grumman]

Remember Starship Troopers? The book, not the movie, when they had propaganda films of the Bugs raping human women to get the men all pissed off and primally angry so they'd join the military and fight?

...no, I don't. Are you insane?

[madd0ct0r]

Remember Starship Troopers? The book, not the movie, when they had propaganda films of the Bugs raping human women to get the men all pissed off and primally angry so they'd join the military and fight? That what this sort of story is - propaganda to kick you in the monkey brain so you'll go apeshit over The Enemy. You have to ask yourself - who profits from this? Certainly not the unquestioning folks who take the bait.

Remember Starship Troopers? The book, not the movie, when they had propaganda films of the Bugs raping human women to get the men all pissed off and primally angry so they'd join the military and fight?

...no, I don't. Are you insane?

Damn. I gave The Forever War to a charity chop in the last big culling, so I can't quote the passage but I can confirm it is present.

[Agent Fisher]

I read the book again last month... And I don't remember that at all.

[Bedlam]

It is the Forever War rather than Starship Troopers, if I remember correctly it was a false memory implanted in the troops to activate as soon as they first met the enemy. Earth hadn't even seen the enemy then so it ended up that the images don't end up matching who they're fighting at all.

[SpottedKitty]

I read the book again last month... And I don't remember that at all.

Neither do I — it sounds more like one of the deliberately over-the-top propaganda snippets from one of the films (which I watched once and promptly forgot most of it because it was such a heap of dreck).

[Elheru Aran]

Dudes... she got the book/movie wrong. Mixed it up with The Forever War by Haldeman.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

It's fine, Broomstick just took a thing from one of two classic military science fiction novels (The Forever War) and mis-attributed it to the other classic novel (Starship Troopers). The (painfully memorable) scene in question is definitely in The Forever War, it's a real scene and she didn't make it up or anything.

In regards to the actual terrorist attack, the entire thing took place over a period of three and a half hours. During the hostage situation at the Bataclan theater there was time for some of the terrorists to commit tortures and atrocities, it is at least not physically impossible that such a thing could have happened.

But as another mentioned, if Fox reports something like this I tend to regard it as evidence against it being true, simply because they are so eager to report such things that they are very likely to seize on a fake leak or repeat someone else's lie. It's not like they'll get in trouble or lose credibility with their core audience if they're wrong.

This may be bad logic but I can't help myself.

[Wild Zontargs]

It is the Forever War rather than Starship Troopers, if I remember correctly it was a false memory implanted in the troops to activate as soon as they first met the enemy. Earth hadn't even seen the enemy then so it ended up that the images don't end up matching who they're fighting at all.

Yup, this bit:

I knew it was just posthypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they'd implanted it, but that didn't make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudomemories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists' vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn't stand the acceleration), then raping the women to death with huge veined purple members (ridiculous that they would feel desire for humans), holding the men down while they plucked flesh from their living bodies and gobbled it (as if they could assimilate the alien protein)...a hundred grisly details as sharply remembered as the events of a minute ago, ridiculously overdone and logically absurd. But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters...

[Grumman]

That explains it. Obviously Broomstick didn't mean anything by it, but bullshit like that is why I like Starship Troopers and loathe The Forever War.

[Broomstick]

It is the Forever War rather than Starship Troopers, if I remember correctly it was a false memory implanted in the troops to activate as soon as they first met the enemy. Earth hadn't even seen the enemy then so it ended up that the images don't end up matching who they're fighting at all.

^ Yes, sorry, it was The Forever War and not Starship Troopers. Apologies for getting the two confused. Probably doesn't help I read both of them a quarter century ago so my recollections are a bit fuzzy by now.

[Broomstick]

Duplicate post deleted.

Apparently I am now old enough to repeat myself without realizing it.