> You are likening a nation of humans to a fictional alien species?

If you don't like it, talk to Gene Roddenberry. In ST:TOS the Klingons (IIRC) were used as a stand in for the Soviets:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon#Conception

* https://www.history.com/news/star-trek-series-episodes-vietn...

Or you could view it as the anthropomorphization of the vice of greed or stinginess/miserliness/parsimony.

> "Hey, that story about Polish people reminds me of those scurrilous Romulans!"

Heh. You wanna guess where my ancestors come from? :)

:gasp: Romulus???

Most fiction tends to be based at least in some part on reality, whether the author explicitly intended it or not (allegorically or literally).

We learn from fiction. Try it. And... It's fine if you find it offensive. We don't care.

I always used to wonder if the races in the star trek universe had any correlation with human ethnicities.

I wouldn't say ethnicities... The Ferengi serm to be a personified contrasting ideology against the "we don't need money anymore" of the Federation.

Not to say that people won't overlay their own prejudices over what's actually there, but i see just an explicit contrast of ideas about economies.

Less ethnicities than cultures and metaphors. Darmok notwithstanding.

The Klingons were originally intended to look Asiatic and resemble Mongols or Japanese samurai, with the Klingon Empire being essentially the Soviet Union In Space. And there is an uncomfortable elephant in the room that Klingons, a species mostly known for violence and bloodlust, are all (or almost all) black coded. While the implications are obviously unintentional, it's impossible not to draw parallels in the history in sci-fi and fantasy to the "swarthy, dark-skinned savage" archetype.

Speaking of which here[0] is a video on Klingons and the history of racial coding in Star Trek if anyone is interested.

The relationship between Cardassians and Bajorans is clearly a metaphor for post-war Germany, with the former being Nazis and the latter Jews. Romulans, obviously, are Space Romans.

The Borg clearly represent the dehumanizing effect of technology and collectivism, making them a perfect foil for the Federation with its techno-utopian ideals. I've heard but can't prove that the Borg were meant to be a parody of Japanese business culture. There are alien stand ins for racial prejudice from "Let That Be your Last Battlefield" and nonbinary gender persecution from "The Outcast," and the Trill species in general. In cases like these, the aliens are meant to serve as a mirror to some aspect of humanity.

And of course the Ferengi have already been discusssed here.

Although in one egregious case (TNG's "Code of Honor")[1] the "aliens" were literally just African caricatures in space. And of course TOS gives us planets with literal space Nazis, space Romans, space Cowboys, space Greek Gods, space whatever costumes they could scrounge from the Desilu lot that week.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbSQWKV_T8

[1]https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/14/jonathan-frakes-and-denise-...

If you watch the first appearence of the Klingons they are obviously Mongol raiders. Later they are vikings?

General opinion for decades has been the Ferengi are specifically anti-Semitic stereotypes rather than generic Mediterranean-area stereotypes.

> In America, people ask 'Do the Ferengi represent Jews?' In England, they ask 'Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?' In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese[…] The Ferengi represent the outcast… it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[19]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Comparisons_with_anti-...

Or you could view them as the anthropomorphization of the vice of greed or stinginess/miserliness/parsimony.

As a Jew, I always just considered them space goblins...

So did I.

I forgot where I read it, but I believe Roddenberry modeled the Ferengi after New England traders in the 1800's.

This is stated directly in the episode that introduced them.