Those were long seasons, 22 episodes each. The total is basically an epic novel written for TV. Nobody gets to do that today. Even author-driven shows like "The Last of Us" feel truncated at only 8-9 episodes with no guarantee of renewal.
22 episodes of 42 minutes each used to be standard for a season. 24 episodes was also pretty common. Granted, not all written by one person, but JMS had been planning a 5-season series for a long time before any network picked it up.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list...
The cult of tradition for example. If they really whorshipped traditions, facist movements wouldnt regularly destroy their whole environment and society, uprooting all that was before.
Take ISIS and Nazi Germany, they pretended to be pro Traditions, but at the same time destroyed all that had come before completely and utterly.
I found the "states regressing to tribal society und pressure while wielding a industrial economy" to be the better description of the problem.
Though in that criteria, ISIS was not that facist, as they never had the debt loaded industrial economy that defines a full scale non-local regression.
Side reference, but of course historian Eric Hobsbawm is the central name here, who wrote "the invention of traditions" about how this happens.
The Fascists of Italy were all about casting themselves as returning Italy to the glory of Ancient Rome, right down to the basic symbolism of the party.
A good read. Eco opens with how he know about fascism -- he was a kid in Italy when WW2 happened, and talked about how he won a child essay writing contest about the New Fascist Man, something he dwells on. But then he struggles to nail down what a New Fascist Man really is, and delves into his list.
Had to read it in college, worth the extra paragraphs.
I see the use of the badges and uniforms, for example the NightWatch armbands as a thing that repeats itself in history. For example the Nightwatch armbands are clearly modelled on Nazi uniforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_symbolism has some other examples
People forget now, but department of homeland security - with all its B5 connotations was originally a Democratic Party idea, which Bush resisted until he started getting beat up politically for not doing more to unify the intelligence and security functions post 9/11.
As for the telepaths - well that’s a different story..
In that context, Babylon 5 felt to me like a bad parody, taking cheap shots at the political landscape in the US at the time. For example, their equivalent to the DHS was something like the Earth Alliance security division, and just like how US senators were wearing little "USA flag pins" on their lapels, the politician characters in the show started wearing similar little pins on their lapels.
"I get it, you watch the news, stop making it so obvious." was what was going on in my mind for every second scene. It felt almost obnoxious... until I realised the show was made in the 1993 – 1998 time frame, years before any of the things it was showing had happened!
Suddenly, it blew my mind how prescient it was, how it was showing a society's journey down the road to military fascism, and how half the world was following the same path.
Around the same time I read someone's "Ten steps to a fascist society." article (also pre-2001!), and I realised that the B5 TV show was at step 8, and the United States was at step 7 and eagerly beginning work on the next step.
Then, Obama won the election. Whew.