Dune is not written from a liberal worldview.

I don't know Herbert's personal views, other than his hatred of Homosexuality, but Dune comes across as Extreme Machiavellianism

Depicting Machiavellian politics doesn't necessarily mean endorsing them. He uses them to explore how power works and how charismatic leaders, religious myths, and mass movements can produce disastrous consequences.

A book that has "action X1 creates good result Y, action X2 creates bad result Z" is absolutely an endorsement of X1 and condemnation of X2

My favorite version. The three hour fan edit.

It's nietzchean. The main theme is that chaos and struggle is necessary for human self actualization, indeed for human survival. The correctness of human hierarchy is assumed. The only question is whether that hierarchy can be engineered or whether it must emerge naturally through struggle and war.

He was very cautious of power and in particular politics masking as religion. This is exactly what liberal ideology is: a deracinated Millennialist Christianity (Voegelin's ideas are on point). Herbert was very happy with Lynch's film (which was made with a sequel in mind).

He enjoyed it, but, really wanted the Thufir death scene and hated the rain at the end (He talks about this in the Waldenbooks interview). Also, the Baron's doctor was originally meant to be Scytale in the sequel that never happened.

Yes; I'd read about this - I didn't realise until I started researching that Lynch was "merging" books as it were. I saw the 1984 film as a boy at the cinema and loved it. I was in the minority it would seem.

I've taken an interest in Dune as a side project to my academic interest. I have no doubt that Herbert was cynical in his day about the liberal establishment. I think if he had lived up until now he'd be called "far right" because he would have resisted our situation.

Absolutely. His frustrations, and people in general, haven’t changed much at all in the past 50 years.

I read the original 6 books 20 years ago, and it's clear he's NOT a liberal. But it was also clear that he had views that would of been considered both extreme rightist & extreme leftist in the same personal ideology today. Many right views with environmentalism, etc mixed in.

It's evident once you hear his interviews

source: richard spencer

That’s because people that build empires like that have jobs.

I know Frank Herbert was not a liberal but I am failing to see how a liberal worldview couldn't think of this. A book about critiquing religious fanaticism and how even the most virtuous aristocratic houses use the populace to advance themselves on a zensunni world.

Herbert was somewhat small L libertarian. He advocated for decentralisation. That said I personally don’t think a spacefaring humanity has to necessarily revert back to an older form of governance. If anything, given the long distances involved some form of anarcho-capitalism (some models of which essentially amount to a voluntary feudalism) is more likely to occur. On the other hand, the space feudal aesthetic is awesome and I wouldn’t change it.

😉

It was definitely one of baby's first redpills for me. To just imagine a world completely based on the pre-liberal conception of man, myth, religion, and politics started me down a rabbit hole there was coming back up from...

Yeah realistic interstellar colonization will likely use nuclear/antimatter rockets or solar sails to travel decades to nearby stars, but communication would still only be lightspeed. There may be liberal forms of society in said interstellar colonies but yes itd be decentralized