When I read those books as a kid, I knew the human society was very fascist but I didn't read it as like an endorsement, just kind of a background. I wouldn't be surprised if something in one of those books was like "And the fascism is awesome" but I was able to enjoy that universe without feeling like I was rooting for the hellish society.

I think some of the earlier books talk about how bad the junta was, but it gets kind of swept aside due to the whole external forces committing genocide thing. Which is honestly kind of realistic, like if literally Covenent showed up literally today and started glassing the planet, it would be a little weird to fixate on how bad this country is, even though that's no less true than it was yesterday.

Obviously we'd come out of an alien invasion even more fascistic, but fascism is I suppose better than being completely wiped out by other space fascists.

I don't translate this into "sometimes collaborating with fascists is good" because it's such an outlandish scenario it's stupid to even factor that into literally anything.

It would be so fucking cool if a Halo game decided to have a revolution against the UNSC, but that'll probably never happen. I can hope though.