I'm hate-reading it for my book club. It already sucks for a bunch of reasons but it's also nakedly jingoistic in ways I don't even think the author understands because I think he's just a dumb rich kid (his father is Mel Brooks).
It's a zombie apocalypse book. The baseline we're working with is: if a country is a country its policies are good-to-neutral (for example Israel wisely accumulates all evidence of outbreaks and is the first to publish a report to warn the world, then is the only country to quarantine BUT SINCE THEY'RE SO WISE AND GRACIOUS THEY ALSO GRANT RIGHT OF RETURN SO PALESTINIANS CAN QUARANTINE WITH THEM) but any official enemy is disastrous evil (China hides the outbreak from the world, Russia slaughters their own troops to maintain rank, Iran starts a nuclear war). Also doesn't hesitate to slip in liberal conspiracy theories about them - the PLA makes millions selling human organs (extracted from live, unwilling subjects), Iran completes their nuclear program with assistance from DPRK.
I haven't got into the armed forces idolatry like there's so much that sucks about this book but this is the quote that made my eyes bulge out of my head:
Now, I am a good soldier, but I am also a West German. You understand the difference? In the East, they were told that they were not responsible for the atrocities of the Second World War, that as good communists, they were just as much victims of Hitler as anyone else. You understand why the skinheads and proto-fascists were mainly in the East? They did not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences.
Fuck this dumb book how did it receive such universal praise
Let's see: Nazis in Germany post-war were hired and brought directly back into:
but other than all of that though!
(And that's not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the "Victims of Communism Foundation" which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet "Captive Nations Lobby" headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)
ty comrade for doing my hard work for me to support my rant when my book club meets
No problem comrade.
all for good measure. The collaboration and support for modern Nazi groups including in Ukraine is its own whole list of nonsense; but predictably a direct legacy with all the same powers toward the same ends, because why would they ever have stopped? (it's like when people say "operation mockingbird and cointelpro were past programs they stopped those" --- why would they ever do that? and why would they honestly tell you if they did?)