"Dr. Strangelove" predicted the future

President Trump and everyone who supports him acts like the insane general from the movie.

“Dr. Strangelove,” a 1964 black comedy directed and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, imagines a scenario in which an insane United States brigadier general orders a baseless preemptive attack on the Soviet Union. Specifically, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) claims fluoridation is a Communist conspiracy to cause mass impotence among American men. He would rather risk global nuclear holocaust than live in a world which compromises his manhood…. even if it is only compromised in his own mind.

This brings me to why “Dr. Strangelove” is my favorite Kubrick film. As I discussed in a recent interview with Kubrick experts Tony Zierra and Elizabeth Yoffe (creators of the Kubrick documentaries “Filmworker” and “SK13”), “Dr. Strangelove” is depressingly, frighteningly relevant to modern politics. From President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth all the way down to grassroots anti-vaxxers and QAnon adherents, it seems as if the entire MAGA movement is populated by real-world Rippers.

If you want to see the full interview (including Zierra’s contributions, which are not included here), check out the clip embedded below.

ROZSA: You and I were discussing before this interview, Liz, that there really were people in the 1960s who believed that fluoridation was a Communist conspiracy to render men impotent. I actually know that my great-uncle in 1973 spoke at a town hall meeting in New Jersey against the John Birch Society, which claimed that fluoridation was a Communist plot to render us impotent. The point I’m making is that General Jack D. Ripper was not a far-fetched character when he was brought to America’s pop culture mainstream in 1964. And now in 2025, it looks like the President is Jack D. Ripper, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth is a stand in for Jack D. Ripper, and half the administration of the government are Jack D. Rippers. How do you think Kubrick would feel about all of these observations?

YOFFE: What you’re saying is fascinating and, okay, I go back to my theme that I keep hitting. Look at how much a man who made this movie way back is hitting what’s happening right now. So this absurdity that we’re seeing in the movie and in our lives at the moment is something that exists. He, Kubrick, liked to heighten the way that the characters came across…

Later I added,

ROZSA: I could see Pete Hegseth in the Slim Pickens role riding a nuclear warhead to all of our destruction while cheering and yeehawing, and it looks like a phallic symbol, which was absolutely deliberate on Kubrick’s part.

YOFFE: Oh, absolutely, yes.

ROZSA: To me, when Hegseth gave that macho BS speech at the Pentagon, it was the rhetorical equivalent of Pickens riding that phallic bomb to all of our end. It really is, because it’s about how stupid macho posturing governs so much of our foreign policymaking. What bothers me is, shouldn’t a movie like “Dr. Strangelove” have helped humanity collectively evolve past that kind of thinking?

YOFFE: Well, that’s an interesting point. You’re saying there’s a lot of, shouldn’t this… I don’t have the quote right in front of me, but I can say that Kubrick himself really felt that even though his art had resonance, that he did not believe that it could change anything.

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Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 6

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Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.