US President Donald Trump posted an image of dark “next generation” US Space Force uniforms on Sunday that the text claims were “inspired by the discipline and functionality of the Starship Trooper uniform” – a design the director of the 1997 film Starship Troopers said was directly meant to evoke Nazis.
Trump also posted an AI-generated image titled “Space Force” of himself in a spaceship as two nuclear mushroom clouds detonate on Earth behind him, part of a frenzy of Truth Social postings over the weekend that also included AI images of himself in a decorated military uniform and pondering changing “New Mexico” to “New America”.
The “next generation” uniforms, the image text stated, were “modernised for the Guardians of the space domain”.
The Space Force, which Trump signed into law in 2019, had already announced new service dress uniforms for their Guardians last year.
But Trump’s post was of black boots, black shirts and “midnight black” collars, seemingly evoking the villains in a science fiction film – which is what they were.
Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director of the 1995 film based on Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel about a space military fighting giant alien insects, said his film was about “fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism”.