What is Zeonism? How has it changed over the Universal Century? A review of the political movements of the Solar Sphere from U.C. 0050 onwards.
Published
Updated
This Federation Survey Service report aims to collect a comprehensive list of the variations on Zeonism, which can be loosely defined as the philosophy based on the teachings of Zeon Zum Deikun. It will address three main topics:
This report is a work in progress. If you have resources or other bits you’d like to see added here, please contact the author via @ontploffing@writing.exchange, irradiate-space on tumblr, or u/red_adair, or other relevant methods.
The state of progress at this time is:
People to check up on:
Items not yet written, but deserving of their own articles:
An examination of Zeonism, or any other major political movement, must choose one or more axes by which to examine it. To enumerate the possible axes, we begin by quoting at length an essay from Tumblr user Mitigated Chaos in their description of what a “nation” encompasses:
Under multi-level recurrent ecology, the world is viewed as existing in layers of increasing abstraction. Patterns emerge at the base level (replication, division, acquisition of resources, etc) of molecules, and then may reappear at greater levels of abstraction (often though not necessarily also more complex) such as the cell or multicellular organism.
“Zeon” is a nation, and thus like many things, a phenomenon which exists across multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously. It is,
- A people (and their associated biology, particularly noting the existence of newtypes)
- A place (the various space colonies and their environment)
- A memetic wave or ideology which synchronizes the actions of individuals and harmonizes their actions towards a specific direction (including rebellion against the ruling Earth Federation)
- An information environment within which that wave spreads
- A hierarchy and set of institutions guided by that ideology within that information environment which shape the actions of those people in that place
- A set of specific technologies which enable all of the above, including the eventual invasion of Earth with giant robots from space
- A sequence of events which enable all of this to happen
Cultivation of national ecology is not a form of transcendence nor in itself a moral action, but can be directed towards multiple ends, some of which are better or more moral than others. Further, the different layers of abstraction have different qualities, not just different quantities - as reasoning beings humans are able to make agreements or make changes to the world which are effectively unreachable to, say, iguanas. (Thus newtypes can be viewed from a certain perspective as being at a ‘higher level of evolution,’ due to their ability to reach a new level of communication, but of course that primarily makes sense as ‘figurative’ evolution, rather than literal.)
Of the levels of abstraction that Mitigated Chaos lists, this report is not concerned with: the common people, the locations of the space colonies, the information environment of the Earth Sphere, or the structure of the various governments or militaries. The sequence of events has been covered somewhat exhaustively in the scholarship of Yoshiyuki Tomino. His scholarship is often published through Sunrise.
I’m similarly uninterested in comparing Zeonism to any events, ideologies, or movements of the Anno Domini calendar era. Universal Century histories often have obvious allusions to themes from the Anno Domini era, and it’s very easy to draw allusions between Zeonism and AD-era ideologies. Zeonism was born in, and generally occurs in, a fundamentally different material and historical context. Reducing the Zeonism of any given time or character to a mere analogy to an AD-era movement is to strip Zeonism of that context, and thereby lose clarity of analysis. The process of drawing the allusion requires to provide AD-era context. This report does not seek to answer the question “Which AD-era ideology is Zeonism most like?”
Those who seek answers to the former question may build upon this report’s research and findings, for this report seeks to answer a more-foundational question: “What is Zeonism?”
It is the memetic content of Zeonism that interest me: the “ideology which synchronizes the actions of individuals and harmonizes their actions towards a specific direction”.
As early as U.C. 0068, Zeon Zum Deikun was articulating the ideas that would later become Zeonism. The following decades included rapid formation and dissolution of various Zeonist governments and factions during a period of frequent military conflict.
One problem that makes the presentation of this analysis difficult is that several characters’ opinions evolve over time, in response to each other over the course of many years. For example, Casval Rem Deikun’s Zeonism derives necessarily from the ideals of his father Zeon Zum Deikun, but it is also affected by the Zeonism of his classmates at school, the battles he fights, and the people he encounters during his travels.
Another problem is that several characters affiliated with Zeonism don’t appear to be Zeonists — or, if they are Zeonists, their Zeonism no longer reflects the ideals of Zeon Zum Deikun. Consider Full Frontal, the so-called “second coming of Char Aznable”, who unlike Char decided to abandon Earth. Or Haman Karn, the regent of Zeon, who seemed more concerned with putting Mineva Zabi on the throne of the Principality of Zeon than with advancing a Zeonist agenda.
The final problem is that the Universal Century histories are written in Japanese. An English-speaking person like this report’s author might only be able to find amateur translations, if in fact any copies of a work are available. This is the case for the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn novels, which this report relies on extensively to describe the ideology of the Sleeves faction. In many cases, the video presentations lack official dubbing, and instead the only available option is the original Japanese audio paired with fan translations as subtitles. As you read the quotes in this report, keep in mind that there may be translation errors.
Finally, there’s the question of “canonicity”. Many scholars in this field feel that the true version of history is the version presented in a subset of the animated works. Unfortunately, these works are not very detailed, and focus more on mobile suit combat than on the reasons for the conflict. For that reason, I aim to assess as many written and animated works as possible. Some works provide alternative viewpoints on the same events, or introduce a differing version of that history. For this reason, this report is written from the perspective of an Earth Federation Survey Forces officer, sometime after the events described herein. (Also, the FSS logo is top-tier.)
People’s beliefs and praxis change over time. Political movements can be tents large enough to hold people with different ideas. Different histories present different takes and different versions of events. Language barriers may prevent perfect understanding. These may seem significant obstacles, but preliminary research showed that it was possible to pluck common themes from the histories of the Universal Century that are available.
Therefore, with caution tempered by hope, this project.
Zeon Zum Deikun was a political philosopher, whose ideals inspired a political movement. His conveniently-untimely death kicked off a series of armed conflicts that killed billions-with-a-b of people, on Earth and in space.
The Zeonism of Zeon Zum Deikun comprised several distinct ideas, which were loosely related:
Together, the ideas have been called “Contolism”, though they are more commonly named after their author: Zeonism.
Not every follower of Zeon Zum Deikun adopted every tenet of his philosophy, and not every adopter was a Zeonist. But in the century after Zeon Deikun’s death, I think that most people who called themselves Zeonists or who fought under the flag of Zeon did believe in at least some of the philosopher’s ideas.
When the same philosophy has different versions at different points in history, we put ‘neo-‘ on the beginning when we talk about a later revival, to remind us that it’s different from the original.
Carlyle Foster, in Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer, chapter 9: “Every Soul That Ever Died”
Just as neo-Platonism came after Platonism, the Neo-Zeonists revived and revised the Zeonism of their predecessors.
There are many significant Neo-Zeonist movements, notably including:
The organizing ideas and documents of these movements are rarely, if ever, documented directly.
Instead, we are left to draw the ideology from the statements of people who join these movements and fight for them, and the people who fight against them. Each major person or group is split into their own pages, listed and summarized here:
The Zeonism of Casval Rem Deikun, among his other names:
The Zeonism of the Zabis: Gihren, Degwin, Kycilia:
The Zeonism of Anavel Gato and contemporaries:
Haman Karn, regent of Zeon, protector of the child Mineva Zabi, is a difficult character, because her Zeonism is viewed through the lens of Zabi-ism. She was raised in Zabi-ist circles, by Zabi-ists, with no political alternatives. In speeches to Zeon soldiers, she proclaimed that Axis Zeon’s conquest of Earth was to restore the Zabis to rule. The Zabis were the method by which she hoped to achieve Spacenoid independence and environmental cleanup of Earth, and fulfill Zeon Zum Deikun’s prophecies. But did she want to achieve those goals because they were the Zabis’ goals, or did she back the Zabis to achieve those goals? Was there even a conscious choice made to become regent? She was given the role at the age of 15.
Mashymre Cello is loyal to Haman, personally. Brainwashed, even. He is not shown as believing in either Zeon or the Zabis, but instead solely Haman.
Glemy Toto starts as a commander loyal to Haman’s vision of a Zabi heir, and his Zeonism is the Zeonism preached by the Zabis, but in the end he uses the veil of Zabiism to cloak himself in legitimacy as he splits another faction from Axis Zeon.
The Zeonism of Mineva Lao Zabi, heir to the Principality of Zeon, sees a future that contains both Newtypes and Oldtypes, working together. She’s not a Spacenoid supremacist or separatist, in contrast to many Zeonists. She is opposed to war.
The Zeonism of Monaghan Baharov, foreign/defense minister of the Republic of Zeon, and leader of the Wind’s Assembly, is motivated by realpolitik. His actions reignite conflict after the Laplace Incident.
This article also covers the Sleeves remnants in U.C. 0097.
Rita Bernal, a Newtype orphan raised within the Federation, knows of Zeonism only the Newtype theory.
Ideologies informed by Zeonism, but not directly claiming to be Zeonist, are also detailed:
The Titans were formed by the Earth Federation in late 0083 to hunt down Zeon Remnants and other “terrorists”. The Titans quickly became independent and absorbed many Zeon factions as they sought to reform or replace the Federation government.
The ideology of Paptimus Scirocco, the Man from Jupiter, is a distant echo of Zeonism, but it allows him to ally with Axis Zeon.
The Anti-Earth Union Group fought the Titans, but they weren’t part of the Federation. The AEUG and its Terrestrial sister organization Karaba eventually became subsumed within the Earth Federation Forces as part of Londo Bell, but their independence allowed them to push against the Federation, the Titans, and the Zeon groups of the 0080s.
With a human population between ten and twenty billion people, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are so many different people and takes on Zeonism in the Universal Century.
… This is still a work in progress. You seriously think I’d have a conclusion? This work started in 2019. Set a calendar reminder to check back in a year.