In-universe the Jihad was generally seen as a necessity. No one was really against it politically, even if they skirted around or violated it in actuality.

Not really everyone, Ixans viewed it as obstacle, but didn’t wanted to be nuked so they were making a lot of extra effort to comply even though they were actually violating it later during reign of Leto II. He allowed it because he needed the navigational computers which weren’t even close to thinking machines btw.

Basically all PoV’s were usually aristocracy, ubermench cultists or their cronies so they actually actively benefitted from the system put in place by the jihad, so no wonder they weren’t quiestioning it. Also 10000 years is A LOT of time to burn the supertistion in people’s minds, especially that author seemingly believed in some kind of biological species-wide memory that can be modified by social sciences.

Leto II said: “The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines. Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed.”

Not convincing, especially not from the galactic slaver and genocider. As example you can see when Duncan Idaho go to the village in and is shocked by how miserable everything looks and is informed that basically entire empire looks like that. Sense of beauty my ass, about the same as Narco Rubio or Heinrich Himmler telling about the western civilization.

With all his prescience he saw humankind dying out unless he followed the Golden Path.

Funnily enough unless we believe in Omnius literally the entire Golden Path was created to deal with the problems of Golden Path.

That is a kind of tragedy, to be very nearly all-powerful and all-knowing, to know right from wrong, and to have tyranny be the only way forward.

Yes now you get it, it’s a tragedy, though locked in place much earlier, during jihad. Also kwisatz haderach weren’t all-knowing, some in-universe characters expressed that and even Paul and Leto constantly complain that the prescience locked them in one vision, we don’t have literally any evidence that it was the only possible vision just the only one they saw, which they both admit. Also at least Paul had some possibilities to avoid and destroy that path but it would require him to die and he wasn’t willing.

and to have tyranny be the only way forward.

So sad, much necessary, wow, i bet no one ever in history used this excuse.

I don’t for a second believe that Frank made the jihad as a reference to Samuel Butler because he thought it was a bad idea. If the book had wanted to communicate that it was a bad idea, it would have been presented as one at some point.

Again you might refer to the genre of tradegy, the point of them is that there is some condition set up that make for a inevitable tragedy and that condition is usually portrayed just as existing fact, especially that Frank consistently portray the setting not as ever-knowing narrator but from the point of view of characers. So as i mentioned above barely anyone even have information or mindset to even question the jihad and those who do support it.

On the other hand, we also see complete ahistorical absence of any kind of socialist thought and we know authow was a lib, so he might just liked primitivism, feudalism and objectification of the masses. Again, we constantly see the PoV of elites and humanity in entirety or even smaller portions of it shown as the grey amorphous mass with barely any agency which need to be directed by this or that ubermesch cult.

Lmao it is my favourite sci-fi book, it is a great Greek tragedy. And if anything, it is you who read it wrong since you took from it that a tragic event that crippled humanity is a good one.

Independently? Of what, humanity’s creations? Well, that’s true, jihadists destroyed basically entire civilization. 99% of humanity were slaves or serfs, the nobility and merchants were even more static than ever, the instant teleportation that eventually allowed for galactic or even multi galactic scale spread seen basically no use except making money since the distant planet Arrakis was just 200 LY from Earth and most of mentioned worlds even closer. Most “progressive” factions like Ixians or Tleilaxu took thousands of years to actually invent something, even entirely legal. Even maintaining the space civilization relied on impossible magical tech. Education and science were abysmal, superstition widespread, it made the cults inevitable, just they were real because of space heroin and magic.

they just made for a better story about power and politics.

This isn’t really the story about power and politics, it’s a classical Greek tragedy where everything is fucked no matter what because everything has been setup to fail by the story premise, which is precisely the butlerian jihad.

The Jihad was the basis for the development of mentats, navigators, prescience, most of what the Bene Gesserit could do, etc.

Supremacist superhuman cults and objectification of humans are good and empowering according to you? Wow how nice. Also you forgot nice tleilaxan things like turning every woman into breeding tank or genetically engineered slaves. Prescience? Did you missed literally every book constantly saying “prescience bad”?

The spice became a cause of atrophy as well when people became reliant on it, but that’s consistent with the theme.

Yes it’s consistent with the theme of butlerian jihad atrophying humanity to the point of being hooked on barely understood space heroin. The atrophy and decay of human minds went so far barely anyone even thought about that.

Fuck the Great Convention obviously, but the Jihad was (mostly) good actually.

Jihad literally plunged humanity into millenia of slavery and serfdom. I find it absolutely wild that any leftist would support this.

but discarding tools that atrophy us rather than empower us.

In the book it discarded tools that empowered us and ending up atrophying humanity basically forever, and even when the atrophy supposedly ended for the price of unbelivable suffering, it was only vulgar numerical and territorial growth, not empowerment. And it STILL required usage of not only forbidden tech but also technomagic required to even have a primitivist interstellar civilization.

Butlerian jihad was deeply reactionary war and every leftist should fight against the bastards that set up the Great Convention system.