Has it? Since 1st ed each subsequent edition has seemed.to trend playing it straight. When you got into it back then, the satire was pretty front and centre.
If you asked a teenager getting into it now, do you think it would read satirical?
Can GW really play 40k straight and still try and defang it by claiming satire?
Plenty of people pull out the satirical nature as a defence of its intolerance and violence, but when is something played so straight that it just is straight?
The amount of self-awareness and satire varies from book to book.
There are usually enough examples of the imperium being horrible or hypocritical for it to be clear that they're not the "good guys," even if it isn't always "ha ha" comedic style satire.
Some stories steer away from the actual satire and just want to tell funny or action-packed stories in a setting that would be very unpleasant to visit. (A lot of the xenos PoV stuff falls into this category.) They're not excusing the horribleness; they're just not necessarily wallowing in it either.
The only stories that I can call to mind where it's really an issue are some of the marine stories. Not necessarily showing the marines as "good guys" (though those exist too), but frequently putting them firmly in the role of protagonist without going out of the way to remind the reader that the imperium they're fighitng so hard to protect is an evil dystopia.
But most novels seem to fall into the realm depicting the 41st millenium (including the imperium) as pretty awful and telling the stories of people who live there without necessarily "satirizing" the horribleness. It's like telling a story set in Sin City. The city is bad, and there are things to be satirized, but not every story is necessarily satire, nor are protagonists necessarily good people to be emulated. Or maybe the Black Company books are a better comparison: lots of morally gray or straight up horrible people in a frequently bleak setting. But a given story doesn't have to spend the whole time dwelling exclusively on how horrible everything is.
EDIT: Salamanders, the good guy marines, still commit the occasional mass murder or genocide. Whether or not a given story about Salamanders bothers to mention that is a decent barometer for whether a story is wandering into glorify-the-donkey-cave territory.
I was referring to 40k as a whole, not any specific novel. The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
for satire to actually function as satire though, it needs to be apparent. Satire has a purpose that is completely undone if no one knows it's happening.
When things become post satire and play straight, they can often end up acting as a positive message for the thing they were satirising.
Satire's strength is that it runs the line of the topic in order to highlight it, but if the line disappears then you're just unironically supporting terrible ideologies.
At some point in satire a shoe will drop and you get the message. Modern 40k seems to cruise by on assuring everyone there's a shoe and it will drop, but it never does.
It's like that guy who likes to make terrible comments to women and how they take it determines whether he says he was joking or not.
I just don't think I can consider giving 40k that cloak of satire unless I actually see some. It shouldn't be able skate by on 40 year old Obiwan Sherlock Clouseau.
GW has sniffed their own farts for too long and taken themselves far too seriously for it to actually be satire anymore.
EDIT:
One of the things that really pointed out the satire and was one of my favourite parts of older editions, were the in universe imperial quotes in boxes peppered throughout the books. They were almost all absurd, intolerant and hilarious as a result. Quotes like 'an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unguarded and unbarred', or 'I find foreign travel narrows the mind wonderfully'. Things that are clearly at odds with how most readers' would think. Modern 40k is just lots of intolerant violence and unironic justifications for why its good and necessary to do.
the power of those quotes was they had no arguments or defences around them, they were just statements of ridiculous intolerance that came across exactly as intended. The more they try to protagonise the setting, the less you get to see it as an observer and the more you see it in an empathetic way, undermining the point of the satire.
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
I don't think modern 40k is a satire - but I'm not sure it ever was. GW was less serious as a company back in the 80s and 90s. But I think people read into it what they want.
There was a bit of tongue in cheek that around 5th became played straight. But it's not like it was that way all the time or applied to every bit of lore put out.
Depends what you’re reading. The Cain and Ufthak Blackhawk books really lean into the satire, without themselves become a satire of the satire.
With Cain, we’ve someone who despite being a Commissar (or because of it) is very aware of the Imperium’s rampant hypocrisy. Who in turn believes himself to be a coward because his every action isn’t selfless or strictly for the greater good of The Imperium.
Ufthak is an Ork perspective series, and a blood good one. It gets across that Orks just don’t care in the way other species do, that they are indeed, mostly just there to have a good time which happens to involve fighting, and some typically Orky reflection on the ‘Umies approach to things.
I guess the important thing to keep in mind is that satire needn’t be comedic. Black Mirror for instance is fundamentally satirical horror, relatively light on all by the darkest of humour. And we do see some of this in at least the earlier Heresy novels, where the Legions will quite happily commit genocide on Xenos species, and only slightly regret doing it to human civilisations that won’t bend the knee. Too caught up in the insisted righteousness of their cause, that only The Emperor can help mankind survive and anyone who doesn’t agree has to die.
There are glimpses of satire still there, but it is mostly glorification and apologism of totalitarianism via boring shiny, perhaps nominally tragic "hard men making hard choices."
It is pretty off putting, and has gotten worse over the years. Return of Guilliman was the culmination of it, and now the instead of the Imperium being led by a mad shadowy cabal of faceless overlords, it is led by such tragic but noble hero.
I just need to ignore most of the modern fluff if I'm to enjoy the game.
I'd say, yeah it has been flanderised to hell. But it's inevitable for a work of fiction that is maintained and allowed to change over such a long time.
I also want to make clear that I don't really consider the novels to be "40K". They're a side thing to me, it's what's in the books for the game that count as far as I'm concerned.
All the original writers are gone now, as well as most of the original artists. The people who've replaced them are generally fans. So what we read nowadays is fanfiction. And it does show, in my opinion.
Original 40K was crammed full of (often quite hamfisted) cultural references. Some were pop culture, some quite arty, and it was all mixed together.
The people writing 40K now grew up on those references, and the references are their culture. They may not know much about the original thing that was being referenced. You see this all the time in fantasy especially - original fantasy, say Tolkien, was based heavily on history and myth. But as people grow up on fantasy as a genre, history and myth is no longer the main reference, but rather fantasy stories themselves, and through this self-referential process fantasy becomes more and more disconnected from it's original cultural references. That's why you see especially in video game but now also in miniatures such ridiculous looking armours and weapons and so on, because they are self referential rather than referencing any real material culture. A really excellent designer can make something whole cloth that looks cohesive and sensible, but most are not that good and create heavily stylised versions of something that was based on something that was based on something that was historical.
40K suffers badly from this in my view. But so do lots of things. Star Wars suffers from it, the Ghostbusters movies, the Transformers stuff, LOTR shows and movies - anything where "the property" is being handed off to new writers who grew up with the thing they're being handed. I think millennials (my generation) are especially bad for this, and generally write really poor fiction because of it.
I don't see much of a way out of it though. So I tend to ignore the newer stuff and cherry pick what I like. Like, I hate pretty much everything about how the Primaris marines were introduced and what they mean for the setting, but ADB's book featuring them was pretty good for a 40K novel.
It's important too to maintain perspective. I'm expressing a negative view here but I'm in no way heated emotionally over it, and I don't "hate" anything. I'm a bit disappointed, but it's not a huge deal for me and probably shouldn't be for anyone. If you don't like what "the property" has become because others own it, take ownership yourself and make your own version of it. If you're a long term fan your ideas have just as much legitimacy as the guys writing the current background, they're just like you.
Way I see it, 40K was originally "edgy" and satirical because the og designers were so much into the whole 2000 AD thing. But little by little, ties needed to be severed to Rebellion style edgyness, and.. here we are.
For me personally all this matters little, as I have my own headcanon fork of the whole 40K lore in my head, which is still married heavily into 2000 AD. In that headcanon, the Emperor Of Mankind is basically Torquemada, and Khaos loves to fight against the tyranny. Cant help myself, thats what I fell in love with originally, so I'm sticking with it. Fans of the modern lore can enjoi their flanderisms, no skin off my hack
The overt satire has been gone a very long time. Even the jump from Rogue Trader to second edition pushed 40k from a loose sort of collection of influences into the basic blueprint we see today. And at the end of hte day, 40k exists to sell space marine models, and there's only so ironic you can make space marines and still sell them.
I don't think the game lore is substantially less satirical, but the bigger change has been the perspective and voice in lore snippets. IN 3rd and 4th edition, we tended to get a lot more "unreliable narrators" and outside views. In the first Tau codex, there was literallly a story of an imperial diplomat visiting a tau world, and we got to learn about hte tau through his eyes. In the current tau codex, we saw the opposite: a tau delegation visiting an imperial world. So, it was cool to see the imperium described through alien eyes, but if you wanted to learn more about the tau, not so helpful.
I just think that overall, the tone has shifted from slightly tongue in cheek and unreliable to propoganda/encyclopedic.
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Da Boss wrote: I
Original 40K was crammed full of (often quite hamfisted) cultural references. Some were pop culture, some quite arty, and it was all mixed together.
The people writing 40K now grew up on those references, and the references are their culture. They may not know much about the original thing that was being referenced. You see this all the time in fantasy especially - original fantasy, say Tolkien, was based heavily on history and myth. But as people grow up on fantasy as a genre, history and myth is no longer the main reference, but rather fantasy stories themselves, and through this self-referential process fantasy becomes more and more disconnected from it's original cultural references. That's why you see especially in video game but now also in miniatures such ridiculous looking armours and weapons and so on, because they are self referential rather than referencing any real material culture. A really excellent designer can make something whole cloth that looks cohesive and sensible, but most are not that good and create heavily stylised versions of something that was based on something that was based on something that was historical.
With long running IP, you want to mix keeping it fresh while playing the hits, while avoiding it becoming "just say the line." Personally, I think that separating 40k from it's influences is good, in the long run. There's clearly a demand for deeper and more specific lore, and the only way to get that is to differentiate 40k from it's influences. I'm not a big fan of the HH series, I liked the idea of it being legends, not history, but 100 novels and a whole new game later, I"m clearly in the minority.
If I have one concern about 40k going forward, it's that last truly new faction was added in 2003, with the Tau. While GSC, Admech, Custodes, and Votann are all newer, they reach back to very clear influences, if not full armies, in 40k's past. That is now mined out, aside from Exodites and Lost and the Damned.
All the original writers are gone now, as well as most of the original artists. The people who've replaced them are generally fans. So what we read nowadays is fanfiction. And it does show, in my opinion.
Nailed it on the head. Whole post really, but this line summarizes it well. The issue with long running satire is simply that you start picking up fans unfamiliar with what is being satirized and are instead fans of the satire itself. Probably the biggest example of this is 90's comics and ultimately the DCEU, which were all a result of a fanbase built on DKR as a baseline for what those characters should be.
40K suffers from a lot of the same thing. Fans that zealously guard the canon and try to make it as real and rigid as possible. There's definitely value in that, but it definitely creates a lot of people that increasingly accept the justifications put forth by the characters in the setting. Not only do things have to be this way, but they should be this way. The more your audience feels this way, the harder it is to pull off any real satire.
With the thing about fans taking over - it grows stale as it's there's less or no stuff outside going back that influences it (which was how it was originally built).
LunarSol: Yeah, I almost referenced the DCEU in my post. Except that like you say, those guys seemed to only be fans of deconstructions of DC superheroes, not actually fans of the superheroes as they are normally.
Polonius: Yeah, I think it's very tricky to keep something like 40K "going" for as long as it has been. Probably impossible to do it without making someone like me grumpy.
I think we just live in an era where immortal brands seem to be the going thing, and it makes you really aware of how stretched these ideas can be when you see it everywhere. That said, I hold contradictory feelings about it as well. Like, I feel the same as you about HH, but then I also read a bunch of the books and overall enjoyed them.
I think this process is inevitable when these things are conceptualised as IP and part of a profit motivated system. And obviously, none of this would really exist without being part of that system, but it still has these effects on the things it creates.
Over the course of a few decades, 40k has gone from being an intentional parody of many aspects of politics, literature and culture to being an unintentional parody of itself.
Kind of a bummer, but probably inevitable when you go from a scrapy underdog to the billion dollar, big-dog-in-the-room juggernaut.
My take on it is that 40k has gone from overt satire like Starship Troopers to a much more subtle satire, though perhaps not everyone got the memo. It's hard to keep a consistent tone and feel with so many cooks in the kitchen.
I think the Horus Heresy really exemplifies the modern take on this. It told from the perspective of the Imperium (for the most part) and the impression that they're the "good guys" but that's only the most surface level read of what's going on. Much of the conflict within is about the Primarchs and their Legions reconciling with what exactly they are fighting for and what a victory would actually even mean.
The largest thing though is something that was always core to the lore and has only been better expanded upon, and that is the failure of the Great Crusade itself. Big E is portrayed as the strongest, smartest, most powerful person to ever exist; he is given every possible conceivable advantage and his plans still fail. Importantly they fail BECASUE of his ideals and policies. The entire Horus Heresy is an example of how even in the most ideal situation, a fascist totalitarian government is doomed to collapse.
Da Boss and LunarSol with great posts. I do have lots of thoughts that I often feel my English just isn’t good enough to convey.
For 40K specifically I think a big issue is a lack of other factions being able to really have different themes. So often they are just enemies of the imperium and are the most bad and evil. It’s hard to have satire when it’s rarely ever challenging or thoughtful.
Chaos I think gets it worst, rather than reflection of the universe it’s often just worse and why would anyone even consider it.
But outside of 40K I also think it’s a bit of the influence of lore channels and such. So often I hear it’s all shades of grey to essentially say that these absolutely horrible groups are somehow not the bad ones, since sometimes the good guys are forced to make sacrifice or choices.
It’s why I think satire is so common still outside of Nerd culture, But within it’s often stagnant.
This is also an issue with other themes that I think share parallels within Nerdy culture.
Writers are pretty commonly toning down the writing in so many games, even when they want to write these themes and stories.
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Tawnis wrote: My take on it is that 40k has gone from overt satire like Starship Troopers to a much more subtle satire, though perhaps not everyone got the memo. It's hard to keep a consistent tone and feel with so many cooks in the kitchen.
I think the Horus Heresy really exemplifies the modern take on this. It told from the perspective of the Imperium (for the most part) and the impression that they're the "good guys" but that's only the most surface level read of what's going on. Much of the conflict within is about the Primarchs and their Legions reconciling with what exactly they are fighting for and what a victory would actually even mean.
The largest thing though is something that was always core to the lore and has only been better expanded upon, and that is the failure of the Great Crusade itself. Big E is portrayed as the strongest, smartest, most powerful person to ever exist; he is given every possible conceivable advantage and his plans still fail. Importantly they fail BECASUE of his ideals and policies. The entire Horus Heresy is an example of how even in the most ideal situation, a fascist totalitarian government is doomed to collapse.
I think it’s called Juvenalian Satire, or maybe Menippean satire. I sure someone here knows better than me .
I don’t like the Horus Heresy and gave up on it as I don’t think it did well setting this up, maybe later books did better. But I never got that feel with discussions on the setting I listened too.
I often feel HH fans are the ones who least think of it this way.
On Chaos I agree, though I think the problem was pretty much there from the start.
I really liked the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader RPG books, they had great, very 40K ideas in them and I think hit the themes pretty nicely. Standouts were the clan of tech-nomads living on an ancient terraforming machine that they could only barely keep running, for example. Very 40K.
When Black Crusade, the Chaos expansion was going to be released, I was very excited. I thought that a Chaos book would sort of show things from the Chaos point of view, show why a Chaos worshipper might not think of themselves as evil, why they might have good reasons to do what they do and show a more nuanced view on Chaos than the in universe Imperial propaganda. I wasn't expecting Chaos to be "the good guys" but I was expecting a similar treatment to what the Imperials got, just from a different philosophical viewpoint.
Instead, it was very much a game about playing the villains, having essentially a villains campaign. I was really disappointed and actually sold my collection of 40Krpg books soon after (though that was a lot to do with finding the mechanics for those games to be a bit lacklustre, the setting stuff in the first two books remains top notch).
Chaos was always way better in Fantasy Battle, and it seems this has at least somewhat carried to AOS as well. Chaos barbarians in those seem pretty understandable and relatable; they're just people living brutal lives worshipping brutal gods.
Given how horrible Imperium is it shouldn't be terribly hard to depict those who decide to oppose it and choose to pray for dark gods for aid as sympathetic, but GW practically never does it. Chaos in 40K is usually just silly cartoon evil for evil's sake.
Modern 40k is still Not Good, but it is absolutely no longer satire. Anything remotely satirical which comes up is circumspect, ergo individual authors choosing to satirize individual elements in their individual works. On the whole, as in the broad strokes, it is now just a grim-derp setting rather than satire.
It still is somewhat there if you read core books and codexes, see the Tyranid deniers (a blatant parody of COVID deniers) in the recent Leviathan crusade book.
Some novels are still very satirical, but they are a minority.
Eilif wrote: Over the course of a few decades, 40k has gone from being an intentional parody of many aspects of politics, literature and culture to being an unintentional parody of itself.
Kind of a bummer, but probably inevitable when you go from a scrapy underdog to the billion dollar, big-dog-in-the-room juggernaut.
Yes. As one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live said: "At some point you go from being avant garde to just garde."
There are elements to the 40k lore that simply can't be discussed now. I mean, yes, the lore may still be out there but what it meant - the subversive element - would get you banned in a hot minute if you tried to explain it.
That's one reason I reverted back to the 1990s version of the game and have been collecting all the WDs of that era. It was a much more relaxed time and the game had some bite.
I think the big issue with it is that GW uses the in universe narrative (aka imperial propaganda) for their marketing which makes it feel very non satirical. It isn't tongue in cheek anymore because it tries to justify itself too much by the in universe realities instead of looking at the setting from the perspective of the audience. It's taking itself too seriously and glorifying the factions/characters which stops being satirical when it feels like they want you to buy into the lore as being objective.
GW's flagship faction are the ubermensch saviors of the IoM who are the embodiment of intolerance and hatred for those against their God Emperor and the Imperium. It takes quite a bit of digging to find the aging satire when the lore does so much to justify what they do. I would even argue that Guilliman fits the trope of the Randian Hero who is this great person fighting against the problems of the bureaucratic government to try and keep the IoM afloat. Without doing a bunch of digging, the only parts of 40k still taken as satire are the Orks who are still the resident comic relief faction.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Your question is exactly the problem I see. 40k has not kept the satire relevant or front and centre, so you're working from a completely different paradigm thinking it the way 40k just is.
As I said above, would a teenager getting into 40k now apprehend it as a satire? I don't think so. It's now just played straight as dark and edgy ultraviolence fantasy.
40k back in the 80s and early 90s made direct references to pertinent political events of the day, illustrating marines acting as space police arresting punks for graffitiing walls, referencing socio economic groups within britian and of course the infamous Ghazghkull Thatcher.
there have been a lot of great comments here from others on the issues with the satire, but it's clear that the corporatisation of art ensured that the satirical commentary was frozen in stone in an identity to make money, rather than a means of dialogue.
you see this in all art owned by corporations. Their early days are scattershots of creativity, exploring anything they can to find something that will be popular. This early time is where their best ideas come from because they are unbound by expectation. but as soon as they come up with something that sticks, the business strategy congeals around it, redirecting everything to continuing to replicate that thing for eternity. You can see the difference here between US comic companies and Japanese ones - the US companies own all the IP and have spent the better part of 100 years regurgitating the same dozen IPs over and over, dressing them in new clothes to try and resell them. The japanese industry has the IP owned by the creator, and when the story is done, the product concludes. And so you see a churn of new stories, ideas and IP in Japan at a rate that leaves the US for dead, entirely for this reason.
So although 40k was originally created with aware satire in it, as soon as that turned a profit, the satire congealed into a static image because they knew that sold. They didn't consider the satire as the reason it sold, only the particular examples in the product and so those stuck with the IP and the reasoning behind it was lost.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
I dont think anyone wants to copy paste thousands of popculture references that can easily be googled by anyone interested.
The setting now has a blonde-haired blue-eyed super-super soldier regretfully pressing the big red button labelled "genocide" 20 times a day while thinking about how far from his father's dream this all is.
That the absurdity of it is lost on people (including, seemingly, some of the novel writers!) I don't think is a notch against its satirical nature.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
Rihgu wrote: The setting now has a blonde-haired blue-eyed super-super soldier regretfully pressing the big red button labelled "genocide" 20 times a day while thinking about how far from his father's dream this all is.
That the absurdity of it is lost on people (including, seemingly, some of the novel writers!) I don't think is a notch against its satirical nature.
But - at the danger of being ignorant - what is that a satire of?
"Its a send up of how fascism is bad". But that's kind of broad brush. I'm not really sure how its a satire. "Tyranid deniers" as stand in for various X-deniers in real life is kind of a satire. But there's also a sense that this isn't what this is. Instead its just what the Ecclesiarchy does in 40k - because its living via decade long-recycled memes at this point rather than a thing in itself, operating according to logical/consistent character development.
I mean COVID deniers, anti mask and anti-vaxxers are sadly not decades old memes, they are both still very relevant and still very deserving of being mocked.
If Tyranid deniers aren't satire then I don't know what satire is.
Rihgu wrote: The setting now has a blonde-haired blue-eyed super-super soldier regretfully pressing the big red button labelled "genocide" 20 times a day while thinking about how far from his father's dream this all is.
That the absurdity of it is lost on people (including, seemingly, some of the novel writers!) I don't think is a notch against its satirical nature.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
That blond-haired, blue-eyed soldier pressing the genocide button 20 times by accident, thinking it was some other button of the console, would tickle my satir-o-meter much more tho
Kulliman genociding reluctlantly.. too much Emo feels mate
Rihgu wrote: The setting now has a blonde-haired blue-eyed super-super soldier regretfully pressing the big red button labelled "genocide" 20 times a day while thinking about how far from his father's dream this all is.
That the absurdity of it is lost on people (including, seemingly, some of the novel writers!) I don't think is a notch against its satirical nature.
But - at the danger of being ignorant - what is that a satire of?
"Its a send up of how fascism is bad". But that's kind of broad brush. I'm not really sure how its a satire. "Tyranid deniers" as stand in for various X-deniers in real life is kind of a satire. But there's also a sense that this isn't what this is. Instead its just what the Ecclesiarchy does in 40k - because its living via decade long-recycled memes at this point rather than a thing in itself, operating according to logical/consistent character development.
Well, yes, that specific thing is a broad brush of "fascism/fascist bad", but that's what it's supposed to be. More specific satirical elements will drill in on more specific things
That blond-haired, blue-eyed soldier pressing the genocide button 20 times by accident, thinking it was some other button of the console, would tickle my satir-o-meter much more tho
True, I never said it was necessarily top tier satire, tho
I haven't bought a 10th edition codex yet, but if I remember right Chaos Space Marines comes out either tomorrow or next weekend. I'll have to browse that to see if there's much going on there beyond the broad strokes stuff. Maybe 10th edition has toned down specifics but the broad setting sure is still satirical, in my opinion, if only for the absurdity of the "justifications" of the fascism and the general rotten bureaucracy that is still portrayed.
Rihgu wrote: The setting now has a blonde-haired blue-eyed super-super soldier regretfully pressing the big red button labelled "genocide" 20 times a day while thinking about how far from his father's dream this all is.
That the absurdity of it is lost on people (including, seemingly, some of the novel writers!) I don't think is a notch against its satirical nature.
But - at the danger of being ignorant - what is that a satire of?
"Its a send up of how fascism is bad". But that's kind of broad brush. I'm not really sure how its a satire. "Tyranid deniers" as stand in for various X-deniers in real life is kind of a satire. But there's also a sense that this isn't what this is. Instead its just what the Ecclesiarchy does in 40k - because its living via decade long-recycled memes at this point rather than a thing in itself, operating according to logical/consistent character development.
I mean, take your pick of European powers/Britain/America justifying their military adventurism or foreign policy by saying "Well, we really just had to do this, we didn't have a choice" while prattling on about the ideals they allegedly embody yet readily abandon the first time it's convenient. It's not like there isn't a long history of that dating back to the Raj and before.
This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
tauist wrote: This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
Yes! That's actual satire!
A heroic space Caesar is emo about genocide but still does it because he is a hard man making hard choices is not satire, it is accidental fascism apologia.
ccs wrote: You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
No, I can't. To do that, I'd have to list every commercial, news item, passing pop music reference, obscure political crises that actually never amounted to anything, etc.
I'd also have to immerse you in the Cold War, which is simply impossible to do because you know how it all turned out. At the time, that wasn't clear.
40k was very much a cynical product of the "maybe there isn't going to be a happy ending" mentality. That being the case, one might as well laugh at it.
tauist wrote: This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
Yes! That's actual satire!
A heroic space Caesar is emo about genocide but still does it because he is a hard man making hard choices is not satire, it is accidental fascism apologia.
While I appreciate that not everybody is familiar with it, but this would put Disco Elysium's fascist vision quest as "not satire".
Guilliman sees himself as a hard man making hard choices but he isn't, he's making easy, horrible choices. Not pressing the big red genocide button is the hard choice, here. Pressing the button and feeling sad about it is the absurdity, the vehicle for the satirical element of genocide ever being a good choice, let alone the correct one.
Guilliman sees himself as a hard man making hard choices but he isn't, he's making easy, horrible choices. Not pressing the big red genocide button is the hard choice, here. Pressing the button and feeling sad about it is the absurdity, the vehicle for the satirical element of genocide ever being a good choice, let alone the correct one.
Except it is not treated like that. For the satire to work, it should be actually be presented as absurd and bad, but instead it is just represented as regrettable necessary evil.
ccs wrote: You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
No, I can't. To do that, I'd have to list every commercial, news item, passing pop music reference, obscure political crises that actually never amounted to anything, etc.
I'd also have to immerse you in the Cold War, which is simply impossible to do because you know how it all turned out. At the time, that wasn't clear.
40k was very much a cynical product of the "maybe there isn't going to be a happy ending" mentality. That being the case, one might as well laugh at it.
Ok, you could be helpful & list some of them.
Pick say 5 obscure things & 1 of your favorites and (briefly) explain them.
Because people here on Dakka seem to fall into 2 broad categories - those of us who were around when the references were new/timely, & those who've only started playing this game in the past 5-10 years (or sooner).
We old dogs don't need the explanation. But the newcomers do so that they know what the hell you're talking about. What you're lamenting has been lost throughout the editions.
I think that satire as a whole doesn't really work when reality is already absurd.
We've got to the point where comically evil people aren't an exception but the rule and their short-sighted idiocy is either cheered or laughed at as harmless.
Bringing up The Boys as an example already doesn't work due to the frankly scary number of people who legitimately don't think Homelander is an evil mofo.
ccs wrote: Ok, you could be helpful & list some of them.
Pick say 5 obscure things & 1 of your favorites and (briefly) explain them.
Because people here on Dakka seem to fall into 2 broad categories - those of us who were around when the references were new/timely, & those who've only started playing this game in the past 5-10 years (or sooner).
We old dogs don't need the explanation. But the newcomers do so that they know what the hell you're talking about. What you're lamenting has been lost throughout the editions.
Seriously, just go through the UK pop charts and TV offerings of that era and you're most of the way there. Check some of the newspaper archives for top stories as well.
The elephant in the room was the Cold War, which is really hard to relate to if you weren't there. Europe was an armed camp, with millions of troops glaring at each other across minefields. On the one hand, you had the West, freedom, democracy, warts and all and then the Iron Curtain, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq War, Red Brigades, The Troubles in Ireland, etc. Digging into that would probably cause some issues because of forum rules, so I'm not going to go deeper.
I will say this - it was also a more serious time, and so people were willing to tolerate more in the way of satire and outrageousness to blow off steam. The leaders of that era might not have been soldiers in WW II, but they grew up during or immediately aftwards and remembered hunger, rationing, ruins and what it was like to have a nation fight to last desperate inch - and what people were truly capable of. That's why no one in the 40k universe has any concept of mercy or pity. There is only war.
I think that outside of the anglo, and maybe the western cultural world, w40k "satire" does not translate well, because it doesn't sound like satire. The whole "there is only way and the imperium of men is falling apart, while there is war all around it". Sounds a bit different when you get to "enjoy" eastern europe or the balkans, after a few decades of communism and WWII.
All the gore and "scary" stuff, which I assume is either shock value and/or satire, I can just find within 50km or where I was born. happening in the span of last 100 years on a decade basis. The whole "and they horrible thing X, Y and Z" has a different edge to it, when the first thing you think while reading about it is "ah so what was done to grand uncles family in 1952".
came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
Yeah British football hooliganism in the 70's and 80's is a fascinating subject, awful people of course but a lot more depth to it than many might think and definitely worth a deep dive for anyone with any interest in subversive subcultures.
On Guilliman? He is part of the overall satire and social commentary.
A Literal Demi-God of humanity. A being of near unlimited potential. Reduced to toeing the Imperium’s line. The slow corruption of who should’ve been a shining beacon of hope and renewal.
Gone from standing for mankind, to standing for the mere status quo. And perhaps reflection that, just perhaps, that’s what he’s always done since being reunified with his creator. The scales falling from his eyes that, just perhaps, The Imperium isn’t that far from the Great Crusade, just in a hyper religious wrapper. Because whether you’re forcing a religion or enforcing atheism, your tools and oppression remain the same. You’re still trampling all over a right to self determination and spiritual succour.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On Guilliman? He is part of the overall satire and social commentary.
A Literal Demi-God of humanity. A being of near unlimited potential. Reduced to toeing the Imperium’s line. The slow corruption of who should’ve been a shining beacon of hope and renewal.
Gone from standing for mankind, to standing for the mere status quo. And perhaps reflection that, just perhaps, that’s what he’s always done since being reunified with his creator. The scales falling from his eyes that, just perhaps, The Imperium isn’t that far from the Great Crusade, just in a hyper religious wrapper. Because whether you’re forcing a religion or enforcing atheism, your tools and oppression remain the same. You’re still trampling all over a right to self determination and spiritual succour.
I think kicking this on isn't going to get an answer, as people just disagree.
But how is this "satire"? What is this sending up?
I mean I'm fairly versed on contemporary UK politics (....where to begin with the latest madness?). But a knowledge of that doesn't give any hidden meaning of 40k. Who in 40k is say the stand in for Boris, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Corbyn (or Cameron, Brown, Blair, all the way back to Thatcher) etc? Ditto US politics - is Guilliman meant to be Trump? Or Biden? Not obviously. "Its a take on Imperialism, or the Cold War or the Iraq War, Guilliman is George Bush" - but again, it just isn't. A knowledge of these things doesn't give you any special insight into why Guilliman is a bit miffed the Imperium is being overwhelmed by its effectively infinite enemies.
I mean its perfectly possible for GW to write a story where there is an obvious 1:1 with contemporary real people/politics. But they don't.
In the olden days, presumably before GW realised they had an IP worth billions, they were happy to just steal things. "Hey, its Alexander the Great but in Spaaace". And if you know about Alexander the Great you can go "I see what you did there, its Alexander the Great in Spaaace". But even that's not obviously "satire" exactly. Unless we are meant to think its a criticism of Alexander the Great, which it doesn't seem to be.
It’s about how power corrupts. That The Imperium is so far gone, short of The Emperor stepping of his throne and putting his house in order, there’s no going back to the heady days of relative enlightenment that was the Great Crusade.
Satire needn’t be comedic, it can be irony on its own. And Guilliman, the single most powerful entity with The Imperium, who played a massive part in its initial Founding, is powerless to save it from itself, and has instead stooped to its level? That is irony.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s about how power corrupts. That The Imperium is so far gone, short of The Emperor stepping of his throne and putting his house in order, there’s no going back to the heady days of relative enlightenment that was the Great Crusade.
Satire needn’t be comedic, it can be irony on its own. And Guilliman, the single most powerful entity with The Imperium, who played a massive part in its initial Founding, is powerless to save it from itself, and has instead stooped to its level? That is irony.
I'll give you ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. But there's a difference to my mind between "40k has comedic elements" and 40k is a satire. For Guilliman to be a satire, there should be some contemporary thing - person, society, event, whatever - that you can read into Guilliman. And as said, I don't think there is. Its certainly not obviously intentional (I realise that people can read anything into anything if they try hard enough.)
On the Ork thing, the people who think that Orks, like 40K Orks, or even Tolkien Orcs are supposed to be a stand in for Africans...well I'd say they have some reflection to do themselves.
Like Tolkien's Orcs fairly obviously at least influenced by the urban poor and people he met in the army from that sort of background.
And 40K Orks are obviously football hooligans in space.
If you're reading something else into it it probably says something about your own biases, or just ignorance of cultures outside your own.
Orks are also a pastiche of the “Barbarians at the Gate” trope.
As the now infamous musings of that Eldar point out, they’re seen as crude, when their society is incredibly robust, and evidently immensely successful.
When Ancient Rome was sacked by barbarians, were not talking Ooga Booga Me Hit With Rock primitives. At all. Were they less regimented than Rome? Sure. Yet….they still sacked Rome, and all Rome’s art, philosophy and social order went up in flames all the same.
The Football ‘Ooligan thing is likely a deliberate filter. A cipher for how the rich and powerful ultimately fear the poor, because there’s more of them, and they’re quite willing to fight for what they do have.
To quote “Common People” by Pulp?
You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning of control and with nowhere left to go. You are amazed that they exist yet they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why.
Now, that is of course a somewhat romantic take on things, but the message holds true.
Yet at the same time the human poor of the 40k universe will walk into a mulching machine in a despondent manner because the imperium orders it. Which is probably a more biting satire than "they'll fight for what they have" which let's face it is usually not true if there is a propaganda machine blaming it on some "other". Hey, just like 40k. Kinda.
Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Dai wrote: Yeah British football hooliganism in the 70's and 80's is a fascinating subject, awful people of course but a lot more depth to it than many might think and definitely worth a deep dive for anyone with any interest in subversive subcultures.
See and here is where we hit the first problem. "Hooligan" football clans in eastern europe are an essential part of not just daily life, but culture. There are conflicts between some that are close to century old. And they are so important that EVERYONE has to be part of it. Teachers, officials, police etc. They have impact on life, for example lets say you get kicked out of school, the official don't want you to die, so they have to check where you live (which decides which clan you support) and then they have to find a school where your "people" go to. Clans have ally, and sub division clubs are part of fellowships of bigger clans. Both police and criminals recruit from the ultras, and in some case (like the "Sharks" of the White Star) the clan become so powerful that they run their own stuff. Politician hire them to break up rallies of other candidates or for "unknown assiliants" to beat up a judge or high ranking officials that check stuff they shouldn't check. Professional sports are also part of it, because of beting and sponsorships. Especialy in football stuff like players being beaten by "unknown fans" is maybe not common, but it does happen. It is not a subculture it is a the culture. I mean when a clan has more members then the local police and city guard combined, there is nothing sub about them.
Yet at the same time the human poor of the 40k universe will walk into a mulching machine in a despondent manner because the imperium orders it. Which is probably a more biting satire than "they'll fight for what they have" which let's face it is usually not true if there is a propaganda machine blaming it on some "other".
When the other option is to walkin in to a mulching machine that belongs to someone else then fellow humans, the decision starts to make a lot more sense. Every eastern and balkan war fought to the very end, can be explained by it. That is why I am saying it from a western perspective all those w40k things can be comedy, satire or philosophical reflection on the state of menkind. To use it is more of a ,how do I say this, like life. The "pray they won't take you alive" is not meme here. And I am sure other cultures in other parts of the world have could have similar views (as in w40k not very much a satire. I don't know how popular w40k is in southern parts of China, but a "hive city", with its factories that never go to sleep, must hit different.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Dunno. Savage Orcs are just…primitives. The Picts and Celts used to go into battle “Skyclad” as a sign of bravery. And trust, coming from that area of the world, going nuddy in that weather is brave enough. And there’s plenty of solid archaeological evidence for Antler being used as tools and weapons in pre-Roman Scotland.
So I don’t agree Savage Orcs are inherently African coded.
Yeah, wasn't the "kilt" an english invention, because they, being christians, had enough of half naked or full naked scots coming to the markets and selling cattle?
We had people like that too the Prus (eradicated by the Teutonic Knights around XIV-XVth century) and the Żmudins (almost eradicated by the Teutonic Knights and then we finished them with mass colonisation after plagues in XVIth century).
Kilt was invented by the English because the traditional cloths of the workes were not doing well with the factory machines
Da Boss wrote: If you're reading something else into it it probably says something about your own biases, or just ignorance of cultures outside your own.
or just not being into western Europe post WW2 history and don't live in a country were this is important
that one need to know a very specific thing that is even unkown to most Europeans (as also hooligans are not everywhere the same, like I only know about british football Hooligans because I read that Orks are based on them and therefore researched it because Orks are nothing like the Hooligans here) to get the joke is a problem
it is also ignorant of thinking that everyone needs to know that specific cultural thing and that people from other cultures make different connections
just because something is obvious for you with your cultural background does not make people ingorant who don't see the connection because they have a very different cultural background
My point is about assuming Brutal-Simple-Violent = African, not about not knowing about Football Hooligans in particular.
Americans have a tendency to project their racial politics onto everything, and I was referring to that in my comment about not knowing about cultures outside your own. I don't think people need to know that they're based on hooligans, just that they're obviously not based on Africans.
Still, I get why my post would come off poorly, and apologise for that.
On the Savage Orcs thing, I disagree with you there Mad Dok, if they're based on Picts, why are they all from the Southlands, where the heat does something weird to their brains?
Is it just a co-incidence that Savage Orcs are common in the part of the Old World that corresponds to real world Africa? I highly doubt it.
I maintain that a big part of the issue is that 40k lore has definitely shifted from "look at these idiots who deliberately make their empire an inefficient mess and worship a toaster" to "blind faith is a survival requirement to ward off daemons and everything the Imperium does is required to survive".
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I think this shift really began around 5th edition, but the seeds are earlier. The Horus Heresy is a big part of this with stuff like saints overtly defeating daemons through faith.
Haighus wrote: I maintain that a big part of the issue is that 40k lore has definitely shifted from "look at these idiots who deliberately make their empire an inefficient mess and worship a toaster" to "blind faith is a survival requirement to ward off daemons and everything the Imperium does is required to survive".
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I think this shift really began around 5th edition, but the seeds are earlier. The Horus Heresy is a big part of this with stuff like saints overtly defeating daemons through faith.
Yes, that's the core of it. And I think it was mainly caused by Black Library and HH in particular. Once you start to sell books which get to personal level, you want to hake the characters appealing to the readers, and it is hard to do if they're presented as misguided idiotic bigots. It is way easier if you write them as noble defenders of civilisation. And once start you write about the movers and shakers of this totalitarian state in this way, you have pretty seriously shifted the tone from the satire to apologia.
Haighus wrote: I maintain that a big part of the issue is that 40k lore has definitely shifted from "look at these idiots who deliberately make their empire an inefficient mess and worship a toaster" to "blind faith is a survival requirement to ward off daemons and everything the Imperium does is required to survive".
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I think this shift really began around 5th edition, but the seeds are earlier. The Horus Heresy is a big part of this with stuff like saints overtly defeating daemons through faith.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On Guilliman? He is part of the overall satire and social commentary.
A Literal Demi-God of humanity. A being of near unlimited potential. Reduced to toeing the Imperium’s line. The slow corruption of who should’ve been a shining beacon of hope and renewal.
Gone from standing for mankind, to standing for the mere status quo. And perhaps reflection that, just perhaps, that’s what he’s always done since being reunified with his creator. The scales falling from his eyes that, just perhaps, The Imperium isn’t that far from the Great Crusade, just in a hyper religious wrapper. Because whether you’re forcing a religion or enforcing atheism, your tools and oppression remain the same. You’re still trampling all over a right to self determination and spiritual succour.
I think kicking this on isn't going to get an answer, as people just disagree.
But how is this "satire"? What is this sending up?
I mean I'm fairly versed on contemporary UK politics (....where to begin with the latest madness?). But a knowledge of that doesn't give any hidden meaning of 40k. Who in 40k is say the stand in for Boris, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Corbyn (or Cameron, Brown, Blair, all the way back to Thatcher) etc? Ditto US politics - is Guilliman meant to be Trump? Or Biden? Not obviously. "Its a take on Imperialism, or the Cold War or the Iraq War, Guilliman is George Bush" - but again, it just isn't. A knowledge of these things doesn't give you any special insight into why Guilliman is a bit miffed the Imperium is being overwhelmed by its effectively infinite enemies.
I mean its perfectly possible for GW to write a story where there is an obvious 1:1 with contemporary real people/politics. But they don't.
In the olden days, presumably before GW realised they had an IP worth billions, they were happy to just steal things. "Hey, its Alexander the Great but in Spaaace". And if you know about Alexander the Great you can go "I see what you did there, its Alexander the Great in Spaaace". But even that's not obviously "satire" exactly. Unless we are meant to think its a criticism of Alexander the Great, which it doesn't seem to be.
I feel your view of satire is a bit narrow. Stuff can satirise current events, but they can also satirise concepts. Whilst early GW had a fair few examples of satirising current events, it was mostly satirising concepts of authoritarianism (which I agree were heavily inspired by 2000AD, a setting which is much more consistent in this). The satirisation of authoritarianism has slowly given way to justification in my view as I outlined in my previous post in this thread, and which isn't surprising as GW became a big corporation.
Haighus wrote: I maintain that a big part of the issue is that 40k lore has definitely shifted from "look at these idiots who deliberately make their empire an inefficient mess and worship a toaster" to "blind faith is a survival requirement to ward off daemons and everything the Imperium does is required to survive".
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I think this shift really began around 5th edition, but the seeds are earlier. The Horus Heresy is a big part of this with stuff like saints overtly defeating daemons through faith.
The question becomes, is that the belief of the characters in the setting, or the message the writers are to get across. It's certainly the former, but the latter is debatable, can is very likely different from author to author.
I do see your point on the HH faith angle, however I do still see this as satire based on a few things.
1) This entire situation in the first place was caused by their own regime being so messed up that Chaos didn't look that bad to some involved, especially when they started out only having a cursory understanding of it. It was Big E's totalitarianism that pushed many of the Primarchs to that point.
2) The nature of the faith that repels Daemons ISN'T actually related to the Emperor at all, any personal belief will work if the conviction is strong enough, if a character honestly believed in themselves to the extent many believe in Big E, they would be just as effective at smiting Daemons. The people of the Imperium were just in such a dire fractious and vulnerable state that they latched on to this half-truth like a drowning man and have been clinging to it for 10,000 years. Their society had already indoctrinated them into a single truth mentality, so when this came along, they never even bothered to think there could be another solution or explanation.
3) We do see that the Imperium is not the only alternative to Chaos thanks to the Tau. While I'm still on the fence about Ethereal lore, (time will tell what they do with that) we can clearly see there are other ways to combat the Warp then religious devotion. The Tau's belief in the Greater Good, a concept and ideal rather than a dogmatic figurehead, created their own (as far as we know) benevolent warp entity from the minds of the humans they had converted. We see their foil here, if The Imperium was as likeminded and tolerant, could the warp be calmed and the Chaos Gods defeated without an ocean of blood? It's left unanswered, but the idea is certainly implied.
Obviously this doesn't cover all 40k lore and YMMV depending on the writer. I do however think that overall, 40k has maintained it's satire, it's just a lot more subtle about it than directly parodying real world people like it did back in the day.
Tawnis wrote: The question becomes, is that the belief of the characters in the setting, or the message the writers are to get across. It's certainly the former, but the latter is debatable, can is very likely different from author to author.
Agreed about that last point- it varies from author to author- but they gave the authoritarian ubermensch enlightened despot a literal fething halo on the cover of the 9th Ed rulebook.
I've seen a lot of people express that they like 40K because it's 'about how far you're willing to go to survive' or something to that effect, essentially that the Imperium is doing really bad things because they're necessary. If there are authors at GW who feel that their product is a satire of authoritarianism, it's sufficiently subtle that it goes right over the heads of half the fanbase.
It also doesn't help that the drive to explain has created internal justifications for things that might otherwise be satirical. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they're blinkered idiots' is satire. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they might actually become possessed and it's a perfectly rational thing to do' is not. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because they're a cargo cult that doesn't understand what they're doing' is satire. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because everything actually has a sliver of machine intelligence thanks to the DAoT and much of it is corrupted so they're actually perfectly rational' is not.
At some point if your setting is justifying the things it's supposed to be satirizing more than it's making fun of them, it isn't satire anymore.
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I can think of one thing recently that undermines the "necessity" thesis, but I think overall, you might be on to something.
So think back to Gathering Storm.
Eldrad and Yvraine cook up a scheme to get rid of Slaanesh through a great big ritual. Obviously, the Imperium would be better off without Slaanesh.... But the deathwatch happen to be on the planet where the ritual is taking place, and Artemis be like, "Hey, there's an Alien, I should shoot him!"
And so now we're stuck with Slaanesh.
The DW didn't NEED to take out Eldrad, and the Imperium as a whole would have been better off if he had left Eldrad alone. Even after Artemis shot him it didn't take him out- it just botched the ritual, which just compounds the sheer stupidity of the action.
I don't know if it exactly constitutes satire- it doesn't reference a single real-world directly, but it is the type of mistake government bureaucracies of the 21st century make on a regular basis.
Catbarf nails it for me. And I also agree the shift happened back in 5e, around the time the background started being written by fans of the setting rather than it's original creators.
I remember being annoyed about it at the time. The shift from "the machine spirit is how the mechanicum explain stuff they don't understand because they're a stupid cult" to "machine spirits are for real a thing actually, they're not as stupid as you might first think!" to "because of the warp everything actually DOES have tiny spirits in it, because people think they do!" is traceable as just one example. There's far too much "belief makes stuff happen" in modern 40K (and modern fantasy as a genre altogether).
On the satire point, I'm not sure it was always really intended to be a satire as such. There were mild satirical elements, but a lot of it was just jokes and humorous takes on how the world works. There was some satire, and it was heavily influenced by 2000AD and the like, but other parts were just taken from history with a humorous spin.
And there was always a bit of "Yeah these guys are the baddies, but they're pretty cool too!" in it, because back in the 80s people were a lot less morally pious about their entertainment. Nowadays, a lot of people seem to have difficulty just liking something "problematic" and have either drop something or explain away the things that they don't agree with.
As soon as your evil empire actually needs to be horrifically oppressive to survive, rather than simply thinking it does but actually makes everything worse, your setting now justifies totalitarianism rather than satirising it.
I can think of one thing recently that undermines the "necessity" thesis, but I think overall, you might be on to something.
So think back to Gathering Storm.
Eldrad and Yvraine cook up a scheme to get rid of Slaanesh through a great big ritual. Obviously, the Imperium would be better off without Slaanesh.... But the deathwatch happen to be on the planet where the ritual is taking place, and Artemis be like, "Hey, there's an Alien, I should shoot him!"
And so now we're stuck with Slaanesh.
The DW didn't NEED to take out Eldrad, and the Imperium as a whole would have been better off if he had left Eldrad alone. Even after Artemis shot him it didn't take him out- it just botched the ritual, which just compounds the sheer stupidity of the action.
I don't know if it exactly constitutes satire- it doesn't reference a single real-world directly, but it is the type of mistake government bureaucracies of the 21st century make on a regular basis.
I regularly see narrative excuses made for this. I do get why people want to as it makes playing Deathwatch feel really foolish at times, particularly in stories like this where applying the DW's xenophobia to something as human as the Eldar feels much worse than when its applied to things like Tyranids or even Orks. I think that's one of the core issues with the satire of the setting. The satire itself isn't.... fun... anymore. There's too much real hate and sense of being ground down by an inhumane system in the world to make a lot of the ironic slogans fun to repeat.
This story is nearly a decade old, but even then it was kind of the death of the satire for me. The scales are so lopsided but still fall on the side of petty hate and while that's very much the point its so egregious that its not fun anymore. I'm honestly not sure how to end this thought, but I just know this story really made me feel like the setting just couldn't survive on the kind of nihilism that fueled it to that point.
Tawnis wrote: The question becomes, is that the belief of the characters in the setting, or the message the writers are to get across. It's certainly the former, but the latter is debatable, can is very likely different from author to author.
Agreed about that last point- it varies from author to author- but they gave the authoritarian ubermensch enlightened despot a literal fething halo on the cover of the 9th Ed rulebook.
I've seen a lot of people express that they like 40K because it's 'about how far you're willing to go to survive' or something to that effect, essentially that the Imperium is doing really bad things because they're necessary. If there are authors at GW who feel that their product is a satire of authoritarianism, it's sufficiently subtle that it goes right over the heads of half the fanbase.
It also doesn't help that the drive to explain has created internal justifications for things that might otherwise be satirical. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they're blinkered idiots' is satire. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they might actually become possessed and it's a perfectly rational thing to do' is not. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because they're a cargo cult that doesn't understand what they're doing' is satire. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because everything actually has a sliver of machine intelligence thanks to the DAoT and much of it is corrupted so they're actually perfectly rational' is not.
At some point if your setting is justifying the things it's supposed to be satirizing more than it's making fun of them, it isn't satire anymore.
I would argue that many of those internal justifications are just a change in what is satirical about the topic. To use your examples:
The Inquisitors: Either way you slice it, the Inquisitions still acts out of fear. The fear has changed from an ignorant fear to an somewhat informed fear, but it's still mass murder based on fear. It still has the same effect of commenting on the horror of persecution based on imagined or possible "crimes" in this case ones that are not even under the victims control. You can still draw a lot of parallels to this and many uncomfortable chapters in human history and non of the Inquisitions reasoning makes it more acceptable.
The Admech: I'd actually argue that the tech having a sliver of machine intelligence is even more satire than the original, they're just a crazy cult interpretation. While it's only a small fraction of it, they are essentially worshiping the proscribed AI technology that they so vehemently claim to abhor without even realizing it. The faction that's on the surface seems like it's all about science and reasoning are actually so indoctrinated into their beliefs that they are revering what they think they despise out of ignorance. That certainly has some real world parallels.
What I like about the current state of 40K satire is partially what makes it so hard to see as true satire and what makes it a razors edge to walk, that not all authors successfully achieve. Relatability. It's easy to write off the blinkered Inquisition or crazy admech and know that we could never be like them, but in understanding their motives and the universe they live in, we see how and why they are led to these actions. These actions are still terrible, but in relating to these characters, it's a stark reminder that the slope is a slippery one, and that we may not see how far down we've slid until it's too late.
Of course the flip side to this is that if it's TOO relatable, then it becomes an advocate for what it's trying to satirize, which is why as I said, this line to walk can be razor thin.
Tawnis wrote: The question becomes, is that the belief of the characters in the setting, or the message the writers are to get across. It's certainly the former, but the latter is debatable, can is very likely different from author to author.
Agreed about that last point- it varies from author to author- but they gave the authoritarian ubermensch enlightened despot a literal fething halo on the cover of the 9th Ed rulebook.
I've seen a lot of people express that they like 40K because it's 'about how far you're willing to go to survive' or something to that effect, essentially that the Imperium is doing really bad things because they're necessary. If there are authors at GW who feel that their product is a satire of authoritarianism, it's sufficiently subtle that it goes right over the heads of half the fanbase.
It also doesn't help that the drive to explain has created internal justifications for things that might otherwise be satirical. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they're blinkered idiots' is satire. 'The Inquisition killed everyone who saw a daemon because they might actually become possessed and it's a perfectly rational thing to do' is not. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because they're a cargo cult that doesn't understand what they're doing' is satire. 'The AdMech pray to machine spirits and reject technological development because everything actually has a sliver of machine intelligence thanks to the DAoT and much of it is corrupted so they're actually perfectly rational' is not.
At some point if your setting is justifying the things it's supposed to be satirizing more than it's making fun of them, it isn't satire anymore.
The problem is a lot of the bad things ARE neccesary, at least to some extent. Which is why I agree it is a bad satire of fascism. I think it wants to be but a lot of the world logic is at odds with it.
When the worst possible incarnation of fascism, jingoistic enforced ignorance has persisted for 10,000 years, to the put a son of your widely worshipped god ends up powerless to correct the course in any meaningful way? That’s your tragedy.
That Guilliman (Lion remains to be seen, but I’m not going to special plead here) is now part and parcel of that awful status quo, despite lofty ideals and being The One Thing In Existence It’s Really, Really Hard For Anyone Involved In That Religion To Overrule has resorted to selling out said ideals? That’s your satire.
Neither has to be funny, neither has to be Punk or counter culture. Both remain tragic and satirical.
The problem is a lot of the bad things ARE neccesary, at least to some extent. Which is why I agree it is a bad satire of fascism. I think it wants to be but a lot of the world logic is at odds with it.
Are they though?
There is a lot of fascist propaganda that plays their actions off as necessary too. Much of their arguments are based off of (very warped) logic and reasoning. They posit that A and B are true and if that is the case then logically, what we need to do is X,Y and Z. The logic behind it all makes sense if you believe A and B, the problem is that A and B are always bs.
It is the same setup in 40k, the beliefs that the Imperium holds are used to justify their actions and make them seem necessary to some extent. However, also in lore, we can verifiably say that the core beliefs that underpin this are wrong, hence it still at its core being good satire IMHO.
The problem is twofold however. 1) The universe is so expansive that just picking up a single book, it's often hard to tell that this is the case. 2) Imperium books sell the best, but have the hardest to get through perspective on this. If we had more Xenos lore with other viewpoints on the Imperium, Chaos, and the universe in general, this would be much more apparent. (It would also play into the satire of the us vs them if we had a lot more relatable Xenos for the Imperium to go around purging, but that's another topic.)
At the end of the day, they're balancing a lot of plates, and sometimes they drop some, but the act overall is still satirical. .
Xenos books tend to be better at the satire because they serve as in-universe outsiders to the insanity that is the IoM (instead of Imperial characters drunk on Imperial kool-aid), and their narratives don't need to bow to Imperial nonsense.
I belive that GW, over the course of the years, has become convinced that grimdark is inherently more appealing to large parts of their customer base than satire when it comes to getting invested into their setting and narrative. The problem now is that they maintain their settings are satirical at their core, while their products (as well as licensed 3rd party products) largely suggest otherwise, which rightfully leads to the alienation of certain parts of their customer base, and a still somewhat problematic public image.
This isn't exactly helped by the more recent trends of conflating fiction with reality, on either end of the spectrum. Whether it be people unironically supporting the implementation of the Imperium's dogma in our societies, or erasing any notion of "problematic" concepts in fiction altogether to shield people from harm. GW as a company and Warhammer as a product are relics of a time in which there was a lot more nuance involved both in the portayal and the reception of media, and they are trying to adapt to a world that is seemlingy no longer interested in nuance.
I would argue that grimdark is inherently satirical, and that works that have lost the satire aspect are no longer grimdark. They are just dark, some are not even that just mindless bolter porn.
Yeah, people used to just be more chill about this stuff. It was okay to like fictional bad guys. I dunno what it is about the current zeitgeist, some people seem to really need the fiction they are into to be morally bulletproof. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in consumerism, and therefore ascribing more importance to the things you "consume" (urgh) along with the social media age requiring everyone to broadcast their virtue to others for brownie points.
Is it because we spend so much time and money and passion on this trivial crap that we need to convince ourselves it's somehow meaningful, a commentary on society, rather than a bunch of stuff slapped together because the people making it thought it would be funny or cool?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Things I’d argue are necessary for good reason - at least in the short term?
Culling Psykers. Each and everyone is a potential portal to Actual Hell where Actual Daemons exist.
Wariness of the Xenos. Not universally so, but there’s a lot of genuinely hostile Other out there.
That's the thing, though - those might not be necessary, and they're arguably self-reinforcing. Sure, psykers are potentially dangerous, but the kind of abuse and persecution that the Imperium does to them is not going to make psykers want to show up voluntarily for training, is it? It also gives Chaos an easy W since it's hard for any rational person to look at the Black Ships and go "yeah, I should ignore the guy with the weird tattoo telling me he can help me control my powers and go get fed to the Emperor instead". Likewise, the xenophobia of the Imperium is universal, which means that few xenos would be dumb enough to try allying with them except under the direst circumstances. As a result, there's nothing preventing the less hostile xenos (Tau, Eldar) from treating humans the way that humans treat them, which then gets used as justification for the universal xenophobia, and round and round we go.
Basically, the Imperium is the guy who beats his dog and then is surprised that the dog bites him, so he beats his dog for biting him. I'm not sure how subtle is too subtle, but modern GW lore feels a bit less like someone pointing at that and saying "Look at this muppet, perpetuating the cycle of violence like it's going to help" and more like someone shrugging and saying "But the dog bit him, though".
I had the idea from pretty early on that the Imperium was metaphysically self defeating as well - like, that they created Chaos in the form that it's in, because their regime was so horrible and oppressive that all the misery, repression and rage on a massive, galactic scale soured the Warp and turned it into a sea of emotions that was predominantly negative, rather than positive. If the Imperium was a nicer place, it's Warp reflection would also become nicer. The Imperium creates the Chaos it's afraid of.
I think it's been clarified by now that that is NOT how it works, more's the pity.
I think it's been clarified by now that that is NOT how it works, more's the pity.
It may not be the actual reason, but the constant misery and desperation is absolutely contributing to the situation, at least to the Nurgle side of things.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, people used to just be more chill about this stuff. It was okay to like fictional bad guys. I dunno what it is about the current zeitgeist, some people seem to really need the fiction they are into to be morally bulletproof. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in consumerism, and therefore ascribing more importance to the things you "consume" (urgh) along with the social media age requiring everyone to broadcast their virtue to others for brownie points.
Is it because we spend so much time and money and passion on this trivial crap that we need to convince ourselves it's somehow meaningful, a commentary on society, rather than a bunch of stuff slapped together because the people making it thought it would be funny or cool?
IMHO it is modern social media and the need to be "right" (be it either morally, politically and the best of all technically ) plus the advantage of internet anonymity.
I mean, has any of us been approached in real life about the "problematic" nature of 40k lore? Or had to deal with idiots that believed that the IoM is a role model? Sure there is that fascist dumbass in that Spanish tournament a few years ago, but the fact that it was news shows it isn't a common occurrence.
I would like to believe that most of the 40k player base is functional and sane and nice people instead of the gak show that is social media.
I think the "it's satire!" thing is broadly a defense against people saying "it's fascism apologia!"
It's got satirical elements, and sometimes they also write background that shades into fascism apologia (I think by accident).
But it's not a big deal either way, is it? Like, someone's hour long video essay in either direction is not some sort of political win or activism, it's just a trivial waste of time. The entire hobby is a trivial waste of time.
Da Boss wrote: I had the idea from pretty early on that the Imperium was metaphysically self defeating as well - like, that they created Chaos in the form that it's in, because their regime was so horrible and oppressive that all the misery, repression and rage on a massive, galactic scale soured the Warp and turned it into a sea of emotions that was predominantly negative, rather than positive. If the Imperium was a nicer place, it's Warp reflection would also become nicer. The Imperium creates the Chaos it's afraid of.
I think it's been clarified by now that that is NOT how it works, more's the pity.
It still somewhat is. We know that Humans that follow the Greater Good of the Tau have inadvertently created a (as far as we know) benevolent warp entity that saved one of their ships from destruction in the warp.
I agree that modern 40k is not devoid of satire, that would be unlikely in such a sandbox setting, but it has become increasingly rare and I fully agree with Catbarf. It is a problem when a straight read is all to apparent to a substantial segment of the player base.
kodos wrote: came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
This highlights one of the problems of corporatised art when it used messaging (Satire, political commentary etc) in its original creation.
Satire isn't a one and done thing. For it to work the fact that it's satire needs to be relevant to the reader, which makes the concept more important than the example. Thus the satire would evolve with the times to remain relevant.
With an IP, they decide that the example is what was popular and that's what they need to sell, so the satire is frozen as one image of one particular time and the meaning is lost.
Which is basically flanderisation, where the original nuance is lost as specific aspects are over promoted.
There is a lot of fascist propaganda that plays their actions off as necessary too. Much of their arguments are based off of (very warped) logic and reasoning. They posit that A and B are true and if that is the case then logically, what we need to do is X,Y and Z. The logic behind it all makes sense if you believe A and B, the problem is that A and B are always bs.
This is it guys. We can just /thread.
Fascism is literally built on creating enemies are justifying doing horrible things to them. This is their perpetual state, they will always find someone to persecute; even down to self-segregating and demonizing smaller and smaller demographics within themselves if they have to. More over, it's built on making "hard choices" to defend from these supposed enemies.
That GW has created a scenario where the fascist behavior is unironically seem as "the right thing" to do is pretty much the death knell of any attempt at satire, because that's the point of satire. That it's not necessary or required, but an object lesson in how not to do things / the results that happen when some variant of something (let's just blanketly call it "stupidity") is allowed to run too far. And so 40k, for well over a decade now, has not had more than the occasional drop of satire.
Furthermore, this is reinforced by the Horus Heresy. Previous 40k was kind of a post-apocolyptic distopian nightmare satire because the age of enlightenment and plenty had failed to take off, plunging everything into this awful spiral of satirical fascism with only war and genocide to reap. Where the golden age was pushed away by the mad dash for greed and power, and ignorance had continued to perpetuate from there because doing the right thing is scary.
Now we have the HH written out.. And the golden age of enlightment was just as full of fascism and genocide. So no longer is 40k the result of history gone satirically awry and poking fun at what happens when fear, hatred, and conservatism run rampant; now it's just the fascist genocide dark future version of the failed fascist-genocide golden age.
Again, satire does exist in the form of individual authors penning it into their individual works. But in terms of a cohesive vision, and a setting wide tongue-in-cheek / poking fun at anything, satire is well and truly dead in 40k. It has been for a long time.
There is a lot of fascist propaganda that plays their actions off as necessary too. Much of their arguments are based off of (very warped) logic and reasoning. They posit that A and B are true and if that is the case then logically, what we need to do is X,Y and Z. The logic behind it all makes sense if you believe A and B, the problem is that A and B are always bs.
This is it guys. We can just /thread.
Fascism is literally built on creating enemies are justifying doing horrible things to them. This is their perpetual state, they will always find someone to persecute; even down to self-segregating and demonizing smaller and smaller demographics within themselves if they have to. More over, it's built on making "hard choices" to defend from these supposed enemies.
That GW has created a scenario where the fascist behavior is unironically seem as "the right thing" to do is pretty much the death knell of any attempt at satire, because that's the point of satire. That it's not necessary or required, but an object lesson in how not to do things / the results that happen when some variant of something (let's just blanketly call it "stupidity") is allowed to run too far. And so 40k, for well over a decade now, has not had more than the occasional drop of satire.
Furthermore, this is reinforced by the Horus Heresy. Previous 40k was kind of a post-apocolyptic distopian nightmare satire because the age of enlightenment and plenty had failed to take off, plunging everything into this awful spiral of satirical fascism with only war and genocide to reap. Where the golden age was pushed away by the mad dash for greed and power, and ignorance had continued to perpetuate from there because doing the right thing is scary.
Now we have the HH written out.. And the golden age of enlightment was just as full of fascism and genocide. So no longer is 40k the result of history gone satirically awry and poking fun at what happens when fear, hatred, and conservatism run rampant; now it's just the fascist genocide dark future version of the failed fascist-genocide golden age.
Again, satire does exist in the form of individual authors penning it into their individual works. But in terms of a cohesive vision, and a setting wide tongue-in-cheek / poking fun at anything, satire is well and truly dead in 40k. It has been for a long time.
I agree with all your points, but have to disagree with the conclusion drawn from them.
Yes, 40k is not the satire it used to be, that much is obvious, but I'd argue that it's just changed from Menippean Satire to a dark Juvenalian Satire.
The points you make about the Horus Heresy are correct, but they don't account for the shift in the universal narrative. The Golden age that used to be portrayed before the Horus Heresy still exists, it was just pushed back much further in the timeline to before the Emperor's rise to power. After the fall of the age of prosperity, Big E raises this interstellar empire based on fear, hatred and ignorance, is given every conceivable advantage and still fails, creating a universe arguably worse than the one he was trying to fix. The lesson here is that no matter what, this style of governance and rulership is doomed to collapse. That's the lesson of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.
As I mentioned before about the warped logic. We are given a universe where (both in universe as propagandists, and from a meta writers sense) they control what we see and believe about everything. They show us what A and B are, and in so doing, we think, "okay, in that context X, Y, and Z make sense" and suddenly we're relating to genocidal madmen. It's a fine line to walk, and it's not always done well, but the point I believe is to have people look at how little it really took to get them to see the "logic" behind these atrocities, and hopefully take that knowledge back with them and be far more cautious about the justifications of their own actions (and by extension, the actions of those they support).
Yes, gone is the obvious digs and political figures and clear 1-1 parallels, but I believe it's been replaced by something a lot deeper. A cautionary tale of the kind of decisions that lead to a universe like this. The story is no longer, "ha ha, look at those backwards idiots" it's now "look how easy it could be to start thinking like them, you need to be careful" Now I fully agree that not every lore writer gets this, and YMMV greatly depending on the individual work, but as a whole, I believe the opposite as you. As a cohesive vision, this is the kind of grim satire that 40k is now and that non-satirical straight takes are occasionally penned by individual authors.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, people used to just be more chill about this stuff. It was okay to like fictional bad guys. I dunno what it is about the current zeitgeist, some people seem to really need the fiction they are into to be morally bulletproof. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in consumerism, and therefore ascribing more importance to the things you "consume" (urgh) along with the social media age requiring everyone to broadcast their virtue to others for brownie points.
Is it because we spend so much time and money and passion on this trivial crap that we need to convince ourselves it's somehow meaningful, a commentary on society, rather than a bunch of stuff slapped together because the people making it thought it would be funny or cool?
The real life several-hundred-percent rise in hate crimes and hate speech, as well as weaponized politics and culture war that disproportionately affect some people for stupid reasons, are why it’s less enjoyable now.
That and all the chuds using this stuff to get hyped and even more radicalized make it seem less fun.
If comedy is tragedy plus distance, we’ve been steadily losing distance for years.
I mean, I just don't think it was a lot better in the 80s UK where this was being written?
You'd got Thatcherism, Section 28, violent policing, an actual bloody civil war in Northern Ireland...it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Hate speech? Try armed militias beating the crap out of you for being a Catholic Civil Rights marcher or terrorists blowing up pubs in Birmingham.
So I don't really buy that things are worse now. Several hundred per cent rise in hate speech is because hate speech is a relatively new concept and wasn't reported in the past, so obviously as the concept catches on more so people are reporting it more. There was plenty of hateful speech in the 80s too.
The internet serves to magnify the level of nutters.
I'm pretty sure there was a lot more casual violence in society in the 1980s. But the US might be moving that way, versus a relatively quiet 90s/2000s. (Terrorism, both domestic and foreign aside.)
Tyel wrote: The internet serves to magnify the level of nutters.
I'm pretty sure there was a lot more casual violence in society in the 1980s. But the US might be moving that way, versus a relatively quiet 90s/2000s. (Terrorism, both domestic and foreign aside.)
US crime stats say otherwise, being down considerably from 2010 levels for both violent and property crime, let alone the levels we had in the 80s and 90s.
Da Boss wrote: I mean, I just don't think it was a lot better in the 80s UK where this was being written?
You'd got Thatcherism, Section 28, violent policing, an actual bloody civil war in Northern Ireland...it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Hate speech? Try armed militias beating the crap out of you for being a Catholic Civil Rights marcher or terrorists blowing up pubs in Birmingham.
So I don't really buy that things are worse now. Several hundred per cent rise in hate speech is because hate speech is a relatively new concept and wasn't reported in the past, so obviously as the concept catches on more so people are reporting it more. There was plenty of hateful speech in the 80s too.
I think I misunderstood what you meant, then. I thought you meant the wider fan backlash against that kind of thing, with the US being a significant source for the backlash and pretty much most of the social media problems.
If you were asking why were people more okay with this kind of humor back when racism was mainstream, police were less accountable and everyone understood teachers were encouraging bullies to beat up the kids who were different, I think the question answers itself. And I apologize for reading your statements as inflected with nostalgia for that period as if decrying how comedy can’t be funny any more ifyouknowwhatImean. That was what I thought you were getting at.
I have question regarding the "fasism in w40k" thing. How is generaly understood, because it can be actual fasism. That thing with its separation of church and state nationalisation of production and focus on citizentship rather then nationality is nothing how W40k Human Imperium is run. So is it like used as a stand in for "things I don't like to happen" or is there is a set of things that define the w40k state in a peculiar way. I am almost confused by the wording used regarding settings like w40k.
Xenophobia for example, a specific definition for a very odd to wrong point of view on the world. But only in the "setting" we have right now. There is absolutly nothing xenphobic about wanting to kill eldar, ork, tyranids etc on sight, because the threat from all those races is not imaginary. Eldar for example wiped out the population of a hive planet, just to get a few soult stones the governour used as jewlery. Tyranids kill and eat humans. Orks kill humans and enslave some, and sometimes they eat them too. Tau technicaly take humans in, but they have sterilisation programs, and then there is also Farsight who is very anti everything no tau, not just humans.
So a phobia of a xeno, isn't a phobia, it is a regular warented fear.
Same with the with witch/mutant thing. In our world, as long as it ain't illegal, peresecution of someone for just being different is abhorable. I personaly am a mutant. But in the w40k setting being a unsactioned psyker or a mutant means one can become a gate to the warp and cause the destruction of the entire planet or even a sector. The expiriance of the long night clearly taught humanity to act fast and decise, when it comes to unsantcioned people.
And it is not even something some odd. I come from a rural region that was plagued in the last decade or so, by swine and bird flu. If a source of any of those gets found near a farm, all the birds/pigs are killed. And it is done swift, because not doing it risks further spreading.
Karol wrote: I have question regarding the "fasism in w40k" thing. How is generaly understood, because it can be actual fasism. That thing with its separation of church and state nationalisation of production and focus on citizentship rather then nationality is nothing how W40k Human Imperium is run. So is it like used as a stand in for "things I don't like to happen" or is there is a set of things that define the w40k state in a peculiar way. I am almost confused by the wording used regarding settings like w40k.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and/or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Authoritarian - Check
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
The only things that the Imperium doesn't follow with regard to "traditional fascism" are the various inter-human isms like sexism or racism but that is because humanity has largely moved beyond those (sexism does still exist in some places within the Imperium).
Xenophobia for example, a specific definition for a very odd to wrong point of view on the world. But only in the "setting" we have right now. There is absolutly nothing xenphobic about wanting to kill eldar, ork, tyranids etc on sight, because the threat from all those races is not imaginary. Eldar for example wiped out the population of a hive planet, just to get a few soult stones the governour used as jewlery. Tyranids kill and eat humans. Orks kill humans and enslave some, and sometimes they eat them too. Tau technicaly take humans in, but they have sterilisation programs, and then there is also Farsight who is very anti everything no tau, not just humans.
Other races being Xenophobic does not in and of itself justify Xenophobia. The Federation faces the Romulans, Cardassians and Klingons all of which have a healthy dose of Xenophobia yet the Federation remains Xenophilic in nature.
The Imperium is Xenophobic because the Emperor preached that humanity is destined to rule the stars and that all who opposed this were to be destroyed.
Same with the with witch/mutant thing. In our world, as long as it ain't illegal, peresecution of someone for just being different is abhorable. I personaly am a mutant. But in the w40k setting being a unsactioned psyker or a mutant means one can become a gate to the warp and cause the destruction of the entire planet or even a sector. The expiriance of the long night clearly taught humanity to act fast and decise, when it comes to unsantcioned people.
And it is not even something some odd. I come from a rural region that was plagued in the last decade or so, by swine and bird flu. If a source of any of those gets found near a farm, all the birds/pigs are killed. And it is done swift, because not doing it risks further spreading.
Witch hunts are mob justice and are just as likely to kill a non-Psyker as a Psyker. Psykers themselves are rare in most societies and most humans will never meet a Psyker. But the idea that your neighbour could secretly be an evil disgusting Psyker keeps people afraid and easy to control.
As for mutants, Xmen should be all the nuance you need into that situation. Are mutants really the problem or did humanity mark them as evil because they were afraid?
Gert wrote: [
The Imperium is Xenophobic because the Emperor preached that humanity is destined to rule the stars and that all who opposed this were to be destroyed.
Do you not think that humanity would have had essentially the same outlook on xenos without the Emperor?
Humans have been fighting Orks since the Dark Age. They don't hate greenskins just because big golden man said fungus men bad...
Orks yes, the hundreds of other races humanity exterminated? Not necessarily.
We know the Great Crusade wiped out hundreds of Xenos species. Both the Interex and Diasporex were human/Xenos allied empires that thrived before the Imperium genocided them.
For every Ork or Rangda, there is an Interex or Diasporex.
The races left by the end of the Crusade are the likes of the Orks and Hrud who were impossible to destroy completely, or the Aeldari who hid it the Webway. One of the problems that led to many within the Legions siding with Horus was the idea that the Emperor was going to destroy the Astartes because there was no power able to stand against the Imperium anymore.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
I don't really think the exact ideology matters in this case, any kind of modern political authoritarianism would do as a comparision. GW do openly describe it as a satire on fascism though. Again, I'm not sure they are succesful in this aim but that is because of writing skill more than intent I think.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
Well, Stalinism does to an extent (aside from nationalism and racism), communism, however, opposes basically every point on the list but the regimentation of economy.
There are certainly arguments to not see the Imperium as fascist per se. One very important aspect of fascism that's missing on Gerts list is the opposition to marxism and socialism, for example, which is also absent in the Imperium. (That is, if you don't take Chaos Cults as workers rights movements ).Totalitarian and conservatism might be more fitting than outright fascism.
Gert wrote: [
The Imperium is Xenophobic because the Emperor preached that humanity is destined to rule the stars and that all who opposed this were to be destroyed.
.
Unfortunately not really. Tribalism is a very innate trait of humans, a primal instinct from the times when people living in another cave were 99% of the time an existential threat to our cave. This instinct in the modern world just subconsciounsly carries over to nations, religions, races... It takes an intellectual effort, education, study of history and psychology, societal pressure to overcome it (similarly to other destructive primal instincts).
The Imperium doesn't do any of those things, quite the opposite. Just like many politicians we know from our time it feeds it, supports it. And just like these politicians it does it for power.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
Well, Stalinism does to an extent (aside from nationalism and racism), communism, however, opposes basically every point on the list but the regimentation of economy.
There are certainly arguments to not see the Imperium as fascist per se. One very important aspect of fascism that's missing on Gerts list is the opposition to marxism and socialism, for example, which is also absent in the Imperium. (That is, if you don't take Chaos Cults as workers rights movements ).Totalitarian and conservatism might be more fitting than outright fascism.
I think the imperium would quite quickly put down any rhetoric about class struggle where it pops up!
The Imperium is a pastiche of various awful authoritarian regimes. Shades of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and oppressive feudalism all smushed together to really drive home that it's an awful place to be. I don't think it's particularly lampooning any one of them, just taking everything and cramming it in.
Da Boss wrote: The Imperium is a pastiche of various awful authoritarian regimes. Shades of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and oppressive feudalism all smushed together to really drive home that it's an awful place to be. I don't think it's particularly lampooning any one of them, just taking everything and cramming it in.
That's my take on it too, for that matter, with a big sprinkle of theocracy.
Da Boss wrote: The Imperium is a pastiche of various awful authoritarian regimes. Shades of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and oppressive feudalism all smushed together to really drive home that it's an awful place to be. I don't think it's particularly lampooning any one of them, just taking everything and cramming it in.
That doesn't make it not fascist though. Calling the Imperium something like a theocratic militarist authoritarian state is just a long-winded way of saying fascist. This isn't Stellaris where you pick some ethics off a wheel and get a fancy government type.
I don't see whats so wrong with calling the Imperium what it is.
Karol wrote:Tau technicaly take humans in, but they have sterilisation programs, and then there is also Farsight who is very anti everything no tau, not just humans.
Just to address, but this simply isn't accurate.
The Tau sterilisation thing exists only in one form of media, and the canonicity isn't supported by any other media. Sure, you can choose to believe that source, but I'm just pointing out that it is not the most recent, nor is it corroborated.
Second, Farsight isn't "anti everything non-Tau". In fact, if I'm not wrong, he was one of the FIRST T'au to embrace the Gue'vesa. He's anti-Ethereal and anti-Ork, and almost certainly has a grudge against Space Marines and the Imperium, but that doesn't mean he's anti-HUMAN.
Third, the quality of life in the Tau Empire is significantly higher than that experienced by nearly all humans in the Imperium (caste system aside, which is *really* where the criticism over the Tau should come in from. If anything, the Ethereal Caste is the worst element of Tau society, and by Farsight breaking away from them, Farsight genuinely represents one of better elements of the Tau, and the main branch that could become something akin to the Interex in 40k)
So a phobia of a xeno, isn't a phobia, it is a regular warented fear.
Except when that "phobia" is used to justify killing Eldar that might genuinely have altruism in mind, or Tau, or the Interex, or humans who don't want to join the Imperium, or any of the countless xenos species that the Imperium regularly exterminate *simply for being xenos*.
Bobthehero: Oh yeah, theocracy absolutely. Stupid to leave that out!
Gert: Yeah no argument from me really. I don't have a problem with calling the Imperium fascist.
I think this is probably splitting hairs to the 9th degree, but I'd argue the Imperium is insufficiently developed to be fascist.
I mean a fundamental issue of the Imperium is that it isn't centralised. You could argue its more centralised in the most recent lore (cos Guilliman etc) - but not really.
Its social organisation is far closer to high middle ages feudalism (and I realise all those terms are contested) than the office politics of modern bureaucracies.
The military and bureaucracy are controlled by the central government, not the local nobility.
The various Adeptus are departments of government from the DOD (Astra Militarum, Navy) to the Home Office (Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Administratum).
Individual planets still have local government but that local government is beholden to the laws and edicts set by the central government and the enforcers of that government (Arbites, Munitorum, Administratum, Inquisition) have the authority to remove and replace that local government if it does not align with the wishes of the central government.
But to again raise the point, what is the point in using other terms when fascist fits what the Imperium is? Why bother calling it a feudal theocratic authority when one word does the job the same way?
But to again raise the point, what is the point in using other terms when fascist fits what the Imperium is? Why bother calling it a feudal theocratic authority when one word does the job the same way?
Gert wrote: But to again raise the point, what is the point in using other terms when fascist fits what the Imperium is? Why bother calling it a feudal theocratic authority when one word does the job the same way?
Probably because if you dilute the term so much you end up arguing every government ever is fascist. Which is a bit reductive.
But really I think we come back to disagreements on the lore.
I mean the idea that the Imperium's military and bureaucracy are controlled by central government. They just aren't. The Imperium can barely communicate across its vast distances. How can it therefore possibly be run from the centre?
Random inquisitors roaming around doing what they fancy, requisitioning resources etc "in the name of the central government" isn't the same as being the central government. The connection just isn't there.
And as was pointed out earlier, the Imperium fits the bill for a fascist power. Just because I'm using one term rather than five doesn't mean I'm not being specific.
Tyel wrote: Probably because if you dilute the term so much you end up arguing every government ever is fascist. Which is a bit reductive.
Cool but did you see the bit where I listed all the things that make a fascist state and how the Imperium matches them? I have a background in history and social sciences so this kind of thing is kind of my specialty. I'm not some Reddit warrior looking up HOI4 descriptions of government.
I'm not calling the Imperium fascist because it isn't left-wing, I'm calling it fascist because that's what it is.
But really I think we come back to disagreements on the lore.
I mean the idea that the Imperium's military and bureaucracy are controlled by central government. They just aren't. The Imperium can barely communicate across its vast distances. How can it therefore possibly be run from the centre?
Random inquisitors roaming around doing what they fancy, requisitioning resources etc "in the name of the central government" isn't the same as being the central government. The connection just isn't there.
Who orders the deployment of the Astra Militarum and Navy? Who requisitions the supplies and materials needed for these deployments? Who supervises the recruitment and training of the Astra Militarum and Navy? It's not local lords or nobles, it's the Departmento Munitorum, a department of Imperial government.
The fact that the Imperium is inefficient doesn't make it not fascist. Nazi Germany had massive internal strife between its upper echelons because Hitler kept pitting them against each other and when Hitler took direct control of the armed forces they performed poorly. Inefficiency is often a hallmark of fascist powers due to the constant need to keep everyone fighting each other so they aren't fighting the ruling figure.
Regarding the Inquisition, you are correct that they alone enforcing the will of the Imperium does not make it a central government. This is why I also listed the Arbites, who enforce the Lex Imperialis on all worlds and will remove a governor and their administration if they refuse to comply, the Munitorum, who oversees the recruitment of the various armed forces and will remove an administration who refuses this duty, and the Administratum, who enforces the Tithe and will remove anyone who causes problems for the Tithe being collected.
Sounds like a central government to me.
The Imperium is run from Terra and uses the Adeptus Terra to manage its territories. A governor might rule a planet but that planet adheres to the laws and edicts of the Imperium or the Imperium removes the governor.
I think the issue is that while on paper the IoM is supposed to be centralized, in practice it isn't by combination of unreliable warp communications and even more unreliable bureaucracy.
So while on paper the fleets and armies answer to Terra, on practice local military and political leadership do whatever they want while paying lip service to Terra and occasionally willing to go as far as open revolt if Terra oversteps its actual authority.
So while on paper the IoM is fascist, on practice we have to wonder if it is possible to suck so much at fascism like the IoM and still be fascist and I have seen argument go either way.
Now the Great Crusade on the other hand? That was actually fascist.
Tyran wrote: I think the issue is that while on paper the IoM is supposed to be centralized, in practice it isn't by combination of unreliable warp communications and even more unreliable bureaucracy.
So while on paper the fleets and armies answer to Terra, on practice local military and political leadership do whatever they want while paying lip service to Terra and occasionally willing to go as far as open revolt if Terra oversteps its actual authority.
But we're not talking about local military like the PDF or system defense craft, we're talking about the Guard and the Navy. The Guard is not controlled by the local political structure of the planet they fight on, nor is the Navy beholden to whoever commands a local defense fleet.
Likewise, while the Administratum and Arbites exist to support the rule of local powers, if those powers step out of line then both institutions can and will remove them from power.
I also think that you may be taking "centralised" to mean "all controlling" and that's just not what that is. Power in the Imperium is derived from Terra (more accurately the Emperor) and regardless of how efficient the bureaucracy may be, the ultimate claim to power still resides with Terra (and the Emperor). If Terra says "Jump", the rest of the Imperium says "Off of which cliff?".
So while on paper the IoM is fascist, on practice we have to wonder if it is possible to suck so much at fascism like the IoM and still be fascist and I have seen argument go either way.
Now the Great Crusade on the other hand? That was actually fascist.
Being a failing state doesn't mean the Imperium isn't fascist though. By that token the Italian Social Republic or 1945 Germany are both not fascist because they weren't doing it very well.
Tyran wrote: So while on paper the IoM is fascist, on practice we have to wonder if it is possible to suck so much at fascism like the IoM and still be fascist and I have seen argument go either way.
I mean, historically fascism sucks quite badly at running a fascist state as well, which might have something to do why their leader did a pretty good impression of a piñata.
Not only is it largely no longer satire it is essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and two-dimensional counterparts. It's a fascist power fantasy the majority of the time now.
tauist wrote: This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
Are you referring to the show or the comic? The show maybe, but the comic God no. "What if... the Salamanders were pedophiles lmao!" is the kind of satire I can do without.
Like Tolkien's Orcs fairly obviously at least influenced by the urban poor and people he met in the army from that sort of background.
They're based on the Mongol hordes primarily.
"squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" - JRR Tolkien
Da Boss wrote: Is it just a co-incidence that Savage Orcs are common in the part of the Old World that corresponds to real world Africa? I highly doubt it.
Wait, really? Whew lad and people defend that piece of gak setting.
1) This entire situation in the first place was caused by their own regime being so messed up that Chaos didn't look that bad to some involved, especially when they started out only having a cursory understanding of it. It was Big E's totalitarianism that pushed many of the Primarchs to that point.
Without a single exception every Chaos-aligned Primarch is depicted as betraying the Imperium due to grievous personality flaws that the loyalist Primarchs are depicted as completely lacking by comparison. People will with a straight face say that it's okay for the Chaos Primarchs to be portrayed as ineffectual losers compared to their loyalist brothers because it's meant to show how Chaos has degraded what they once were and made them less than their peers who kept to the straight and narrow path of supporting a totalitarian genocidal regime.
Every Chaos Primarch is portrayed like this. Mortarion? Admits to Jaghatai Khan that he's essentially envious of the Emperor and aspires to be a tyrant and can't stand being one's lackey. Magnus? Can't admit fault for anything and fell because he refused to admit he might be wrong. Curze or Fulgrim? Lol, the former is fething insane and the latter is a cartoon villain. Perturabo? A petty and vindictive scumbag with a martyr complex. Even Angron, who you'd think is the only Primarch who lacks moral agency due to his situation is presented as someone unable to take responsibility for his own circumstances. Like uh, having needles put in his brain and being forced to lead a Legion he didn't want to. Although of course to make sure you know he's bad he has to do something cartoonishly evil like force his sons to put the Nails in their heads.
None of the loyalist Primarchs have any of these fun personality flaws and are all the more sterile for it, and ones who were originally being portrayed as less than ideal were whitewashed later, most notably Lion El'Jonson. Because being loyal to Space Hitler Jesus is good, betraying him is le bad.
This is what I mean when I say that 40k is just fascist capeshit. The heroic Imperium are there to make the hard choices and look badass while they mow down either the traitorous and cowardly Chaos forces or the perfidious and subversive Je- I mean Xenos.
And as pointed out in this thread it doesn't help that the setting is written in such a way now that the Imperium's actions are often portrayed as justified. It's not satire if an Inquisitor wipes out a city's population because some kid found a red rock that oh is actually possessed by a Daemon and could possess the kid and cause him to be possessed by a Daemon Prince which would open a rift in the Warp and cause the legions of Hell to pour through and corrupt the entire planet. It's just fascist apologia as mentioned.
As someone who's been in the hobby since 1989, I don't think there's any satire in it.
I think perhaps a lot of you who think it's satire need to read some of the mid 1900's sci-fi. Try Larry Niven's "A Gift From Earth" or "A World Out of Time", just as two examples. Science Fiction for most of the 20th century foresaw the inevitable future of humanity as being an impersonal communist state that would grind any independent thinker to dust.
WH40K came along at the end of the Cold War, when those of us living at the time had the specter of global thermonuclear war looming over us in a much more ever-present way than do modern generations. It seems natural to me that Britishers in the 80's would read sci-fi and speculate on what the galaxy might look like in 38000 years and come up with this.
Come to think of it, you can also read John Scalzi's MUCH more recent "Old Man's War" to find source material that has as its underlying ethos "anything to preserve humanity."
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
It's not satire, it's meant to convey how high the stakes are for every battle. And if you read the novels and the material with that in mind, it all makes perfect sense. Especially if you have any experience with bureaucracy.
dadx6 wrote: It's not satire, it's meant to convey how high the stakes are for every battle.
Can you elaborate on this point?
Because "Dystopic fascist regime" vs. "Brutal warmongering nihilists" doesn't exactly have the same stakes as, say, "Noble, if flawed, group," vs. either of the aforementioned. Or even two groups that have good means/ends/both but still have differences.
If the Imperium wins, humanity is under the a regime that's straight-up horrific.
If Chaos wins (not necessarily the gods, but someone like Abaddon) then most of the life in the galaxy is wiped out in brutal ways due to infighting eventually.
If Nids win, everyone gets eaten.
If Necrons win, everyone gets enslaved.
Like... There's no good ending, so any given battle just helps determine which horrible ending you get. Why yes, the stakes are very high when you choose between death via torture (starting on the left side of your body) and death via torture (starting on the right side of your body).
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
Many of the people who were key creators of the franchise have stated, since at least the 90s, that 40k is supposed to be satirical.
As for the general thread question, is 40K satire? To answer that question, all you have to do is look at 40k content. Can anyone point me to a Black Library novel (or hell even a codex fluff blurb) written in the last 15 years, that actually depicts the Imperial heroes of the story genociding an enemy that is explictly more ethical and functional than the Imperial heroes? Eldar and Tau certainly are not- both being factions that are equally prone to committing attrocities when it is strategically convenient for them. Closest I can think of is the Interex, but even that situation was basically engineered by Evil Chaos Man for Evil Chaos goals.
Judge Dredd is obviously satire, because when Dredd gives someone a 10 year prison sentence for loitering it is obvious that the punishment does not fit the crime. But whenever we see the Guard or Space Marines stomp citizens into the dirt we always find out that, actually, those citizens were a baby-sacrificing cult! Or they were genestealers! Or they were Tau loyalists secretly plotting to blow up all the factories so that the Imperial war machine would be effected! We don't ever get to see Calgar or Eisenhorn or Gaunt slaughter an entire planet down to the last child just because they converted to atheism, but were otherwise a completely normal and functional civilization (by real world modern moral standards). 'cause 40K is not satire. Maybe it once was, but it is no longer.
And that makes perfect sense because financially it is simply not in GWs interest for the Imperium to be satirical. They want people to form strong emotional connections to Imperial characters, they want people get invested in the black library books, they want TV shows and cartoons and comic books. It's a lot easier to get customers invested in that when your posterboy faction isn't going around kicking puppies (or rather, it is okay to kick the puppies if it is at least established that the puppies are actually demons that want to wear your skin).
A franchise that is the size, popularity and age of 40k cannot exist with the underlying theme of every storyline being "but actually look at how stupid and pointlessly evil everyone involved is haha". Consider how white-washed and non subversive Game of Thrones became by the end, then appreciate that GoT was only popular for eight years compared to Warhammer being around since the late 80s.
GW has gone on record, several times, that it is satire.
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Laughing Man wrote:
I mean, historically fascism sucks quite badly at running a fascist state as well, which might have something to do why their leader did a pretty good impression of a piñata.
Historical fascism didn't have the plot shields to keep running after everything fell apart and people started worshipping the rotten corpse of space Hitler.
Gert wrote:
But we're not talking about local military like the PDF or system defense craft, we're talking about the Guard and the Navy. The Guard is not controlled by the local political structure of the planet they fight on, nor is the Navy beholden to whoever commands a local defense fleet.
Likewise, while the Administratum and Arbites exist to support the rule of local powers, if those powers step out of line then both institutions can and will remove them from power.
I also think that you may be taking "centralised" to mean "all controlling" and that's just not what that is. Power in the Imperium is derived from Terra (more accurately the Emperor) and regardless of how efficient the bureaucracy may be, the ultimate claim to power still resides with Terra (and the Emperor). If Terra says "Jump", the rest of the Imperium says "Off of which cliff?".
If Terra says "Jump", half of the IoM doesn't receive the message because it got lost in the Warp, half of the half that did receive the message come up with interesting interpretations of why they aren't going to jump and clearly Terra meant something different from "jump" and the last quarter declare the concept of gravity heretical and thus it is impossible to jump.
And while at it ten percent fall to either Chaos or Genestealer Cults.
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
Hahahahahah.
Oh yeah it is definitely meant to be a satire of fascism that is clear both by what the company says and a surface level glance at the fluff. The question is are they successful in their attempt to which I would argue again, only at service level. Once you get into the weeds it all becomes a lot more questionable in a few ways but I'd raise an eyebrow towards anyone who questions the intent.
Tyran wrote: If Terra says "Jump", half of the IoM doesn't receive the message because it got lost in the Warp, half of the half that did receive the message come up with interesting interpretations of why they aren't going to jump and clearly Terra meant something different from "jump" and the last quarter declare the concept of gravity heretical and thus it is impossible to jump.
And while at it ten percent fall to either Chaos or Genestealer Cults.
That still doesn't make it not fascist. Your entire point relies on the unreliable nature of warp travel and astropathic communication somehow negating the fact that the Imperium is still a modern system of government that has a central power structure.
It's not feudal because feudalism can't be applied to an industrial society and it certainly isn't socialist or democratic.
Why is it so wrong to apply the term to the Imperium when the term fits almost perfectly?
Starting at the top and working down through the social stratas, you see fewer rights and rewards.
Planetary Governors are however largely left be, provided their non-negotiable “deliver or die” tithe is paid on time, every time? That’s good enough.
Even a major world like Necromunda doesn’t have a massive presence of Arbites. Certainly not enough to fight an uprising on their own. Their job instead is to ensure that Imperial Law is broadly followed, and that Local Law Enforcement isn’t completely useless.
The Mechanicus and Ecclesiarchy will of course assist in oversight of their respective areas. But even then, there’s a perverse tolerance for some deviation. Essentially, provided you’re sticking to the underlying message, exactly how you preach that is open to some interpretation.
Outside of that, a Planetary Governor need only worry about clandestine Inquisition Agents. Who also aren’t terribly fussed how you’re fulfilling your tithe provided it’s not Too Naughty. Horrific human rights abuses, up to and including grinding up your dead to feed to the living? Nobody cares. At all.
Eh, the Imperium can be both fascist and feudal, these do not seem to be mutually exclusive at the scale of the Imperium. The way it is set up is also completely different to any modern society despite being (mostly) industrialised, with the vast majority of worlds run as vassals that are largely left alone so long as they pay their tribute on time.
It seems to me to be fascist by intent, but forced to be feudal in implementation. So all the organs of the Imperial state are fascist, but the relationship between them and a given world is feudal. A given world can be all over the place. Most seem to be either hereditary monarchies or some kind of oligarchy, but theoretically a democratic Imperial world could exist if it still followed Imperial law (pay tithes etc) and recognised the Emperor as overlord (sort of a constitutional monarchy vassal when I think about it).
Karol wrote: I have question regarding the "fasism in w40k" thing. How is generaly understood, because it can be actual fasism. That thing with its separation of church and state nationalisation of production and focus on citizentship rather then nationality is nothing how W40k Human Imperium is run. So is it like used as a stand in for "things I don't like to happen" or is there is a set of things that define the w40k state in a peculiar way. I am almost confused by the wording used regarding settings like w40k.
Xenophobia for example, a specific definition for a very odd to wrong point of view on the world. But only in the "setting" we have right now. There is absolutly nothing xenphobic about wanting to kill eldar, ork, tyranids etc on sight, because the threat from all those races is not imaginary. Eldar for example wiped out the population of a hive planet, just to get a few soult stones the governour used as jewlery. Tyranids kill and eat humans. Orks kill humans and enslave some, and sometimes they eat them too. Tau technicaly take humans in, but they have sterilisation programs, and then there is also Farsight who is very anti everything no tau, not just humans.
So a phobia of a xeno, isn't a phobia, it is a regular warented fear.
Same with the with witch/mutant thing. In our world, as long as it ain't illegal, peresecution of someone for just being different is abhorable. I personaly am a mutant. But in the w40k setting being a unsactioned psyker or a mutant means one can become a gate to the warp and cause the destruction of the entire planet or even a sector. The expiriance of the long night clearly taught humanity to act fast and decise, when it comes to unsantcioned people.
And it is not even something some odd. I come from a rural region that was plagued in the last decade or so, by swine and bird flu. If a source of any of those gets found near a farm, all the birds/pigs are killed. And it is done swift, because not doing it risks further spreading.
First, to your point with Xenos, that's not entirely accurate.
- Eldar. While some Eldar have done what you say, sure, there are just as many who have helped humanity (usually to further benefit their own ends, but now always) and many who are just straight up ambivalent. Would you condemn the entire human race based on the worst of our kind?
- Orks: While incredibly warlike as a society, there are individual or small groups of Orks that can be somewhat... if not peaceful, at least willing to live without constant violence. There are some that live within backwater human colonies, work with Rouge Traders, or my personal favourite, the Ork "Philosopher" that gave an interview to an Inquisitor about Ork society and culture. His profound and genuine question of "why is Dakka?" still cracks me up. So long as they build up to WAAAGH! levels, Orks can live amongst others and we do know they have changed a lot since their creation, perhaps a galaxy without constant war would long term change them more?
- Tau: Baseline Tau lore on how they treat humans has changed a lot, so I'm not exactly sure where we are at with that at the moment, but I can say that your read on Farsight is just straight up wrong, though that could have been old lore. Currently, he greatly values the humans that are part of his tiny realm, and IIRC has honoured them greatly after the sacrifice of some human scientists to bring down a Hive Fleet tendril with some super poision.
- Okay, Tyrnaids are a fair point, but that's still only 1.5/4.
As for the Psykers, your realize that your argument is comparing human beings to cattle right? It shouldn't have to be explained that prematurely killing livestock and persecuting a subset of humanity because of a genetic abnormality are to wildly different things. While they can be warp conduits, we also know that with proper training, their abilities can be used mostly safely, (something the Eldar could help with if both sides could stop fighting long enough to work something out). Also if the warp was less tumultuous due to the constant feeding of the dark gods, it would be a lot easier for psykers to control their powers.
With all that said, circling back to your initial questions about fascism, you start to see the point. It's a system that is always pointing the faults at others, always scapegoating. "The problems of the galaxy aren't the Imperium's fault, oh no, they are the fault of all these "others" the xenos, the mutnat, the heretic. We're great, but they are stopping us from achieving our greatness, so they can be given no quarter, no mercy." That is the MO of fascism, and as usual it ignores the fact that the Imperium is just as much a problem as all these other races, if not more in some cases, but it doesn't want to improve, learn, or grow, it just wants to keep blaming all the "others" for it's problems so it can justify all the terrible things it does to keep the people in power where they are and doing whatever they want to do.
Worth noting that fascism is not a system of government, it’s more of an ideology. Basically fascism is the idea that we (whomever ‘we’ constitutes can vary) are strong and we do not just deserve to rule, but we are a combination of genetically disposed and divinely selected. And while we are so chosen, they (again, they can vary and continues to once each ‘they’ are dealt with) have subversively toppled us from our chosen position been intentionally undermining us to keep us down.
It’s key hallmarks are militarism (so we can regain our rightful place), intolerance (finding your ‘they’), and an obsession with a near mythical and perfect past when we were strong and ontop before they conspired to drag us down (we will be great again).
To this end fascism can apply to any form of government in the same way that capitalism can. While it’s most suited to forms of dictatorship, it’s theoretically possible to see stuff like fascist democracies or even fascist communisms.
So the imperium is undeniably fascist, and quibbling over what form or structure the government takes is beside the point.
1) This entire situation in the first place was caused by their own regime being so messed up that Chaos didn't look that bad to some involved, especially when they started out only having a cursory understanding of it. It was Big E's totalitarianism that pushed many of the Primarchs to that point.
Without a single exception every Chaos-aligned Primarch is depicted as betraying the Imperium due to grievous personality flaws that the loyalist Primarchs are depicted as completely lacking by comparison. People will with a straight face say that it's okay for the Chaos Primarchs to be portrayed as ineffectual losers compared to their loyalist brothers because it's meant to show how Chaos has degraded what they once were and made them less than their peers who kept to the straight and narrow path of supporting a totalitarian genocidal regime.
Every Chaos Primarch is portrayed like this. Mortarion? Admits to Jaghatai Khan that he's essentially envious of the Emperor and aspires to be a tyrant and can't stand being one's lackey. Magnus? Can't admit fault for anything and fell because he refused to admit he might be wrong. Curze or Fulgrim? Lol, the former is fething insane and the latter is a cartoon villain. Perturabo? A petty and vindictive scumbag with a martyr complex. Even Angron, who you'd think is the only Primarch who lacks moral agency due to his situation is presented as someone unable to take responsibility for his own circumstances. Like uh, having needles put in his brain and being forced to lead a Legion he didn't want to. Although of course to make sure you know he's bad he has to do something cartoonishly evil like force his sons to put the Nails in their heads.
None of the loyalist Primarchs have any of these fun personality flaws and are all the more sterile for it, and ones who were originally being portrayed as less than ideal were whitewashed later, most notably Lion El'Jonson. Because being loyal to Space Hitler Jesus is good, betraying him is le bad.
This is what I mean when I say that 40k is just fascist capeshit. The heroic Imperium are there to make the hard choices and look badass while they mow down either the traitorous and cowardly Chaos forces or the perfidious and subversive Je- I mean Xenos.
And as pointed out in this thread it doesn't help that the setting is written in such a way now that the Imperium's actions are often portrayed as justified. It's not satire if an Inquisitor wipes out a city's population because some kid found a red rock that oh is actually possessed by a Daemon and could possess the kid and cause him to be possessed by a Daemon Prince which would open a rift in the Warp and cause the legions of Hell to pour through and corrupt the entire planet. It's just fascist apologia as mentioned.
The is the point though, and the tragedy of the setting. These characters were flawed yes, but it's made clear in the setting that their fall isn't inherit to their character flaws, it's inherit to how they were shoved into the Imperial machine with no thought or care as to who they were or what they wanted.
- Mortarion: Spent his entire life trying to overthrow a tyrant just to be shackled to an even greater one. He was always sullen and morose, and the Imperium did nothing to dissuade him that this is just the nature of everything. There's always a bigger tyrant, always someone else pulling the strings. So he sees the only path to personal freedom to be the one on top, they very thing he vehemently despises.
- Magnus: That was only his first step. Once he realized the gravity of his mistake he fully understood his own folly and still would have been a staunch ally in the fight against Chaos, until Russ showed up. It was the lapdog of his father's regime grounding Magnus' people beneath his boot because he believed them lesser than he, Magnus and his psykers are treated like the "others" that Russ always believed them to be, and now no one is holding his leash. That is what caused Magnus' fall, a last ditch attempt to save his remaining sons that ultimately caused his doom.
- Cruze: "Raised" on a world of crime and excess while constantly tormented by visions of a terrible future, Curze never had anyone to help shoulder his burden. While incredibly wrong in his actions, Curze did at his very core, want to do right. He believes himself the lesser of two terrible evils, but still abhors what he believes he has to do, and by extension himself, which does nothing to bolster his already fragile psyche. No one has ever been there for him, and the one time he finally reached out to someone who he thought just MAYBE, might be a kindred spirit in Sanguinius, that idiot had to go and blab to Dorn who of course treated Curze like any other problem and attempted to hammer it into submission because that's the person he had to be for his father's regime. After this "betrayal", Curze gave up on everything and just more-less accepted his fate in being the monster that everyone saw, cleaning up what he considered to be his own mess in Nostromo, before being almost happy to accept his demise in the end. Had anyone actually given him the time of day, and been a true understanding friend and confidant, this could have been avoided, but there is no tolerance for those outside the norm in the Imperium.
- Fulgrim: (I can't really speak to this one because I've read so little of his pre-Lyrean blade lore, I don't know enough about him to make this argument.)
- Perturabo: He never wanted to be what he was. Perturabo only every wanted to create, to build, but his talent for building was surpassed only by his talent for destruction, so despite any of his own wishes, that's what he was constantly called upon by the Imperium to do, the exact opposite of what he really wanted and cared about. Combine that with his already grim and harsh outlook on everything and you get someone who easily becomes petty and vindictive. He's the child that thinks if he can't have his sandcastle, then no one else is going to have one either. In a society of progress and creation, Perturabo wouldn't have fallen, he may have even found true happiness.
- Angron: He's presented as someone not in control of his own actions, but (especially at the start) that is far from the truth. There is a reasonably argument to be made that the nails control him far less than everyone seems to think (or at least they did). While Angron didn't conquer his world, he did still lead a full on slave rebellion that especially given their complete lack of supplies and minimal manpower, needed to be led by someone with a level head. Had they just blindly fought, they never would have gotten as far as they had. But then Big E shows up and just kidnaps Angron and lets all his friends die, because he only has use for his Son and doesn't deign to consider any lives that don't serve his ultimate goal. He cares more about his own personal goals then anything he Son could want. The War Hounds were in orbit, they could have re-enforced their gene-sire and saved both him and his army, but no, instead Angron was ripped away from everything and everyone he every cared about, as if the Great Crusade could fill that void in him now, because in a fascist state, nothing can be greater or should provide more purpose than serving the cause. This is the moment he surrendered to the nails and set upon his path to damnation, and it was the most preventable of all.
- Horus: As a leader, Horus was far more progressive than his father and genuinely cared about the people beneath him; before his fall, he's the person I would have bet on to actually make the Imperium a better place. Yet, as the Great Crusade ground on and on, he began to see more of the cracks in the façade, the true problems with the Imperium he was helping to build. It started with the Interex, but only grew in scope from there, he began to question, but at the same time, felt the weight of responsibility and "trust" that Big E had placed in him. He didn't want to believe that the Imperium was what it was, he wanted to believe that his father actually truly cared about his sons and the people of his empire. It's debatable if the moment the Emperor turned from Horus to let him die actually happened or was a warp trick, but it didn't matter anymore, because Horus had learned enough about who his father was and what he had done to believe it, and that's what caused his final step into the abyss.
- Alpharius: The epitome of the ends justify the means, it was Alpharius' reliance on working outside the light of day, keeping all the secrets and trusting no one that led to his "fall". It's been heavily implied that Alpharius never actually fell, but was subverting Horus' forces from within. That being said, when the time came for him to make his ultimate play, he had no ally to count on. His insular and secretive nature, much like that of any secret police, left no one to trust him when he needed it most, and was thus struck down by Dorn. The whole Alpharius/Omegon thing would take way too long to get into here, but in essence, whichever one of them died at the hands of Dorn on Pluto was solely the fault of the secret police mentality that they conducted the Alpha Legion with.
- Lorgar: The most obvious of all, no truth can exist other than the truth of the great leader. In a society where everyone is forced to think a certain way and never to question, the philosophers and thinkers are the first to suffer. Had Lorgar been given the freedom of religious expression, something obviously anathema to Big E's empire (except when it's not ala Mars because hypocrisy), he never would have fallen.
On the surface, sure the Imperium are portrayed as the good guys, the heroes, but taking any kind of look under the surface and it's very clear that they've caused nearly all of their own problems. Their greatest enemy is LITERALLY the one they created, an obvious allegory to the fictional enemy at the gates that fascist regimes build themselves up on. Much of the lessons and take downs of the Imperium within 40k are a lot more subtle than people give these writers credit for, and it can be hard to see because of the in universe views of many of the point of view characters, but it is there. It's a cautionary tale of how these regimes rise to power, what they look like, what the people within them believe, and how frighteningly easy it is to unknowingly see them as the heroes, when you are just fed their propaganda. The truth is very clearly there for us to see though, and that's the point of it all, the lesson of 40k, to look beneath the surface of a society, a cause, or a person's actions, to the reason behind it, to question our own beliefs and the people we support, and get us to ask why we do so.
morganfreeman wrote: Worth noting that fascism is not a system of government, it’s more of an ideology. Basically fascism is the idea that we (whomever ‘we’ constitutes can vary) are strong and we do not just deserve to rule, but we are a combination of genetically disposed and divinely selected. And while we are so chosen, they (again, they can vary and continues to once each ‘they’ are dealt with) have subversively toppled us from our chosen position been intentionally undermining us to keep us down.
It’s key hallmarks are militarism (so we can regain our rightful place), intolerance (finding your ‘they’), and an obsession with a near mythical and perfect past when we were strong and ontop before they conspired to drag us down (we will be great again).
To this end fascism can apply to any form of government in the same way that capitalism can. While it’s most suited to forms of dictatorship, it’s theoretically possible to see stuff like fascist democracies or even fascist communisms.
So the imperium is undeniably fascist, and quibbling over what form or structure the government takes is beside the point.
But if your concept applies to essentially every government on earth, its surely meaningless?
Fascism is a 20th century ideology, rooted in the concepts and ideas of that specific era.
if you can go:
Napoleon? Fascist.
Louis XIV? Fascist.
England and France in the 12th century? Absolutely Fascist, look at how they tick through my list.
Then maybe your list isn't all that useful.
If to be a non-fascist state you need a happy go-lucky liberalism, then the number of historical examples is few, and essentially none when under any degree of duress.
I mean how many of these does say the US in WW2 tick? Most of them by my count. But its not a fascist state (cue twitter hipsters arguing otherwise).
Tyel wrote: But if your concept applies to essentially every government on earth, its surely meaningless?
That's because morganfreeman is wrong because you can't have a fascist democracy or fascist communism, they are opposing concepts and theories.
If to be a non-fascist state you need a happy go-lucky liberalism, then the number of historical examples is few, and essentially none when under any degree of duress.
I mean how many of these does say the US in WW2 tick? Most of them by my count. But its not a fascist state (cue twitter hipsters arguing otherwise).
Let's test that shall we?
Authoritarian - Nope. Democratically elected government which went to the polls in 1944 to re-elect FDR.
Ultranationalist - Nope. In fact, WW2 took the US out of its isolationism and thrust it into the spotlight as one of the first modern global powers.
Dictatorial leader - Nope. FDR was democratically elected and at any point could have been removed from power if he hadn't died in office. His VP took over and was also then voted into office.
Centralised autocracy - Not an autocracy. The US has both the Senate and House of Representatives to check the power of the President.
Forcible suppression of opposition - Nope. Elections were held midwar in 1944 and the opposition was allowed to run.
Belief in natural social hierarchy - This is the only one where there is a point to be made with the oppression of non-White Americans and even then it was absolutely nowhere near the level of fascist governments.
Subordination of individualism - Nope. A nation built on immigrants did pretty well being individualistic.
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Nope. That's what the free market was for.
Wow, how did you manage to be so completely wrong?
It does run into the issue that 40k is a late 20th early 21th century tabletop game rooted in concepts and ideads specific to this era.
Its writers didn't come up with new political and ideological ideas for it, nor is it a historical era. But rather it is a mismatch of militarism, might makes right, divine rule, genocides everywhere, and putting that together yes it would kinda be ideologically fascist.
It doesn't get the cultural and political distance actual historical regimes get, and when someone talks about it they will be using current political and cultural concepts because the 41/42 millenium doesn't really exist as a historical or political entity.
So what’s the end game of all this ranting? If 40K doesn’t conform 100% to your current political beliefs, it is fascist, and anyone that likes the game is a Tory, Trumper, or fascist by default? Maybe you would be happier if we instituted a plan where you can only write or work for GW by showing a party membership card from your ‘approved’ list? Maybe we should do it at the register for anyone buying any 40K stuff as well…the game ain’t what it used to be, in a lot of ways. My take is that it is game has certainly gotten blander over the years? Know why? So GW can sell more junk to the skeptical parents of kids. But I guess for some, it can only be the vast fascist conspiracy in action.
totalfailure wrote: So what’s the end game of all this ranting? If 40K doesn’t conform 100% to your current political beliefs, it is fascist, and anyone that likes the game is a Tory, Trumper, or fascist by default? Maybe you would be happier if we instituted a plan where you can only write or work for GW by showing a party membership card from your ‘approved’ list? Maybe we should do it at the register for anyone buying any 40K stuff as well…the game ain’t what it used to be, in a lot of ways. My take is that it is game has certainly gotten blander over the years? Know why? So GW can sell more junk to the skeptical parents of kids. But I guess for some, it can only be the vast fascist conspiracy in action.
What?
No, seriously, what?
Observing "The Imperium is a horrific fascist government," is just an observation.
Yeah no one is "ranting". It's been a remarkably civil discussion on some of the finer aspects of political ideology and its representation in fiction before that culture war outburst.
Wow, how did you manage to be so completely wrong?
I think because you are skipping over things.
Authoritarian - Yes. The Government imposed conscription, nationalised railways, mines and other sectors. It broke up and banned strikes through various labour laws. 120k people of Japanese descent (and smaller numbers of Germans and Italians) were interned.
Ultranationalist - Yes. The US view post Pearl Harbour was that the Japanese should be killed to essentially the last man. Attitudes to Germans grew worse throughout the war. The general belief in US cultural superiority - and the right to impose US-style constitutions around the world is surely not in question.
Dictatorial Leader - Sure, I'll give you this one. FDR was elected in free and fair elections.
Centralised Authority - Partially give you this one. Yes Congress existed. But executive Power to prosecute the war was centralised. How much Congress can control the President in matters of war remains an enduring issue in the US to this day. FDR was more constrained in domestic policy (with Congress sometimes insisting on holding back - or going further - than FDR personally wanted).
Forcible suppression of opposition. Sure, I'll give you this one. Formal political opposition was permitted. Republicans were free to run on the idea that FDR was a Communist. Although you do however still have those internment camps to wave away.
Belief in natural social hierarchy. You've given me this one.
Subordination of individualism. Which is why I'm a bit mystified why you are arguing against this one. 1940s US is racist, sexist, classist etc. You have conscription, strike breaking and various other impositions. Your individuality is rather clearly subordinated to the cause of winning the war.
Strong regimentation of society and economy. The US didn't turn 40% of its economy towards the war on a whim. If you say its not Fascist because people were paid, then what do you think was happening in Germany? There was a combination of carrot and stick. Corporations who got on board got profitable contracts. Those who didn't faced nationalisation, expropriation. Strikes were broken up and made illegal by a range of labor laws. This is not laissez-faire capitalism. Society and the economy is being regimented to win the war.
Clearly the US is not a fascist country. But from the list, I think you tick 5 out of 8 of your list, with some quibbles on the other 2.
I can't see GW doing it - but if Guilliman and the Lords of Terra decided to run for election, would the IoM cease to be fascist under your definition, even if everything else remained the same? They've already discussed various factions, not hard to go and establish political parties. Although does anyone want this in their Grimdark Eternal War game? Probably not.
GW missed a perfect opportunity to really bring in some modern satire with the return of Guilliman.
They should have had the Ecclesiarchy refuse to recognise him as he wasn't toeing the line of what 10,000 years had done to religion in the Imperium, so that the return of the son of their god and what he claimed were the ideals of said god directly clashed with the new tenets they had built. So they get a sniper to put a turbo round through his brain as he is a false prophet.
Bring that satire of fundamentalists full circle by pointing out that many christians today would try to crucify Jesus if he returned as stuff like prosperity gospel is about as far from his teachings as you can get, and people have a lot of money and power invested in not having their followers realising that.
In fact, I'd have had the Imperium completely purge the Ultramarines afterwards. They are created from the seed of a traitorous heretic after all, and how better to demonstrate the self destructive purity politics of the Imperium and its insanity than them deciding to wipe out a military force that gave them millennia of loyal service because their primarch didn't fit the current view and was too much of a threat to the power of the high lords. But that would annoy the space marine players, so it would never happen.
Also, the Imperium is explicitly fascist. It ticks pretty much every single box in Umberto Eco's list of major fascist characteristics. About the only ones you could maybe say it doesn't is the appeal to the middle class and the sexual aspects of machismo. But then, Eco never said that fascism needed every single one of these characteristics to be fascism, just that these are the more common characteristics observed in fascist ideology.
"The cult of tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
"The rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
"The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
"Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
"Fear of difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
"Appeal to a frustrated middle class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
"Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
"Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
"Contempt for the weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
"Everybody is educated to become a hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality".
"Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".
"Newspeak" – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Yeah the lack of modern satirical critique shows that it wasn't the satire itself gw cared about selling, but the image it was originally presented with in the 80s.
That image was conserved to sell. The satire it represented, not so much.
There are so many modern angles of satire they could mine if the satire was important, but it's clear it's not.
A lowly tech adept discovers a killer joke. A Joke so powerful that it kills everyone who hears it.
5 lords of terra are lost before appropriate measures are enacted. The joke is given to the Minotaurs (The LEAST SILLY ones) for testing. The entire chapter is wiped out over night. In an effort to weaponize this, they put it into the heads of several Astropaths, and point them towards the Warp, with extremely satisfying results. 15 Daemon lords, and one Chaos god are destroyed in the coming months. In an unforeseen consequence, the Orks who hear it are actually made stronger, when they get angry due to now understanding the joke. The Eldar are also unable to understand it. Slanesh giggles, but does not die.
Wow, how did you manage to be so completely wrong?
Authoritarian -
<snip>
What?
You keep using these words, and then clearly showing that you don’t know what they mean
A government utilizing power is not authoritarian in and of itself. Likewise, growing popular dislike/ distaste / even hatred for those a country I’d at war with is not nationalism; let alone ultranationalism.
There are MANY valid criticisms which can be laid at the feet of US, especially WW2 era US. However these aren’t some of them.
Tyel wrote: I think because you are skipping over things.
I'm not going to derail this thread further by breaking down just how wrong you are. All I'm going to ask is why is it important that the Imperium doesn't get labeled as fascist?
Wow, how did you manage to be so completely wrong?
Authoritarian -
<snip>
What?
You keep using these words, and then clearly showing that you don’t know what they mean
A government utilizing power is not authoritarian in and of itself. Likewise, growing popular dislike/ distaste / even hatred for those a country I’d at war with is not nationalism; let alone ultranationalism.
There are MANY valid criticisms which can be laid at the feet of US, especially WW2 era US. However these aren’t some of them.
Authoritarianism is a spectrum, and arguably exerting state power is authoritarian to varying extents (with the other end of that spectrum being libertarianism/anarchism with minimised state power). Plus, a lot of countries are more authoritarian than they try to present as. WWII era USA would be one of these IMO, given large swathes were experiencing segregation at the time. I agree it wasn't fascist though.
A Town Called Malus wrote: GW missed a perfect opportunity to really bring in some modern satire with the return of Guilliman.
They should have had the Ecclesiarchy refuse to recognise him as he wasn't toeing the line of what 10,000 years had done to religion in the Imperium, so that the return of the son of their god and what he claimed were the ideals of said god directly clashed with the new tenets they had built. So they get a sniper to put a turbo round through his brain as he is a false prophet.
Bring that satire of fundamentalists full circle by pointing out that many christians today would try to crucify Jesus if he returned as stuff like prosperity gospel is about as far from his teachings as you can get, and people have a lot of money and power invested in not having their followers realising that.
In fact, I'd have had the Imperium completely purge the Ultramarines afterwards. They are created from the seed of a traitorous heretic after all, and how better to demonstrate the self destructive purity politics of the Imperium and its insanity than them deciding to wipe out a military force that gave them millennia of loyal service because their primarch didn't fit the current view and was too much of a threat to the power of the high lords. But that would annoy the space marine players, so it would never happen.
Also, the Imperium is explicitly fascist. It ticks pretty much every single box in Umberto Eco's list of major fascist characteristics. About the only ones you could maybe say it doesn't is the appeal to the middle class and the sexual aspects of machismo. But then, Eco never said that fascism needed every single one of these characteristics to be fascism, just that these are the more common characteristics observed in fascist ideology.
Spoiler:
"The cult of tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
"The rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
"The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
"Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
"Fear of difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
"Appeal to a frustrated middle class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
"Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
"Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
"Contempt for the weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
"Everybody is educated to become a hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality".
"Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".
"Newspeak" – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
40k sticks so closely to this list that it makes me think someone at GW used it for inspiration at some point or another when developing the imperium
Probably. The IoM is supposed to be a pastiche of every tyranny in history. The worse excesses of the Roman Empire and the HRE, the USSR, the Third Reich, Genghis Khan, name it and it will probably be represented somewhere in the Imperium.
A Town Called Malus wrote: GW missed a perfect opportunity to really bring in some modern satire with the return of Guilliman.
They should have had the Ecclesiarchy refuse to recognise him as he wasn't toeing the line of what 10,000 years had done to religion in the Imperium, so that the return of the son of their god and what he claimed were the ideals of said god directly clashed with the new tenets they had built. So they get a sniper to put a turbo round through his brain as he is a false prophet.
Honestly, there's still time to do something like this. If I was GW at this point and really wanted to make my poster boys "the good guys" I'd absolutely have the UM driven out of the Imperium and develop them as more of a good humans faction while letting the Imperium itself become more overtly villainous.
I just want them to go back to being an incredibly inefficient and paranoid bureaucratic structure. Like, using exterminatus on a world due to a clerical error because some intern made a typo, or executing some poor bloke for possessing a demonic artifact that's really just a useless bauble that just happened to have a crack on it that looked like a chaos symbol.
You'd think a British company would have seen Brazil or Monty Python, but I guess not.
Hell, the novel Iron Kingdom has two Imperial factions having an appendage measuring contest about who can be the biggest d-bag before it ends up in a full-scale war because neither side wants to back down with the Imperium sending in the Marines Malevolent to murder the leader of the opposing faction.
The whole venture ends with the Knight world weakened with its queen dead, and the Imperium losing its fleet flagship to Red Corsairs.
Tyran wrote: I think a bigger issue is the side of the fandom that cries "grimderp" each time the IoM is shown to be inefficient and/or insane.
+1
The fact that some fans throw the label 'grimderp' at any instance of Imperials being irrational implies that they expect the Imperium to be composed of rational actors behaving in reasonable ways, ie not remotely satire.
I take that as evidence that the writing is too subtle, if it's meant to be satirical at all. You don't see people calling Verhoeven a hack because the Klendathu assault is strategic idiocy.
Um yeah, you definitely do see that. Verhoeven himself even said:
"I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don't."
The amount of people who don't understand the Starship Troopers movie is satire is as the man himself said, painful and they also perfectly intersect with the type of people who unironically think the Imperium is the good guys in 40k.
The satirical edge is easier to maintain when it's a detached third person "history book" style like in the game books themselves. When you write a novel, you need to have some relatable and likeable characters, and they need to behave in ways the reader will accept. So that inevitably means that Imperial characters will be written in a sympathetic light, and soft retcons will abound to make the stuff they do less stupid and more sensible.
The solution imo is to write the Imperium as an outside force. Have the protagonists not arms of the Imperial machine but either worlds outside the Imperium (there should be a lot more of those) or people technically in the Imperium but who don't really have much to do with it.
If I was gonna run an RPG in the 40K universe, I'd absolutely set it in non-Imperial space, and the characters would not have even heard of the Imperium. Then at some point the crusade fleet shows up and the gak hits the fan.
Edit: To an extent the problem I outlined above has always existed tbf. A lot of game background is the personal background of studio members armies or whatever. And people tend to cheer for "their dudes". So that trend has always been there. I think it's accelerated and especially now that the setting is more focused than ever on special characters and what they're getting up to.
And I'm not that bothered by it myself tbh. Anything I don't like I feel free to ignore or change.
You see only a vanishingly tiny minority of idiots not getting it. You do not see communities equally divided on whether the Federation is meant to be satirical, or half the Starship Troopers fanbase talking about how they love the franchise but decry the Federation's stupid policies as bad writing.
SST is also, to Da Boss's point, a pretty clear example of narrative written around characters who are presented as likable and relatable but still end up Triumph Of The Will'd into authoritarian nutjobs. Even that likability isn't strictly necessary; Judge Dredd is a fun read even though the character himself is absolutely bugfuck insane. It's entirely possible to write overtly critical satire where you can still cheer for your dudes, GW just... isn't doing that.
You see only a vanishingly tiny minority of idiots not getting it. You do not see communities equally divided on whether the Federation is meant to be satirical, or half the Starship Troopers fanbase talking about how they love the franchise but decry the Federation's stupid policies as bad writing.
We don't because the movie that it's so well known for came out in 1997. Had the internet been back then what it was today, I'm sure we would have seen that kind of full blown idiocy. It would still be a minority, just as I think it is a minority in 40k, but the internet makes those minorities far louder and seem far bigger than they would otherwise be.
I've never met a single person in all the time I've been in the hobby that doesn't think 40k is satire (and who was old enough to understand what satire is), but we see them all the time online because that's how the internet works.
I mean it comes up almost yearly at this point usually when some other franchise like 40k or this year Helldivers makes a point about genocidal regimes being bad.
Maybe it's the effect of the Internet but we're closing in on the film being almost 30 years old and people still don't get that it's satirical and that fascism is bad.
Just my 2 pennies.
Da Boss wrote: The satirical edge is easier to maintain when it's a detached third person "history book" style like in the game books themselves. When you write a novel, you need to have some relatable and likeable characters, and they need to behave in ways the reader will accept. So that inevitably means that Imperial characters will be written in a sympathetic light, and soft retcons will abound to make the stuff they do less stupid and more sensible.
This just isn't true. Tom Sharpe wrote 2 books satirising the South African police during apartheid. They are not likeable in any way. Of the three main characters, one is a rapist and murderer, another is a sexually repressed psychopathic secret policeman, and the last is a moron who dreams of nobility while being just as racist and hateful as the other two.
They are never depicted as competent, nor are they ever given the dignity of their actions being framed as sensible.
A Town Called Malus wrote: This just isn't true. Tom Sharpe wrote 2 books satirising the South African police during apartheid. They are not likeable in any way. Of the three main characters, one is a rapist and murderer, another is a sexually repressed psychopathic secret policeman, and the last is a moron who dreams of nobility while being just as racist and hateful as the other two.
They are never depicted as competent, nor are they ever given the dignity of their actions being framed as sensible.
But are those books actually readable?
Not familiar with them, so that's a genuine question, as someone who struggles to read books where the protagonist isn't likeable, or at least relatable in some way. And I'm not the only one who has that problem, by any means... which is why the early Black Library novels focused on a lot of characters who were described as being different from the norm - Eisenhorn was a very 'human' face on the Inquisition, Gaunt was a less extreme Commissar who was staunchly against wasting the lives of those in his command, Uriel Ventris eschewed the normal Ultramarine ways of war... They were all there to provide a relatable, 'everyman' view into the Imperium's insanity.
It's certainly possible to write good stories with insane or unlikeable protagonists (see the aforementioned Dredd)... but a lot of the time it just doesn't make for an enjoyable (CoughThomasCovenantCough) story.
The unlikability of characters is the reason I never read past the first book of Song of Ice and Fire.
By the end of the first book we were following I think 3 different characters (Danaerys, Tyrion and John Snow iirc) and they were all insufferable in different ways.
I had no interest in continuing to read about them.
And those were fantastical characters. I don't think I'd even pick up a book about the realworld, satirical or not. I find it far too depressing.
I like my escapism to actually escape earth, pointing a lens on our terribleness from a distance so I'm not constantly reminded of reality....
A Town Called Malus: Poor wording on my part - I should have said "If you want to have mass market appeal for your genre fiction based on a toy soldier game, you need likeable protagonists".
I've read plenty of books with no likeable people in them, but unless the prose is absolutely beautiful and the book is saying something really interesting about the human condition, people don't tend to suffer through stories with unlikeable protagonists. Black Library writes bang bang war books aimed at teenagers and the stable of writers they have on the whole are not good enough to carry off something like A Secret History or The Grass is Singing because their prose is poor, as is their dialogue.
You see only a vanishingly tiny minority of idiots not getting it. You do not see communities equally divided on whether the Federation is meant to be satirical, or half the Starship Troopers fanbase talking about how they love the franchise but decry the Federation's stupid policies as bad writing.
it is even more funny when you add in that SST was on the Index in Germany (until 2017) and only allowed to be aired as a cut and toned down version that removed most of the fascist satire because they did not got the joke
You see only a vanishingly tiny minority of idiots not getting it. You do not see communities equally divided on whether the Federation is meant to be satirical, or half the Starship Troopers fanbase talking about how they love the franchise but decry the Federation's stupid policies as bad writing.
it is even more funny when you add in that SST was on the Index in Germany (until 2017) and only allowed to be aired as a cut and toned down version that removed most of the fascist satire because they did not got the joke
A Town Called Malus wrote: This just isn't true. Tom Sharpe wrote 2 books satirising the South African police during apartheid. They are not likeable in any way. Of the three main characters, one is a rapist and murderer, another is a sexually repressed psychopathic secret policeman, and the last is a moron who dreams of nobility while being just as racist and hateful as the other two.
They are never depicted as competent, nor are they ever given the dignity of their actions being framed as sensible.
But are those books actually readable?
Not familiar with them, so that's a genuine question, as someone who struggles to read books where the protagonist isn't likeable, or at least relatable in some way. And I'm not the only one who has that problem, by any means... which is why the early Black Library novels focused on a lot of characters who were described as being different from the norm - Eisenhorn was a very 'human' face on the Inquisition, Gaunt was a less extreme Commissar who was staunchly against wasting the lives of those in his command, Uriel Ventris eschewed the normal Ultramarine ways of war... They were all there to provide a relatable, 'everyman' view into the Imperium's insanity.
It's certainly possible to write good stories with insane or unlikeable protagonists (see the aforementioned Dredd)... but a lot of the time it just doesn't make for an enjoyable (CoughThomasCovenantCough) story.
I think so, because I find reading about fascists failing and completely fething themselves over due to their ignorance and hatred funny.
You see only a vanishingly tiny minority of idiots not getting it. You do not see communities equally divided on whether the Federation is meant to be satirical, or half the Starship Troopers fanbase talking about how they love the franchise but decry the Federation's stupid policies as bad writing.
it is even more funny when you add in that SST was on the Index in Germany (until 2017) and only allowed to be aired as a cut and toned down version that removed most of the fascist satire because they did not got the joke
Didn't they also remove the Swastika from Wolfenstein? You know, that game where you kill Nazis.
German censorship laws are silly.
well, that was because it is a forbidden symbol that is not allowed to be shown outside of educational purpose and historical context
problem with laws from the 1950ies not accounting for computer games and it is not allowed to be shown in any games
the censorship of movies and books is something different as this is decided by a commission who also adjust the rating which is controversial in general as games are still treated as if only kids are playing (like Fallout 3 was only allowed to be sold at adults in addition of having violence removed)
Da Boss wrote: The satirical edge is easier to maintain when it's a detached third person "history book" style like in the game books themselves. When you write a novel, you need to have some relatable and likeable characters, and they need to behave in ways the reader will accept. So that inevitably means that Imperial characters will be written in a sympathetic light, and soft retcons will abound to make the stuff they do less stupid and more sensible.
The solution imo is to write the Imperium as an outside force. Have the protagonists not arms of the Imperial machine but either worlds outside the Imperium (there should be a lot more of those) or people technically in the Imperium but who don't really have much to do with it.
If I was gonna run an RPG in the 40K universe, I'd absolutely set it in non-Imperial space, and the characters would not have even heard of the Imperium. Then at some point the crusade fleet shows up and the gak hits the fan.
I wish there was some sort of "mercenary" or "rebels" faction that could represent humans that are not directly Imperial or even oppose it without being some chaos or xenos cultists.
But I think you can write sympathetic imperials without losing the ability to satirise. You just need to write about people who are not in positions of supreme power, but instead are some sort of low or middle ranking somewhat decent people trying to deal with the terrible situation and their psychotic overlords. The issue is that BL seems to want to write about Primarchs and other super important people who are practicably calling the shots in this hellstate, and once you make those sympathetic or even vaguely sane you're killing the satire.
Yeah, I actually want there to be more non-Imperial human factions.
Technically the Votann fall under that as they are abhuman rather than xenos, but they really should have kept the Interex around to some degree.
I wonder if it would have been better to make the T'au a human faction rather than alien. Perhaps actually commit to the whole commy meme and make them an over the top parody of the Soviet Union, kind of like what AT-43 did with the Red Blok, thereby keeping with 40k's overall theme of a 2000AD-esque parody of human politics.
In retrospect, GW did actually have a chance to do that; by having the Imperium split down the middle they could have very well done a sort of Eastern / Western Roman Empire split with one half of the Imperium developing in one way and the other developing in another way, having been cut off from Terra and the high lords.
Of course, that would take effort, and we can't have that.
I'd certainly like to see human auxillaries as part of Tau forces being more normal. Planning on making some with some Stargrave Mercs.
And yeah, the split seems underutilised. I quite enjoyed the Spears of the Emperor book set in Imperium Nihilus, and it felt very 40K to me. Though on the topic of the thread, the Spears are obvious "Good Guy Marines".
I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Dai wrote: I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Probably, but apparently it's not overt enough. Just as there are those who think the Imperium are heroes, there are those who think that the Tau are the good guys and take their Greater Good message and "cleaner" aesthetic at face value.
I guess GW is just really bad at writing effective satire, no matter who they are mocking.
Was the mind control aspect confirmed? I know it's been heavily implied, but I don't think it's been outright stated that's how the Ethereals control their subjects?
Crimson wrote: Chaos was always way better in Fantasy Battle, and it seems this has at least somewhat carried to AOS as well. Chaos barbarians in those seem pretty understandable and relatable; they're just people living brutal lives worshipping brutal gods.
Given how horrible Imperium is it shouldn't be terribly hard to depict those who decide to oppose it and choose to pray for dark gods for aid as sympathetic, but GW practically never does it. Chaos in 40K is usually just silly cartoon evil for evil's sake.
The most ineresting read on chaos I have is that chaos is incapable of being anything but a dark reflection of materium societies. Since the imperium is by far the dominant galactic society, chaos is helpless to be anything but the imperium taken to an even more extreme degree. The imperium engages in pointless sacrifices? Then chaos does to at an even more extreme and arbitrary scale. The imperium is fragmented between competing ordos and adeptus and such? Chaos is even more fractured into warbands. Et cetera et cetera. Everything bad about chaos is just what is bad about the imperium, but more so.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
This would be falling into the trap of expending WAY more effort and energy to prove the fash wrong then the fash spends in making mockery of the discussion
tauist wrote: This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
Yes! That's actual satire!
A heroic space Caesar is emo about genocide but still does it because he is a hard man making hard choices is not satire, it is accidental fascism apologia.
Guilliman managed to make the imperium more fascist, yes.
kodos wrote: came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
I mean there are times orcs in fantasy were absolutely standins of a british person's perspective of Africans living in Africa.
The game designers were heavily influenced by anti establishment punk culture. But, uh, sometimes that's still got plenty of yikes parts of it.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s about how power corrupts. That The Imperium is so far gone, short of The Emperor stepping of his throne and putting his house in order, there’s no going back to the heady days of relative enlightenment that was the Great Crusade.
Satire needn’t be comedic, it can be irony on its own. And Guilliman, the single most powerful entity with The Imperium, who played a massive part in its initial Founding, is powerless to save it from itself, and has instead stooped to its level? That is irony.
Corrupts what?
Guilliman was doing the same gak at the emperor's behest in 30k that he does in 40k
As the now infamous musings of that Eldar point out, they’re seen as crude, when their society is incredibly robust, and evidently immensely successful.
When Ancient Rome was sacked by barbarians, were not talking Ooga Booga Me Hit With Rock primitives. At all. Were they less regimented than Rome? Sure. Yet….they still sacked Rome, and all Rome’s art, philosophy and social order went up in flames all the same.
The Football ‘Ooligan thing is likely a deliberate filter. A cipher for how the rich and powerful ultimately fear the poor, because there’s more of them, and they’re quite willing to fight for what they do have.
To quote “Common People” by Pulp?
You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning of control and with nowhere left to go. You are amazed that they exist yet they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why.
Now, that is of course a somewhat romantic take on things, but the message holds true.
They were also part of roman society emplyed by roman emperors with leaders raised in roman capitals.
The barbarians weren't at the gates. They were living inside the city already and only sacked rome because the romans were staggeringly racist towards the people they were filling their armies with. And that's Oedecar. Theoderic was literally sent to the western empire (to kill Oedecar) by the eastern emperor to conquer it and only split because theoderic wanted to be emperor and Zeno was, again, staggeringly racist towards him (Which is funny since he was Isaurian and, uh, the population of constantinople would drive his successor off the throne for insufficient romaness)
Da Boss wrote: Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Dunno. Savage Orcs are just…primitives. The Picts and Celts used to go into battle “Skyclad” as a sign of bravery. And trust, coming from that area of the world, going nuddy in that weather is brave enough. And there’s plenty of solid archaeological evidence for Antler being used as tools and weapons in pre-Roman Scotland.
So I don’t agree Savage Orcs are inherently African coded.
The naked Celt is Roman and Greek propagandizing of a foreign people. If the celts ever did this, and they probably DIDN'T, it was one group of wierdos in one battle during the early republic era (this is the only historic reference we have of it)
If Caesar had fought the prototypical naked celts, you'd better believe he'd have never shut up about it in his chronicles (And indeed he did write about how he sent celts fleeing bare arsed after ambushing them in their camp).
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, people used to just be more chill about this stuff. It was okay to like fictional bad guys. I dunno what it is about the current zeitgeist, some people seem to really need the fiction they are into to be morally bulletproof. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in consumerism, and therefore ascribing more importance to the things you "consume" (urgh) along with the social media age requiring everyone to broadcast their virtue to others for brownie points.
Is it because we spend so much time and money and passion on this trivial crap that we need to convince ourselves it's somehow meaningful, a commentary on society, rather than a bunch of stuff slapped together because the people making it thought it would be funny or cool?
It's because fascism is on the rise again.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thing is? What’s considered a hate crime now was….language and attitudes freely aired on TV as part of entertainment.
And psychos shooting up schools and malls and churches at increasing rates.
Like there is a measurable acknowledged increase of political violence, and ESPECIALLY right wing political violence.
Tyel wrote: The internet serves to magnify the level of nutters.
I'm pretty sure there was a lot more casual violence in society in the 1980s. But the US might be moving that way, versus a relatively quiet 90s/2000s. (Terrorism, both domestic and foreign aside.)
US crime stats say otherwise, being down considerably from 2010 levels for both violent and property crime, let alone the levels we had in the 80s and 90s.
But the incidents of mass shootings are very much UP from those years.
There's less other crimes being committed, but more of this.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
Authoritarianism has many similar methodologies. There's only so many ways to be totalitarian.
But communists believe in the opposite of a natural hierarchy, are not inherently militarist, and really they should be anti nationalist. But interestingly, communist states are defined largely by their failures to live up to the ideology. Fascist states do exactly what they say they will. Kill people.
Tyel wrote: I think this is probably splitting hairs to the 9th degree, but I'd argue the Imperium is insufficiently developed to be fascist.
I mean a fundamental issue of the Imperium is that it isn't centralised. You could argue its more centralised in the most recent lore (cos Guilliman etc) - but not really.
Its social organisation is far closer to high middle ages feudalism (and I realise all those terms are contested) than the office politics of modern bureaucracies.
I would describe the imperium as decayed fascism. In reality, all fascist regimes were highly fractious and internally competitive and backstabby. The imperium's disunified nature is just a natural result of all the backbiting fascists naturally get up to lasting 10 thousand years (without somehow collapsing, because fascist regimes ALSO have never survived the death of their leader in reality)
dadx6 wrote: As someone who's been in the hobby since 1989, I don't think there's any satire in it.
I think perhaps a lot of you who think it's satire need to read some of the mid 1900's sci-fi. Try Larry Niven's "A Gift From Earth" or "A World Out of Time", just as two examples. Science Fiction for most of the 20th century foresaw the inevitable future of humanity as being an impersonal communist state that would grind any independent thinker to dust.
WH40K came along at the end of the Cold War, when those of us living at the time had the specter of global thermonuclear war looming over us in a much more ever-present way than do modern generations. It seems natural to me that Britishers in the 80's would read sci-fi and speculate on what the galaxy might look like in 38000 years and come up with this.
Come to think of it, you can also read John Scalzi's MUCH more recent "Old Man's War" to find source material that has as its underlying ethos "anything to preserve humanity."
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
It's not satire, it's meant to convey how high the stakes are for every battle. And if you read the novels and the material with that in mind, it all makes perfect sense. Especially if you have any experience with bureaucracy.
This is a lot of words to say "I think the imperium is actually good"
morganfreeman wrote: Worth noting that fascism is not a system of government, it’s more of an ideology. Basically fascism is the idea that we (whomever ‘we’ constitutes can vary) are strong and we do not just deserve to rule, but we are a combination of genetically disposed and divinely selected. And while we are so chosen, they (again, they can vary and continues to once each ‘they’ are dealt with) have subversively toppled us from our chosen position been intentionally undermining us to keep us down.
It’s key hallmarks are militarism (so we can regain our rightful place), intolerance (finding your ‘they’), and an obsession with a near mythical and perfect past when we were strong and ontop before they conspired to drag us down (we will be great again).
To this end fascism can apply to any form of government in the same way that capitalism can. While it’s most suited to forms of dictatorship, it’s theoretically possible to see stuff like fascist democracies or even fascist communisms.
So the imperium is undeniably fascist, and quibbling over what form or structure the government takes is beside the point.
But if your concept applies to essentially every government on earth, its surely meaningless?
Fascism is a 20th century ideology, rooted in the concepts and ideas of that specific era.
if you can go:
Napoleon? Fascist.
Louis XIV? Fascist.
England and France in the 12th century? Absolutely Fascist, look at how they tick through my list.
Then maybe your list isn't all that useful.
If to be a non-fascist state you need a happy go-l
ucky liberalism, then the number of historical examples is few, and essentially none when under any degree of duress.
I mean how many of these does say the US in WW2 tick? Most of them by my count. But its not a fascist state (cue twitter hipsters arguing otherwise).
Fascism is also a populist ideology. It limits the populism to the elect, but it absolutely is populist. The whole of the people (as defined by their race) are given to strive with a singular will to their natural greatness (embodied and guided by the great leader).
Fascism was invented as a reaction, primarily, to socialism. In that Mussolini was a racist gak and thought that good things should only go to the right group of people. Mussolini started as a socialist and was disillusioned by the globalist perspective of the socialist movements during ww1 (Italian socialists were, generally, VERY against fighting in the war. Mussolini was very very into the war and italy claiming its place in the sun). This broadened to hating pretty much the rest of the liberal west when he saw that italy wasn't compensated enough in his view for fighting on their side in the war. Throughout this his views continuously curdled and grew more sour and discarded any sense of progressiveness they once held.
Funny in a way, he'd probably be way more sympatico with what stalin did ('Socialism' in one state).
totalfailure wrote: So what’s the end game of all this ranting? If 40K doesn’t conform 100% to your current political beliefs, it is fascist, and anyone that likes the game is a Tory, Trumper, or fascist by default? Maybe you would be happier if we instituted a plan where you can only write or work for GW by showing a party membership card from your ‘approved’ list? Maybe we should do it at the register for anyone buying any 40K stuff as well…the game ain’t what it used to be, in a lot of ways. My take is that it is game has certainly gotten blander over the years? Know why? So GW can sell more junk to the skeptical parents of kids. But I guess for some, it can only be the vast fascist conspiracy in action.
Do you think the imperium is good and should be emulated in some way in real life?
Crimson wrote: Chaos was always way better in Fantasy Battle, and it seems this has at least somewhat carried to AOS as well. Chaos barbarians in those seem pretty understandable and relatable; they're just people living brutal lives worshipping brutal gods.
Given how horrible Imperium is it shouldn't be terribly hard to depict those who decide to oppose it and choose to pray for dark gods for aid as sympathetic, but GW practically never does it. Chaos in 40K is usually just silly cartoon evil for evil's sake.
The most ineresting read on chaos I have is that chaos is incapable of being anything but a dark reflection of materium societies. Since the imperium is by far the dominant galactic society, chaos is helpless to be anything but the imperium taken to an even more extreme degree. The imperium engages in pointless sacrifices? Then chaos does to at an even more extreme and arbitrary scale. The imperium is fragmented between competing ordos and adeptus and such? Chaos is even more fractured into warbands. Et cetera et cetera. Everything bad about chaos is just what is bad about the imperium, but more so.
Hellebore wrote: The setting was designed as a self aware satire of totalitarianism, thatcherism and many other isms.
According to who?
Well, the designers for one, but there are a ton of references to events and people that are entirely forgotten today and trying to bring people up to speed involves long, tedious explanations that invariably end with: "I guess you had to be there."
You could be helpful & list thise references so that those who're curious enough can do thier own research.
This would be falling into the trap of expending WAY more effort and energy to prove the fash wrong then the fash spends in making mockery of the discussion
tauist wrote: This reminds me, the writers of "The Boys" should start doing BL books. That series has the type of satire I personally find appetizing to the degree the old 40K lore gave me
Yes! That's actual satire!
A heroic space Caesar is emo about genocide but still does it because he is a hard man making hard choices is not satire, it is accidental fascism apologia.
Guilliman managed to make the imperium more fascist, yes.
kodos wrote: came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
I mean there are times orcs in fantasy were absolutely standins of a british person's perspective of Africans living in Africa.
The game designers were heavily influenced by anti establishment punk culture. But, uh, sometimes that's still got plenty of yikes parts of it.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s about how power corrupts. That The Imperium is so far gone, short of The Emperor stepping of his throne and putting his house in order, there’s no going back to the heady days of relative enlightenment that was the Great Crusade.
Satire needn’t be comedic, it can be irony on its own. And Guilliman, the single most powerful entity with The Imperium, who played a massive part in its initial Founding, is powerless to save it from itself, and has instead stooped to its level? That is irony.
Corrupts what?
Guilliman was doing the same gak at the emperor's behest in 30k that he does in 40k
As the now infamous musings of that Eldar point out, they’re seen as crude, when their society is incredibly robust, and evidently immensely successful.
When Ancient Rome was sacked by barbarians, were not talking Ooga Booga Me Hit With Rock primitives. At all. Were they less regimented than Rome? Sure. Yet….they still sacked Rome, and all Rome’s art, philosophy and social order went up in flames all the same.
The Football ‘Ooligan thing is likely a deliberate filter. A cipher for how the rich and powerful ultimately fear the poor, because there’s more of them, and they’re quite willing to fight for what they do have.
To quote “Common People” by Pulp?
You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning of control and with nowhere left to go. You are amazed that they exist yet they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why.
Now, that is of course a somewhat romantic take on things, but the message holds true.
They were also part of roman society emplyed by roman emperors with leaders raised in roman capitals.
The barbarians weren't at the gates. They were living inside the city already and only sacked rome because the romans were staggeringly racist towards the people they were filling their armies with. And that's Oedecar. Theoderic was literally sent to the western empire (to kill Oedecar) by the eastern emperor to conquer it and only split because theoderic wanted to be emperor and Zeno was, again, staggeringly racist towards him (Which is funny since he was Isaurian and, uh, the population of constantinople would drive his successor off the throne for insufficient romaness)
Da Boss wrote: Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah Orks and even more so WFB Orcs are influenced by the cultures that fought with the romans and eventually brought down the western empire. The checks and bright colours, boars as a symbol of strength are very celtic, and you've got woad warpaint and even just the Goffs lifted wholesale. But not much african about any of that.
WFB Savage Orcs are a whole other kettle of fish though, definitely african coded and not in a very thoughtful or pleasant way.
Dunno. Savage Orcs are just…primitives. The Picts and Celts used to go into battle “Skyclad” as a sign of bravery. And trust, coming from that area of the world, going nuddy in that weather is brave enough. And there’s plenty of solid archaeological evidence for Antler being used as tools and weapons in pre-Roman Scotland.
So I don’t agree Savage Orcs are inherently African coded.
The naked Celt is Roman and Greek propagandizing of a foreign people. If the celts ever did this, and they probably DIDN'T, it was one group of wierdos in one battle during the early republic era (this is the only historic reference we have of it)
If Caesar had fought the prototypical naked celts, you'd better believe he'd have never shut up about it in his chronicles (And indeed he did write about how he sent celts fleeing bare arsed after ambushing them in their camp).
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, people used to just be more chill about this stuff. It was okay to like fictional bad guys. I dunno what it is about the current zeitgeist, some people seem to really need the fiction they are into to be morally bulletproof. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in consumerism, and therefore ascribing more importance to the things you "consume" (urgh) along with the social media age requiring everyone to broadcast their virtue to others for brownie points.
Is it because we spend so much time and money and passion on this trivial crap that we need to convince ourselves it's somehow meaningful, a commentary on society, rather than a bunch of stuff slapped together because the people making it thought it would be funny or cool?
It's because fascism is on the rise again.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thing is? What’s considered a hate crime now was….language and attitudes freely aired on TV as part of entertainment.
And psychos shooting up schools and malls and churches at increasing rates.
Like there is a measurable acknowledged increase of political violence, and ESPECIALLY right wing political violence.
Tyel wrote: The internet serves to magnify the level of nutters.
I'm pretty sure there was a lot more casual violence in society in the 1980s. But the US might be moving that way, versus a relatively quiet 90s/2000s. (Terrorism, both domestic and foreign aside.)
US crime stats say otherwise, being down considerably from 2010 levels for both violent and property crime, let alone the levels we had in the 80s and 90s.
But the incidents of mass shootings are very much UP from those years.
There's less other crimes being committed, but more of this.
Ultranationalist - Check
Dictatorial leader - Immortal God Emperor and also his Demi-God Son who cannot be impeached
Centralised autocracy - Nominally in the idea of the Emperor but technically ruled by the High Lords who claim to be the chosen voice of the Emperor. Authority is derived from the Emperor in all cases.
Militarism - Check
Forcible suppression of opposition - Check
Belief in natural social hierarchy - In the sense that the strong rule the weak, yes
Subordination of individualism - Check
Strong regimentation of society and economy - Check
Communism checks just about all of these, for that matter. Bit of a general list.
Authoritarianism has many similar methodologies. There's only so many ways to be totalitarian.
But communists believe in the opposite of a natural hierarchy, are not inherently militarist, and really they should be anti nationalist. But interestingly, communist states are defined largely by their failures to live up to the ideology. Fascist states do exactly what they say they will. Kill people.
Tyel wrote: I think this is probably splitting hairs to the 9th degree, but I'd argue the Imperium is insufficiently developed to be fascist.
I mean a fundamental issue of the Imperium is that it isn't centralised. You could argue its more centralised in the most recent lore (cos Guilliman etc) - but not really.
Its social organisation is far closer to high middle ages feudalism (and I realise all those terms are contested) than the office politics of modern bureaucracies.
I would describe the imperium as decayed fascism. In reality, all fascist regimes were highly fractious and internally competitive and backstabby. The imperium's disunified nature is just a natural result of all the backbiting fascists naturally get up to lasting 10 thousand years (without somehow collapsing, because fascist regimes ALSO have never survived the death of their leader in reality)
dadx6 wrote: As someone who's been in the hobby since 1989, I don't think there's any satire in it.
I think perhaps a lot of you who think it's satire need to read some of the mid 1900's sci-fi. Try Larry Niven's "A Gift From Earth" or "A World Out of Time", just as two examples. Science Fiction for most of the 20th century foresaw the inevitable future of humanity as being an impersonal communist state that would grind any independent thinker to dust.
WH40K came along at the end of the Cold War, when those of us living at the time had the specter of global thermonuclear war looming over us in a much more ever-present way than do modern generations. It seems natural to me that Britishers in the 80's would read sci-fi and speculate on what the galaxy might look like in 38000 years and come up with this.
Come to think of it, you can also read John Scalzi's MUCH more recent "Old Man's War" to find source material that has as its underlying ethos "anything to preserve humanity."
Personally, I think all the "WH40K is satire" stuff is nonsense created by the younger generations who can't handle the fact that a fictional universe doesn't have people behaving in an ideal fashion (to them).
It's not satire, it's meant to convey how high the stakes are for every battle. And if you read the novels and the material with that in mind, it all makes perfect sense. Especially if you have any experience with bureaucracy.
This is a lot of words to say "I think the imperium is actually good"
morganfreeman wrote: Worth noting that fascism is not a system of government, it’s more of an ideology. Basically fascism is the idea that we (whomever ‘we’ constitutes can vary) are strong and we do not just deserve to rule, but we are a combination of genetically disposed and divinely selected. And while we are so chosen, they (again, they can vary and continues to once each ‘they’ are dealt with) have subversively toppled us from our chosen position been intentionally undermining us to keep us down.
It’s key hallmarks are militarism (so we can regain our rightful place), intolerance (finding your ‘they’), and an obsession with a near mythical and perfect past when we were strong and ontop before they conspired to drag us down (we will be great again).
To this end fascism can apply to any form of government in the same way that capitalism can. While it’s most suited to forms of dictatorship, it’s theoretically possible to see stuff like fascist democracies or even fascist communisms.
So the imperium is undeniably fascist, and quibbling over what form or structure the government takes is beside the point.
But if your concept applies to essentially every government on earth, its surely meaningless?
Fascism is a 20th century ideology, rooted in the concepts and ideas of that specific era.
if you can go:
Napoleon? Fascist.
Louis XIV? Fascist.
England and France in the 12th century? Absolutely Fascist, look at how they tick through my list.
Then maybe your list isn't all that useful.
If to be a non-fascist state you need a happy go-l
ucky liberalism, then the number of historical examples is few, and essentially none when under any degree of duress.
I mean how many of these does say the US in WW2 tick? Most of them by my count. But its not a fascist state (cue twitter hipsters arguing otherwise).
Fascism is also a populist ideology. It limits the populism to the elect, but it absolutely is populist. The whole of the people (as defined by their race) are given to strive with a singular will to their natural greatness (embodied and guided by the great leader).
Fascism was invented as a reaction, primarily, to socialism. In that Mussolini was a racist gak and thought that good things should only go to the right group of people. Mussolini started as a socialist and was disillusioned by the globalist perspective of the socialist movements during ww1 (Italian socialists were, generally, VERY against fighting in the war. Mussolini was very very into the war and italy claiming its place in the sun). This broadened to hating pretty much the rest of the liberal west when he saw that italy wasn't compensated enough in his view for fighting on their side in the war. Throughout this his views continuously curdled and grew more sour and discarded any sense of progressiveness they once held.
Funny in a way, he'd probably be way more sympatico with what stalin did ('Socialism' in one state).
totalfailure wrote: So what’s the end game of all this ranting? If 40K doesn’t conform 100% to your current political beliefs, it is fascist, and anyone that likes the game is a Tory, Trumper, or fascist by default? Maybe you would be happier if we instituted a plan where you can only write or work for GW by showing a party membership card from your ‘approved’ list? Maybe we should do it at the register for anyone buying any 40K stuff as well…the game ain’t what it used to be, in a lot of ways. My take is that it is game has certainly gotten blander over the years? Know why? So GW can sell more junk to the skeptical parents of kids. But I guess for some, it can only be the vast fascist conspiracy in action.
Do you think the imperium is good and should be emulated in some way in real life?
Wow, how did you manage to be so completely wrong?
Authoritarian -
<snip>
What?
You keep using these words, and then clearly showing that you don’t know what they mean
A government utilizing power is not authoritarian in and of itself. Likewise, growing popular dislike/ distaste / even hatred for those a country I’d at war with is not nationalism; let alone ultranationalism.
There are MANY valid criticisms which can be laid at the feet of US, especially WW2 era US. However these aren’t some of them.
Authoritarianism is a spectrum, and arguably exerting state power is authoritarian to varying extents (with the other end of that spectrum being libertarianism/anarchism with minimised state power). Plus, a lot of countries are more authoritarian than they try to present as. WWII era USA would be one of these IMO, given large swathes were experiencing segregation at the time. I agree it wasn't fascist though.
\
Different definitions muddle things, but generally authoritarian vs not is based largely on where the legitimacy for the use of state power rests.
That said, I very much do not think you can have a democratic fascist state. You can elect fascists, but they will strive to dismantle and hobble the democratic levers of the state to render them vestigal at best and will never willingly surrender power. If a fascist falls out of power, it is because he simply had not the ability or time to dismantle checks on himself or arm a sympathetic mob thoroughly enough to ensure he stays in power. A fascist never willingly leaves power.
Indeed one of the easiest ways to recognize a fascist is their unwillingness to surrender power and their willingness to resort to violence to keep it
Dai wrote: I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Probably, but apparently it's not overt enough. Just as there are those who think the Imperium are heroes, there are those who think that the Tau are the good guys and take their Greater Good message and "cleaner" aesthetic at face value.
I guess GW is just really bad at writing effective satire, no matter who they are mocking.
Was the mind control aspect confirmed? I know it's been heavily implied, but I don't think it's been outright stated that's how the Ethereals control their subjects?
Those people used to write the tau for GW.
The tau as they are now are the result of pressure to ensure that the tau are not, in fact, better than the imperium.
The tau were once a tool to underline the satire of the imperium, but alas we cannot have the blue aliens be ACTUALLY better then the imperium because space marines are cool
The tau as they are now are the result of pressure to ensure that the tau are not, in fact, better than the imperium.
The tau were once a tool to underline the satire of the imperium, but alas we cannot have the blue aliens be ACTUALLY better then the imperium because space marines are cool
Well, there's that, but also because it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
Which isn't meant to be a compliment mind you; that's meant to be dire. It's meant to hammer in just how terrible humanity's situation is in the setting.
Having a bright eyed, altruistic alternative with more plot armour than even the Wardiest of Ultramarines undermines that aspect, which is why they moved to make them a little more grey and not quite the defacto best option in the setting.
But I think you can write sympathetic imperials without losing the ability to satirise. You just need to write about people who are not in positions of supreme power, but instead are some sort of low or middle ranking somewhat decent people trying to deal with the terrible situation and their psychotic overlords. The issue is that BL seems to want to write about Primarchs and other super important people who are practicably calling the shots in this hellstate, and once you make those sympathetic or even vaguely sane you're killing the satire.
This is one of the main reasons why the Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain books are so popular.
I'd say Gaunt's Ghosts, much as I enjoy the books, are prime culprits in softening the Imperium. Especially all the faith stuff that comes up. And Gaunt is still a total bastard to anyone who transgresses against the Imperium.
Ciaphas Cain works better, not only because it's knowingly humorous but also because Cain is very cynical and detached. I do get tired of reading the same descriptions of Jurgen's smell in every book though!
Da Boss wrote: I'd say Gaunt's Ghosts, much as I enjoy the books, are prime culprits in softening the Imperium. Especially all the faith stuff that comes up. And Gaunt is still a total bastard to anyone who transgresses against the Imperium.
Ciaphas Cain works better, not only because it's knowingly humorous but also because Cain is very cynical and detached. I do get tired of reading the same descriptions of Jurgen's smell in every book though!
Cain also highlights how brutal the Imperium is by default. Lenient punishments still typically involve corporal punishment and the xenophobia and closed-mindedness of the Imperium is on full display. It is quite clear that even if Cain is a good guy personally (somewhat debatable), he is working for a brutal and cruel regime and can only do so much within that without becoming a victim of it himself.
Dai wrote: I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Probably, but apparently it's not overt enough. Just as there are those who think the Imperium are heroes, there are those who think that the Tau are the good guys and take their Greater Good message and "cleaner" aesthetic at face value.
I guess GW is just really bad at writing effective satire, no matter who they are mocking.
Was the mind control aspect confirmed? I know it's been heavily implied, but I don't think it's been outright stated that's how the Ethereals control their subjects?
This is kinda the problem of so little overall Tau lore and most of what we have coming from the Farsight books which are off in their own corner away from the Ethereals for the most part.
From what I recall, (and it's been a long time, so correct me if I'm wrong) the Tau started out as the straight up "good guys" in the setting and were meant to be a foil to all the madness, decent people just trying to get the galaxy off the genocidal madness train, but being to small to do anything functional about it. But then there was all this outcry over having a non grimdark faction in the game, so the lore shifted a little to that being only the surface take and the Etherals being this mysterious group that put up a noble façade, but were secretly all on power trips themselves. When the pendulum swung the other way and all the people who liked the original lore didn't like that, they just tossed their hands in the air and wrote a bunch of Farsight books. Not that those are bad, they just don't really represent the Tau Empire as a whole very well. We only get snippets of what life is like there, not a full picture.
Personally I think that either of these takes works as part of the satire. You can run the true good guy angle as a foil to everyone else, but their size and morality keeps them from ever being able to topple the insane super powers. Or you can run them as the façade of good, but just being another version of a corrupt and twisted system. I just wish they'd pick one, stick with it, and actually give us some more lore books. (Personally I prefer the former take though).
It was more-less confirmed. While there are some scenes that could be taken as extreme reverence, there is one where Aun'Va tells another Tau to kill themselves and the read is that without really understanding what is going on, they are subconsciously compelled to obey.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
Da Boss wrote: I'd say Gaunt's Ghosts, much as I enjoy the books, are prime culprits in softening the Imperium. Especially all the faith stuff that comes up. And Gaunt is still a total bastard to anyone who transgresses against the Imperium.
Ciaphas Cain works better, not only because it's knowingly humorous but also because Cain is very cynical and detached. I do get tired of reading the same descriptions of Jurgen's smell in every book though!
That's fair, I guess despite being the title character, he's one of the last people I think of when I think of that series.
I think of Agun Sorric's story, I think of Caffran, Cridd, Dalin, and Yoncy, I think of Larkin and Bragg, Gol Kolea and Ban Daur, Dorden and Curth. Those are the stories that always sold the series to me, people just trying to live their lives and do the best they can in a universe of madness. (And okay, seeing Mkoll be a likeable badass is pretty fun too.)
Yeah, I feel you there. The Cain books are great and I love him as a character in the setting, but it's the same general formula over and over of fight an enemy, fight a bigger enemy, trick the enemies into fighting each other, win.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
And this thing is, that's really only the case in a vacuum anyway. Sure, between the options of Imperium and Choas, Imperium is objectively the less terrible, but they are both terrible. Just because they are the only two superpowers in he Galaxy doesn't mean there isn't a third option. This is why the Tau as the "reasonable man" foil worked so well. Even without them though, just because a faction doesn't have a specific ideology in the setting, doesn't prevent it from existing. Just because in contecxt, the Imperium is the lesser of two gigantic evils doesn't mean that's something to embrace or aspire to, and I think that's what some people tend to miss.
kodos wrote: came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
I mean there are times orcs in fantasy were absolutely standins of a british person's perspective of Africans living in Africa.
The game designers were heavily influenced by anti establishment punk culture. But, uh, sometimes that's still got plenty of yikes parts of it.
there's a certain degree to which any works in the lineage of Tolkien and D&D cannot escape the racist beginnings of the trope. Tolkien even used race science terminology in descriptions in Lord of the Rings. 40k is a bit distant from that origin and takes explicit influence from a specific alternative source, so it's better than most in this regard, but the original issue present remains, like a genetic disorder passed down from father to child. even knowing the background present, the "savage" and "mongoloid" coding of orcs remains present and makes the way they're presented in 40k a bit problematic. you can't fully escape the issue unless you break from convention completely, and when 40k's entire point at the beginning was "conventional fantasy, but in space", it's difficult to do so
Tyel wrote: I think this is probably splitting hairs to the 9th degree, but I'd argue the Imperium is insufficiently developed to be fascist.
I mean a fundamental issue of the Imperium is that it isn't centralised. You could argue its more centralised in the most recent lore (cos Guilliman etc) - but not really.
Its social organisation is far closer to high middle ages feudalism (and I realise all those terms are contested) than the office politics of modern bureaucracies.
I would describe the imperium as decayed fascism. In reality, all fascist regimes were highly fractious and internally competitive and backstabby. The imperium's disunified nature is just a natural result of all the backbiting fascists naturally get up to lasting 10 thousand years (without somehow collapsing, because fascist regimes ALSO have never survived the death of their leader in reality)
ah, but you see, the Imperium's leader never actually died. sure, his body died, but he's being kept alive, so really, he still counts as being alive. totally definitely alive, nothing to worry about there. everything is fine
ah, but you see, the Imperium's leader never actually died. sure, his body died, but he's being kept alive, so really, he still counts as being alive. totally definitely alive, nothing to worry about there. everything is fine
All it takes is tens of thousands of citizens being fed to the psyker grinding machine every day and the great leader will continue to lead the Imperium to glory!
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
This is effectively what happens when an audience's desire for verisimilitude in a fictional setting results in authors creating reasonings for everything. The justifications become requirements rather than excuses. This gets particularly bad if you insist on an unchanging narrative, as there's no attempts to change the status quo and give people paths forward.
Lets be clear. Humanity is entirely reliant on the emperor's continued survival for interstellar travel, but they don't have to be. 10,000 years of contact with alien races who are quite capable of moving through the galaxy and have done so long before the emperor made it possible for humanity to do so would give humanity ample opportunity to remove that dependency. It's not that it can't happen, its that it won't as long as the Imperium insists on technological stagnation and murdering every other culture the encounter.
It's just really hard to make the setting compelling when its a galaxy of idiots doing things the hardest way possible so.... we create excuses and sell the excuses and ultimately create a version of the setting where the audience stops looking at things critically or objectively and just accepts that the absurdity of it is logically sound.
Well, there's that, but also because it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
This has never, ever been true. What the imperium does is only for the survival of the imperium as a system, not humanity as a species.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
Neither do I, hence why I said tragic. Never said they were the "right" choice. The right choice would have been for the Dark Age of Technology to never end and for the Imperium to never form.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
Neither do I, hence why I said tragic. Never said they were the "right" choice. The right choice would have been for the Dark Age of Technology to never end and for the Imperium to never form.
The tragedy is the Imperium doing the horrific acts it does despite them being detrimental to the survival of humanity.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
[citation needed]
The Tau were meant to be the 'reasonable man' foil to the Imperium's insanity. It's explicitly stated in White Dwarf as the reason they were chosen as the POV for a major videogame, Fire Warrior.
I don't think 'actually fascism is necessary to survive so being a space nazi is the right choice' is what the writers are going for because I don't think they're actively trying to produce fascist apologia.
Neither do I, hence why I said tragic. Never said they were the "right" choice. The right choice would have been for the Dark Age of Technology to never end and for the Imperium to never form.
The tragedy is the Imperium doing the horrific acts it does despite them being detrimental to the survival of humanity.
Yep, a lot of humanity's problem current problems were because of terrible decisions made in the past that they can't get out of. That's the point, humanity dug themselves in deep and they can't get out, so they keep digging down out of hope they'll come through the other side.
Dai wrote: I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Probably, but apparently it's not overt enough. Just as there are those who think the Imperium are heroes, there are those who think that the Tau are the good guys and take their Greater Good message and "cleaner" aesthetic at face value.
I guess GW is just really bad at writing effective satire, no matter who they are mocking.
Was the mind control aspect confirmed? I know it's been heavily implied, but I don't think it's been outright stated that's how the Ethereals control their subjects?
This is kinda the problem of so little overall Tau lore and most of what we have coming from the Farsight books which are off in their own corner away from the Ethereals for the most part.
From what I recall, (and it's been a long time, so correct me if I'm wrong) the Tau started out as the straight up "good guys" in the setting and were meant to be a foil to all the madness, decent people just trying to get the galaxy off the genocidal madness train, but being to small to do anything functional about it. But then there was all this outcry over having a non grimdark faction in the game, so the lore shifted a little to that being only the surface take and the Etherals being this mysterious group that put up a noble façade, but were secretly all on power trips themselves. When the pendulum swung the other way and all the people who liked the original lore didn't like that, they just tossed their hands in the air and wrote a bunch of Farsight books. Not that those are bad, they just don't really represent the Tau Empire as a whole very well. We only get snippets of what life is like there, not a full picture.
Personally I think that either of these takes works as part of the satire. You can run the true good guy angle as a foil to everyone else, but their size and morality keeps them from ever being able to topple the insane super powers. Or you can run them as the façade of good, but just being another version of a corrupt and twisted system. I just wish they'd pick one, stick with it, and actually give us some more lore books. (Personally I prefer the former take though).
It was more-less confirmed. While there are some scenes that could be taken as extreme reverence, there is one where Aun'Va tells another Tau to kill themselves and the read is that without really understanding what is going on, they are subconsciously compelled to obey.
Sinister undertones have been present since the very first Tau codex in 2001, they've just become more overt. They started out as a strict caste-based society with a defined leadership caste that seems to exert mind control over its minions- Farsight was a break away after the last Ethereal in his expedition died in the first codex. The Tau Empire was also overtly colonial from the beginning- it isn't xenocidal but it does have a very paternalistic approach to the xenos it assimilates and assumes they should be "civilised" to Tau values where possible.
Kill Team, also released in 2001, had parts of the Tau empire collaborating with the Last Chancers to take out one of their own commanders as he is becoming a bit of a liability (I think the implication is they are worried of a second Farsight).
The original rail rifle lore, where the Ethereals accepted weaponry that could kill the user, came not long after the Tau codex in White Dwarf.
The Tau empire is definitely better than the Imperium, but has always been grey not white.
The thing about the IoM being the "better" option for humanity survival is that neither the IoM or humanity is supposed to survive.
It is the End of Times, there are 3-4 existential threats, each one capable of annihilating humanity on its own. It isn't a question of survival, that train departed long ago, it is a question of spite.
Well, there's that, but also because it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival.
This has never, ever been true. What the imperium does is only for the survival of the imperium as a system, not humanity as a species.
Why not both? The Imperium is composed of humans, and after wiping out all rivals human institutions they currently the only human political body run by humans for humans.
Whether or not they are doing a good job is another matter entirely; the sad truth is that the Imperium is the current state of humanity.
So unless there's an Interex colony somewhere, yeah the Imperium does have a vested interest in humanity's survival, because no humanity means no Imperium and vice versa.
Dai wrote: I think the Tau potential mind control, empire building and brutal treatment of dissident compared to it's utopian greater good promises is probably better satire than a straight take on soviets myself.
Probably, but apparently it's not overt enough. Just as there are those who think the Imperium are heroes, there are those who think that the Tau are the good guys and take their Greater Good message and "cleaner" aesthetic at face value.
I guess GW is just really bad at writing effective satire, no matter who they are mocking.
Was the mind control aspect confirmed? I know it's been heavily implied, but I don't think it's been outright stated that's how the Ethereals control their subjects?
This is kinda the problem of so little overall Tau lore and most of what we have coming from the Farsight books which are off in their own corner away from the Ethereals for the most part.
From what I recall, (and it's been a long time, so correct me if I'm wrong) the Tau started out as the straight up "good guys" in the setting and were meant to be a foil to all the madness, decent people just trying to get the galaxy off the genocidal madness train, but being to small to do anything functional about it. But then there was all this outcry over having a non grimdark faction in the game, so the lore shifted a little to that being only the surface take and the Etherals being this mysterious group that put up a noble façade, but were secretly all on power trips themselves. When the pendulum swung the other way and all the people who liked the original lore didn't like that, they just tossed their hands in the air and wrote a bunch of Farsight books. Not that those are bad, they just don't really represent the Tau Empire as a whole very well. We only get snippets of what life is like there, not a full picture.
Personally I think that either of these takes works as part of the satire. You can run the true good guy angle as a foil to everyone else, but their size and morality keeps them from ever being able to topple the insane super powers. Or you can run them as the façade of good, but just being another version of a corrupt and twisted system. I just wish they'd pick one, stick with it, and actually give us some more lore books. (Personally I prefer the former take though).
It was more-less confirmed. While there are some scenes that could be taken as extreme reverence, there is one where Aun'Va tells another Tau to kill themselves and the read is that without really understanding what is going on, they are subconsciously compelled to obey.
Sinister undertones have been present since the very first Tau codex in 2001, they've just become more overt. They started out as a strict caste-based society with a defined leadership caste that seems to exert mind control over its minions- Farsight was a break away after the last Ethereal in his expedition died in the first codex. The Tau Empire was also overtly colonial from the beginning- it isn't xenocidal but it does have a very paternalistic approach to the xenos it assimilates and assumes they should be "civilised" to Tau values where possible.
Kill Team, also released in 2001, had parts of the Tau empire collaborating with the Last Chancers to take out one of their own commanders as he is becoming a bit of a liability (I think the implication is they are worried of a second Farsight).
The original rail rifle lore, where the Ethereals accepted weaponry that could kill the user, came not long after the Tau codex in White Dwarf.
The Tau empire is definitely better than the Imperium, but has always been grey not white.
Thanks for the extra details, it's been quite a while since I read old Tau lore.
While Tau have always been overtly colonial, they are still probably one of the nicest depictions of colonialism I've ever seen, fictionally or not. While paternalistic, they don't seem (so far as I can tell) to put all but the most basic restrictions on the other species in their empire. For example many of the Tau see the Kroot as fairly savage beings in need of enlightenment (obvious parallels are obvious), yet they don't force this upon them or even ban their canabalistic nature which the Tau find incredibly distasteful. So far as I can tell, the only two rules they've imposed on Kroot society is a) Don't eat us, and b) We mutually defend each other. It's also not like they haven't' had time to do this either, the Kroot are one of the earliest members of the Tau Empire and have been a part of the union for thousands of years, yet have still very much maintained their independence and cultural identity. I'm sure if we had more Kroot lore, we could get into much more of the relationship between these species, but I'm not holding my breath.
There have been some more recent snippets of lore hidden about that do imply a more sinister side to their colonialism. It is implied (though it is through the subjective experience of a Kroot's genetic memory of a Vespid) that the Tau have subverted the Hive structure of Vespid society and turned their drone armies into essentially slave warriors, but it's only an implied second hand account. (Another race we need to see more of).
In the Farsight books we even get to see the council that governs Tau society as a whole has 3 non-Tau members in its 12 person council (or it might be 13 counting Aun'Va, I'm not sure if he was counted as part of the 12). IIRC it was a Demiurg, a Human, and a Niccassar. Another thing not typical of colonial empires, they tend to install their own leaders in the colony governments, not invite members of the colony back to join their own.
The bit about the Last Chancers reminds me of the book... I think it was Fire Caste... where essentially this Tau Commander and Imperial Commander have a deal to keep eternally fighting over this backwater nothing rock as a place where their factions can send the unwanted dregs of their solidary to die while the neither side causes a problem for their governments at large. There is corruption in every society though, and these do seem like more the outliers in Tau society and not the norm, but that's hard to say for certain without more lore.
For sure, even if they were still considered the "good guys" of the setting, it's never that simple, I didn't mean to imply as such.
If nothing else one would probably have a nicer time living under the Tau jackboot than the imperial one so long as you play ball and don't question anything. That's when the guns come out.
It's kind of interesting to see how some authors approach it. Chris Wraight, in the Carrion Throne series, has an Interrogator think about the skulls all over everything and wonder when humanity stopped doing it ironically. In the Lords of Silence there's the character of Vorx basically being a Space Ghost episode inside an otherwise horrifying story. A lot of Dan Abnett's books seem like they play it straight but when you visualize it there's a lot of sight-gags (I was reminded of this reading Titanicus lately, where they literally throw the squad auspex at an attacking Titan). Dembski-Bowden has Cyrion in the Night Lords trilogy asking how people are doing; there's a sinister reason revealed eventually but the joke is that he's friendly and personable despite being a Night Lord. Then there's Arkhan Land's monkey.
Well, there's that, but also because it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival..
Is it, though?
This is one of the things that the interminable Horus Heresy series got right. It showed us that Horus rebelled because the Chaos powers tricked him into creating the future he wanted to avoid... And it hinted that the Emperor got at least some of his power and his vision of the future from those same Chaos entities.
The clear implication is that the Emperor was wrong. And that makes the setting so much better, from a narrative perspective.. 'The Imperium is awful, but necessary' isn't a tragedy, it's just horrible. 'The Imperium is awful, and those in charge think that's necessary, but they are wrong' ... That's a tragedy.
insaniak wrote: 'The Imperium is awful, but necessary' isn't a tragedy, it's just horrible. 'The Imperium is awful, and those in charge think that's necessary, but they are wrong' ... That's a tragedy.
Well, there's that, but also because it undermined a core part of the setting's tragic nature, where no matter how terrible the Imperium is, it's still the better option for humanity's survival..
Is it, though?
This is one of the things that the interminable Horus Heresy series got right. It showed us that Horus rebelled because the Chaos powers tricked him into creating the future he wanted to avoid... And it hinted that the Emperor got at least some of his power and his vision of the future from those same Chaos entities.
The clear implication is that the Emperor was wrong. And that makes the setting so much better, from a narrative perspective.. 'The Imperium is awful, but necessary' isn't a tragedy, it's just horrible. 'The Imperium is awful, and those in charge think that's necessary, but they are wrong' ... That's a tragedy.
Well, you're not wrong, but do you know what else is a tragedy? For human civilization to be at it's peak, for it to have all sorts of technology and cultural wonders, and then lose it all due to a quirk of fate, and continue going downhill from there due to a combination of bad luck and terrible decisions, to the point that humanity now lives in a hell of its own making that it can't get out of because they believe the alternative could be extinction, and it may very well be given how hostile the galaxy is (which again, was partially due to luck and partially due to poor decisions)
That's pretty damn tragic.
Now, you might say "but that's horrible", and you're right, it is horrible, that's the point.
I mean, if your setting is described with this :
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Then yeah, abandon all hope, ye who enter.
Which is why it bothers me that GW is trying their damnedest to make it look like some colourful, heroic marvel farce. That's...not the look they should be going for. If they are going to copy a comic, at least copy Berserk.
Well, you're not wrong, but do you know what else is a tragedy? For human civilization to be at it's peak, for it to have all sorts of technology and cultural wonders, and then lose it all due to a quirk of fate, and continue going downhill from there due to a combination of bad luck and terrible decisions, to the point that humanity now lives in a hell of its own making that it can't get out of because they believe the alternative could be extinction, and it may very well be given how hostile the galaxy is (which again, was partially due to luck and partially due to poor decisions)
That's pretty damn tragic.
Yes, and that was exactly my point.
You claimed that the tragedy was in the Imperium being bad but the alternative being worse. My point was that the actual tragedy is that the Imperium is bad but never actually needed to be.
We have no evidence that the alternative would be worse, only the Emperor's word... and the Emperor was wrong.
Well, you're not wrong, but do you know what else is a tragedy? For human civilization to be at it's peak, for it to have all sorts of technology and cultural wonders, and then lose it all due to a quirk of fate, and continue going downhill from there due to a combination of bad luck and terrible decisions, to the point that humanity now lives in a hell of its own making that it can't get out of because they believe the alternative could be extinction, and it may very well be given how hostile the galaxy is (which again, was partially due to luck and partially due to poor decisions)
That's pretty damn tragic.
Yes, and that was exactly my point.
You claimed that the tragedy was in the Imperium being bad but the alternative being worse. My point was that the actual tragedy is that the Imperium is bad but never actually needed to be.
We have no evidence that the alternative would be worse, only the Emperor's word... and the Emperor was wrong.
Ah I see, it seems we were talking about the same thing, just that I didn't communicate it properly. My apologies.
Well, you're not wrong, but do you know what else is a tragedy? For human civilization to be at it's peak, for it to have all sorts of technology and cultural wonders, and then lose it all due to a quirk of fate, and continue going downhill from there due to a combination of bad luck and terrible decisions, to the point that humanity now lives in a hell of its own making that it can't get out of because they believe the alternative could be extinction, and it may very well be given how hostile the galaxy is (which again, was partially due to luck and partially due to poor decisions) That's pretty damn tragic.
Yes, and that was exactly my point.
You claimed that the tragedy was in the Imperium being bad but the alternative being worse. My point was that the actual tragedy is that the Imperium is bad but never actually needed to be.
We have no evidence that the alternative would be worse, only the Emperor's word... and the Emperor was wrong.
This. Also, the Imperium could never have been anything but what it became because it was rotten at it's core, the Emperor. It was founded in war and genocide by a psychopath who had no understanding of humanity. He had no empathy, no compassion. He was never going to make anything but a complete dystopian hellscape.
my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
kodos wrote: my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
I don't mind the change that much. Making them too much of the best possible option would have detracted from the setting's bleak nature, imo.
I'd rather have trade offs than upgrades.
They are less "as the Imperium should have been" and more "what Imperium could have been without exposure to everything else" now, I think. Unfortunately, the Tau are now getting exposed to everything else and are learning things the hard way. Like that Cultural Exchange event with the Dark Eldar.
Still collectivist gits though.
I dunno if the Imperium has that much free will compared to the Tau, really. I'm sure on some worlds you might have a bit more freedom, but the Imperium still uses lobotomy as a punishment and there are still hive cities. There's not much point in having free will when you have some foreman whacking you over the head for not meeting your 20 hour work quote.
kodos wrote: my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
I don't think it needs to be a competition and if it does then I'd personally rate the imperium as far worse. I still think having a pure good guy faction would be kind of out of place for cynicism of the setting though.
kodos wrote: my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
I still think having a pure good guy faction would be kind of out of place for cynicism of the setting though.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. One of the mistakes GW made with the Imperium was insisting on making Space Marines the noble good guys, rather continuing to make them Sardaukar monks. Bit of a mismatch, really.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: There's not much point in having free will when you have some foreman whacking you over the head for not meeting your 20 hour work quote.
Especially when he's whacking you on the head with the mechanized femur of the last guy who didn't meet his quota...
kodos wrote: my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
From what information we have so far on the Tau, I think this is a vast oversimplification. From everything I've read, the Ethereals can only use their "mind control" when in close proximity to their targets. This allows them to control the top echelons of government for their entire society, but prevents them from doing basically anything on a day to day level for their citizenry, so they still need to keep them happy. Also, they only have influence over Tau, not other races, so as they bring more races into their empire, it does somewhat diminish their own power. While not ideal, this is still a vast improvement over the Imperium.
Honestly, Tau society kinda makes me think of many current governments, just with an official oligarchical meritocracy framework rather than one behind the scenes of a democracy.
kodos wrote: my problem with Tau, Imperium and satire here is, that the Tau at the beginning were something like "as the Imperium should have been" and despite everything it works for the better which is a big contrast to the "only way possible to survive" making it all more obvious
and than it was changed to be "worse" than the Imperium because it only works because they are mind controlled by a higher power and the Imperium is still the better option because there you have at least some form of free will
I still think having a pure good guy faction would be kind of out of place for cynicism of the setting though.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. One of the mistakes GW made with the Imperium was insisting on making Space Marines the noble good guys, rather continuing to make them Sardaukar monks. Bit of a mismatch, really.
I think it was in Godblight by Guy Haley where the Ultramarines massacre some civilians so that they don't give away their covert mission.
Fun observation: The IOM likely kills more of humanity than any other source. Between executions, sacrifices, Wholesale World ending execution missiles, wasteful and protracted conflicts, and collateral damage, IOM likely kills more IOM than anything else. All combined in a single day, maybe "they" kill more, but IOM is certainly better at killing itself than being killed.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Fun observation: The IOM likely kills more of humanity than any other source. Between executions, sacrifices, Wholesale World ending execution missiles, wasteful and protracted conflicts, and collateral damage, IOM likely kills more IOM than anything else. All combined in a single day, maybe "they" kill more, but IOM is certainly better at killing itself than being killed.
Ah, but those don't actually kill the Imperium as an entity. That kind of mass death is the goal of the Imperium, as fascism is a cult of death, be it in war or genocide. War, wholesale murder and genocide isn't a means to an end for the Imperium, it is the end that the Imperium seeks.
Humanity is the fuel that the Imperium burns to sustain itself.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Fun observation: The IOM likely kills more of humanity than any other source. Between executions, sacrifices, Wholesale World ending execution missiles, wasteful and protracted conflicts, and collateral damage, IOM likely kills more IOM than anything else. All combined in a single day, maybe "they" kill more, but IOM is certainly better at killing itself than being killed.
Ah, but those don't actually kill the Imperium as an entity. That kind of mass death is the goal of the Imperium, as fascism is a cult of death, be it in war or genocide. War, wholesale murder and genocide isn't a means to an end for the Imperium, it is the end that the Imperium seeks.
Humanity is the fuel that the Imperium burns to sustain itself.
Genocide of other species? Sure. Genocide of humanity? No, because the Imperium is ultimately run by humans. Not xenos, not machines, not chaos, humans.
The Imperium has a vested interest in keeping humanity alive because it is humanity. It saw to that following the Great Crusade, absorbing or destroying any lost colony the Emperor's forces came across.
Think of it as an ant hive. It doesn't matter how many drones die, as long as the hive as a whole (or rather the queen, which is basically the hive as it's the only source of new ants) survives, because there will be more ants to take its place. The hive doesn't seek to wipe itself out through it's expansionism because that would be counterproductive.
Indeed, there is a parallel between the Imperium and eusocial insect colonies; remember that their cities are called hives.
I know it's tempting to speak of the Imperium as some nebulous, faceless force of nature controlling the masses like AM or Sauron, but all it is is a dysfunctional political system run by dysfunctional people.
The IoM will happily genocide humans it considers traitors or geretics or too far from what it considers baseline humanity. It isn't trying to wipe out the entire species, but definitely specific groups.
Haighus wrote: The IoM will happily genocide humans it considers traitors or geretics or too far from what it considers baseline humanity. It isn't trying to wipe out the entire species, but definitely specific groups.
True, but that still isn't the Imperium's end goal. No, it's end goal is to wipe out every other species except for humanity, thereby completing the Emperor's vision of a galaxy dominated by humanity.
As bleak and terrible as it may be, the Imperium is still very much pro-human. It's just that in true 40k fashion, it's a very bloody, disturbing and cynical form of it.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: The Imperium has a vested interest in keeping humanity alive because it is humanity.
No, it isn't. Humanity is people, which the Imperium holds zero value in. The Imperium is the Imperium.
It's like saying the Nazi party is the German people. Just because the Nazis are germans, does not mean they represent the wishes of or wellbeing of germans as a whole. They will claim they do, because that is what fascism does, that's the populism of fascism.
The Imperium is exactly the same. It is controlled and run by humans who claim they act on the collective will of humanity as a whole, but that is a lie.
The Imperium has no vested interest in keeping humanity alive. If it could replace every guardsman with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every clerk with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every factory worker with a servitor, it would. The Imperium does not care about humanity as anything but a resource to be spent to preserve the Imperium.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I know it's tempting to speak of the Imperium as some nebulous, faceless force of nature controlling the masses like AM or Sauron, but all it is is a dysfunctional political system run by dysfunctional people.
Exactly, it is just like the Nazis, or Mussolini's fascists. They also claimed to represent the collective will of their people and were rife with dysfunction, and they were wrong. We saw that writ large when Italians executed Mussolini and strung him up from a lamppost.
Haighus wrote: The IoM will happily genocide humans it considers traitors or geretics or too far from what it considers baseline humanity. It isn't trying to wipe out the entire species, but definitely specific groups.
True, but that still isn't the Imperium's end goal. No, it's end goal is to wipe out every other species except for humanity, thereby completing the Emperor's vision of a galaxy dominated by humanity. As bleak and terrible as it may be, the Imperium is still very much pro-human. It's just that in true 40k fashion, it's a very bloody, disturbing and cynical form of it.
And if that happens, the Imperium will eat itself, as fascism cannot exist without an enemy to kill.
The Imperium is exactly the same. It is controlled and run by humans who claim they act on the collective will of humanity as a whole, but that is a lie.
The Imperium has no vested interest in keeping humanity alive. If it could replace every guardsman with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every clerk with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every factory worker with a servitor, it would. The Imperium does not care about humanity as anything but a resource to be spent to preserve the Imperium.
Then why hasn't it? The high lords could do that. I'm sure the Ad mech would love to "improve" billions upon billions of factory workers. So why haven't they? Right now being a servitor is considered to be a punishment, as it strips away what is it to be human. If they hated humanity that much, then why do they hold it in such value?
It's almost as if the High Lords aren't lying, they actually believe what they are doing is for the good for mankind. No different than any other set of ideologically driven tyrants with delusions of grandeur, really.
even if the imperium ever did manage to eradicate every alien species from the galaxy, that wouldn't stop the violence. that just means it's time to turn inward. humanity is full of abhumans and mutants, so those also need to be dealt with. keep enacting violence until they reach the ideal. forever more death, forever more sacrifice, until that ideal is reached (nevermind the fact that this ideal of "human", much like the nazi ideal of "arayan" is nothing more than a hollow icon, a fascistic ideal that can never truly be accomplished, but instead provides an excuse to continue the violence against whoever is deemed as part of the out group
The Imperium is exactly the same. It is controlled and run by humans who claim they act on the collective will of humanity as a whole, but that is a lie.
The Imperium has no vested interest in keeping humanity alive. If it could replace every guardsman with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every clerk with a servitor, it would. If it could replace every factory worker with a servitor, it would. The Imperium does not care about humanity as anything but a resource to be spent to preserve the Imperium.
Then why hasn't it? The high lords could do that. I'm sure the Ad mech would love to "improve" billions upon billions of factory workers. So why haven't they?
It's almost as if the High Lords aren't lying, they actually believe what they are doing is the good for mankind. And that's even worse than a lie, which is the point.
The Imperium doesn't have the resources to, and it would result in loss of efficiency in many areas.
And nothing I said would require that the High Lords be actively lying. Hitler and the other leading Nazis believed that what they were doing would be good for the German people. They were just as wrong as the High Lords.
Fascism is inherently dishonest just as a fact of its ideals being in conflict with reality. It doesn't matter whether the people in charge believe in the lies, they are still lies.
hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
CthuluIsSpy wrote: If they hated humanity that much, then why do they hold it in such value?
Because it is justification for war and genocide. Just like it was in Nazi Germany. Again, the end goal is war and genocide, everything else is justifications for that.
And again, they don't hold humanity in high regard, only their vision of humanity as a cog of endless war. What value does the Imperium place on human qualities such as compassion, or empathy? On curiosity?
Like all fascists, the Imperium chooses aspects of humanity it values, being aggression, xenophobia, hatred, fear. Everything that it cannot use in its pursuit of war is discarded and labelled as weakness or even treason.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
But they are still Abhuman though? They were never made xenos, they are still very much abhumans in the fluff.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
But they are still Abhuman though? They were never made xenos, they are still very much abhumans in the fluff.
is what i was talking about. it's an out of universe thing, but you can make in-universe commentary on it as well
StudentOfEtherium wrote: hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
But they are still Abhuman though? They were never made xenos, they are still very much abhumans in the fluff.
is what i was talking about. it's an out of universe thing, but you can make in-universe commentary on it as well
Oh, under categorizations. Fair enough, they aren't part of the Imperium, true.
But then again, GW doesn't seem to care that much about anything that's not Imperium or Chaos. They probably just see xenos as synonymous with "other"
Which means that if they somehow bring back Interex, who are also human, they will also count as xenos. Which is pretty funny to me.
Like all fascists, the Imperium chooses aspects of humanity it values, being aggression, xenophobia, hatred, fear. Everything that it cannot use in its pursuit of war is discarded and labelled as weakness or even treason.
That's just human society in a general. Every society picks and chooses aspects of human nature.
Our current one is against aggression and hatred. Does that mean we hate humanity? After all, though unpleasant, they are still aspects of humanity.
Picking aspects of humanity it values is hardly unique to fascists. Literally every civilization on Earth has done that in some form.
If your criteria for loving humanity is that it must embrace all aspects of it, then ironically that would make Slaanesh the most humanist in 40k. After all, Slaanesh values all forms of human emotion, both good and bad, does it not?
Like all fascists, the Imperium chooses aspects of humanity it values, being aggression, xenophobia, hatred, fear. Everything that it cannot use in its pursuit of war is discarded and labelled as weakness or even treason.
That's just human society in a general. Every society picks and chooses aspects of human nature.
Our current one is against aggression and hatred. Does that mean we hate humanity? After all, though unpleasant, they are still aspects of humanity.
Picking aspects of humanity it values is hardly unique to fascists. Literally every civilization on Earth has done that.
The specific aspects that are picked are common amongst all fascists. Because fascism as an ideology requires violence as its goal, so aspects which support that are always lauded.
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CthuluIsSpy wrote: If your criteria for loving humanity is that it must embrace all aspects of it, then ironically that would make Slaanesh the most humanist in 40k. After all, Slaanesh values all forms of human emotion, both good and bad, does it not?
Slaanesh is hedonism. It is possible to embrace humanity in all its aspects without that. But yes, slaanesh is much closer to actual humanity than the Imperium.
Like all fascists, the Imperium chooses aspects of humanity it values, being aggression, xenophobia, hatred, fear. Everything that it cannot use in its pursuit of war is discarded and labelled as weakness or even treason.
That's just human society in a general. Every society picks and chooses aspects of human nature.
Our current one is against aggression and hatred. Does that mean we hate humanity? After all, though unpleasant, they are still aspects of humanity.
Picking aspects of humanity it values is hardly unique to fascists. Literally every civilization on Earth has done that.
The specific aspects that are picked are common amongst all fascists. Because fascism as an ideology requires violence as its goal, so aspects which support that are always lauded.
Ok, yes, a militaristic society will encourage aspects that encourage militarism, I never denied that. But that still doesn't make it unique among societies in general when it comes to picking and choosing human traits.
The Imperium is militaristic, so it will encourage traits that promote aggression. If it weren't then it would promote other traits. That doesn't mean it hates humanity, it just means that it's yet another militaristic, expansionist empire, brought to its over the top, brutal extreme.
Because remember, it's 40k. Exaggerations are to be expected.
I never said it was unique, just that it doesn't represent humanity.
The Imperium is the the Imperium. Everything it does is for the survival of the Imperium as a political and ideological system.
If you don't believe that, would the imperium accept subjugation to a greater alien power in return for the survival of humanity as a species, or would it fight to the absolute end even if it meant every single human dying?
The Imperium would rather destroy entire worlds and populations of humans than have humans live under the rule of aliens. How is that beneficial to the survival of the human species? It isn't, but it is beneficial to the survival of the Imperium.
The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
Tyran wrote: The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
We already know the answer to that, as human worlds have joined the tau empire willingly and without violence.
The Imperium is the the Imperium. Everything it does is for the survival of the Imperium as a political and ideological system.
If you don't believe that, would the imperium accept subjugation to a greater power in return for the survival of humanity as a species, or would it fight to the absolute end even if it meant every single human dying?
Depends, what are you calling a greater power, and how do you know it's 100% benevolent with no ulterior motives or colonialist overtones?
Because that currently doesn't exist in the setting.
What greater power that does exist in the setting is Chaos, which is known to grant it's followers great power in exchange for sacrifice. So tell me, would the Imperium sacrifice humanity to chaos in exchange for godhood, Beserk style, or would it resist it?
Tyran wrote: The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
We already know the answer to that, as human worlds have joined the tau empire willingly and without violence.
There's also worlds that resisted, so no, we don't know the answer to that and it's not that clear cut.
I like how people are decrying the Imperium for being fascist in this thread, but supporting literal Imperial colonialism. Not only colonialism, but colonialism by collectivist aliens who follow a strict caste system and follow an ideology that demands that you sacrifice the self to further the whole. As if that can't be abused.
Tyran wrote: The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
"humanity" isn't making choices as a collective whole. either the imperium imposes its will onto humanity and forces those choices, or humanity is unable to make such universal choices. some worlds would happily accept xenos leadership, while some would fight to the last man, and a vast range exists between those extremes. even under the imperium, worlds are divided
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Fun observation: The IOM likely kills more of humanity than any other source. Between executions, sacrifices, Wholesale World ending execution missiles, wasteful and protracted conflicts, and collateral damage, IOM likely kills more IOM than anything else. All combined in a single day, maybe "they" kill more, but IOM is certainly better at killing itself than being killed.
Ah, but those don't actually kill the Imperium as an entity. That kind of mass death is the goal of the Imperium, as fascism is a cult of death, be it in war or genocide. War, wholesale murder and genocide isn't a means to an end for the Imperium, it is the end that the Imperium seeks.
Humanity is the fuel that the Imperium burns to sustain itself.
Genocide of other species? Sure. Genocide of humanity? No, because the Imperium is ultimately run by humans. Not xenos, not machines, not chaos, humans.
The Imperium has a vested interest in keeping humanity alive because it is humanity. It saw to that following the Great Crusade, absorbing or destroying any lost colony the Emperor's forces came across.
Think of it as an ant hive. It doesn't matter how many drones die, as long as the hive as a whole (or rather the queen, which is basically the hive as it's the only source of new ants) survives, because there will be more ants to take its place. The hive doesn't seek to wipe itself out through it's expansionism because that would be counterproductive.
Indeed, there is a parallel between the Imperium and eusocial insect colonies; remember that their cities are called hives.
I know it's tempting to speak of the Imperium as some nebulous, faceless force of nature controlling the masses like AM or Sauron, but all it is is a dysfunctional political system run by dysfunctional people.
But the humans that run the Imperium think nothing of throwing as many bodies as they think are necessary to stop a problem. Throwing millions of lives at an opponent isn't a bug, it's a feature. Between that and Exterminatus, they will gladly genocide entire planets of humans if they think it will slow down Chaos/Tyranids/Whatever.
Tyran wrote: The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
"humanity" isn't making choices as a collective whole. either the imperium imposes its will onto humanity and forces those choices, or humanity is unable to make such universal choices. some worlds would happily accept xenos leadership, while some would fight to the last man, and a vast range exists between those extremes. even under the imperium, worlds are divided
This. There can be no universal voice that represents humanity because the will of humanity is not homogeneous. If one world chooses to leave the Imperium, it is enough to expose the Imperium as being the will of humanity as a whole as a lie.
The Imperium is the the Imperium. Everything it does is for the survival of the Imperium as a political and ideological system.
If you don't believe that, would the imperium accept subjugation to a greater power in return for the survival of humanity as a species, or would it fight to the absolute end even if it meant every single human dying?
Depends, what are you calling a greater power, and how do you know it's 100% benevolent with no ulterior motives or colonialist overtones?
Because that currently doesn't exist in the setting.
It's a thought experiment. A new player enters the game as instantly demonstrates their invulnerability to the Imperium's arms and ability to wipe out humanity. What does the Imperium do? Does it kneel, or does it futilely fight?
What greater power that does exist in the setting is Chaos, which is known to grant it's followers great power in exchange for sacrifice. So tell me, would the Imperium sacrifice humanity to chaos in exchange for godhood, Beserk style, or would it resist it?
The Imperium already did that when the Emperor made the primarchs and space marines. Sacrificing humanity for godhood is literally the foundation upon which the imperium was built.
It's a thought experiment. A new player enters the game as instantly demonstrates their invulnerability to the Imperium's arms and ability to wipe out humanity. What does the Imperium do? Does it kneel, or does it futilely fight?
Well, they're humans, so they'd fight. And then surrender when they get beaten hard. I mean, there's cases in human history where a weaker power tried fighting a stronger power instead of immediately surrendering. Humans aren't rational like that.
And with an empire the size of the Imperium with ridiculous numbers of soldiers at their disposal, why wouldn't they fight? They've already been fighting for the last 10,000 years, what's one more war?
There's also worlds that resisted, so no, we don't know the answer to that and it's not that clear cut.
I like how people are decrying the Imperium for being fascist in this thread, but supporting literal Imperial colonialism. Not only colonialism, but colonialism by collectivist aliens who follow a strict caste system and follow an ideology that demands that you sacrifice the self to further the whole. As if that can't be abused.
One world choosing to willingly join and live under alien rule is enough to expose the Imperium's false claim to being humanity because it shows that humans as a collective can make a choice the Imperium never would.
And nobody here is supporting colonialism. Also, the Imperium has all of those things you just decried in the Tau.
"humanity" isn't making choices as a collective whole. either the imperium imposes its will onto humanity and forces those choices, or humanity is unable to make such universal choices. some worlds would happily accept xenos leadership, while some would fight to the last man, and a vast range exists between those extremes. even under the imperium, worlds are divided
The IoM only is capable of imposing it's will only humanity because humans chose to follow and enforce that will on other humans.
That combinations of helpless compliance + enforcement is a collective choice even if it doesn't cover the entirety of humanity.
There is an argument there than the IoM only works because of plot fiat and should have dissolved long ago, although one could also argue 40k humans are more inherently hierarchical than real life humans.
Also, the Imperium has all of those things you just decried in the Tau.
I know they do. I consider the T'au to just be an Imperium in the making. The Imperium has been rotting for thousands of years. The Tau are still fresh.
The two are more similar than you think. It's just one is more willing to engage in diplomacy, because it hasn't had a Dark Age of Technology event yet.
One world choosing to willingly join and live under alien rule is enough to expose the Imperium's false claim to being humanity because it shows that humans as a collective can make a choice the Imperium never would.
One world in an empire of thousands is hardly a collective, and that's assuming that all humans on that world agreed with the governor's decision to defect.
It's a thought experiment. A new player enters the game as instantly demonstrates their invulnerability to the Imperium's arms and ability to wipe out humanity. What does the Imperium do? Does it kneel, or does it futilely fight?
Well, they're humans, so they'd fight. And then surrender when they get beaten hard. I mean, there's cases in human history where a weaker power tried fighting a stronger power instead of immediately surrendering. Humans aren't rational like that.
And with an empire the size of the Imperium with ridiculous numbers of soldiers at their disposal, why wouldn't they fight? They've already been fighting for the last 10,000 years, what's one more war?
The point is that the Imperium would never choose not to fight, regardless of the futility. Even if it knew it could not win and that fighting would result in the complete genocide of humanity, it would still fight because to do anything else would be to expose the entire basis of the Imperium as a lie, and fascists would rather die and condemn all around them to death than admit that. That's why Hitler was sending children to fight Russian armour in the ruins of Berlin.
Also, the Imperium has all of those things you just decried in the Tau.
I know they do. I consider the T'au to just be an Imperium in the making. The Imperium has been rotting for thousands of years. The Tau are still fresh.
The two are more similar than you think. It's just one is more willing to engage in diplomacy, because it hasn't had a Dark Age of Technology event yet.
Neither has the Imperium. The Imperium didn't suffer the dark age of technology. The Imperium has never, ever tried diplomacy as anything but a stalling tactic while it gets it's forces in position for war.
The Imperium is not a continuation of the human empire that existed before.
One world in an empire of thousands is hardly a collective, and that's assuming that all humans on that world agreed with the governor's decision to defect.
Yes it is, it is the collective of that world, composed of millions of people.
And, again, no it doesn't require unanimous approval of all humans on the world.
The point, once again, is that there is no unanimous will of the people that any government can represent. The Imperium is not humanity, the Tories are not the British, the Nazis were not the Germans, the Republicans are not the Americans etc.
No government, anywhere, can legitimately claim to be the will of their entire people.
The point is that the Imperium would never choose not to fight, regardless of the futility. Even if it knew it could not win and that fighting would result in the complete genocide of humanity, it would still fight because to do anything else would be to expose the entire basis of the Imperium as a lie, and fascists would rather die and condemn all around them to death than admit that. That's why Hitler was sending children to fight Russian armour in the ruins of Berlin.
So the British were fascists then? They refused to surrender, even when their backs were against the wall by an enemy that held the advantage? Even when asked to surrender multiple times?
I suppose the VietCong were also fascists, communist fascists no less. After all, as even though they kept losing engagement after engagement to the Americans and used child soldiers they refused to surrender to a superior foe.
It's almost as if fighting regardless of futility is something humans do, which isn't unique to fascists. You're assuming a level of perfect rationality that simply doesn't exist.
Neither has the Imperium. The Imperium didn't suffer the dark age of technology. The Imperium has never, ever tried diplomacy as anything but a stalling tactic while it gets it's forces in position for war.
The Imperium is not a continuation of the human empire that existed before.
Oh, but it is a continuation of that empire. It was born from its corpse, and now scrambles to gather its remains. The Imperium would not exist without the old empire's death. And no one suffered the dark age of technology; The Dark Age of Technology was the peak of human civilization. It's called the Dark Age because most traces of it has been lost, not because it was terrible. The suffering came after its collapse.
The point, once again, is that there is no unanimous will of the people that any government can represent. The Imperium is not humanity, the Tories are not the British, the Nazis were not the Germans, the Republicans are not the Americans etc.
No government, anywhere, can legitimately claim to be the will of their entire people.
Except they do claim. A government, after all, is supposed to represent their nation and people.
Whether or not they are actually the will of the people, as if they operate as some sort of hive mind, is irrelevant.
In practice, a government does represent the people because, in theory at least, they are of the people.
Could you try actually refuting the points I am making rather than jumping to strawmen? Nothing I said there could be interpreted in good faith as implying that Britain was fascist, nor the Vietcong. They were fighting materially superior enemies but still had the possibility of victory. Which can be seen by the fact they won. This is not true of the Imperium. It, like all fascists governments, has war as it's end goal. Final victory is not actually desirable, or achievable, in fascism as war is the goal, not the means to achieve the goal.
I am also not assuming perfect rationality, in fact I am doing the complete opposite as the Imperium is inherently irrational as you have to be irrational to believe in fascism. The Imperium would not behave rationally if faced with an existential threat it could not defeat because the foundational dogma of the Imperium is irrational belief that humans are the ultimate superior species, and it would doom the entire human species as a result. That's literally the point I have been saying.
The Imperium has as much a claim to the human empire whose ashes it rose out of as the Third Reich had to the Roman Empire. That is, none. Like all fascists, the Imperium used claims of a connection to a past empire to give itself the veneer of legitimacy in its expansionist goals. How many countries on Earth would not exist today if not for the collapse of the British Empire? Being born from the collapse of an empire does not give you a claim to that Empire, else Uganda would have a claim on a quarter of the entire globe.
Notice I said legitimately claim. The Tories can claim to represent the entire will of the British people all they want, it will never be true. Just like the Imperium claims to represent the will of all humanity, and is wrong about that as well as it is impossible as there is no universal will of Humanity.
I'm not making strawmen, I just do not agree that refusal to surrender against all odds is a fascist trait. The VietCong and British didn't know that they were going to win, but they could see a chance at victory.
Hitler had the delusional idea that victory was always a possibility, that eventually the allies will just give up if he keeps throwing more into the grinder. Whilst absurd, to him there was still a chance at victory. Were Hitler not a meth headed fanatic undergoing a mental breakdown, he might have been more willing to negotiate.
Same with Imperial and feudal Japan, same with the Zulu, same with the Soviets, same with most other powers throughout history.
Refusing to surrender against seemingly superior odds, especially when one believes that the alternative is enslavement or extermination, is not unique to fascists. If there is the slightest chance at victory, no matter how outlandish, humans will fight.
Fascism just happens to encourage this aspect, due to it's glorification of war and extreme tribalism.
Yes, I did notice you said legitimately claim. And I'm saying that governments do that already. You can say "but that's not really true" all you want but that's how they function politically and is used as such internationally.
Narratively and politically speaking; the Imperium represents humanity, and in true grimdark fashion, they happen to represent the darker aspects of it. If that bothers you, good, that's the bloody point.
Also, the Third Reich never claimed to be a successor to the Roman Empire. That was Mussolini's goal. They claimed to be a successor to the Holy Roman Empire (or more directly, the German Empire), which is something completely different.
No, the Third Reich did claim to be a successor to the Roman Empire.
Why do you think they used Roman salutes and eagles all over the place? The Nazis believed that the Romans were actually Germanic Aryans.
In fact they believed that the Greek and Mesopotamian civilisations was founded by Germanic Aryans, because if you believe you are the master race, you have to explain why you weren't or were the dominant civilisation of the past.
And again, the point is not the futility of the war but that war is the end goal of fascism. Fascism cannot exist without war. If the Imperium were not at war it would collapse as it would have no external enemies to direct the aggression it fosters in its populace at and so all that aggression, hate, and fear would be directed inwards and would tear itself apart.
There is a reason that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia, and that is because the people require that external enemy in war for fascism to sustain itself. The Imperium is no different.
Why do you think they used Roman salutes and eagles all over the place? The Nazis believed that the Romans were actually Aryans.
.
Well one, that salute wasn't Roman, two, they got it from the Italian Fascists who did try to be Roman who thought that salute was something the Romans did, and three Romans don't have a monopoly on eagles.
The Holy Roman Empire also used the Eagle as their emblem, it was used by the German Empire so of course the Nazis are going to use an eagle as it is a "Germanic" emblem.
Where did they claim that they were successors to Rome? Because there is literally nothing I could find that support that.
Think about it logically; if the Nazis believed themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire, they'd be the Fourth Reich, not the Third. The First was the HRE, the Second was the German Empire.
Why do you think they used Roman salutes and eagles all over the place? The Nazis believed that the Romans were actually Aryans.
.
Well one, that salute wasn't Roman, two, they got it from the Italian Fascists who did try to be Roman who thought that salute was something the Romans did, and three Romans don't have a monopoly on eagles.
The Holy Roman Empire also used the Eagle as their emblem, it was used by the German Empire so of course the Nazis are going to use an eagle as it is a "Germanic" emblem.
Where did they claim that they were successors to Rome? Because there is literally nothing I could find that support that.
Think about it logically; if the Nazis believed themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire, they'd be the Fourth Reich, not the Third. The First was the HRE, the Second was the German Empire.
And the HRE claimed to be a successor of what previous empire in order to use it as a basis for legitimacy? The clue is in the name.
Again, you are operating on the assumption that fascism makes sense. It doesn't. It engages in doublethink, doublespeak, it lies. Fascists believe things that are not true, such as that Germanic Aryans are the supreme race responsible for all the great civilisations of Europe's past, or that humanity is the supreme race destined to rule the galaxy alone. These are not true, never have been true. The Imperium claims to be humanity and that all it does is for humanity, this is also not true. Everything the Imperium does is for the continuation of the Imperium as a system of fascist government, not the survival of humanity which is just a byproduct of that prime goal.
Perpetual warfare is the end goal of the Imperium because it is the only means by which the Imperium as a system can be sustained. You keep talking about how it is run by humans but that doesn't actually matter anymore. Political systems have inertia and momentum of their own.
Why do you think they used Roman salutes and eagles all over the place? The Nazis believed that the Romans were actually Aryans.
.
Well one, that salute wasn't Roman, two, they got it from the Italian Fascists who did try to be Roman who thought that salute was something the Romans did, and three Romans don't have a monopoly on eagles.
The Holy Roman Empire also used the Eagle as their emblem, it was used by the German Empire so of course the Nazis are going to use an eagle as it is a "Germanic" emblem.
Where did they claim that they were successors to Rome? Because there is literally nothing I could find that support that.
Think about it logically; if the Nazis believed themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire, they'd be the Fourth Reich, not the Third. The First was the HRE, the Second was the German Empire.
And the HRE claimed to be a successor of what previous empire? The clue is in the name.
I'm sure Voltaire would have something to say about that, but ok, still doesn't mean the Nazis did. I'm not sure it works like that.
The Nazis saw themselves as successors to previous German empires. That doesn't automatically mean they saw themselves as successors to what those empires thought they were successors of.
Again, you are operating on the assumption that fascism makes sense. .
And you are operating on fan fiction. Where did they make the claim that they are direct successors to the Roman Empire?
We know Mussolini saw his regime as a successor to the Roman Empire because he outright said it and wanted to restore it. Where does Hitler say that?
Watch the video I linked. The Nazis believed the Roman ruling class were actually Germanic Aryans and the modern German people had a blood claim on Rome as a result. They believed that literally every great civilization in ancient and classical history was actually founded by Germanic Aryans. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece. All Aryan in the Nazi view on history.
They regarded modern Italians, especially those who lived in the south of Italy, as the result of interbreeding which diluted the Aryan blood of the original Romans, and that that interbreeding was one of the causes of the fall of Rome.
If the Nazis had been victorious in Europe and Russia, they would have turned on Mussolini or his successor after his death at some point as there could not be two successors to Rome in their ideology.
Also, the Third Reich never claimed to be a successor to the Roman Empire. That was Mussolini's goal. They claimed to be a successor to the Holy Roman Empire (or more directly, the German Empire), which is something completely different.
and the Holy Roman Empire itself claimed to be the successor of the Roman Empire, as there can only be one Empire and one Emperor, the Roman one, hence why they used even the same title (Kaiser = Caesar)
and if we go further, the the Russian also claimed to be the 3rd Rome, (Tsar also comes from Caesar) as they see themselves as successor of Byzanz (which was the 2nd Rome and therefore in direct conflict with the HRE which also claimed to be the 2nd Rome)
I know qualifications on the internet are worthless as could be lying and there is always someone more qualified but political history ba here! I never went in depth into the area but the nazis did not consider themselves heirs of the roman or greek empires as far as I know. They did largely admire them as examples of white supremacy though.
Did you cover much about the Nazis attempted archaeological justifications for their racial policies? Specifically the work of Ahnenerbe under Himmler?
Because that is the root of their claims of succession, as I have said. It was not succession via political model, but by (fictitious) bloodline.
Also, the Third Reich never claimed to be a successor to the Roman Empire. That was Mussolini's goal. They claimed to be a successor to the Holy Roman Empire (or more directly, the German Empire), which is something completely different.
and the Holy Roman Empire itself claimed to be the successor of the Roman Empire, as there can only be one Empire and one Emperor, the Roman one, hence why they used even the same title (Kaiser = Caesar)
and if we go further, the the Russian also claimed to be the 3rd Rome, (Tsar also comes from Caesar) as they see themselves as successor of Byzanz (which was the 2nd Rome and therefore in direct conflict with the HRE which also claimed to be the 2nd Rome)
That is true, but that still doesn't mean they saw themselves as a continuation of the Roman Empire, as they were more interested in carrying on the legacy of "Germanic" empires.
Whilst racially they might have seen the Romans as Aryans and as such their descendants, culturally and politically they were more interested in the HRE (as the HRE was a Germanic Empire that dominated Europe after the Fall of Rome), hence why they are the Third Reich, rather than the Fourth.
Funnily enough, Himmler was obsessed with archeology and tried to uncover proof that the Germanic Tribes were a super advanced civilization en par with the Romans. His failure to do so irritated Hitler greatly and Hitler tried suppressing such findings. I guess actual historical evidence would have gotten in the way of his propaganda.
Because that is the root of their claims of succession, as I have said. It was not succession via political model, but by (fictitious) bloodline.
If that were truly the case, they would have cut to the chase and just called themselves Atlanteans.
So no, it was secession by political model. The bloodline nonsense was part of their racial policy, to justify why they, the Germans, have claim to greatness.
Anyway, the specific empire is actually not important to the point I was making, which is that fascists will try to forge a link between themselves and great empires of the past, using that as a claim of legitimacy and heritage and to provide justification for war and expansion.
The Imperium did this with the fallen Human empire, just like Mussolini with Rome and the Nazis with the German Empire and HRE (and Rome, in my opinion). The Imperium has no more a claim to that heritage than any other group of humans that existed at its founding, and the success of its expansion gives no legitimacy to the initial claim after the fact.
If that were truly the case, they would have cut to the chase and just called themselves Atlanteans. So no, it was secession by political model. The bloodline nonsense was part of their racial policy, to justify why they, the Germans, have claim to greatness.
You do know how much of the modern atlantean crackpot archaeology is based on the Nazis, right? And that many Nazis did believe in a world spanning ancient Aryan empire called Thule? Also, that racial policy touched literally every aspect of Nazi rule. It was their entire raison d'etre.
Hmm, I suppose. Chronologically they would be the successor, of course, and they do use the ruins and technology of the old empire but culturally...no.
In fact, I vaguely recall a story about a lost DAoT vessel full of human passengers that found it self in Imperial space, saw it's crew get brutally murdered by Imperials and consequently went mad of result, going on a huge tirade about how humanity is a disappointment and a failure when the boarding parties arrived.
You do know how much of the modern atlantean crackpot archaeology is based on the Nazis, right? And that many Nazis did believe in a world spanning ancient Aryan empire called Thule?
Yes, that's what they believed, it was pretty crazy.
Nazi mythology was wild. Good source for weird war fiction though.
So the imperium of man shows it's hand when ever it tells it's greatest Lie:
"The Emperor Protects". He doesn't. At all. He doesn't even care. He never did. The IoM only cares about one thing, and that's power. It's is completely willing to sacrifice entire worlds to avoid loosing one iota of power. Even the slightest hint of "Tau" subversion can warrant an Extermination on a global scale.
Even the merest hint of insinuation that populace of a planet is not perfectly human, could be the straw on the back of the camel that prompts the Sisters of Battle "Taking it upon their own volition to wipe it out".
The Space Marines might suddenly decide to Exterminatus your planet on the grounds that a Daemon was summoned on it.
The Emperor does not protect. The emperor hates his people. And their suffering and tragic nature is the most perfect comedy against what his intent was, and how it ended due to humanity's nature.
Didn't that happen in the 9th ed trailer? Or was it the 10th ed one?
Doesn't faith in the Emperor also affect demons, and his beacon is needed for Human Warp travel? Yeah there's alternatives, but I doubt the necrons and Eldar are going to share their techniques, and humans probably can't copy them anyway because of either how advanced they are or require specific biological traits.
Also, how do Living Saints and Acts of Faith work?
Given that the Emperor is dead, I find that highly unlikely. And he's not the one giving the order for exterminatus, his followers are, no different from those who kill in the name of their god.
One of the themes of the setting is that the Emperor is not the one giving orders, just the High Lords who claim to act in his name, but aren't really as the Emperor has no way to actually tell them what to do.
Because he's dead, he is no more. If it weren't for the constant supply of human kindling his light would cease to shine. He's passed on, he's ceased to be. He's gone on to meet the maker he didn't think existed. That is a dead emperor.
What you see as the Emperor's Light or will whatever is just residual psionic traces being kept sustained by the Golden Throne that's kept burning with routine sacrifices, and even then that is getting weaker over time. The Emperor himself has been dead for ten thousand years.
So she kneels, says a prayer, and her arms stops being crackly?
No special golden light, no magic aura?
Are there any other instances of this that have been shown in something like other animations, BL fiction, comics, or the such?
Is there any other source that corroborates that a prayer to the Emperor can heal humans?
How do we know this isn't the indomitable human spirit? Zealotry is a hell of a drug after all.
I'm playing devil's advocate here because there are so many instances where people will look at one thing and then say that everything is the same.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Doesn't faith in the Emperor also affect demons, and his beacon is needed for Human Warp travel? Yeah there's alternatives, but I doubt the necrons and Eldar are going to share their techniques, and humans probably can't copy them anyway because of either how advanced they are or require specific biological traits.
A little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B. It's not just a case of believing really hard in the Emperor hurting Daemons, it's specific acts or symbols that are more closely aligned with Daemonology than religion, the two just neatly align together.
For example, just an Aquila doesn't do anything but invoking the Emperor while holding an Aquila pendant might cause a Daemon a fragment of pain. Is it the symbol or the words behind the symbol?
Also, how do Living Saints and Acts of Faith work?
Living Saints are Emperor-Daemons and Acts of Faith is an army rule no different to Oaths of Moment. A Space Marine making an Oath doesn't suddenly become better at fighting and a Sister praying doesn't automatically become tougher or stronger.
Psychologically it would have an effect that could in turn cause a physical change but that's along the lines of The Indomitable Human Spirit rather than god intervening. If you think god is on your side, you fight that little bit harder.
Also, how do Living Saints and Acts of Faith work?
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I'd say it's just the power of the Warp. Believing in things stirs it, so it's just the same process as with spells or daemonic manifestations. The result is different because the underlying belief is different and the Warp moulds itself to match, just like it does with other strong emotions.
The issue is that belief system is real toxic with how easy that crosses over to real world systems
Isn't that the point? The Imperium takes heavy influence from various real world religions, but primarily Catholicism due to the overall aesthetic being based on Medieval Europe but in the Future.
And by Catholicism I mean a bastardized version of it according to pop-culture that takes the worst aspects and turn it up to 11.
The Imperium is a massively advanced civilisation stripped of pretty much all knowledge and understanding of how it got there.
Consider the humble Lasgun. In-game, it’s a meme’s to death joke weapon. Low powered, “with a laser sight its twin linked lolololol”. But genuinely? It’s an absolute miracle weapon I suspect any modern Military would give its eye teeth for.
Easy to maintain, near as dammit infinite ammunition. And for only slightly more advanced models, shot and power options. It resolves a lot of supply train issues, is highly resistant to extremes of environment and weather and that. And it’s perfectly capable of killing.
Indeed, if it has one genuine drawback? Provided the target survives the initial hit, thanks to cauterising its own damage, it reduces the medical care needed to get said target back on the field.
It’s the whole Dark Ages of Europe set to a ridiculous degree, where the Enlightenment can never occur.
Look at the Adeptus Mechanicus, those who keep the forges stoked and the materiel flowing. It’s…a deeply conservative religious order, arguably even more oppressive than the Ecclesiarchy.
The modern Imperium is the loss of all reason, but not the benefits of science that came before.
The entirety of The Imperium is so focussed on simply surviving and maintaining itself, and the power structure which, by and large, has allowed it to do so, it’s lost sight of the entire reason for its own existence.
The Emperor is a terrible being. Willing to commit xenocide and genocide to see his dream come true. But at least he was doing so with an actual goal in mind. His Imperium has lost sight of that goal. It perpetuates horrors on its own people without ever really improving anything for anyone. It now exists for the sake of existing.
And as much as Rejuvenaut treatments can drastically extend the human lifespan? None of the High Lords or Planetary Governors live forever. After 10,000 years, dozens if not hundreds of generations of rulers have come and gone, each one further and further and further removed from what the whole point of the Great Crusade was.
The issue is that belief system is real toxic with how easy that crosses over to real world systems
Isn't that the point? The Imperium takes heavy influence from various real world religions, but primarily Catholicism due to the overall aesthetic being based on Medieval Europe but in the Future.
And by Catholicism I mean a bastardized version of it according to pop-culture that takes the worst aspects and turn it up to 11.
I would argue that it reflects very accurately specific eras of the Catholic church's history, only writ larger across the stars. The purging, witch hunting, crusades etc of history were all instigated by, in the name of, or supported by the catholic church (and its pope) of that era. This expands to colonisation (and by this stage of history, the other newer christian churches are also culpable).
40k took those very real and terrible actions and placed them on a galactic stage. It's an examination of power - 'what if the catholic church as it existed during the crusades had access to unlimited manpower and a galaxy of heathens to crusade across? Would they not then do exactly the same thing, only larger?'
That's one of those original satirical aspects of 40k. The imperium has a virtually medieval mindset, as does its church (thus it can tap into the actual historical acts of said church from that era in a believable way). That combined with their speciest supremacy and eugenics ideology creates a what if scenario where a medieval catholic church dominates a theocratic feudalist empire built on fascist ideologies.
But the modern image of the imperium is in some ways like the black and white era of film making, where those historical events were told through a white european bias with those being crusaded against as unequivocally the bad guys and the crusading force a benevolent force for good, Guilliman as Richard the Lionheart but make it 50s romance Lionheart, not actual history terrible human Lionheart...
The issue is that belief system is real toxic with how easy that crosses over to real world systems
Isn't that the point? The Imperium takes heavy influence from various real world religions, but primarily Catholicism due to the overall aesthetic being based on Medieval Europe but in the Future.
And by Catholicism I mean a bastardized version of it according to pop-culture that takes the worst aspects and turn it up to 11.
The issue is that the earnest mindset of "The imperium is justified doing anything to xenos and mutants to secure the future of humanity" is easily equivalated to "The (insert far right group) is justified to do anything to (insert minority) and (insert political opponents) to secure the future of humanity". Because this is the relentless messaging from the far right.
I am deeply concerned when someone expresses the first that they might have been sucked into the second. Especially with other signifiers.
And indeed people USE the first to try and vaguely point to the second in places where saying the second is not accepted.
If people have far right views, I don't think Warhammer is going to convince them one way or another. They might use the rhetoric in a jokey way to downplay their ideas, but people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality. I think only severely ill or developmentally disabled people would actually be radicalised by a tabletop wargame, and I'm not sure those people would be less likely to be radicalised if the game made the satire more overt.
Edit to add: I am in favour of the older background to be clear, and I find the new stuff with Guilleman completely insipid. But I have similar critiques about lots of the background after nearly 3 decades of interest in the setting - Squats are cooler as Xenos Demiurg, Eldar Corsairs should be the default Eldar, Orks shouldn't have magic belief powers, Tau should just be relatively normal levels of cynical and not mind controlling monsters, the Hive Mind should not have emotions that are comprehensible to humans, Necrons are cooler as killer androids of unknown origin than Space Tomb Kings, giant sized Primarchs are ridiculous, ditto ludicrously large spaceships, Chaos shouldn't be portrayed in such a flanderdised way that anyone who ever chooses Chaos is obviously an insane idiot and so on.
Da Boss wrote: If people have far right views, I don't think Warhammer is going to convince them one way or another. They might use the rhetoric in a jokey way to downplay their ideas, but people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality. I think only severely ill or developmentally disabled people would actually be radicalised by a tabletop wargame, and I'm not sure those people would be less likely to be radicalised if the game made the satire more overt.
well, it's not that the game itself would convince them, but those people using the game to downplay their real-world ideology using it as a vehicle for those views. not a process that could happen in isolation, but this is a community-based game, and if you end up in a poor community, especially online, there are far too many easy pitfalls
I think if you are convinced to be far right by a tabletop game community online you are either extremely easy to influence to the point where influencing you back out of it should be trivial, or you already had a fairly heavy lean in that direction to start with and perhaps just learned language to express it and felt more comfortable being open about it in that group.
Gert wrote: So she kneels, says a prayer, and her arms stops being crackly?
No special golden light, no magic aura?
Are there any other instances of this that have been shown in something like other animations, BL fiction, comics, or the such?
Is there any other source that corroborates that a prayer to the Emperor can heal humans?
How do we know this isn't the indomitable human spirit? Zealotry is a hell of a drug after all.
I'm playing devil's advocate here because there are so many instances where people will look at one thing and then say that everything is the same.
The green glowing ongoing gauss weapon wound, still surrounded by bolts of green lightning discharge, changes to a red golden glow upon prayer and then once the glow fades the SoB is left with a ragged gloved but still functional hand. Clearly the implication is there is something going on that is supernatural and not just the SoB gritting her teeth and bearing it.
In the more recent editions the SoB have had more blatant divine miracles like prayers that make the enemy spontaneously combust and relics that do the same, especially to Chaos aligned units and daemons.
I admit I kind of preferred it when the Emperor was more subtle and the miracles might be inexplicable endurance when the person should have died, or an incredible string of coincidences happening, rather than big golden aura and flashy flames. I remember my idea for a SoB Sacred Rose Canoness was using a plasma pistol and using the warlord trait that made Miracle dice a 6 for the warlord, combined with the Sacred Rose stratagem that turned hits on 6's into 2 hits, having a SoB character that could fire its plasma pistol that hit harder without any risk of explosion. For the Imperium, that is already a miracle.
Da Boss wrote: I just feel this line of discussion is really similar to the "videogames make children violent!" arguments we all heard back in the day.
Lowkey, it pretty much is. It's funny how much it's swung from the puritan right being the main censor and proponent against video games, to the radical left now being the main censor for things like how video game characters look or act and the things they deem must be boycotted (e.g. Hogwart's Legacy and how that boycott failed miserably). Horshoe theory is definitely a thing.
Like you said, it's fundamentally a game of toy soldiers, I think it's more a reflection of YOU and your issues if you believe this game is full of far-right or far-left dog whistles and that it's a secret covert breeding ground for Nazis/communists. Like this game is for escapism, I would hope you would not be basing your morality, life, and identity around something that is intended to be a hobby. Or do people around here also freak out about Mario being an entryway into animal abuse because he stomps on turtles in his game?
Da Boss wrote: If people have far right views, I don't think Warhammer is going to convince them one way or another. They might use the rhetoric in a jokey way to downplay their ideas, but people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Hopefully it's that way in your countries. Here in the USA atm? It's a akin to a coin flip. A good # of my countrymen have just gone stupid in recent years.
Whilst thankfully I never had to deal with such things directly, in my time as a till monkey it wasn’t uncommon to see older gamers be an influence on the younger ones.
That is the core issue. Young folk are impressionable. And that can be a truly wonderful thing. As I’ve said before, when you see a young geek, probably picked on at school, find their tribe and start to come out of their shell, it’s a great thing. To see social skills rapidly develop and happier, more rounded individual emerge is priceless.
But. That is dependant on those being the influence being a good influence. Politics entirely aside, stuff like demonstrating good manners, your pleases and thank yous. Being a good sport, discussing rather than arguing. Being polite and kind. Hell, even just being clean. That’s all categorically Good Influence.
Sadly, there are those out there of less wholesome intent, who might see impressionable young minds and take liberties.
That’s not something unique to wargaming or Games Workshop either. As Skunk Anasie wrote “you rope ‘em in young”. But it is something we as a society need to be aware of, and vigilant toward, regardless of the forum in which it occurs.
If you think people that boycotted hogwarts legacy were "far left" then I'd say your country is pretty far right as a baseline already .
And horseshoe theory fails everyday seeing how conservatives and Liberals copy neofascist politics every day right now in europe, neofascism is radicalized conservatism, there's nothing that connects it to left (that is socialist, communist or anarchist) views.
The horseshoe theory has less to do with politics itself and more that people that are highly radicalized are likely to become highly hateful, and hateful people change their political beliefs on a dime in the name of keep hating something.
And also the political "left-right" spectrum is a massive oversimplification of a multi-dimensional political space best exemplified by people believing communists and anarchists are both far left and thus the same.
Regardless of how GW presents the 40K setting***, it will always attract far-right extremists because Humanity, as a species, has always been fascinated by evil and by its "aesthetics". And some humans will look at it and say "This is what I want !". There's tons of examples and books about this subject : people are fascinated by true crime stories, by serial killers, by past dictators, by conquerors who were reviled by everyone during their lifetime.
One good example to this day is Roman von Ungern-Sternberg aka "The Mad Baron". The Soviet Union used him as propaganda (you didn't even need to lie about him because he was proud of his actions) and Hitler was fascinated by this man. He was an utterly insane lunatic even back then, during the Russian Civil War and the Chinese Warlords era but frankly, his story is indeed fascinating. There's novels about him (some even were written by far-right authors in the 70s or 80s), comics, songs, history books even though he achieved nothing. The vast majority are interested in this character in order to criticize him. But nonetheless he retains an undeniable power of seduction.
That reminds me a psychology book (I didn't read it) titled "Bad men do what good men dream".
*** Though I do agree that GW tries to downplay the evilness of the Imperium in order to attract a wider audience. However GW is smart enough to not retcon it. Instead, it focuses on other in-universe topics such as the threat of Chaos, the big bad wars, etc. Topics which allow a more superficial reading of the setting.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: If you think people that boycotted hogwarts legacy were "far left" then I'd say your country is pretty far right as a baseline already .
And horseshoe theory fails everyday seeing how conservatives and Liberals copy neofascist politics every day right now in europe, neofascism is radicalized conservatism, there's nothing that connects it to left (that is socialist, communist or anarchist) views.
So, quoting this, but also trying to bend it back to 40k.
Globalization is a leftist concept, as is human rights. In the real world, working together with other nations is the medicine for fascism. People forget that the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation and our modern integrated supply chains were initially created in the post-war era, and while each organisation had its own "purpose," to some extent ALL of these organisations were also designed to promote peace by creating connections between nations which disincentivize hostility.
And for the 40k piece, it is the complete lack of peaceful solutions, mutual support and benefit or interdependence that defines 40k's fascism for me. Again, Artemis shooting Eldrad for no other reason than "he's an alien" WHILE Eldrad was actively involved in a ritual that literally could have ended Slaanesh is the perfect example of what I personally see as 40k's fascism... And I do not believe this was celebrated as "We did it because we had to" - I think it was done to highlight the problematic nature of the IoM.
I think I work with a different definition of left than a lot of people here.
I would not say Globalisation for example is inherently a left wing thing. It's a bit blurry but I see left wing politics as being about wealth redistribution and having more of a role for the state in society.
I think social stuff gets mixed in with it, but I don't see liberal vs authoritarian as being connected to right or left particularly. You can have liberal leftists and liberal rightists, and authoritarians of both flavours. Being a left wing social conservative is totally possible, as is being a right wing social liberal.
Not really relevant to the thread, just makes it hard for me to follow what people mean sometimes.
Da Boss wrote: I just feel this line of discussion is really similar to the "videogames make children violent!" arguments we all heard back in the day.
This echoes my thoughts as well.
Selfcontrol wrote: Regardless of how GW presents the 40K setting***, it will always attract far-right extremists because Humanity, as a species, has always been fascinated by evil and by its "aesthetics".
Spoiler:
And some humans will look at it and say "This is what I want !". There's tons of examples and books about this subject : people are fascinated by true crime stories, by serial killers, by past dictators, by conquerors who were reviled by everyone during their lifetime.
One good example to this day is Roman von Ungern-Sternberg aka "The Mad Baron". The Soviet Union used him as propaganda (you didn't even need to lie about him because he was proud of his actions) and Hitler was fascinated by this man. He was an utterly insane lunatic even back then, during the Russian Civil War and the Chinese Warlords era but frankly, his story is indeed fascinating. There's novels about him (some even were written by far-right authors in the 70s or 80s), comics, songs, history books even though he achieved nothing. The vast majority are interested in this character in order to criticize him. But nonetheless he retains an undeniable power of seduction.
That reminds me a psychology book (I didn't read it) titled "Bad men do what good men dream".
*** Though I do agree that GW tries to downplay the evilness of the Imperium in order to attract a wider audience. However GW is smart enough to not retcon it. Instead, it focuses on other in-universe topics such as the threat of Chaos, the big bad wars, etc. Topics which allow a more superficial reading of the setting.
This makes me think of all the folks cosplaying as storm troopers and Darth Vader. But everybody is fine with that. Even if they're a bunch of oppressive and murderous SOBs.
Da Boss wrote: I just feel this line of discussion is really similar to the "videogames make children violent!" arguments we all heard back in the day.
This echoes my thoughts as well.
Selfcontrol wrote: Regardless of how GW presents the 40K setting***, it will always attract far-right extremists because Humanity, as a species, has always been fascinated by evil and by its "aesthetics".
Spoiler:
And some humans will look at it and say "This is what I want !". There's tons of examples and books about this subject : people are fascinated by true crime stories, by serial killers, by past dictators, by conquerors who were reviled by everyone during their lifetime.
One good example to this day is Roman von Ungern-Sternberg aka "The Mad Baron". The Soviet Union used him as propaganda (you didn't even need to lie about him because he was proud of his actions) and Hitler was fascinated by this man. He was an utterly insane lunatic even back then, during the Russian Civil War and the Chinese Warlords era but frankly, his story is indeed fascinating. There's novels about him (some even were written by far-right authors in the 70s or 80s), comics, songs, history books even though he achieved nothing. The vast majority are interested in this character in order to criticize him. But nonetheless he retains an undeniable power of seduction.
That reminds me a psychology book (I didn't read it) titled "Bad men do what good men dream".
*** Though I do agree that GW tries to downplay the evilness of the Imperium in order to attract a wider audience. However GW is smart enough to not retcon it. Instead, it focuses on other in-universe topics such as the threat of Chaos, the big bad wars, etc. Topics which allow a more superficial reading of the setting.
This makes me think of all the folks cosplaying as storm troopers and Darth Vader. But everybody is fine with that. Even if they're a bunch of oppressive and murderous SOBs.
The issue is one of false equivalence. The idea of promoting violence is one of direct action - the implication that it will make someone go out and kill or hurt people. That is not the same thing as normalising exclusionary ideologies because the latter is passive, internal and long festering. There is 0 effort for someone to take up intolerant ideologies, there is a lot more effort in someone going out and hurting people.
We have plenty of evidence that representation in society works for the marginalised. That is not a fringe idea. Because it's normalising the other to people who don't understand it. It not only makes the marginalised feel better to see representation, it also makes the majority less uncomfortable with them. It's a gradual thing, but it's a practical way to effect ideological change.
However, the normalisation of intolerance is exactly how certain historical ideologies rose up. They gave permission to believe these things, which if left unchecked spirals upwards into permission to do violence, which is where you get things like Kristallnacht.
Ironically, normalising intolerant ideology is a much surer way to lead to actual violent behaviour, than just flat out telling people they get to be violent. Most people need some internal logic to support their actions, they don't just get up and do something out of character. That's why social shift, normalisation of ideology etc is gradual, and you don't see the consequence until you're far enough along that you get total social structural change.
An appropriately 40k analogy is the fall of the eldar.
PenitentJake wrote: Again, Artemis shooting Eldrad for no other reason than "he's an alien" WHILE Eldrad was actively involved in a ritual that literally could have ended Slaanesh is the perfect example of what I personally see as 40k's fascism...
Eldrad had also orchestrated the invasion of an Imperial world... (...and was in the process of bringing about a genocide of Craftworld Eldar)
Artemis' reason for attacking Eldrad's force wasn't just because he wanted to kill some peaceful aliens with pure motives because fascism.
PenitentJake wrote: Again, Artemis shooting Eldrad for no other reason than "he's an alien" WHILE Eldrad was actively involved in a ritual that literally could have ended Slaanesh is the perfect example of what I personally see as 40k's fascism...
Eldrad had also orchestrated the invasion of an Imperial world... (...and was in the process of bringing about a genocide of Craftworld Eldar)
Artemis' reason for attacking Eldrad's force wasn't just because he wanted to kill some peaceful aliens with pure motives because fascism.
No, but the quote attributed to him certainly suggests as much....
Do not ask, ‘Why kill the alien?’ rather ask, ‘Why not?’” - Battle Brother Artemis, Deathwatch.
If that's the case Hellebore, do you think being an Eldar player makes you feel contempt for other humans and value their lives less?
Does playing Dark Eldar make you more likely to want to engage in torture?
Does playing Orks mean you'll think violence is fun?
Does playing Tyranids mean you see everyone as biomass?
Or is it specifically that the Imperium is the human faction that makes it likely to cause a social shift by normalising violent political ideas?
Da Boss wrote: If people have far right views, I don't think Warhammer is going to convince them one way or another. They might use the rhetoric in a jokey way to downplay their ideas, but people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality. I think only severely ill or developmentally disabled people would actually be radicalized by a tabletop wargame, and I'm not sure those people would be less likely to be radicalised if the game made the satire more overt.
"people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality" - Westboro Baptist Church, the Mormons, and Scientology have entered the Chat. Granted and argument could be made for these folks being "severely disabled" emotionally or in their ability to construe facts, but no.
The reason threads like this and the FSM debates go on and on and on, is because, clearly, a too large portion of the world thinks that the Imperium on Man, a made up construct of lore in a board game, is an HONESTLY good idea. They also wear badges of Rhodesia and draw incendiary markings on their tanks and whatnot, but I digress. Wizards first rule: People are stupid. They will sooner believe a lie, if it is convenient, rather than a difficult and painful truth. It wholly applies here.
But do you think those people ALREADY believed that stuff, and they like the Imperium because it seems to agree with them, or that being into 40K and the Imperium actually caused them to go off the deep end?
Because I'd say the group of people you're talking about in the former group vastly outweighs the latter group.
Your three chosen groups are very America centric, which is fine because you're an American, but I don't think it really scans or interfaces well with 40K which was developed by british guys in the 80s.
I did also say "Generally", and I'd say people mostly make an exception for religious belief. Otherwise we'd include everyone who believes in a higher power in your list, not just those who you've singled out.
I think the culture war stuff when it comes to warhammer is mostly a grift from people who want content on both sides now. The far right warhammer fan was kinda a thing 10 years ago but the community and the company have told them they aren't welcome now and the only places I see this discourse really is click bait. Your average warhammer "hobbyist" seems far likely to be progressive than not, which is good! Anyway this is prime thread locking discourse.
I think that when companies become overapologetic and majority-pleasing humor/satire is the first thing that is killed.
Good thing that when it comes to the miniature franchise.. it is entirely player driven.. Now I say that as someone who doesn't read any lore etc but writes his own.. and let's face it.. when you want satire.. kitbash some orks.
that's my two cents.
Dai wrote: I think the culture war stuff when it comes to warhammer is mostly a grift from people who want content on both sides now. The far right warhammer fan was kinda a thing 10 years ago but the community and the company have told them they aren't welcome now and the only places I see this discourse really is click bait. Your average warhammer "hobbyist" seems far likely to be progressive than not, which is good! Anyway this is prime thread locking discourse.
I don't really get how people could possibly think that there ever was a so called far right warhammer fan base, as if politically invested people waste their time with a hobby-community.. so called nazi-orks etc .. cannot have been anything else but a form of edgy humor like any other. Heck I've personally been contemplating making jewish looking chaos dwarves, and I've been raised jewish. (sue me)
People may be afraid of mass backlash these days on the online-domain perhaps, I don't have that fear as I keep my digital life to such a minimum that it is hardly there (no socials, no smartphone, not even internet at home) so by that personal-experience I would say that that is the biggest source of satire-block; fear to be branded an extremist simply for a jest either misunderstood or made into a political vehicle, social vehicle or grudge vehicle to score points with.
edit: also I find it odd when people try to reflect their personal life or political ideas (again as a vehicle) into a hobby to begin with, I just cannot imagine it.. maybe it exists.. sure.. but if it does I cannot take it seriously.. it is satirical to begin with to me when that is being done..
Isn't fiction meant as an escape from the bleak serious and condemning reality?
Personally like to paint dwarves, but also nurgle and elves.. what does that make me.. a cavedwelling well poisoner with a superiority complex?
Dai wrote: Anyway this is prime thread locking discourse.
As interesting as this line of conversation is, I agree. The mods have been quite permissive for politics directly infringing on the hobby space of late, but we probably shouldn't push it.
As it is, no one is going to be able to give a convincing explanation of their position on the current debate about the impact of media on individuals with how much we have to skirt around the politics, so it seems a bit pointless. That is a related but different debate as to whether 40k is still satire (although I grant that the logical next step in such a discussion is "does it matter if it isn't anymore?" which is where we are at).
It's a bit ironic that most people fear mongering about 40k being an gateway to the alt-right in this thread are basically following the same moral panic of the 80's when people claimed that DnD promoted Satanism and witchcraft which led to suicides/murder. Truly, if people do not know history they are doomed to repeat it.
Dai wrote: Anyway this is prime thread locking discourse.
As interesting as this line of conversation is, I agree. The mods have been quite permissive for politics directly infringing on the hobby space of late, but we probably shouldn't push it.
You can also just not read the thread if it offends in some way..
Dai wrote: Anyway this is prime thread locking discourse.
As interesting as this line of conversation is, I agree. The mods have been quite permissive for politics directly infringing on the hobby space of late, but we probably shouldn't push it.
You can also just not read the thread if it offends in some way..
I mean what I've noticed is that usually one side tends to completely dumpster a thread in reports for mods to lock the thread or delete comments the moment the public opinion in the thread seems to push away from their idea of what is correct, but we'll see if we can continue a civil conversation or not.
I mean what I've noticed is that usually one side tends to completely dumpster a thread in reports for mods to lock the thread or delete comments the moment the public opinion in the thread seems to push away from their idea of what is correct, but we'll see if we can continue a civil conversation or not.
Noticed that too everywhere on the internet incrementally since about 2015 or so, but worry not soon we will have AI mods that just autoblock messages like on discord. Noone will have to ask for it anymore.
The thread doesn't offend me, I'd like to explore the current topic more. But I'd also like it to remain open. Name-dropping specific religious/political groups in an openly partisan way is definitely flying to close to the sun and risking a thread lock, regardless of whether I agree or not with the sentiment expressed.
Haighus wrote: The thread doesn't offend me, I'd like to explore the current topic more. But I'd also like it to remain open. Name-dropping specific religious/political groups in an openly partisan way is definitely flying to close to the sun and risking a thread lock, regardless of whether I agree or not with the sentiment expressed.
I never partake in any volatile mode of conversation, if the conversation is witty and contemplatory I like it.
Wouldn't know why I should be offended either, maybe that comes with age though.
The logic just escapes me why people think that fiction invokes some guilt by association.. like.. the examples Grimskul already gave of xenos don't make someone into that type of person..
And what would the ramifications have to be for it.. removing any faction that isn't shooting butterflies (instead of bullets) and drinking milkshakes?
I think most of us agree that forcing female spacemarines while we have sisters already is incendiary campaigning.. but where does it end..
Leopold Helveine wrote: I think most of us agree that forcing female spacemarines while we have sisters already is incendiary campaigning.. but where does it end..
They're not the same thing. And you bringing it up in this thread *is* incendiary.
No-one's being "offended" by this discussion, but it is gradually becoming more and more *against the rules of this forum* - and I don't think anyone wants to cause a thread lock. So, let's perhaps back down a little from some of these Real World Names that we're throwing around, and stick on topic of the Imperium as satire. Don't worry, you're not offending anyone, and this isn't some kind of crusade of censorship - but this is a forum with specific rules and expectations.
if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
Da Boss wrote: I think I work with a different definition of left than a lot of people here.
I would not say Globalisation for example is inherently a left wing thing. It's a bit blurry but I see left wing politics as being about wealth redistribution and having more of a role for the state in society.
Which amuses me no end - growing up in the 20th century, globalisation was the right wing capitalist/corporatists agenda that any poster child of left wing politics railed against.
I don't really get how people could possibly think that there ever was a so called far right warhammer fan base, as if politically invested people waste their time with a hobby-community.
So there is an active right wing fan base. Especially wargamming proper (historicals and chits), where even pointing out a game seems to glorify the Nazi's/Slavery/whatever by playing up to propaganda about their prowess/about their ragged condition/etc. gets you banned as you are somehow insulting peoples identity...
Which is a way is good, it shows your hobby has wide appeal which is important for its longevity. 40k has its share too, most notably in my mind the 'imperial Herald' facebook page that takes republican and 'culture war' talking points and makes them into 40k memes.
While it isn't satire I would find amusing, certainly to its fans it is satire of views they don't like in both the real world and 40k.
The whole FSM issue demonstrates that Warhammer isn’t satire any more. When a loud, angry group of people are far too invested in taking The Lore seriously to allow for FSM, that’s the tell. The satire has become the satirized.
Da Boss wrote: I think I work with a different definition of left than a lot of people here.
I would not say Globalisation for example is inherently a left wing thing. It's a bit blurry but I see left wing politics as being about wealth redistribution and having more of a role for the state in society.
Which amuses me no end - growing up in the 20th century, globalisation was the right wing capitalist/corporatists agenda that any poster child of left wing politics railed against.
Corporatocracy is not corporatism.
Use the correct word if you lot have to break the no politics rule.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
Sister of Battle already has that covered, I think. I'm pretty sure they commit more war crimes than space marines, being die-hard religious fanatics who love using fire and all.
Also inquisitors. They're like, living war crimes. They don't follow the Geneva Convention, they follow the Geneva Checklist.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
Sister of Battle already has that covered, I think. I'm pretty sure they commit more war crimes than space marines, being die-hard religious fanatics who love using fire and all.
Also inquisitors. They're like, living war crimes. They don't follow the Geneva Convention, they follow the Geneva Checklist.
right, so if there's no issue with women in the setting, then there's no issue with women being space marines!
).Totalitarian and conservatism might be more fitting than outright fascism.
stupid in recent years.
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