Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Manchu wrote:
Careful there, I didn’t argue (even implicitly) that fiction isn’t created with political undertones in the first place — I said that others later colonize it for their own separate purposes.

I disagree. It wasn't an "undertone" and it's not a seperate purpose. I can't see any difference there. I don't think you noticed or got involved into adult discussion about those fandoms before you turned yourself into an adult and thus changed perception.

The big problem with 40k is the narrative focus.

Every piece of 40k starts with describing how awful the IoM is, but then it undermines that by having Imperial characters that don't really explore how awful things are. E.g generic Battle Brother Genericus has little to do with the oppressive Imperial policies.

And because most of the 40k lore is Imperial focused, it paints this false image that the IoM is somehow the justified protagonist of the setting.

The obvious solution isn't "canceling" 40k, but exploring the other povs of the setting. Giving the other factions' pov (Eldar, Tau, Ork, Necron and Chaos) more weight would dispel the protagonistic weight of the IoM. And exploring the civilian and other "minor" races' pov would better show how awful the IoM truly is.

And also not having the ends always conveniently justify the means.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
that's true, but Americans tend to have a very broad view of what "censorship" is. The first amendment applies to governmental action, but we seem to think that private entities, or even individuals, cannot limit our speech.

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946) disagrees with you there.

If you’re trying to play gotcha, you picked poorly. Marsh involved company towns, and held that when private property is opened in the sane way as public, the communities 1st amendment rights override the rights of a property owner. It’s not quite dead law, but it doesn’t really come up much

OTOH, Pruneyard v Robins is still good albeit only in California.

I think the very tiny exceptions prove the rule.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think if we accept that fascists like 40K a lot (and those who haven't encountered it, it does exist) then we can examine why that is. And yeah, we can do something about it.

Fascists also drink water. And Hitler was a vegetarian.

"Fascists like X, therefore X is bad" is the most basic example of a logical fallacy you can commit.

My primary objection against comparisons between the Imperium and facisim is that broadness of the given arguments, most people who argue for such comparisons use general notions of authoritarianism totalitarianism to make their case. In realit the broad framework of the Imperium is rooted far before the advent of facisism as a political ideology. A comparison can be made, but for the most part only insofar that the Imperium borrows a number from popular conceptions of facisism with regards to it's aesthetics. The deeper foundations, however are much more closely related to feudalism, absolute monarchism, the Catholic church of old, the Roman empire, etc, than to the machinations of Mussollini.

 Manchu wrote:


Case in point, the origins of 40k have something to do with a subversive, punk mentality. Those who want to use it to idolize IRL figures of authority (or the military generally) are certainly twisting the original concept to diametrically opposite effect.

I think subversive is a much better description than satirical. I’m not sure what naming a warboss after a prime minister really satirizes, but it is pretty punk rock.

 Da Boss wrote:
Pro-Nazi stuff will get you in trouble with the law pretty easily where I am, for sure.

Well to be fair. Nazi got your country in lil' bit of trouble if history serves me right.

 Da Boss wrote:
I really enjoyed reading this thread, and I think the level to which everyone is so tense in replying is sad. Everyone who has replied basically agrees with how to deal with the problem, they basically only disagree on the extent of the problem or whether GW should bear responsibility.

.
.
.
I think if we accept that fascists like 40K a lot (and those who haven't encountered it, it does exist) then we can examine why that is. And yeah, we can do something about it.

This latter statement of yours is why its 'so tense.'
Its unclear who you've decided to Otherize as 'fascists' and what 'something' you intend to do about it.


It seems better to let gamers enjoy the fiction they know is fiction, and if you have to be seen 'doing something,' addressing real world problems would be better.

epronovost wrote:
I don't think you noticed or got involved into adult discussion about those fandoms before you turned yourself into an adult and thus changed perception.

This is a good point. But there is also a sense in which the context has changed since when I was a kid. For example, I grew up in a conservative household but it was also a household that loved Star Trek. In those days, ST:TNG was on every Sunday night in our house and we saw no real conflict between the sweeping left wing utopia of that show and our own IRL conservatism; they fit together somehow in a way that may not make sense in today’s world of demanding rigid, strict ideological tribalism.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:
My primary objection against comparisons between the Imperium and facisim is that broadness of the given arguments, most people who argue for such comparisons use general notions of authoritarianism totalitarianism to make their case. In realit the broad framework of the Imperium is rooted far before the advent of facisism as a political ideology. A comparison can be made, but for the most part only insofar that the Imperium borrows a number from popular conceptions of facisism with regards to it's aesthetics. The deeper foundations, however are much more closely related to feudalism, absolute monarchism, the Catholic church of old, the Roman empire, etc, than to the machinations of Mussollini.

I think there’s more to it though. The idea of a United people, facing threats from all sides including within and literally below. If you look, there’s a lot to connect the IOM to fascism instead of just generic authoritarianism.

But still, what’s the point? Oh, those lads aren’t fascist! They’re just advocating for a totalitarian state which thrives on constant conflict.

I have read some really stupid discussions on dakka, but this one wins. Toy soldiers and aliens people, and a dystopia for a setting. The OP can quit, what do we care. GW encourages you to buy, play, and make others buy. It is just a game company, It has no political agenda whatsoever.

 Polonius wrote:

Caradman Sturnn wrote:
My primary objection against comparisons between the Imperium and facisim is that broadness of the given arguments, most people who argue for such comparisons use general notions of authoritarianism totalitarianism to make their case. In realit the broad framework of the Imperium is rooted far before the advent of facisism as a political ideology. A comparison can be made, but for the most part only insofar that the Imperium borrows a number from popular conceptions of facisism with regards to it's aesthetics. The deeper foundations, however are much more closely related to feudalism, absolute monarchism, the Catholic church of old, the Roman empire, etc, than to the machinations of Mussollini.

I think there’s more to it though. The idea of a United people, facing threats from all sides including within and literally below. If you look, there’s a lot to connect the IOM to fascism instead of just generic authoritarianism.

I won't dispute your obeservations, however I will note that the historical fascist regimes were never under an actual threat in the way the Imperium has been, and as I already mentioned, a number of feudal and reactionary mechanicsms that are present in the Imperium were actively being condemned by the facists at their height.

 Manchu wrote:

epronovost wrote:
I don't think you noticed or got involved into adult discussion about those fandoms before you turned yourself into an adult and thus changed perception.

This is a good point. But there is also a sense in which the context has changed since when I was a kid. For example, I grew up in a conservative household but it was also a household that loved Star Trek. In those days, ST:TNG was on every Sunday night in our house and we saw no real conflict between the sweeping left wing utopia of that show and our own IRL conservatism; they fit together somehow in a way that may not make sense in today’s world of demanding rigid, strict ideological tribalism.

I think things have changed, but it’s not also how old you are, but how old the ideas being discussed are. Star Trek was, for its time, diverse for the sake of diversity, but people accept it because that’s how it was. Having a black female officer, or Russian, was a big deal then, but we accept that. When modern trek includes modern diversity, people seemingly get mad because they only want the original version.

In some ways, it’s why everybody on the right lionizes MLK when objecting to any modern civil rights movement, even though MLK was LOATHED by the right when he was alive.

Polonius, there might be something to that but I’m making a different point. In the 90s, when TNG was still in production, we were watching it without hating on it for being “liberal” (even though we knew it certainly was), whereas today there seems to be a much more intense filing into tribal ideological commitments. I think that development has to do with why a person like OP has all this anxiety about whether he should play 40k given that some other 40k players, and not even GW or the 40k setting themselves, have political opinions he considers bad.

 Manchu wrote:
This is a good point. But there is also a sense in which the context has changed since when I was a kid. For example, I grew up in a conservative household but it was also a household that loved Star Trek. In those days, ST:TNG was on every Sunday night in our house and we saw no real conflict between the sweeping left wing utopia of that show and our own IRL conservatism; they fit together somehow in a way that may not make sense in today’s world of demanding rigid, strict ideological tribalism.

This phenomenon is called compartimentalisation and it's not exactly very hard. We do it all the time. I love war drama and war fiction, but I'm a pacifist. How do I square up both of those things? I compartimentalise. We can seperate what we enjoy as fiction or as fantasy and what we enjoy in reality. All that to say I'm not reall surprised that conservative people enjoy liberal media and vice versa. Hell, a former neo-nazi friend of mine told me he used to be a fan of Captain America comic books even when he was within his group. That's how crazy things can be.

Eh you've got to learn that some people will corrupt anything and if you worry about them then you'll never have anything.


Consider football; no racial, political or any other such things in the rules or structure and yet hooliganism embodied all those things and worse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism_in_the_United_Kingdom

Would you in turn say that football caused that; that it was a force for evil; or did people just use it as a shield and vector and excuse.

Compartmentalization regarding fiction seems to have gotten harder since the 1990s as evinced by this thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Eh you've got to learn that some people will corrupt anything and if you worry about them then you'll never have anything.

This is probably what it all comes down to.

 Tyran wrote:
The big problem with 40k is the narrative focus.

Every piece of 40k starts with describing how awful the IoM is, but then it undermines that by having Imperial characters that don't really explore how awful things are. E.g generic Battle Brother Genericus has little to do with the oppressive Imperial policies.

And because most of the 40k lore is Imperial focused, it paints this false image that the IoM is somehow the justified protagonist of the setting.

The obvious solution isn't "canceling" 40k, but exploring the other povs of the setting. Giving the other factions' pov (Eldar, Tau, Ork, Necron and Chaos) more weight would dispel the protagonistic weight of the IoM. And exploring the civilian and other "minor" races' pov would better show how awful the IoM truly is.

Generic Battle Brother Genericus was taken from his parents as a child to be trained and indoctrinated by a religious warrior-cult to become a killing machine. It's a fairly common premise in the 40k universe, but that doesn't make it less horrible, so I don't see how this is hiding the awful nature of the IoM. It's just that we have taken Space Marines and all that comes with them for granted within this setting. Any attempt of creating a similar superhuman warrior in the real world would obviously face heavy opposition from an ethical standpoint, but we are willing and capable to make that leap and pretend Space Marines are justified when engaging with 40k.

We also do have other POVs, more than ever really. Thing is, no matter which race or faction you engage with, it always culminates in various kinds of murder and killing, because that's the essence of 40k. Morality rarely enters the picture, because GW doesn't produce miniatures of humanist philospohers. Master of Mankind does explore some of that in the Emperor's motivations and plans for humanity as a whole, but I don't think you can go much further than this without departing too much from the core premise of 40k.

Here's a relevant example for another POV: In Damocles, Shadowsun orders the bombardment of a Hive City, killing millions of people in one salvo. The author explicitly mentions that, as a large portion of the Hive Spire breaks off, crushing the levels below. When her Tau forces get ambushed and obliterated by the White Scars, she proclaims that these Tau were happy to give their lives for the greater good, and that their sacrifice is a small price to pay.

Violence on a massive scale is a regular occurrence in 40k, and it's not limited to the IoM. It's never justified from a general point of view, only in the heads of the people in the story. Readers are competent enough to make that leap, we do it all the time when engaging with fiction.

 Manchu wrote:
Polonius, there might be something to that but I’m making a different point. In the 90s, when TNG was still in production, we were watching it without hating on it for being “liberal” (even though we knew it certainly was), whereas today there seems to be a much more intense filing into tribal ideological commitments. I think that development has to do with why a person like OP has all this anxiety about whether he should play 40k given that some other 40k players, and not even GW or the 40k setting themselves, have political opinions he considers bad.

Oh, yes, that makes sense. I’m a card carrying member of the ACLu, and I love military history and war movies and the NFL. I think some people do feel the need to square their interests and hobbies with their politics in a way that was rare a generation ago.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
Compartmentalization regarding fiction seems to have gotten harder since the 1990s as evinced by this thread.

In many areas, but not in all. I think matters of sexuality, while they’ve been highly politicized, are less partisan than prior. I think conservatives can enjoy fiction with queer themes more readily than in the past.

Our culture has gotten shockingly less uptight though. I belong to a Presbytarian church in the Deep South, and our divorced pastor dating is a matter of curious gossip, but not scandal. A cohabiting couple joined to no raised eye brows. Admittedly, were not a very conservative congregation, but even 3” years ago it’d be very different.

 BertBert wrote:


Generic Battle Brother Genericus was taken from his parents as a child to be trained and indoctrinated by a religious warrior-cult to become a killing machine. It's a fairly common premise in the 40k universe, but that doesn't make it less horrible, so I don't see how this is hiding the awful nature of the IoM. It's just that we have taken Space Marines and all that comes with them for granted within this setting. Any attempt of creating a similar superhuman warrior in the real world would obviously face heavy opposition from an ethical standpoint, but we are willing and capable to make that leap and pretend Space Marines are justified when engaging with 40k.

The problem is that we have taken it for granted. I don't think there is a piece of 40k lore that explicitly explores why that practice is horrible.

We also do have other POVs, more than ever really. Thing is, no matter which race or faction you engage with, it always culminates in various kinds of murder and killing, because that's the essence of 40k. Morality rarely enters the picture, because GW doesn't produce miniatures of humanist philospohers. Master of Mankind does explore some of that in the Emperor's motivations and plans for humanity as a whole, but I don't think you can go much further than this without departing too much from the core premise of 40k.

We do have more POVs than ever before, but it still is a very sad and small proportion of all the boring Imperial focused stories. And yes every race partakes in the murder and killing, but it is easier to see the flaws of other factions from the outside.

Here's a relevant example for another POV: In Damocles, Shadowsun orders the bombardment of a Hive City, killing millions of people in one salvo. The author explicitly mentions that, as a large portion of the Hive Spire breaks off, crushing the levels below. When her Tau forces get ambushed and obliterated by the White Scars, she proclaims that these Tau were happy to give their lives for the greater good, and that their sacrifice is a small price to pay.

Violence on a massive scale is a regular occurrence in 40k, and it's not limited to the IoM. It's never justified from a general point of view, only in the heads of the people in the story. Readers are competent enough to make that leap, we do it all the time when engaging with fiction.

Some of use are competent enough to make that leap, but that is not an universal trait, and any good storytelling recognizes that some readers do need narrative hand-holding.

 Polonius wrote:
I think there are two strands of thought in the OP, one of which I agree with, the other I do not.

the first is the appeal the 40k lore has to people with fascist tendencies. Yes, you can call them shitposters, or the alt right, or whatever, but 40k has a lot of fans in that camp. You don't need to dig deep to find it. And it's not hard to see why: not only is 40k dominated by warfare, it's one in which the brainwashed super soldiers for the totalitarian empire are the protagonists! Also, the imperium of man is beset on all sides by threats, from without and within, the struggle has a spiritual aspect, and the best hope is violence and strength. If that doesn't sound like modern far right rherotic, you aren't paying attention.

the second strand is if GW is somehow responsible for this. And I don't think so. Nobody is lured into hatred because of GW, I think it just provides a vocabulary of symbols for people to relate to.

In short, I think it's obvious the appeal 40k has to the far right, but I don't think there's anything morally or ethically wrong with playing 40k.

100% agree with this.

In recent years though I've become incredibly uncomfortable with some of way 40k is marketed which is part real-world events and part the almost complete removal of self-awareness and critical takedowns within-Lore of what the Imperium and its poster boys represent. I think the reductive and silly counter argument usually goes something like "oh well, all the lore in the rulebook and such is written from the Imperium PoV, it's basically propaganda!" Which... I guess it kind of is.... but it absolutely does not come across that way whatsoever. It comes across as Word of God, immutable truth: The Imperium is the only true hope for Humanity and represents it's best interests, Xenos are all without question to be killed and exterminated as they cannot be trusted to exist and Faith in the Emperor is the one bulwark against eternal damnation. Oh and Astartes are given the most glowing praise, with the moral and ethical nature of their creation and continued existence and use is not touched upon whatsoever, not in the rule book, not in their Codex.

If more material surrounding 40k made more of an effort to address and argue against this stuff I think GW's statements about "You will not be missed" might have a little more weight. Certainly if they fire BL authors for speaking out in defense of Bisexual Youtubers who get homophobic attacks directed towards them it basically shows said statements as the insincere corporate piss they really are.

People bringing up 4chan earlier actually makes for a really good point in how just brushing off any concerns or being so self-assured in the knowledge that somehow everyone is going to "get" the parody is actually a really dangerous idea. You go back 12-13 years in 4chan's history and while there were a lot of edgy people on there throwing around slurs, the actual politics of the userbase were fairly left wing or at most, pretty liberal. Back in 2008, you had threads on /v/ bemoaning the prevalence of shaved head middle age white dudes as being the only type of character design video game developers were capable of making, and wanting more diversity in race, age and gender amongst protagonists. Fast-forward to 2016-onwards and the mere appearance of a black woman in any major role in a video game gets you about 50 threads about "Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School Liberal (???) plots to commit White Genocide." This is entirely because in a culture revolving around anonymity and edginess, eventually it would be filled with people not in on the joke, and ones who took it seriously. I mean, hell, look at Incels, also a 4chan creation. Incels started as a fething joke, an ironic pisstake. Now an Incel is a defined and actual thing that people believe and actually are.

I don't want to be all "oh won't somebody please think of the children!" but if all you show people of this supposed horrible setting is how the Imperium is necessary and Space Marines are awesome then that's what certain people are going to believe and it's going to attract or warp the views of the more susceptible ones. A shock revelation for some but many people do not separate themselves that much from their chosen hobbies or fictional universes.

What's also interesting is that in my anecdotal experience, I've seen more women, people of colour and openly LGBT people engaged with Sigmar and other tabletop games than I have 40k, despite 40k being the biggest of them all. And I live in a very diverse and accepting area where the 40k community is incredibly open-minded and incredibly anti-fash. But the community is only one aspect of it, when the game and setting itself revolves around so much psuedo-Fascist ultra-Toxic Masculine power fantasies that are ABSOLUTELY NOT presented as ironic jokes or critiques anymore it tends to make a lot of people highly uncomfortable.

 Polonius wrote:
Oh, yes, that makes sense. I’m a card carrying member of the ACLu, and I love military history and war movies and the NFL. I think some people do feel the need to square their interests and hobbies with their politics in a way that was rare a generation ago.

I think it's caused by internet and discussion forums like this one. Here, political discussions are banned (even though we are having one right now), but that's not the case in many forums and politics and debates of value always arise once in a while in any given community. Back in the days, people didn't spent hours writting with strangers on any ggiven subject. Debates on subject of core value like equality, justice, war/peace, democracy, religion, etc. can and often are painful. This leads to people who just want some fun and "chill time" to favor their ingroups and their consumption habits.

Table wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Some years ago I was a financial planner (read: salesman) and part of our training for fleecing clients ("Shields Down" was part of our vocabulary...) was repetition. Repeating phrases, and making sure we repeatedly approached contacts using the same formulas was the core approach we were taught. Admittedly, the program had something of a survivorship bias, but the most successful salesmen were the ones who could repeat the same phrases over and over despite context and despite the mark (one teacher emphasized saying that everything was 'Great!' the manky scotch git, regardless of what it was it was a great opportunity to sell). The point being that constant repetition and exposure to an idea is possibly the greatest factor in someone taking it in.

Which has the unfortunate corollary that we need to practice a form of memetic sanitation so that, like daemons, bad ideas can't infiltrate us.

Eh, not into mind control on any level. One mans bad idea is another mans great idea. Where does the censorship begin? Where does it end? Who is policing this?

The problem is at home. It is with parents not being interactive with their children. There will ALWAYS be nazi's. There will ALWAYS be jerks. Parents need to conceptualized this fact and edit to their moral standing. Whatever that may be.

Another problem is people do not understand what I am about to type. You cannot shame a racist. You cannot stop someone from being a jerk. You CAN stop them from slander, physical or mental violence and from harassment. The problem needs to be solved in the stores by the store owners.

Does anyone hold a gun to your head so that you wash your hands? Because that's the sanitation I'm talking about. People do need to take personal responsibility and keep their own minds clean of fascist memes.

After reading some of this thread it amazes me that people forget scumbags like arch (formerly arch warhammer) and his sizable following exist.

You know, the guy who was against GW's statement in which they say their setting is not what they want the real world to be and all forms of bigotry are bad.

Why does this thread exist when it's basically just the worst parts of Sigmarxism?

Why are politics being allowed now? Why is a mod endorsing this?

One big reason that I recommend wargaming to young people is that it invariably involves taking a meta level perspective on rules that also regulate one’s own success or failure. This perspective is difficult to adopt in a structured way, but wargames offer just such an opportunity and regularly, as they force us to talk about personally important regulations in an objective manner unless we want to be that guy. Oddly enough, GWs poorly composed rules are a bonus in this regard, because if one cannot adopt this meta level critical attitude, then one cannot play these games... well, not coherently and fairly, showing good sportsmanship and so on. One big difference between when I began recommending specifically GW games and now, almost 30 years later, is that people don’t seem to be able to adopt such an attitude so easily, and are thus unable to talk and reason things through. So the world is increasingly polarized, and this seems to show up in the hobby as a sort of symptom. Moreover, unable to adopt a meta level critical perspective on themselves, people don’t seem to recognize the irony in the intolerance of a social organization preaching diversity and tolerance for some and not others based on race, for example. My point here is that, IFF GW games seem to encourage fascism or colonialism, this likely has more to do with the reactionary attitudes and shallow, non reflective rationale motivating social virtue signaling and so on than it has to do with anything actually in GW games...

 Tyran wrote:

The problem is that we have taken it for granted. I don't think there is a piece of 40k lore that explicitly explores why that practice is horrible.

Because we don't need anyone to spell it out - it's obvious.

 Tyran wrote:

We do have more POVs than ever before, but it still is a very sad and small proportion of all the boring Imperial focused stories. And yes every race partakes in the murder and killing, but it is easier to see the flaws of other factions from the outside.

So it's about personal preference then? I'm not super invested into Space Marines or Guard for that matter (I play neither), but their stories are easily the most interesting for me, because humans will always be more relatable to me than aliens.

 Tyran wrote:

Some of use are competent enough to make that leap, but that is not an universal trait, and any good storytelling recognizes that some readers do need narrative hand-holding.

I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with both of those statements. You have to attribute a certain amount of maturity and competence to people, because if you don't, that will prompt certain kinds of people to try and assume control over their lives and decisions. It's also most definitely not standard practice to deliver overt moralistic preaching in anything that isn't made for children. Narrative handholding makes sense as far as the plot goes, but not the underlying implications.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Why does this thread exist when it's basically just the worst parts of Sigmarxism?

Why are politics being allowed now? Why is a mod endorsing this?

Uhhh, probably because it’s s productive and healthy discussion? I think we’re seeing a lot of perspectives that all seem to broadly agree with the OPs concern, but disagree with the suggestion that GW change it’s product.

 Polonius wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Why does this thread exist when it's basically just the worst parts of Sigmarxism?

Why are politics being allowed now? Why is a mod endorsing this?

Uhhh, probably because it’s s productive and healthy discussion? I think we’re seeing a lot of perspectives that all seem to broadly agree with the OPs concern, but disagree with the suggestion that GW change it’s product.

"Rules for thee, and not for me", you mean.