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Fascism has a very specific meaning and the Imperium utterly fails to meet it on account of being a semi-decentralized feudal federation allied with a sovereign power with numerous wholly independent subfactions within it which hold large sections of space with little to no direct oversight. Not only is all its territory structured in a feudal manner with lords and overlords passing taxes up the chain to the Administratum but it doesn't even have a unified economy, let alone a planned one. Which is one of the most important features of Fascism- everything is controlled by the state. The Imperium shares far more with Stalinism than it does Fascism, and even then it's an awful stretch.

(Ironically for all of SB's "le deus vult" memes, the Imperium shares more with the Ottoman Empire considering its usage of slaves and taking children to be raised from youth as the greatest soldiers in the empire. And even having said child soldier caste rebelling multiple times.)

Evil. Xenophobic. But not fascist.

The Imperium is also a heavily feudal and disorganized society, and any given planet may buck these trends heavily. The mind-boggling scale of it all makes it near-impossible to ascribe any traits or ideology to their society as a whole. However when you're looking at the top-down organization of it, and ignore the millions of unique cultures and societies that coexist within it, it's not unfair to refer to it as a combined feudal-fascist-theocratic state; as elements of all of those systems are integral to the organization and function of the Imperium. The Imperium even lets people worship the Emperor their own way as long as they worship him and pay tithe. The Imperial Creed is surprisingly tolerant on how worship of the Emperor is done.

The Imperium is "The worst regime imaginable", but not fascist. But its just as bad as fascism.


I'm not looking for an argument, I'm looking to get facts straight. I'm not looking to start an argument, because I don't want to go through that again. But I'm tired of the Imperium being called fascist whenever people scream a "I don't like this" adjective with anything political. I have never at any point denied the Imperium is evil and xenophobic (and has strayed away from what the Emperor wanted it to be), so there is that.

But people are likely going to alter the subject of this thread and talk about something different for many pages. So talk about whatever you want here.

WOOOOOOOW.

JUST WOW.

Can you ever let things go? Like, do you need people to praise you and nod their heads repeatedly at what you say before you stop spamming the same topics? Your last thread that got caught onto the details of fascism got locked reaaal quick.

Also, if you're not looking for an argument, why bother posting here? That's not the point of this sub-forum, you're not supposed to post inane statements, then say no one's allowed to question it. That's not a discussion, which is the whole point of this forum.

I don't know how many times you have to be told this. Do you want a perma-ban?

Yes, I can. I was just tired of it. And I haven't broken any rules.


If you don't mind, I am going to ask about some books.

You just contradicted yourself, how can you be tired of it, if you're the ONLY one who wants to talk about this? Nobody brings it up except you. And you're breaking a forum rule already by explicitly saying that you're bringing up this topic for your own sake, meaning its spam rather than discussion, which is the entire point of this forum. This isn't your own personal site, just look at how many locked threads you have. It's not because they were "over" naturally, they had to be locked by a mod since you won't stop circling around with your posts. Pretty much only your threads have been locked when you scroll down the page. Maybe that's a sign you should switch up your posting habits?

Oh for feths sake.

The Imperium is a collection of planetary colonies forced to tithe 10% of their global GDP to a central authority under pain of destruction. The culture is dominated by a religion claiming the Emperor is a God and all servants live by his will alone.

Not sure how that's called anything but fascist. There's other terms that apply, but 'fascist' certainly describes this situation adequately.

The imperium's fascist, that's the whole point. They do terrible, objectively evil things because if they don't actual daemons exist and will eat everyone. It's a messed up system and it's messed up on purpose.

It's the first thing you learn about the imperium when you get into the game, it's not that complicated.

The Imperium is not fascist. You literally cannot have a fascist state that is feudal and federalized in nature as fascism requires centralization that brings the entire state under one authority. Not only is the Imperium run as self-governing planets paying a feudal tithe to the Adeptus Terra, but the Adepts themselves are effectively national organizations themselves, autonomous to the point of being their own entities. Especially when the Imperium doesn't even have any kind of economic structure, with most state-level transactions being conducted in a purely bartering manner. The Imperium is just the Empire of Man, which in turn was just a thinly veiled expy of the Holy Roman Empire. Only now in Space.

 Wyzilla wrote:


The Imperium is not fascist. You literally cannot have a fascist state that is feudal and federalized in nature as fascism requires centralization that brings the entire state under one authority. Not only is the Imperium run as self-governing planets paying a feudal tithe to the Adeptus Terra, but the Adepts themselves are effectively national organizations themselves, autonomous to the point of being their own entities. Especially when the Imperium doesn't even have any kind of economic structure, with most state-level transactions being conducted in a purely bartering manner. The Imperium is just the Empire of Man, which in turn was just a thinly veiled expy of the Holy Roman Empire. Only now in Space.

The Imperium is under one authority. The Emperor of Mankind.

"characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy"

The only one that doesn't quite fit is the economy part, and even then the tithes handle that pretty well. I'm just going to steal another comment from another site by Skolloc753 on reddit that goes over it all.

"By that definition it is indeed a fascist imperium. Some counterpoints to yours:

* Every part of the IoM is dedicated to the Emperor. It does not matter if he is aware of that or not. Hitler and Mussolini had a government with different departments as well. The entire life of a common human being is, by law and social pressure, dedicated to the Emperor.

* While you could indeed argue that the tithe is not a direct control over ones economy, the planetary gouverneurs, the AdMech (for forgeworls) and the Astartes (for their breeding grounds) usually control the econmy far more stricly in order to ensure the tithe. You have to take into consideration the size and the communication possibility of the IoM. Without instant communication they need to break down that control to lower levels, but still, everything is controlled for the one goal: meet the quota.

* There are certainly planets in the Imperium which are more noblebright than grimdark (Realms of Ultramar comes to mind) but even that could be compared to a nice Blockwart in the Third Reich who would allow a certain amount leeway in order to not have stress. It should not be confused with real freedom or the illusion of real choice and change possible. Even the niciest of the ReasonableMarines would turn an independence movement or a movement who wants thefreedom of choosing their own believe/relogion into tiny red paste in a second.

* Take the current Indomius Crusade as an example: here, as a war time action, the entire production level of the entire Imperium was massively increased, at incredible costs of life and machines (it is described that entire star systems were rendered lifeless when the AdMech moved in with their Factory/Mining ships).

* Furthermore: the Manifest Destiny is a core part of the entire social structure of the IoM, the church, the AdMech and the Astartes. Humans are better than Xenos. The human tech is more pure then xeno tech. It is the right of the human race to rule and to destroy everything else. And that inherent thinking of superiority based on racial and national ideas is definately the core foundation of the IoM.

And yes, it certainly has (large) elements of Feudalism, Theocracy and Oligarchy mixed into it. But then again: the church does not rule as the most important government body, and the racist framework of the IoM is not necessarily found in feudalistic or oligarchy societies."

Ok cole, soldat, that doesn’t have strong definition to match the Imperium with. It seems to just be a mean government.

You could use Umberto Eco’s fourteen features of ur-fascism. The Imperium checks lots of those boxes, the ones about using militarist and xenophobic propaganda to control people, and misses a few others, like pretending be a populist movement of obsessions with conspiracy theories.

That’s a bit crap to use because this OP is obviously using materialist analysis. Fascism has always happened when there is an economic depression and economic elites needed to incite organized mobs to put down striking or politically active labor groups. They use the tools of fascism described above to get workers to ally with them and mobilize them against each other. That’s been the pattern for fascism in Europe, South America, and Asia.

That isn’t what happened in the Imperium, as you mentioned the threats are real, they weren’t propagated so that industrialists and land owners could retain power. That’s what OP argued and you didn’t even engage it.

 techsoldaten wrote:
The Imperium is a collection of planetary colonies forced to tithe 10% of their global GDP to a central authority under pain of destruction. The culture is dominated by a religion claiming the Emperor is a God and all servants live by his will alone.

in fairness just about any country will resort to force if you refuse to play your taxes. it's the number ONE example used of the "coercive power of state"

This has already been talked to death.

I'm locking this thread. Don't start another one on this topic.