Yea I think more of it as a rhetorical question instead of it being an excercise in “just asking questions”. I just didn’t think to express it like that while I was writing.
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You may not know where to begin from a lack of knowledge, but oh boy… I do know.
Psykers are psykers, not abhumans (but there are abhuman psykers). Ogryns are exactly that, abhumans… I don’t see the problem on calling them that way… and about the way they are treated? They are used the same way everyone in the military is used lol. How psykers are treated? Depends on their use, as everybody else. But in the lore it is well stablished that when a psyker goes mad, explode, etc. lot of bad crap happens, so its coherent that everyone is weary of them. And if you are talking about the golden throne, it’s a necessity, simple as that.
You don’t know where to begin because of you are biased as hell. ALL aliens want to destroy or enslave humanity (T’au included), so it’s fair that the humans would destroy them all before that happens.
I knew you wouldn’t have any words of your own for this matter, but I’ll read it anyway. Let’s see…
1° This person doesn’t know what traditionalism is. Both fascism and NS had nothing against advancement, specially in the regards of technology, being NS so prolific in the matter that everyone stole their scientists.
2° Traditionalists do not reject technology. Neither do reactionaries. “the rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life”. Again, this is written upon the falacy of the previous point. I guess you have not read the book it mentions.
3° “Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake . Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection”. This is a thing of the Imperium, not from fascism nor NS, none of those said anything against thinking before acting.
4° “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.” Again, this is a thing of the Imperium, but nothing else. In fact Julius Evola wrote and sent a book to Mussolini called “Pagan Imperialism” with the sole purpose of telling him that his relation with the catholic church was a bunch of stupidity. The guy wasn’t killed or anything.
5° “Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference” No such thing. Fascism, NS, and Imperial Japan where quite different and still allies. Little moustache man even called the brits “fine people”. Plus NS ideology is full of stuff from Indian culture. This person certainly doesn’t read.
6° This point is actually real. When people got pissed off, fascism and communism appeared. So?
7° “the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies”. Wrong. There is first a recognition of “this is what we are” and a LATER recognition of what others are, and who could be an enemy… and this happens with every country in the world, including the USA. It’s not even called nationalism, it’s just cultural differences.
“Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism”. That’s not nationalism…
8° I don’t even know what this has to do with the Imperium, fascism or anything really. But I can tell you that based on their ideology, it wasn’t about the enemy or themselves being weak/strong. They did what they did because they considered that it was the right thing to do and death was a price worthy of being paid. That’s why germany surrendered only when their capital fell, and japan only when america started a genocide of their civilians.
9° “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. It is bad because life is permanent warfare” This is made up, and funny tbh. For as long as there is out there a culture/group that has an incompatible culture with another there will be war, either militar or economical. This has been a thing forever and it is what happens right now between the west and the east, so… who’s the most fascist?
10° “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology” I guess universities, sports, worplaces and well… EVERYTHING is reactionary as all of them evaluate people and choose the most apt.
" Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses" I guess… the little moustache man wasn’t elected by the people. Weird how history just changes.
11° WOW everything about this one is just on point… except the last sentence. But still, good job Umberto! You almost got it!
12° This is a reach, a dumb one btw. Foucault wrote this thing?
13° Wrong. People were called to act both on NS and fascism. Without the willing to act of the people those movements would not have existed. One can even say that they began “democratically”, just that instead of casting a vote, people went to the streets and did their will.
" Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses" Yeah… I guess this doesn’t happen at all with communist and socialist overlords. Talk with someone from Venezuela.
14° Uh…newspeak is predominantly a socialist/communist thing as the writter itself says. But I would acknowledge that it has spreaded. It’s not something inherently fascist at all. But to be fair I consider the Imperium to be close to communism, so…
Well… yikes. Seems like this Umberto needs to do a lot of reading, specially of the authors he himself mentions. If you want to know about something, go to the source.
Now, regarding the Imperium… context matters. The imperium is not traditionalist, the “fear” the Imperium has about technology comes from the man of iron and secondarily with the deal of the Emperor and the Mechanicum, and as we know, Big E thinks that the cult mechanicus is bs, but he needed their technology and resources.
About the religious aspect of the Imperium, they are going through a fase of obscurantism brought by the absence of Big E guidance. Everybody lives for the Emperor, yeah… they think he is a god, which is pretty fair considering how powerful he is. Before the heresy people lived for the Imperium, not the Emperor, which is a pretty common thing for collectivist societies, specially the USSR, the society gives you something, you give something back, on a context where war is everywhere, that “something” will probably be your life.
Now consider that fascism and NS had socialist principles (just to some extent) to improve the life quality of their (elite bla bla) citizens, which is the reason why their new overlords had a good response from the people at the beginning. The imperium is the opposite, you don’t get any better life quality, there is not time nor resources (or care) for that, you work for a greater cause or you die, just as uncle Stalin intended.
The struggle for life on the Imperium… uh… the enemies and war are out there, it’s a reality, not rethoric. Plus the Emperor expected humanity to evolve into something else when all the wars were over, so he had an answer to a post war scenario.
All the “act don’t think” and the indoctrination of the Imperium is just to avoid troubles with chaos. Chaos corruption is a thing in the setting, not in reality. Context matters…
Anyway, the Imperium is NOT fascist.
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Wow you went through Eco’s ur-fascism and pooped on most of the points? This is honestly just wild.
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Easy when you know the source material. Want to know about fascism, communism, etc? Read the books THEY wrote, not some basic and biased watered down attempt of critique. This is exactly how the knowledge of a thing is lost. The Imperial inquisition would be proud 
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@Harridas
You stated you don’t care about the setting - why are you crusading against some unnamed fascists?
If a certain person writes fascist opinion you’ll have my full support to oppose them - like suggesting the German Japanese alliance was something different then a necessity postponing the inevitable clash of opposing racial superiority fantasies to a time powerful common enemies have been destroyed.
I actually really don’t care if people I don’t like enjoy the same things I do - I choose the people I enjoy those things together with.
I‘m into heavy metal - some neo Nazis are into heavy metal as well. But my friends I go to festivals are fine people so I have no problem.
I enjoy good food, drink and intercourse. I‘m quite positive next to all political and religious extremists enjoy them too. Should I stop enjoying them? I won’t.
So maybe some despicable persons enjoy 40K for reasons I can’t relate to and I don’t care. The people I like to enjoy this grimdark fantasy with together are fine so I don’t have a problem.
And the notion GW could get rid of fascists is funny - once they mastered this feat they should definitely tell democratic governments all over the world how they achieved this…
Small hint: Full out war with total defeat doesn’t do the trick as there are still fascists in Germany and Italy today…
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That he keeps insisting Umberto Eco, the widely respected and prolific writer who grew up in Fascist Italy “must not read” and has no idea what he’s talking about wrt fascism legit made me laugh out loud harder than anything I’ve seen all week. Real Dunning Kruger Effect hours in here, kind of impressive that he managed to talk fully out his ass for such a long time though. We even got a communist Vuvuzela name drop, 10/10 “enlightened centrist” content.
The article they posted isn’t journalism in the sense that it’s like, reporting on an event in a way that presents itself as objective, it’s an essay on a blog which the writer is most likely not making money from. Literally just a “food for thought” opinion piece with some footnotes and links to substantiate their argument. Think of it like a particularly high effort forum post.
I mean if you know anything about far right groups, viking runes and norse mythological symbols are often co-opted by neo nazis and the actual Nazi party, so that is a reasonable thing to be suspicious about if you see somebody with tattoos like that.
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i have bad news, theres nothing you can ever do about fascists liking things you like. they might not even like it because of fascism, but for every thing you like theres a fascist who also likes it.
So lets stop acting like things we like are “problematic” just because some ideological extremist also happens to like it.
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I haven’t said so in recent memory, I think you’re misinterpreting my dislike of 40K as indifference.
Oh how happy I would be if it were that easy. I don’t mean to say or imply that GW get get rid of fascists in general, but instead to have them leave the community through whatever method(s) might be effective. But unfortunately on a broad scale it’s more profitable to tolerate fascism than to actively oppose it.
I’ll say that I believe that 40K is bad satire. We’ve already seen multiple people on this thread saying that the imperium is justified and are the good guys. I believe they’re not realizing that the justifications are written into the setting itself and that that is part of the ‘satire’.
I want to speculate and think it might’ve been more effective if the many justifications for the imperium that are written into the setting are instead wholly manufactured by the imperium itself. Perhaps that could be interesting and more direct.
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I’m going to ignore the entire conversation in this thread.
40K was never satire. This is a dumb myth since forever that it ever was some grand political statement. But the fact that the imperium is deeply tyrannical and basically a grab bag of every horrible action the communists and national socialists came up with over the 20th century AND every tyrannical idea the monarchists and theocratics came up with over the preceding 10 centuries, makes it quite clear that the imperium is obviously not a good place to live. That selfevident fact should be enough to make it clear that no one is endorsing the imperium of man as a desirable end state for human civiliational development. Only the wettest of noodleminds could possibly draw a different conclusion. Tyrannical personalities will always be attracted to representations of tyranny, that doesn’t mean the rest of us somehow missed the memo that 1984 wasn’t supposed to be a guide book just like 40k isn’t an endorsement of the worst instincts of human authority structures.
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Okay so I’m curious, what do you believe is Warhammer 40K? Do you think it has or had a purpose?
a sifi setting
entertainment
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im not a huge 40k fan but i am old and i was about 14 when the first edition was launched i had two friends that loved it. i suspect it has matured and certainly expanded but its pretty much always been like this and i cant speak for the original writesrs but it seems like they were making a sci fi verse that needed to be large offer many races a home and provide reasons for them to always be fighting every other faction.
Grim dark dystopian seems an obvious fit, i would hazard a guess ancient roman empire was more the original inspiration for the empire of man, but the obvious influences of religious dark ages, holy wars, purges, authoritarian , xenophobic and isolationist regimes is writ large across it.
did it start as satire deliberately? doubt it, i would think being interesting was job one. but by design or accident id say it qualifies , the oxford english dictionary defines satire as
“A poem or (in later use) a novel, film, or other work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. as a form of social or political commentary.”
but this was over 30 years ago now , which author and work are we discussing. i would think within the lexicon of books , games, comics , cards etc we can find plenty deliberately satirical , accidentally and even though those that missed the analogues entirely.
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You have to ignore a lot of 40k history to seriously think it’s that simple.
Any sci fi worth reading has always existed as a form of commentary on the time and place it was created. It’s called “speculative fiction” for a reason. Old 40k and Rogue Trader was full of explicit political commentary on Thatcher era policy and other specific Tory politicians, and British life during the neoliberal turn in general. That kind of commentary has been washed out of much of the setting, partly because specific commentary about 1980s british politics is no longer strictly “relevant” (at least in the sense that the specific people are no longer in charge, though a lot of policy decisions made during that time are still relevant today), but also as a side effect of GW becoming a large corporate entity whose owners are more interested in following market incentives by broadening the IP to wider audiences than they are in making counter cultural statements. Doing that requires watering down content that might be seen as too divisive or alienating for “general audiences” of lowest common denominator types who don’t like being asked to think too hard about the media they consume or question the society they live in.
The problem is that art and market incentives don’t exist separately from each other or the real world and the things happening in it and the economic class that controls it, so by chasing that wider audience, GW will inevitably find itself, intentionally or not, reinforcing more mainstream opinions so as to not alienate potential customers. An alarming number of countries have slid further and further right politically in the last few decades, which leads to a rightward shift in what is considered “mainstream” which radiates out to entertainment and what is considered acceptable public opinion.
I’m not really interested in fully derailing the thread or writing more of an essay about the concept of cultural hegemony on a 40k video game forum than I already have, so go read some Gramsci and this will make more sense, he’s smarter than me.
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I had asked Deisu specifically but sure, to pretend that 40K never was an attempt at satire is to ignore the intent of the author(s). I could say it’s willful ignorance.
Also look at what I found, I think it’s a witty, broad summary of GW and relevant to this discussion.
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how do you even build this strawman?
are you saying satire can’t be entertainment or a sifi setting?
what the setting is =/= what the setting is about.
That’s your response? To be counterproductive to the conversation? Would’ve preferred if you simply didn’t respond to the question I had posed at someone else.
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am i not allowed to point out that you misinterpretend what i said?
you’re welcome to ignore anything, or use the direct message tool, but don’t tell me what i can and can not answer to in an open forum.
back on topic, let me ask you a question
do you think a product like are porsche sports car is more than a product for consumers?
does it has a negative connotation due to prosche’s history?
I’d like to take a minute to point out a quote from the article Harridas posted earlier:
“None of this is, of course, to say that playing Warhammer 40,000, or enjoying a Black Library bolter-porn novel, makes you, personally, a fascist. Many of us feel so powerless to make any real difference in the direction of society now, that we’ve instead internalised ‘liking a product’ or ‘not liking a product’ as the only real political or moral choice that anyone can make, and therefore we naturally fear that enjoying a ‘bad product’ automatically makes us a ‘bad person’.”
My intent with starting this thread was mostly as a distraction from the lousy mood in these forums and I thought this would be an interesting subject. In case anyone needs to hear it, no one is being accused of supporting fascists just because it’s a theme in 40K. Morality is about more than what products you buy. There’s no need for anyone to feel defensive about enjoying the setting.
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Maybe I’ve just been reading Rogue Trader ttrpg books a lot lately, but imo the Imperium has the most in common with European colonial powers during the 18th-19th century, with a lot of aesthetic stuff lifted from the previously mentioned 20th century “authoritarian” kitchen sink, and to some extent the Roman Empire. There’s a BL novel whose name I can’t remember (EDIT: it’s called Pawns of Chaos) that is mostly written from the perspective of a rebellious faction on a planet slowly falling to Chaos and iirc you get some pretty good anti-imperialist commentary that humanizes the rebels in some interesting ways even as their original desire for independence is overtaken by Chaotic influence. Good book if anybody can remember what it’s called.
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is this it?
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