Yeah, but that’s just Holy Roman Empire memes.
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There - corrected your typo 
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A small, but noticeable portion of the SOCIETY tends to lean heavily towards transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny and may or may not glorify actual Nazis. This moral panic about a game universe created to sell plastic figurines, is just slightly overblown.
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It matters quite significantly because there is a lot of misuse of that word going on in the world, and that word is being used to justify censorship and political oppression. @Mayson made the most admirable effort to define the term that I saw in the thread (though I didn’t read every post), and he used the definition I would have used as little as a year ago. Before I started doing a better job of challenging myself to do better studying history. It turns out that definition isn’t quite correct since Fascist states aren’t a merger of state and corporate power, but rather a merger of union power (who take over the corporation) into a new dictatorial state. In any case this is important because we shouldn’t be running around trying to ban or exclude people on spurious grounds, all it does is end up causing a ‘boy-who-cried-wolf’ effect. Which is bad.
I have literally never seen anyone show up to a 40K game earnestly and vehemently espousing fascist ideas. I have run into edgelords and idiots online, it definitely happens. Though only once in my 800 hours of Darktide. But we have simple solutions for that already, you can just block and mute such people and call it a day.
I reject it because I am correct. It is not, categorically, fascist. There is no special effort to make the imperium say anything about the real world just as there is no special effort to make Slaanesh or the Eldar or the Tau or anyone else say anything particular about the real world. There are parallels that could be drawn and certainly such rich lore resources can be used to craft allegory or satire appropriate to the real world. But that is not what 40K is or ever should be. 40K is a non-political hobby and it should not be infested with garbage political nonsense. Its all consuming and terrible and WILL ruin the hobby. As your own earlier post makes clear:
Here you propose annihilating decades of established lore in a beloved non-political hobby in order to gatekeep some irrelevant minority of people espousing a particularly unpleasant political ideology. Not because it would be good for warhammer 40k, or the people who enjoy it but as vengeance against a group of people you don’t like.
40K is about rule of cool and telling heroic stories about characters in grim and dark circumstances where everything is bad. There’s a beauty of the spirit of perseverance and self-sacrifice that shines here even in the darkest of circumstances and the most oppressive of governments. That is what makes 40K cool and that’s what makes the Sisters of Battle cool and the Space Marines cool and the Imperial Guard cool despite being part of an otherwise oppressive system. Lets keep that and do away with the politics.
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I don’t know man, seems like you’re missing the point here. I’m talking about fascism as an ideology and associated social movement. Picking apart the minutiae of how historical fascist regimes gained power is missing the point.
Hand waving away what “edgelords and idiots” say because it doesn’t harm you personally is missing the point.
Here you say that the imperial forces are agents of an oppressive system and in the same breath say that the setting is a-political.
You are basically making my point for me and yet still missing the point. If you’d like I could write out my understanding of fascism but, and no shade intended, I think it would probably go right over your head.
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I’m a liberal and I don’t want this. I will say “We should do female space marines because it will scare off fascists!” is a new argument to me though lol.
Personally I dig the clear gender division thematic/aesthetic, and I don’t want to lose that as it’s very rare in popular scifi. 99% of modern scifi in general is gender agnostic because that is the future. Not to mention that no sane marketing manager is going to let a corpo do it due to drama/sales issues. It’s possible 40k will be the last popular scifi IP to ever have this for the rest of my lifetime.
I would also say it is not a small lore change as there is just so much foundational work and endless books building on this aesthetic/thematic concept.
So you would be taking something away from me to (maybe) get one over on some irrelevant fringe trolls and loons. That blows tbh.
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There is a healthy diversity in warhammer, wanna go for “we are not space incels, but marines” team - astartes, “we like hot boys, hot and scorched by holy flamer” - sororitas, “we don’t care about genitalia types, tyranids will eat all of us anyway” - astra militarum, heck, there are even agenders, but you need to identify yourself as a fungus.
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Ah, ending on an adhominem. A fatal maneuver indeed, I accept your concession. But just to rub it in a little: the irony of your own post is that I am not:
I am in fact:
and this is precisely what I have been doing the entire time. Since this board is full of people who are of good caliber I am sure I didn’t need to call this out to them. They were doubtless able to see your embarressment for themselves. But let me make it clear to you that, in fact, it was my point flying over your head. Thanks for the laugh. Stop trying to ruin my hobby.
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can we not go this route, of casting shade at each other. no need to kill the thread with it.
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Speak for yourself. I pride myself on being a member of the lowest common denominator, thank you very much.
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I suppose you’re right. @Reginald I’m sorry I said it’d go over your head, that was rude after I asked you for your take.
My understanding of fascism begins with capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system comes with many problematic contradictions, the expectation of compounding and indefinite yearly growth in a finite system, the expectation of the earth to absorb infinite externalities, the paradox of needing charge workers more for what they produce than what they were payed to produce it, to name a few. Over time these types of problems compound creating immense strain on the system and the people in it.
Capitalism’s nominal political alignment is Liberalism (if you’re American I’m also including Conservatism in that it’s basically Liberalism Classic™). Liberalism is a political framework which holds that liberty for the individual and paradoxically also the free market is paramount. As such Liberals in power are almost always blind to Capitalism’s contradictions. As long as the government isn’t hurting its citizens too much then everything is fine, nevermind what’s going on in the private sector.
When the unattended contradictions of capitalism reach a boiling point people will begin to leave Liberalism behind in search of political ideologies that can explain why it has become so difficult to live in society and propose solutions. There are two political frameworks outside of liberalism that can do this. To the left is socialism which offers an in depth analysis of the failings of capitalism and proposes revolutionary action to remake the economic system into something stable and democratic. And to the right is fascism.
For the record fascism is a pro-capitalist ideology, it does not actually address any issues that it creates. To answer those questions though, fascists will create nationalist myths about a supposed glorious past for the nation’s glorious people. Almost always the “glorious” people are white citizens of the nation in question. Instead of analyzing the economic system for answers it will lay the blame at anyone in society that is not a member of the people they hold up as supreme. So we’re talking immigrants, lgbtq+ people, jews, anyone not performing their gender role in the correct old way, etc. Any marginalized people can find themselves the subject of xenophobic conspiracy theories blaming them for rising rents, high medical bills, underfunded schools, moral decay, too many ads on tv for ED pills, you name it. To the fascist, society is the way it is because of the encroachment of the wrong kind of people. Thier mythology usually envisions their chosen nation and its people as being under a type of siege from uncouth outsiders who wish to see their precious people defiled. History has shown us what their ‘solution’ is. It is an exterminationist ideology.
Anyway it’s late, I think that’s more or less it. You can see the parallels to the imperium.
This is why I think we need to be on our guard when edgelords come around with their slurs. For white men like me there is always an option to ignore them and continue on but for anyone else they may not wish to have anything to do with the community ever again.
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Man I really don’t want to have a serious discussion on the political implications of fascism but I strongly disagree with this statement.
Before we begin, just to make it abundantly clear, I am of the opinion that any dictator led state is bound to fail due to the simple fact that individuals are not infallible. Fascism predicates itself on the rule of few, or the rule of one - which has many points of failures. For starters, an individual who has the capacity to ordain or pass policies without being challenged has the potential of causing major problems within a nation. Take for example one of the biggest f*ck ups of this decade: Russia invading Ukraine. A decision passed without any challenge because everyone is afraid to test Putin’s authority, as the implications of doing so tends to result in outlandish assassinations, imprisonments, or exile of opposition. Now you can argue that Russia is not a fascist state, but if you ask me, there are elements of current Russia which thoroughly threads the needle.
In any case, due to how power is structured it’s naturally easy to build an entourage of yes-men who would agree with whatever the so great leader says. An example is the Chinese President who has on record effectively taken down elites who dared to stand against his autocratic rule thus facilitating supporters who agree with his policies regardless of their efficacy - zero covid anyone, where millions across China protested its draconian policy.
This is why a democratic rule where competition is encouraged via elections, debates, and where individuals are protected when speaking against the status quo; is preferable.
I digress; capitalism on the other hand doesn’t carry that negative of a connotation surrounding it because, first and foremost, it’s an effective economic system that works. It has become one of the strongest tools in facilitating class mobility, allowing economic freedom, and empowering the low class. Whether you want to admit it or not: you benefit from capitalism. Even though I’m sympathetic to the ideals of the communist manifesto, as that ol’ Karl Max has a couple of good ideas worth pondering; communism itself has not been a better alternative to capitalism, in my opinion.
So to bring this back together, Fascism has a lot of problems with its implementation, none of which have anything to do with capitalism. Postulating that fascism is somehow intrinsically linked to it is ridiculous.
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You can really tell that people are getting inside eachother’s heads when they start writing 300+ word essays to eachother.
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recipe for fascism:
- 200g Authoritarian Leadership,
- a BIG spoon of Nationalism,
- half a cup of Totalitarianism,
- 2 pinches of Anti-Democracy,
- Half a liter of Militarism,
- 2 eggs of Social Hierarchy,
- add Corporatism for a fluffy texture
- and garnish with anti-Marxism.
Et voilà gâteau de douche
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ROFL! I usually keep my political beliefs to myself. I’m not the sort to bloviate over politics but that statement triggered a reaction from me so instantaneously I just had to write an essay on the spot without much thought.
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But that’s the thing if they can’t fear monger over an extremely miniscule group that really no one likes, which includes communists weaboos who like Tau (joke, i like Tau, not commies), then you cant influence more people to your side and witch hunt. I guarantee you that no one, including me, likes extreme radicalist groups. They politicize everything and make everything not fun. Personally I just like my Space Marines who are a little overzealous, but if someone wants to use that to psychoanalyze me and assume my political opinions which i do not share any of the same morals as the ones that I play, then that’s on them.
The artists and authors can satirize real life events all they want, but to make the universe of 40K more than it is, a dark space opera with more blood and guts, then you people really need to go touch grass.
To everyone, snort your plastic crack and chill out.
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For the sake of this discussion I don’t think it much matters how fascists implement their dictatorships once they have power, just what fascists believe and how they see the world. The fascists we’re talking about aren’t dictators but trolls who play warhammer. And the question is whether GW is lampooning them as they claim to be or courting them.
It’s called nation-building and you can find it all over the world in every country, like after USSR collapsed some Central Asia countries start to pretend that 90% of their social infrastructure, and even cities in the middle of a desert, wasn’t built by Russian Empire or Soviet Russia, medieval asian warlords become national heroes, just as some ancient figures who lived on that territory even if they were from complete different culture and ethnicity. Because without myth, you can’t build a national state or it’s just harder. Such things even stronger in the low-population ethnicities, it is what hold them to their roots and culture, helping not being assimilated.
Yeah well, maybe cause Europe was the centre of most politcal experiments and political thought development? Like the whole spectre from fascism to communism. And white people are majority of population and native europeans? It is how things work in homogeneous societies, pretty sure there are no white people in japanese nation-building project.
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It doesn’t really matter whether or not you agree with that statement because fascism and fascist movements have historically made deep alliances with local and international capital in order to fund their political work and build an image of legitimacy and civility among the kind of people who respect “polite society”. This is because fascist ideas about hierarchy and Mussolini’s ideas about fascism being a “merger of the corporation and the state” aren’t an existential threat to capitalism in the same way that communism is. US companies were working with the Nazis before WWII (also during in some cases iirc) and the US and European powers even went to great lengths after WWII to ensure that prominent Nazis and other fascists were able to escape justice for their crimes and get put right back into positions of power during the Cold War because capitalist powers saw it as better for business. Fascism is not just when you have one guy in charge and the government does a lot of stuff.
And yes, this should cause you to ask some uncomfortable questions about modern society.
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Yeah it’s true states have their foundational myths, here in the US we’ve certainly got our fair share. Fascists might incorporate those myths into their own story telling or not. The Nazis ridiculously tried to claim norse history as their own.
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