I’ve been enjoying the gameplay, but fucking hell the 40k universe is a fascist’s wet dream.
It’s laid on so thick that fans of the setting say it’s parody. Maybe, maybe it started as a parody but the 500+ novels written in the setting are not parodies. It’s a fantasy.
The loading screen of the game really hammers it home. You press spacebar to tab through quotes, slogans and mottos. “A narrow mind is a pure mind,” “Those who have nothing can still have faith,” “Sharpen your hatred.”
People who choose this as their escapism need to get checked.
Oh no, am I not allowed to like 40K anymore?
I’m not your commissar. Like what you like.
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I disagree.
Type “Commissar” into Google image search and see how far you have to scroll before you see an actual commissar.
Humanity is a storytelling species. For the vast majority of human existence storytelling has been our primary means of transmitting knowledge, and it remains the most effective.
Ask the average (non ML) 40k fan what a Soviet Commissar was. Specify a Soviet Commissar, not a Space Nazi Commissar. See how many gaps in their knowledge are filled in by assumptions that match what’s been modeled by Games Workshop.
It’s a fascist fantasy that toes the parody line just enough to use it as an excuse, but it draws in fascists and imperialists like flies to shit. They love immersing themselves in a setting where the fictional context establishes that their hateful little convictions are correct. All of the 40k-loving circle of friends I’ve distanced myself from since the 2019 HK riots were predictable as clockwork when it came to opions on the British Empire, Israel, Iran, Libya, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Capitalism and economics.
40k has a schools programme. There’s a club for it where I teach. They don’t tell the students (ages 8-11) what the Adeptus Astartes are, they just paint them in school for free and the kids can take their models home. First one’s free on their path to establishing Space Nazis as a beloved cornerstone of their childhood.
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The imperium is one faction in the setting.
And it’s not the franchise faction? It’s not the focus of most of the literature? Center stage on the posters? If I open the school kits they give to fucking nine-year-olds am I going to find an ork or am I going to find a heroically posed space nazi?
You play the fucking video game. When are you getting checked?
Yeah, I’ve also played COD and hate the US army, I’ve bought cinema tickets and hate Hollywood, I’ve eaten fast food and I’ve used products and services from Amazon and Google and hate capitalism. Put me up against the wall; pull the trigger when you hear me defending any of those things.
40k fandom is in a league of its own though. Look at how much fan art is created with the ‘my armour is contempt’ quote. “Parody” is not the aesthetic they are going for.
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You play the thing, but you don’t subscribe to fascist ideology, so it’s super fucking weird for you to then turn around and say everyone else who plays the thing probably subscribes to fascist ideology.
First off played, second I’m saying people who choose the 40k universe as their escapism. It’s not exactly The Man In The High Castle levels of nuance. The 40k universe doesn’t just depict fascism as inhumane; it depicts it as a system necessary for the survival of humanity. It depicts people who knuckle down and endure the system as heroic.
Playing the videogame might be comparable to buying Nestle products or signing up to Audible, but supporting the fandom that produces t-shirts like this:
…is not the same as having a Starbucks tote bag.
When Pokemon first got big people used to joke that kids in the future would be able to name more types of Pokemon than they would real animals. It’s definitely true of the kids I teach. 40k is just as embedded into Western culture and it fucking shows, meanwhile GW has been trying to fester its community in HK from just Westerners and Westernized kids into the local community.
People in a ML community are defending 40k.
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Damn…
The problem that the current Warhammer 40k has in the media is that they try to make the imperial protagonists as the heroes, so if it were based on the vision of the Eldar craftworld a lot of the problems of narrative would be resolved
so if it were based on the vision of the Eldar craftworld
“Fucking monkeys swarming OUR galaxy and won’t let us be the cool all-powerful immortals we used to be”?
Gotcha.
fascist dogwhistle in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kktm-AHYqN0
Great, now I’m afraid to click the link.
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Also Hindutva is not the same as Hinduism
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Then what does this sign have to do with Hindutva?
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Fair
It’s not a stretch. Chan white supremacists have been using the ok sign as a dogwhistle for a long time. Why do you think people find it so funny in the video’s comments?
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Well that’s how dogwhistles work
I don’t see how someone doing a mudra to “channel energy” is inherently a fascist dogwhistle.
Not inherently, no.
This one hand gesture drawn from Vedic tradition finds its way into an aesthetic palette made from Christendom, Roman, Gothic, Wehrmacht and other European influences. There are so many ways they could visually cue “quelling the peril” and they chose that one. Nobody stopped and said “hey, maybe we should pick a different gesture, 40k already gets so much heat for being a fascist dog whistle.” They put it in. And the result, intended or not, is evident from that Youtube video.
