Dude, who even knows.
Question reblogged from Immortalism and Interplanetarianism with 305 notes
Anonymous asked:
There was a dude who showed up to a 40k tournament in nazi shit and GW had to like. “The empire sucks please it’s satire the empire is terrible it’s the entire point we Will ban you for being a nazi here.”
I think *everything* about the lore even stuff they still put out screams that they are fascist and evil and yet people still don’t get it, or actively are drawn to it anyway like yes they are fascist more of this please!
i’m gonna have to disagree with you on this, tbh–i think the fascists who love the empire are ‘getting it’ just fine.
sure, the stuff that comes out about the empire and space marines is clear that they are cruel and violent. but they are cruel and violent and right. but they’re also very very big on the heroism of the space marines, the glorious power of the god-emperor, how real the threat of chaos is. chaos as it exists in warhammer 40k is basically the fantasy of the fascist made reality–a creeping, ever-infiltrating, ontologically evil force that will take root and destroy everything if perfect purity and control are maintained for even a second. like, yes, the empire is very clearly fascist, but they exist in a setting in which fascist propaganda is fundamentally true. fascists are able to see themselves in the empire because empire is, again and again, justified and vindicated by 40k’s writing.
and tbh this was barely better in the early days, as much as people like to cry 'well it was meant to be satire’, but at least the empire used to be also extremely fucking textually useless and incompetent to the point where they were doing more harm than good. but over the years this has entirely given way to the hypercompetent Tough Men Doing What Needs Doing space marine wank that makes up 99% of 40k output nowadays
Honestly I even think ‘a universe where the premises of fascist mythology are true’ isn’t, like, an impossible conceit to do something interesting and worthwhile with. But 'and our protagonists are the literal spartinate unbermensch action heroes’ does kind of close off like 99.99% of them.
The Empire is totalitarian continental Europe as seen from late-20cen Great Britain: the Space Marines, all technologically-advanced ubermenschen stormtroopers but not enough of them, are the Nazis; the Imperial Guard, all masses of tanks and infantry kept in line by ruthless commissars, are the Red Army; and all the rococo gold-filigreed God-Emperor stuff and heresy-hunting are the Catholic Church
Post with 39 notes
I always knew Games Workshop was British, and the Warhammer Fantasy factions were obvious mappings of medieval protonations, but it’s only recently struck me how much the W40K factions are mappings of forces from the more modern British imaginary.
Like, the Space Marines obviously take the place of the German war machine of WWII - technologically superior, purity-obsessed totenkopf ubermenchen, defeatable mostly by virtue of not being able to field enough expensive units. The Imperial Guard is the Red Army - tanks, tanks, masses of human-wave infantry, tanks, and ruthless commissars holding things together by executing their own troops.
A more interesting thing is how the “British” faction is… the Orks. Their dumb, violent, and happy warband culture is some straight hooligan/casual/skinhead shit, and the “run shirtless into battle wielding crap, it’ll work because we believe enough in the magic paint we slapped on everything” is maximum Celt.
(‘Course not all the factions are that resonant, especially the more recent cash-in ones. The Eldar are just Tolkein elves… in space! The Necrons are mummies… in space! The Tyranids are LOLGIGER, the Sisters of Battle are LOLNUNS. For a culture with an actual chaos magic tradition, the Chaos forces are pretty simplistic drawn-on-binder horn-throwing WOO METAL. The Tau are what, Japan? Maaaaybe nonaligned Scandanavian Social Democrats if you squint, but honestly screw the Tau.)
In this schema it’s a little curious how the “Nazi” and “Red Army” forces are fundamentally on the same side, though when you add in the wash of Popery I guess it makes sense as a unified British vision of the Totalitarian Other. Which makes it a little amusing that that’s the human side. I’m sure I’m not the first one to note that the whole effect is awfully rightist, though I suppose that’s why it fits in so well with the nerd right-populism of the 'chans (as I like to think of it, “waifus, warhammer, and white nationalism”).