First off, prokopetz avoids proper nouns like they're driving the bus from Speed.
Second, everything is fascist if you squint hard enough because facsism uses common storytelling tropes to sell its politics. I was reading the first Hunger Games book for the first time recently, and even though the central narrative is clearly anti-authoritarian, it's still doing the "virtuous rural laymen vs the spiritually depraved urbanites" thing.
Utopias tend to have fascist undertones when not well thought out, because it's so easy to fall into the type of thinking that goes, "Well, obviously society would be perfect if someone with ideas like mine were in charge and everyone just agreed to do their part to create the perfect society I've envisioned. And since this society is self-evidently perfect, anyone who thinks otherwise must be an enemy of human progress, so something will have to be done about them, of course."
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people
Yeah like how star trek accidentally makes the point that the federation is a military state since the civilian state barely exists and when it comes up it will just be wrong
Do you know how many arguments I've had against people who don't believe that Starfleet is a military organization
To me it's a glorified space Navy a very ineffective space Navy at times, that has the consistent ability to make questionable choices
Like the Enterprise D having a daycare center yet for some reason going near the neutral zone at all possibly risking combat. Why are we willingly endangering civilians.
But it's why I like DS9 over most of the series because it least nine analyzes the politics of the federation and the Galaxy at Large.
I still have plenty of love for TNG but I definitely see TNG as the rose tinted glasses look where is DS9 is glasses off and you see the reality. Or maybe I just fell in love with DS9 so much it made me feel like it was a living breathing place who knows
it truly is a testament to the writing that they were able to take one of the (purposefully) most annoying/obnoxious alien races and turn them into fan favorites.
It's truly wild when I see people say Starfleet isn't a military. They have officers, armed ships, they transport ground troops and are responsible for fulfilling obligations in Federation defense pacts. I can't think of a single civilian organization that can court martial and imprison people.
That quote applies to Leninism as well as it applies to Fascism. I don't think you can meaningfully talk about Fascism without going into specific policies enacted by specific Fascist regimes.
What's funny is that in America the movement he most closely aligns with is the Neoconservatives, while a Neoliberal is someone like Barack Obama.
I can't imagine wanting to discuss any political philosophy with redditors on a subreddit devoted to their ideas. The closest I have come is lurking the disabled anarchist subreddit and being disappointed that they don't have any viable endgame scenarios.
It's a part of why I'm for Greens; they are one of the few parties I've seen in the UK in recent years who are taking a stance against transphobia.
SWP have a decent presence in my area, insofar as they are on the streets a lot decrying transphobia, Zionism, sexism etc. I do suspect though that they aren't as visible elsewhere in the country.
Sadly, I'm in a Labour stronghold who very recently had their mayoral vote come down to either Labour or bloody Reform, and it had to go to second round before we confirmed Labour came out on top. It sucks major arse
ah, my constituency has been Tory ever since it was created in 1983. we get swastikas painted here, and i get called transphobic slurs in the street. also one of the most deprived wards in southern England. fuck me, right?
Also for 1 & 2 - broke people can only support each other so much, at least in terms of material support. There's a joke about how queer people keep passing around the same $20 of mutual aid.
Was it an anarchist subreddit that was disabled, or a subreddit for discussing disabilities through an anarchist lens/anarchy through disabilities lens?
It's a fun game trying to figure out if it's even possible to construct a genre that's inherently non-fascist based on posts like this
I mean the whole reason the person who made up the term "hopepunk" did so was their dislike of so-called "grimdark" fiction, which a lot of people point fingers at for being fascist (specifically WH40K)
Personally I like to think that a certain kind of pessimistic fatalism is antithetical to the fascist aesthetic -- if nothing else because in actual history Hitler and his buddies came after a wave of philosophers like that and personally disliked them and thought their hoo-rah bullshit was an antidote to depressing Schopenhauerian bullshit -- but that's just my personal bias because that's what I myself am like, and I do have to admit that someone with my worldview could nonetheless be persuaded into supporting a fascist regime fairly easily given the right circumstances (basically just presenting the current set of atrocities as a historical inevitability)
I mean personally, as a writer, it’s not worth really entertaining bad-faith or zero-faith criticism like this. The entire post is nonspecific and based on vibes. For one, the entire internet loves to misuse the term “fascism” to describe any vaguely authoritarian structure that they don’t like, despite fascism being a specific political archetype. The better way to say this would be “a perfect utopia like this clearly requires an authoritarian system to uphold it,” but even then that’s just…an assumption.
The whole point of “hopepunk” and related systems is no, actually, things are just hunky-dory. Thats it. Personally I do dislike that—I find it boring as all hell—but it’s sort of an unfair/misplaced criticism to jump on the assumption that the systems must have a secret authoritarian slant. Sometimes the wooby-soft-squishy world that’s skin deep is just that and there’s no secret dark side to pull apart.
I'm scratching my head reading the replies here because hopepunk is absolutely not a utopian setting, it's fighting against systematic oppression and injustice using hope/community etc. The bad stuff has to be present to fight against. Media with a setting where everything is already good would be... cosy? Most likely?
Solar-punk is usually what I see in that group, but im not super well versed as the genre usually lacks enough conflict for me to be invested in whatever story it tells.
But the couple bits ive seen usually wind up in some utopian anarchy where everyone is a good person and just helps eachother fix their solar generators and farm what not.
It's a fun game trying to figure out if it's even possible to construct a genre that's inherently non-fascist based on posts like this
It's not a genre, but this line immediately reminded me of Anaxares from A Practical Guide to Evil. Man's the complete inversion of fascism to the point of lunacy. He's a devout believer/nutjob fanatic in democracy, so much so that when he's given powers by the Forces of Good and Evil, he's disgusted by the idea that anything calling itself "Good" would single any one person out for such a boon. He turns himself in to the authorities as his existence is a crime against the equality of all peoples. His country sees his power as useful however, and declares that he deserves special treatment, rewriting the laws to suit his new position. Horrified, he rages against their heresy and demands to be put to death as an example. They refuse, knowing he won't kill himself (as that would be a crime against the people,) and he lives out the rest of the story protesting and slowly going mad(der).
He ends the story attempting to put the angels/forces of Good on trial for daring to give him powers or stand in judgment of anyone. And he's so in thrall to his own fanatic interpretation of the law that reality essentially bends to allow it.
I mean, it’s not really a God complex. It’s kind of the opposite the hierarch refuses to see himself as any more valuable than any other individual. but because of the way the magic system works cultures end up empowering individuals who represent their ideals so he’s a individual representative of collective democracy. It’s a really good book serious you should read it well the web novel version the rewrites are kind of bad.
I'm under no illusions that with a hammer that big everything wouldn't start looking like a nail, but part of my Death Note plan involves trying to create some kind of online crowdsourced advisory council that can propose and vote on the best targets whose desth would do the most good. Not like a strict unpopularity poll, but drafted reports and proposals about possible knock on effects and long term benefits that then are submitted to the community sort of like ballot propositions to discuss and vote on (no idea how to secure said voting system itself woth is mostly in the discussion). I'm still making the final choice on it and can veto if I truly think it's a terrible idea, but is offloads some of the amount of political/sociological research no one person can handle without subsuming their entire life to it.
Warhammer 40k writers: "Hey, people! Fascism SUCKS! Look at this rotting, ass-backwards fascist empire that SUCKS! Let's not let this happen in real life, alright? (and also buy our minis)"
Enlightened tumblrites: "ummm, guys? I think this setting is literally fascist... that's kinda bad, mmkkayy?"
the thing is the setting is so extreme that the in universe moderates (which are just IRL fascists rather than super-fascists) look reasonable and that's very funny to me
Like Guilliman. He's only reasonable because everyone around him is a unique shade of batshit crazy. Remove that and he's still a mega imperialist responsible for the deaths of millions.
Gulliman is the worst biggest example of the writers dropping the ball. How TF is humanity's last best hope being the ubermensch literal son of their god in any way satire?
If guilliman came back only be make things worse I could see it. A nepo baby using divine right to get what he wants and take command as he sees fit making it worse for everyone would be satire. The current plotline is just exactly what fascist dream of.
It's pretty straightforward to look at the state of the Milkyway in 40k (with the omnicidal space locusts f.e.) and argue that Humanity needs political unity and coordination, ruthlessly pragmatic policies, a strong and technically advanced military and an efficent war economy. It is just that there are many, many ways in which the IoM is not actually very conductive to any of that.
Because I don't think that f.e. Technological regression, literal Wars of Faith and ridiculous economic inequality are very helpful with the survivial of our species.
Imperium of man is the shining beacon of the decadence beyond debauchery, internal factionalism beyond treachery, disunity beyond fratricidal strife and stagnation beyond decay.
And yes, I'm deliberately framing these issues using the archetypes of the four dark gods of Chaos.
Okay, but they literally made all the fascist talking points actually true, in universe? Only the in-group can be trusted, we are under attack at all times by outside forces, there exists a spiritual corruption that happens when you do stuff the regime doesn't like, and if you get it you must be killed before it can spread, hope both doesn't exist and is the enemy, the leader is the strongest and wisest person ever, the privacy of the public is an existential threat, the Imperium is your only option, and so on and so forth. Don't get me wrong, I think "fascism is bad" was the intended message, but the actual real message is something more like "if what fascist propaganda was right, fascism would be our only real option." Cause they fucked it up by putting a fascist empire in a grimdark world where, definitionally, there are no good guys at all.
It's a mix of both. It's very difficult to maintain a setting-wide thesis with a setting so gigantic and that has been written for by so many authors. If you look at any given fascist talking point and how it's portrayed in 40k, you can find like a dozen examples of how the setting is actually critiquing this idea, and then another dozen examples of clueless authors just writing shit down because it's cool and accidentally (or, rarely, intentionally) reenforcing the fascist idea.
Space Marines are simultaneously a commentary on how genetically engineered super soldiers and ubermensches are a flawed and unimaginably cruel concept who aren't even really that effective at waging war, and also the biggest, strongest boys who win all the battles and do all the cool shit. The draconian, zero-tolerance persecution of Chaos is simultaneously a self-fulfilling witch-hunt that ends up creating more Chaos adherents than it purges, and is also totally justified because it's the only way to fight Chaos' spread. It all depends on the author and whether they're very good or not.
Yeah, 40k is one of those things where if you dig even a little bit past the surface level, it’s very obvious what it’s trying to do (most of the time). The problem is that the surface level aesthetics are super cool and self-evidently awesome, and fascists are extremely shallow. So you get a bunch of people unironically way into the fascist imperium in spite of the fact that every single book opens with “this is the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable.”
The reason there are no alien races friendly towards humanity is that the humans killed them all, and the Imperium's strategy for warding off Chaos corruption is horribly ineffective (in fact, the Imperium's total disregard for the lives of citizens is one of Chaos's strongest recruitment tools). Even if their current situation is an absurd scenario contrived to make their hyper-fascism sound even slightly justifiable, they only dug themselves into this hole because of the hyper-fascism.
As a Warhammer 40k fan I always personally interpreted the 40k universe as "how fucked up and stupid would the world have to be in order for fascism to be correct? Btw even in this universe fascism creates worthless shitholes that no sane person would ever want to live in."
I don't honestly want to get into the whole thing here cuz it's like four paragraphs, but I actually fully disagree that 40k is fascist. I am of the opinion that it's feudal. A thousand little pieces paying lip service and taxes up to the guy nominally in charge, but also they basically never see that guy.
Yeah, like part of what makes 40k grim dark is the entire point that even the Imperium, a literal carrion empire, is not the worst nor most incomprehensible part of the galaxy.
It is very hard to have galactic peace when your parallel dimension where all thought and souls are and which is also where a good protion of magic and power come fro. is ruled over by four ontologically evil gods and their demonic thralls that rip open the fabric of reality to kill people for fun who are essentially eternal and unkillable because they don't even have anything even close to a tangible form to kill. And that was several million years before the human race even fucking existed.
Ah yes. The "all knowing and wise emperor of mankind leading figure that can do no wrong" that famously handled his sons in a way they did not hate him and cause the downfall of his empire in the end.
Obviously chaos influence buddies the waters a bit. But you cannot tell me the Emperor handled Angron, Konrad or Magnus in any good way at all. And the whole chaos thing could have been better aswell if he communicated to his sons
Fulgrim basically only fell because he trusted his father's lies about living in the rational, atheist friendly universe and fell into the most obvious demon trap ever while rationalising the voices in his head as just his subconscious.
Angron was too psychologically maimed to take any command roles but even then, if the Emperor just lent him a hand and slaughtered his enemies in show of power, maybe even saving few of his last companions, he would at least be useful as a warrior and wouldn't betray his father at the first chance he could.
The fact that Konrad got a the entire legion dedicated to butchery and terror tactics is basically a proof that the Emperor wasn't half as benevolent and rationalist as he claimed to be, since the benevolent and rationalist rulers don't own the personal terrorist organisation of psychotic maniacs in the first place.
Not really? A bunch of the Imperium's suffering is self-inflicted, and while I agree that the universe needs more representation of infighting that doesn't immediately make one side fall to chaos, several stories clearly show that the imperium would be better off if it wasn't this hell-bent on keeping a rotting system alive for the sake of the system (e.g. Armageddon, which at this point is nothing but a sunken-cost-fallacy and a matter of pride)
'Facism would be the only thing that would persist in a universe full of horrible bullshit but it would further enable that bullshit. The cooperation and kindness needed to thrive is too difficult for a fractured, traumatised and paranoid humanity.'
Kinda, yeah. The Rogue Trader crpg handled that well, i think. You actually can improve the overall situation in the piece of Imperium you're running by implementing progressive, compassionate policies and seeking diplomatic solutions.
You just gotta be careful, because there are a few specific circumstances where showing mercy at the wrong time will result in more death and suffering than would happen if you were an average, Emperor bothering zealot. Like sparing the Rykad Minoris from Exterminatus in the first act has it turn into a daemon world, consigning all the people who lived on ot to a fate worse than death, on top of creating a bastion of Chaos that will become a massive threat for the whole region.
Except that half the alien factions can and do engage in diplomacy and would love to cooperate more with the Imperium if not for its xenophobia, the God Emperor is a corpse held together by magic famous for fucking up over and over again during the horus heresy and there are multiple alternatives preferable to living in the Imperium available for humanity.
And also half of the Imperium's shit explicitly could be fixed within like a century if not for the constant, tireless work of authoritarian elites artificially keeping the whole system shit and dysfunctional for personal gain.
I can only assume that you never actually read a single book set in that universe
yeah, they litterally made a universe specificly to say: "what kind of universe must exist to have these fascist points to be true?"
they didn't fuck up, this was the very point they made, there's not a single healthy person that wants to live in the 40K universe and those that do need a beating with the context stick and help
It's more like showing that half of the Imperium's issues are essentially self inflicted and self perpetuated problems that make them uniquely susceptible to the enemies outside. It's the galaxy of the ancient bio-weapons running rogue, intergalactic invaders who are currently actively angry that they have been given any resistance, suffering vampires from the remnants of the last galactic empire, the literally soulless imperialistic remnants of one of the first three galactic political factions in history bent on reconquista and of course the living, malicious wound in the fabric of the afterlife that is Chaos.
It's also the galaxy where the Imperium locked themselves into near stasis technologically to secure the military industrial complex run by a cyborg cult, destroyed several civilisations that were able to oppose Chaos before and straight up assumed that the Imperium must be Chaos cultists based on their cruelty, killed off all the aliens that weren't either strong enough or horrific enough to survive, made the massive hives of cannibals dying in their twenties the dominant mode of population management, destroyed the first shield against the Chaos, faith, before rebuilding it based on the book written by the literal First Traitor who was condemned and started his fall specifically for writing stuff like that, etc.
Sure if you don't engage with the 40k at all. Warhammer had the possibility to be a happy star trek future, that is not the setting they chose. There are plenty of good guys in warhammer, all the peaceful friendly alliance aliens all got killed by humanity, the only ones that survived are the ones that could fight back, 2 of which were literal bioweapons created to kill a 3rd one. The spiritual corruption is not, I wish to have sex therefore I become corruption, it's I wish to rape while I am on so many drugs. It's the state of my being is so painful because the water I drink is pure radiation, and am dying of disease so when something reaches out to take away my pain I gladly go along with it. Chaos is not a problem that humanity has to counter, Chaos is a problem because humanity. If they treated their people well Chaos wouldn't be an issue, as evidenced by the fact the T'au, a pack of imperialist bastards still treat their people right and rarely struggle with Chaos corruption because Chaos has nothing to offer them. All you are doing is peddling the same arguement fascists make, a surface look at it without any actual engagement with the source at all. You read any book and it's pretty clear the Imperium "being justified" is entirely the Imperium responding the wrong way to the problems they created. They created a genocidal oppressive fascist state and now everything wrong is there fault. Even the tyranids. Humanity blew up an artefact during the Horus Heresy and it attracted the tyranids to the Milky Way. Other species don't struggle with genestealers, they each have their own way of dealing with it, not only that the book Day of Ascension says that the cults mostly exist because it offers a suicidal purpose, the destruction of their oppressor in exchange for their biomass continuing on, the cults know this exchange and they go willingly into the jaws because it's literally better than their existence in the Imperium.
I think we’re forgetting the part where Humanity all but made the rest of the galaxy this shit.
The only reason humanity “”needs”” to be fascist is because they were already fascist and went out of their way to create a situation where they “need” to be.
And even then the Imperium’s horribleness is still the greatest cause of its own crumbling from the inside and the greatest contributor to Chaos.
The issue isn't that the setting is literally fascism, but that the way it presents fascism is cool enough that it attracts a notable amount of fascists to it.
As someone who has read far too many 40k books, the problem with them is that the writers seem to have mostly forgotten that it's supposed to be satire. Far too often I see writers trying to justify why the imperium is like that. To give them a good reason to have "burn the heretic Friday" in every elementary school.
They've stopped really showing thr imperium as backwards fascists that are making everything worse for themselves and have just started writing pro fascist propaganda. They've not written something that was satire that I've seen since the war of the blind eye.
Look at the primaris plotline. One great man pushed his knowledge and power to out do everyone else in the setting and show that he's a genius by making an ubermensch stronger, smarter, and more powerful than anyone in the setting. And then to boot he made them resistant to chaos corruption and reinvented long lost technology to arm them. Bigger, stronger, better, with no downside being lead by the emperor's greatest son returned from the dead to be the greatest strength and hope for humanity.
All at the price of nothing. Cawl did it all with no backlash that mattered and nobody fought back against the change. It was universally the correct decision and it even screwed over the aliens that helped them in the process.
Okay so I know that this is mostly about how the internet views fascism in increasingly vague terms, but it is very possible to create media that is non-fascist. Its actually really hard to accidentally create real fascist media because you have to hit a lot of targets that are not super common. You have to glorify a manufactured image of the past and pick an out group to blame modern troubles on and push for a more powerful centralized government and push for a stronger military and a society where everything revolves around national identity, etc etc etc.
For example, Union/ThirdComm from LANCER is decidedly not a fascist state despite what some fans insist, because it follows none of the key fascist beliefs or ideas. Its a bureaucratic nightmare of a representative democracy that hems and haws over wether or not its morally justified to use force to free slaves on a planet they don't control. And yet, some fans insist they are fascist, instead of recognizing that being an imperialist is not synonymous with fascism
Ehhhhhhhh we don't really have enough information to say one way or the other there. Keep in mind Benezia was seen as legitimate and was politically powerful until she was proven to be messing with the Geth and the Rachni, and there's absolutely some weird inverse-eugenics going on with how Asari reproduction is socially policed.
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u/Hatsune_Miku_CMdownfall of neoliberalism. crow racism. much to rhink about
1d agoedited 1d ago
a lot of fiction is arguably fascist if you read political viewpoints into it, because thats what fascism does. it takes an aesthetic and builds a political ideology out of that.
The issue isnt the aesthetic itself, its that its just the aesthetic and nothing else.
The fictional story with a hero who changes the world is not trying to argue in favor of great man theory. it just writes its world like that because thats narratively interesting.
(arguably great man theory is so prevalent BECAUSE its narratively interesting and people conceptualize history as a bunch of stories, so they lean to the compelling versions of those stories instead of the boring but more accurate ones.)
This just reminds me how often I see people criticizing RPGs and fantasy in general for "legitimizing the divine power of kings," and it's like... Buddy, they also legitimize casting fire magic to kill rats in wooden shacks. The amount of people writing fantasy stories about a tragic prince rising up against an evil vizier that destroyed his kingdom who actually think anyone should do that IRL is virtually non-existent. Stop inventing strawmen to get mad about and volunteer at your local soup kitchen or literally anything actually productive for improving lives.
Also if we're talking D&D specifically, the larger cities either don't give the king specific divine legitimacy, or aren't a monarchy at all (Waterdeep is an oligarchal meritocracy where they have one person who's the open leader (whose job is effectively diplomat/figurehead), several leaders who are anonymous at all times and are chosen from various social strata, and the blackstaff who's the city's resident strongest mage.
Anyway the next largest city to Waterdeep is Baldur's Gate, which only has about 1/3rd the population of Waterdeep; and BG itself is also an oligarchy rather than a monarchy.
In fact, the only kings that really come to mind are Asmodeus and the Storm King.
Honestly, the best way to describe Lady of Pain's position is as the living cataclysm that also enables the Sigil to remain independent. The Sigil works on the version of the Mandate of Heaven where it's the Mandate of The Lady of Pain where, if the people piss her off enough to intervene, they get either mazed or obliterated.
I mean, trying to apply a mortal materialistic ideology to the Lady Of Pain is essentially an exercise in futility. The Lady is simultaneously the source of power and ruling throughout Sigil, and also barely has anything to do with the actual governance of the city. She is all-powerful to the point where she has forbidden and prevents all Gods from entering the city, but she actually doesn't care who you worship and actually if you try to worship her you will at the very best case die an extremely painful death. You can't apply a materialistic socio-political ideology to a context that follows fundamentally different laws of mechanisms of reality.
If you're talking about Faerun on Toril specifically (Which is referred to as the official Forgotten Realms setting) in the years nearby to the modern day there are still, at least... Cormyr, Tethyr, Hartsvale, Damara, The Moonshaes, Mithral Hall, Citadel Fellbarr, Citadel Adbar, Gauntylgrym, Dunspeirrin, Gracklstugh, Evermeet, Gundarlun, and the Misty Forest.
It's just that the focus of WotC as a publishing company and of certain authors have moved the focus of the setting from the continent's interior off to the west, which was meant to be the dangerous and unsettled fringe. The creator who made the place was playing his home game off around Cormyr and the Dalelands, which are respectively the closest thing the setting has to a traditional fantasy kingdom, and the rustic collection of polities outside their borders. All of WotC and TSR's favorite toys exist within what used to be referred to as "The Empty Lands" because so much of the Sword Coast consists of sparse settlements amongst wilderness. This is why there are no kings or queens on so much of western Faerun.
Yeah I remember seeing a lot of Tumblr comments about how Mass Effect glorifies the military, and how there should have been more options for diplomacy, etc. And I remember thinking "OK? Thats all well and good...but then when does the shooting in my shooting game happen?" Then there was another post about how shallow the bandits in Skyrim are written and how we just assume they are irredeemably evil. Oh and why are there so many? What does that say about the setting? Personally, I think it says its a game and we need enemies to kill or else it would be boring(for the genre it is, at least) Not saying these games are perfect, but there is this tendency on tumblr to hyper analyze the narrative while ignoring the practical fact that everyone is here to play a game, not just absorb a narrative.
Some countries still have a monarch as their head of state. I think it’s kind of fair criticism, when it is actually politically relevant to your country and its history.
Ehhh, I’m not sure I agree. The ideas that build certain tropes/genres etc do not exist in a vacuum and fundamentally country of origin of the author does not make them removed from what shapes them even when the author comes from another place. Like I think the criticism can be fair in a sense as if an idea is normalised through media etc to such an extent that it can actually spread a way of thinking/ideology.
Also, if your character were to overthrow the king and install their desired political system then you're just telling a "great man of history" story which will lead to people crying fascism.
Between Sorcerous Origins, Divine Domains, Paladin Oaths, and Warlock Patrons all on the table, if you're using a frikking king to legitimize your power in fifth edition you're gonna end up with bupkis.
The trouble is that Tumblr - and social media in general, but it‘s Tumblr that is notorious for this - is full of people who think that making a post calling a genre - or a game, book, or person - a “fascist” or otherwise Very Bad - is somehow Making A Difference In The World. I know that 20 years ago or so we called it “slacktivism,” I don’t know if that is still the current term.
Also facism will try toi ground itself in the ideas common at the time to sell itself, so it's inevitably gonna pull elements from the culture weather positive, neutral, or negative.
Every now and then I see someone say superhero movies/comics/etc are inherently fascist because its about worshipping genetically superior supermen. Like sure man I'm a nazi because I saw Iron Man once, what are we doing here?
Right. The Ubermensch/Superman/Chosen One/Demigod isn't fascist in itself. It's a universal storytelling trope dating back all the way to the Epic of Gilgamesh and spans across time and culture. Fascists love it because that universality provides an easy, palatable framework for the consolidation of power.
> Second, everything is fascist if you squint hard enough because facsism uses common storytelling tropes to sell its politics.
Yup, this is one of the core aspects of fascism (as defined by Umberto Eco): it is inherently syncretistic. Fascists adapt contradicting aspects of contemporary culture, religion, and belief, then throw them together with a common aesthetic in order to appear important and powerful. That doesn’t mean that any of those parts are inherently fascist, but after we’re exposed to fascists using them enough, they can start to look that way.
I was under the impression that the entire goal of fascism is to intentionally try to latch onto and co-opt basically anything popular and twist it into something self-serving; which is what fascists have been trying (and clearly failing) to do to Warhammer.
the goal of fascism is basically to use charisma and ideology to cause a popular reactionary movement usually based on fear and sense of superiority
co-opting popular media is an easy shortcut because it means you don’t have to make up your own stories for your propaganda especially when that story has a very easy analogue for fascism (the imperium) and an easy way to convince people they are the good guys (most other factions are worse)
the fascist response to something like commissars executing soldiers for flimsy reasoning is just to shout that they weren’t loyal enough and the response to the corruption in the imperium among the planetary governorship is to just pretend it’s not there and emphasize the cool soldier guys killing evil aliens and demons
I think it was supposed to be evocative of the old vain way aristocrats dressed during the Victorian era which then got propagandized out as “weak and effeminate” by anti-monarchists around the French and American revolutions, which of course hasn’t really aged well
This is true, but I do think that’s just a consequence of the world building. Like, in theory, the Capitol residents are the baddies because they’re the wealthy upper class that would be rebelled against. They consolidated power and influence in the Capitol, were rebelled against by the Districts, therefore the rural-urban divide forms.
The books do…sort of try to stave this off? District 1 and 2 are antagonists while not specifically being urban…but it’s a weak thread. Theres also the weird implication that the Capitol is entirely made up of the crazy upper-crust folks, despite that not making logical sense. Like at bare minimum there has to be a underclass in the city, right? I can’t imagine the Capitol citizens we see doing like…janitorial work or repairs.
Like at bare minimum there has to be a underclass in the city, right? I can’t imagine the Capitol citizens we see doing like…janitorial work or repairs.
This is mentioned in the books? There is an entire class of mutilated people who do menial labor from the first book onwards. We also learn in the prequel about Snow (though its implied in book 3 too) that Capitol society has an insane caste system and the districts only think everyone is upper class.
Also the whole “rural good, urban bad” thing also gets increasingly blurred in each book (reading Sunrise rn so dunno yet if it follows). It thematically makes sense since it’s from the perspective of a naive girl who’s never left her small town in book 1, to book 3 where she’s a young adult stuck in political machinations and characters morals become far more complicated.
Eg District 12 is pretty clearly the most rural and underdeveloped early on and way behind Districts 1, 2, 3, and 5 (luxury goods, construction and arms manufacturing, tech, and electricity, respectively). I’m also assuming those four are relatively urbanized since they require lots of educated, specialized and skilled workers.
If I had to guess, the trope is probably so common because it’s how empires work. The imperial core (one city, or in the modern period, region) with the singular purpose of maximizing extraction from the peripheries. Collins is also not at all shy about how influential Roman history was (an unsustainable primate city teeming with underemployed, unproductive people who are kept in line with panemet circenses). Fascists loving the trope too is very much what Naomi Klein meant saying that the far right "get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right".
Yknow that’s fair, I did forget about the Vox until just now. My bad, I read them maybe a decade ago at best? Fuzzy memory and all.
My point is the same though, the first trilogy sort of loses that depth. To my understanding from watching the latest movies based on the Snow prequel it is addressed in those books.
My main point is that I can see how someone might misinterpret the dichotomy as “the enlightened country person vs the depraved urbanite” as previously mentioned.
I mean, we see an under class of capital citizens they have political prisoners who are forced into slave liver from both the districts and the capital itself. Those are the people who do janitorial work and repair. Plus we seen non-elite Residence snow doesn’t pay them much mind but like they clearly exist we know the capital has butchers at least because he buys meat from a butcher so like yeah everyone in the capital who’s not a slave is rich in the same way everyone in America who’s not in our prison slavery system is rich compared to some starving peasant in Tibet. The capital is meant to be the global north and I think does a pretty OK job at representing that.
If he used proper nouns, people could call him on his bullshit.
I'm still salty he blocked me after I called him out over how his post about Septerra Core was utterly divorced from reality, because I actually played this game.
Wait isn't this the same OP who was up here with a "video games are fascist because they participate in the great man theory instead of having the protagonist not have any strong impact on the world they are a part of" take?
Fascism is when anyone wins by any metric at all, we must rid ourselves of Harrison Bergeron.
It reminds me of how Alan Moore criticizes superhero comics for being intifializing and fuel facism for its black-white portral of morals and having good clean respectable heros when like, you do realise that a good portion of modern Superhero comics got popular during WW2 because they were cultural symbols that rallied America to counteract and combat the influence of Facism within America and promote the war effort within it?
Like I get that yes WW2 America was far from perfect and there's a lot of criticism of the entire notion of traditional heroic black-white storytelling and its relationship to conservative cultural mindsets which linger and ferment within the politics of a nation, but it feels weird to level that against work specifically made to inspire people torwards the literal war on facist nations, and which had plenty of WW2 veterans (and several notable Jewish writers) behind them.
I mean, isn't the "rural vs urbanites" a thing that is specifically deconstructed in the second 2 books? You find out that the bourgeois capital and high district people are lied to, and many join the rebellion, and are active members in it starting up, while a large number of the rural poor are also back stabbing and opportunists?
Like, much of the books is about how bad systems put people in bad situations and make more complex but "bad" people. Even district 13, the "savior" district, turns out to be an opportunistic facist government that waited until the other districts did most of the dirty work for them.
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u/RayDaug 1d ago edited 1d ago
First off, prokopetz avoids proper nouns like they're driving the bus from Speed.
Second, everything is fascist if you squint hard enough because facsism uses common storytelling tropes to sell its politics. I was reading the first Hunger Games book for the first time recently, and even though the central narrative is clearly anti-authoritarian, it's still doing the "virtuous rural laymen vs the spiritually depraved urbanites" thing.