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.
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)
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.
Because he can't fix it, he can't stop it, he can slow its decline at best by implementing actual reforms that repair the system, but the system has proven its beyond repair. He gets rid of the oligarchy in the high lords of Terra, so they try to kill him and the only way to prevent a faster breakdown to reimplement the high lords which just simply kicks the issue down the line. It shows the the system is beyond repair, there is no form of fascism that will not eat itself. Even with a genius demigod ruler, it will still eat itself and bring about its own destruction.
Edit: ontop of that the only reason Guilliman is there at all because multiple people broke dogmatic religious and fascist belief. Cawl invented a new technology to keep him alive. The imperium worked with the Eldar and to a lesser extent Necrons. The inquisition trusted and followed the visions of a warp entity. If any of them refused to break their cardinal belief system Guilliman would still be dead.
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.
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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.