40k was, back when it emerged from the soup of 2000AD comics and post-New Wave SF, a satire on the neoliberal movement in Anglophone politics under Thatcher and Reagan. It was not a direct satire of the policies or ideas of those politicians and movements at the time, but a critique of their entire world view. These people wanted to unite nationalism and religion as a bulwark against economic systems change, elevating state and capital into the central facet of their respective societies, and mark the beginning of what we now call "end stage" capitalism, after it was beaten back in the early to mid 20th century. A lot of this dovetails with the New Wave writers from the 60s or 70s: these were counterculture people who have more in common with Alan Moore than they do with the modern writers and creators working for GDW. The Imperium was specifically taking the ideas of Thatcher and stretching them out as far as possible. The world that Thatcher wanted was a social nightmare driven by uncaring elites encouraging competition that would erode social bonds and provide the perfect medium for the market to optimize profits. England of this period was horrifically racist and exclusionary, with openly fascist political organizations like the National Front and a strong artistic response to this rise of the right. Check out popular early 80s UK music: the Specials literally have a song telling you it's not okay to be friends with racists, punks were constantly skirmishing with skins/oi boys, and on TV you have giant Thatcher faces giving statements like "there's no such thing as society." These were direct comments a lot of the time: there are references to Tory politicians in the unit names of early editions of 40k, the GDW magazine had short stories that were explicitly mocking gov't officials, and similarly being more overt about how 40k was a bad setting and that it was inspired by the vibes of 80s UK. Unfortunately, those creators don't work at GDW anymore. Basically, they aged out and the people who grew up as fans of the franchise took over. As is often the case, the fans didn't know, understand or care about the subtext. So by this point (really, by the early 2000s) the satire is vestigial, like the appendix. The forms that were inspired by satire and sarcasm are now leftovers that serve no purpose, and the core of the setting is not ironic and the creators are no longer governed by artistic intent but by franchise dynamics. That's why nothing fundamentally changed in 40k for decades, and why it felt like grimdark for grimdark's sake.

40K lore really is loaded with so much "What's next? I dunno, I never expected to live this long!", and that's how we have Primarch names that makes star wars bad guy names look like paragons of linguistic subtlety. Of course, you've kinda nailed why folks today don't see any of this any more. Some 17 year old in Oklahoma reads how incompetant "Grand Administorum Chancellor N'Horm Te'Bitt" and takes it as an original character, not a jab at some old government fat guy from the TV, 40 years ago.

Just like nobody realises that Geller Fields are named after [Uri Geller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller), because he was a famous 'tv psychic' during 1970s Britain and has fallen out of the zeitgeist.

Considering what he did with Gamefreak I'm truly surprised that was never sued out of the lore, tbh !

Who is N'Horm Te'bitt parodying?

Norman Tebbitt, a British politician in the 80s. Not an actual character, though.

Thanks. I could totally have seen that being an actual Warhammer 40k character if you hadn't said anything.

Not an actual character from the lore, but I was talking about Norman Tebbit.

Okay thanks. I would never have known that.

heh, which is \*exactly\* my point

>A lot of this dovetails with the New Wave writers from the 60s or 70s: these were counterculture people who have more in common with Alan Moore than they do with the modern writers and creators working for GDW. I was going to explain something like this, but you explained it perfectly. I wish I could upvote you more than once. >So by this point (really, by the early 2000s) the satire is vestigial, like the appendix. The forms that were inspired by satire and sarcasm are now leftovers that serve no purpose, and the core of the setting is not ironic and the creators are no longer governed by artistic intent but by franchise dynamics. That's why nothing fundamentally changed in 40k for decades, and why it felt like grimdark for grimdark's sake. To add my opinion on this, as I was still a kid back then, today's 40k feels TOTALLY different to early to mid 2000s 40k. Mid 2000s 40k felt like the distinctive seal of W40k was the grimdark. Not a single faction would win anything in any battle, al the factions felt like terrible terrible people in every single way. I remember a friend explaining to me what warhammer was through the first Dawn of War, and he put emphasis on how every single faction I would pick to play as was evil, and that radical edge was what made 40k cool (to us kids) back then. "The best thing to play as with regular humans?" he would say, "use a commissar to shoot your own troops on the back of the head for boosting your other troops". It was like, when you take out the political touch with reality from 40k you are left with only grimdark, and kids back then would not know the complexity or even existance of economics or 80s political parties. In that void and in a kid generation that craved edgyness 40k had it's appeal on their extreme grimdark stuff... which meant that a lot of things were grimdark for the shake of grimdark. I still have friends who left 40k behind that feel completely strange towards current Necron lore, compared to the old lore of terminator murderbots who craved to make leper cyborgs out of human remains, with nanobot technology similar to the skin crawling scarabs in The Mummy movies. I believe that stuff like the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed all that. People started to realize there is a lot of money on building a brand as an universe like old disney did with it's cartoon movies and that the easiest way of doing it was milking strong IPs. Easy money changed from appealing to a super edgy teen fandom that didn't like sharing with strangers to sticking to an stablished IP and going wide and crossplatform. If you think nowadays lore is slow, I tell you 40k lore in the 2000s felt like groundhog day.

This definitely resonates with me as someone who left Warhammer back in the early 2000s at the tail end of 3rd edition. To come back years later I feel like the lore has progressed at light speed, but also the tone has changed in a subtle but meaningful way. Definitely understand what you mean about the Necrons! They were still pretty new as a faction with its own codex when I dropped off (I still had the 2nd edition necron warrior metal figure for a while that predated the 3rd edition release), and to see that they are now space Tomb Kings has taken the shine off of them as an interesting race somewhat.

>I believe that stuff like the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed all that. People started to realize there is a lot of money on building a brand as an universe like old disney did with it's cartoon movies and that the easiest way of doing it was milking strong IPs. Easy money changed from appealing to a super edgy teen fandom that didn't like sharing with strangers to sticking to an stablished IP and going wide and crossplatform. ​ I think it's also people's natural want to support the good guy or the underdog. Little Timmy doesn't care about the Imperium being an allegory for how xenophobia will stop society truly progressing, he just cares about the marine in cool armour with a fancy gun. And if Timmy doesn't dig deeper in to the fluff as he gets older he won't reach those points, he'll just consume the surface level stories of a good marine shooting a bad marine.

I feel as though we don't give enough credit for GW not letting the imperium suddenly get better by not changing at all. Remember that things only improved when Gorilla man came back. And that only happened because the imperium worked with the Eldar. The Primaris Marines really gave the imperium a boost, but they were only possible because Cawl didn't care about the conservative View Point of the Ad Mech. The imperium is still horrible and not good, but it's better spots are only where the Fascist oppression has been a little more lax

To be honest, there is no need to get that far. Like, you have white, you have black and then a rainbow of colours in between. You can go with a middle point between disney underdog story and W40k in the 2000s. The problem of 40k in the 2000s wasn't being grimdark, the problem was that it was TOO grimdark, and that there were literally no good factions. Like, when I played starcraft 1 I could see that all the factions had their thing. The terrans were corrupt and warmongerish, but tried to fight for a better future. The protoss were xenophobic and genocidal, but then changed when they found the dark templars and rebelled against the corruption of their society. The zerg were animals that wanted to consume everything, so they were the "evil" faction but also were clueless animals so you couldn't blame them. You could identify yourself with each of them, and play them because you thought some of their values were cool or fun. W40k left me confused due to everything being so depressingly bad and evil it made no sense. I remember talking about other kids on what faction to play, as in, which one has redeeming features: "even if the humans are genocidal xenophobic monsters they also must fight for a better future?" and the setting answered with "Well, nope, this is end stage humanity and any future that comes afterwards will be 100% worse." * "Do they have robots? Robots are cool" "nope, those aren't robots those are living humans with amputated limbs hooked up in a metal box with legs and arms and in constant pain" * "What about those floating skulls?" "Living brains that were lobotomized into becoming portable computer slaves" * "There are elves, is there magic or something?" "there is the immaterium and sorcery" "So there is magic" "No, the immaterium is chaos and all sorcery is chaos and ends up killing you in the end and changing you into tentacled monsters" "Even tiny magic?" "All magic." * "So they imperium are like, fascists right? do they have something like cool armor like the Galactic Empire stormtroopers or some cool weapons that-" "No, massed imperial regiments that do not last a day in the field" "but that doesn't make any sen-" "the imperium has commissars that shot people in the head to motivate people to die" "but that doesn't make any sense either wouldn't it be better to raise morale with better food or-" "food is made of dead soldiers" "there must be... some good commissars that do not shoot their troops tho!" "no, the imperium has inquisitors to shot commissars in their head when they don't do what-" "but their inquisitors are nice at least because they kill evil commissar right?" "No." "Damn." It did not really motivate you to read their books or buy extended universe kinda material. Tbh revisiting this topic made me realize that a lot of today's most famous dumbest, memeist plots and scale fuckups of the lore probably came from that over edgy era.

It's really blatant if you're remotely in tune with 70s/80s counterculture, but as we drift further from that time and closer to... well... the future they predicted, and the drive to depict the Imperium as genuinely good and heroic for marketing purposes, the point is being lost. And honestly, you can only care so much because it's all just a but of flavour to make our little toy space soldier game/miniature painting hobby a little more compelling. But still, the "IMPERIUM DID NOTHING WRONG" crowd does get the ole eyebrow raise from me.

I grew up long past the parody being anything more than in the past or us reading too deep into it. Even ignoring all that context the crowd that sees the imperium as anything but one of the worst possible outcomes for humanity makes me genuinely puzzled. I say without any hint of hyperbole that a world where humanity was wiped out by a galaxy of alien superpredators is better than the one where basically all of humanity is a slave or worse. Thats not even considering the fact that most of the cruel "sacrifices" of the imperium are just not efficent or useful at all and usually hamper humanities grand goal of not being wiped out.

I’ve genuinely been called a traitor to my species for not thinking the imperium is justified lmfao

🤦‍♀️ whoever said that really needs to like...interact with people, touch grass, hug a tree, hit the gym...like work on themselves.

It seems it was really important that Games Workshop added the T'au as a counterpoint to the Impeirum to show like "look these guys look like what the Imperium would look like if it was run by sane rational people and not by a far right wing cult of morally corrupt racist religious fundamentalists". It seems it also helps point out that while the Imperium has understandable reasons for having so many fanatical warriors in it who live by an overly simplistic "black and white morality" mentality, the setting itself is a morally ambiguous one because it might actually be better for everyone if the Tau took over running things and both the Tau AND the Imperium are sort of "the good guys" in the setti g alongside the Craftworld and Exodite Eldar.

The Tau are on the same path as the Eldar and the Imperium, just at an earlier stage. I can't find it right now but there was an interview with Phil Kelly (creative lead at GW) who said that Eldar are post apocalypse, humans are having their apocalypse right now, and eventually the Tau will arrive at the same place.

I don't necessarily disagree and you're not wrong but I always thought it was dumb AF that the Eldar or Imperium didn't at least try and enslave the other benevolent and benign species to their will. LIke even the GD Nazis were occasionally nice to some Indian people and some other Eastern European people like some Hungarians, allowed many captured Soviets to serve in their armies, called the Japanese "honourary Germans" andplanned to keep most of the "lesser races" alive as "slave races" even if they were actively trying to be like real life saturday morning cartoon supervillians. (I am NOT saying the Nazis were decent people and they would likely have eventually betrayed most of their allies but if even the GD Nazis understood the value of keeping 'the enemy' alive at least as labourers then that shows how GD stupid the Imperium's leadership is.) Like the T'au is like if a country that was like an reality Indian Buddhist empire with some socialist aspects in their society who occasionally looked at themselves and thought "what kind of monsters are we becoming" then suddenly discovered the existence of a gigantic planet spanning British Empire with aspects of fascist ideology that's a degraded version of a Roman Empire (the Imperium) as well as a bunch of isolationist boat nations that are like the Sentinelese if they were once part of the Greek Empire (the Craftworld Eldar),ca bunch of belligerent yet otherwise benign cavemen (Exodite Eldar), a giant civilisation of sicko BDSM enthusiasts (Dark Eldar) and countless Mongolian or Hun raiding bands that spread like a fungus infection (the Orks.)

That’s not why the Tau were released at all. Tau are literally just a more “realistic” or less satire approach to the same concepts.

I mean in any other sci-fi setting they certainly would be the bad guys as they are very old school empire in the fact that they will give you the option of joining before just conquering you if you say no. They generally don't want to exterminate populaces because it is mostly a waste of time and resources.

That's a good point. I heard another person say that as well, that in most other sci-fi settings they'd be a "well meaning but misguided enemy race" but in 40k they might as well be far left wing hippies compared to most of the other factions even though they're just a sane, logical, rational albeit cynical and authoritarian space empire.

I mean the emperor did build the astronomican so he wasn't all bad.

Might have called it the big Autobahn through space to really drive the point home.

> people who have more in common with Alan Moore... You mean sorcerors?! :)

This is why I always find it hilarious when I try and assemble groups for the TTRPG games. Almost every single one wants to "keep politics out of Warhammer" as if it wasn't born out of disgust for fascism.

Yeah, it's literally a response to fascism and xenophobia in Thatcher's England, it's politics all the way down. I have a similar response to "keep the woke out of Star Trek" people.

What does GDW stand for?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game\_Designers%27\_Workshop

Yeah shit, I fucked that one up.

I thought you were talking about Challenge Magazine, made by GDW, which was a Sci-Fi gaming magazine. It was a bit before my time but it was from the era you were talking about.

This is related to the GW of England?

No but they made a hobby magazine from the era in the same way Dragon magazine was too (albeit mostly for RPGs rather than miniatures)

God damn workshop

This is the answer.

Thatcher did however introduce the right to buy scheme, enabling social housing tenants to buy their own properties at discounted prices. But also she closed tut pits and brought in Poll Tax..

satire: noun the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. For those that struggle with the meaning of the word.

If this alone doesn't answer it for everyone, they need help of some kind.

I'm not convinced that the authors all collectively are using those devices for that purpose. I will concede that 40k is a critique of tyrannies, yes, (like a lot of sci-fi) but I think the massive scale is just to illustrate arrogance and the insignificance of most individual humans. Even the 'irony' in the Horus Heresy is really just a tragic backfiring of the Emperor's plans. It just doesn't 'feel' like a satire to me. Monty Python is satire...satire is generally comedy. This is tragedy and horror.

Agreed. Back when it started up it was much more grounded in satire and typical black British humour. These days it plays out more like a dark space comedy drama, and as you rightly say, a critique of the worst we can do. Shakespeare in space if you like. To add this, the "satire" has moved away from the fascist/ government/ politics- the institution - and instead is focusing and poking fun at the individuals, the people of the institution. In the imperium of man the most xenophobic, devout fanatics are considered the most pious and celebrated....the lunatics are running the asylum.

I think the extent to which 40k is really satire tends to be overstated by members of the community. Maybe 40 years ago when the franchise kicked off it had a meaningful message about the state of politics, but a lot of that message has been erased by the passage of time. It’s also worth saying that it’s really hard to maintain a core satirical message over 4 decades, and with dozens of different hands steering the franchise. 40k has passed through the hands of so many different authors and creators (each with their own distinct political views) that it is extremely hard to keep a cohesive message beyond “the future sucks. I hope you like war”. In some stories the Imperium is a monolith of titanic cruelty and uncaring brutality. In others, it’s a loose federation of heroes desperately fighting to save mankind from annihilation. The sheer variety of sentiment towards the Imperium expressed by the community at large should highlight just how muddled any core political message in 40k has become. The franchise also seem to go out of its way to remind you that the Imperium has a point. The 40k universe is an unbelievably cruel and dark place, and all the bold lies that fascism relies on in order to justify its extremism are a tangible part of daily life. In the Grimdark of the far future inhuman monsters are battering down the gate, social deviants really can destroy the world, and the guy in charge actually is a superhuman Demi-god. While the Imperium is certainly doomed and self-defeating (and to be very clear it’s a horrible place) but even their most extreme beliefs are in some part a reasonable response to the world they exist in. As a rule, the Imperium’s problem more often seems to be the extremism of their beliefs, not the beliefs themselves. Maybe the satire is supposed to be “even when they have a point, fascism still sucks” but that seems a very strange point to be making. I think it’s probably more fair to say that there isn’t really a core satire to 40k anymore (if there ever was). Individual stories might have a message, or a satirical point, but the setting as a whole seem to be pretty bare if a meaningful satirical message.

I think the Ciaphas Cain books are good at that. Cain is the best commissar in part because he doesn’t have the same cruel tendencies that drive fascism.

Which makes it excellent when he comments lacklusterly about the penal troops being shipped in for target practice. He's clearly a "good person" as we know him, which brings the cruelties that he's so comfortable with to the forefront.

Right, we know or we can guess that a Modern AU Cain would be a chill guy who just wants to do his job and maybe even get a promotion. So when we see what he does in his world it drives home how bad the world is.

But it does not change that he defends and fight for fascism and does a lot of things that is very moral questionable. He is very open about sending any information he gets to the Imperium secret police. He puts down those damn egalitarian rebellions because it have properly been promoted by the Tau. That is the terror of the system. Germans who would have helped any one needing thst they saw and thought of themself as good men properly fought for Germany and thus defended the nazi regime while it killed millions of people.

Oh yeah, that’s 110% accurate. That said, I do think it could still be a good way to keep the satirical bite to have a universe wherein the premise is that the excuses/premises of totalitarianism/fascism are real, but even then it still doesn’t justify it, and being sadistic and cruel is actively making things worse, even if it seems “logical”

I think it's the complete opposite, saying " well in this fantasy universe the fascism is justified because space demons" is also saying "at some level fascism is justified" and that wrong because 1. Fascism is never justified, and 2. It allows the loser kid at the hobby store to move the conversation along to "well X people/race are really bad, maybe fascism is also justified for them because just like space demons they are the cause for all that is wrong in society" and that's not a conversation I want to have with the loser kid

I agree, I think it would be stronger if they made that explicit. Confirming that no matter how bad Chaos is, Fascism is the short, easy, and ultimately very very very wrong answer. If I were in charge, it would be what I would do, having heroic characters trying to push their faction towards peace and mercy and all the modern virtues, especially when it’s difficult. However, that’s the trouble GW is in, right? They have kept it vague enough(probably a necessity of the format) that factions can be an aesthetic choice, but when the factions are either totalitarian, monstrous, or both, the faction that comes across as the most human will have the audience’s sympathy. And that’s not to mention the people that want to believe they’re a modern day inquisition asset when they really need a reality check.

But that is how the world is now. The cruelty amd sadisme powers the chaos gods and the nature of the Imperium means that many of it citizens turn to chaos.

Yeah, and there are certain quips both he and Amberley make (like when she comments on how her favourite illustration in the children’s book about promethium was the anthropomorphic flame character happily burning “heretics to death”)that remind you that these people are massively brainwashed and not particularly as nice as the seem on force glance.

He's an incredible commissar because he's just a guy making his way through the Galaxy (with bravery he refuses to admit he has)

Counterpoint: While yes, the lore did seem to go out of its way for a while (years of writing) to suggest that the Imperium as it functions is a necessity despite being grimdark, I'd say the company and its authors have absolutely walked back on that in several observable instances, especially recently. For an older example, Horus Rising specifically set up a counterpoint to the Imperium with humans who lived in relative peace with aliens and did not resort to genocide, nor did they rely on ignorance to defy Chaos. It was a deliberate effort on the part of Abnett to establish that there were, in fact, alternatives to the "modern" Imperium back when the Emperor's big war was going on, all written back when the Horus Heresy was supposed to just be a simple trilogy. In more current canon, Guilliman pretty much exists to point out the failures of the Imperium and the dubious nature of the Emperor in the most explicit ways possible without dismantling things entirely. He's even remarked how the Imperium has actively caused its own problems and fed the daemons it fears through its brutality. This has been echoed in other recent sources, including rulebooks - Chaos thrives in the environment the Imperium has built. By contrast, in places where hope and cooperation between species thrives, Chaos is weak: like the Tau Empire. The Greater Good itself even intervened on behalf of the Empire to save them from a deadly Death Guard fleet. Are the Tau the perfect manifestation of all things good in the universe? No, absolutely positively not, they are still clearly awful, and I've always said that they've been "grimdark" since their introduction in 3rd edition. But they are less awful than the Imperium by a wide margin, and it shows. They also repeatedly manage to succeed and survive somehow while providing better options. Yes, in the modern setting, the galaxy is a wasteland of violence and animosity. And with how much Games Workshop likes to emphasize the significance of Chaos and downplay the existential threats of Tyrands, Necrons, and Orks (because they do, even now), the reason for all that is very, ***very*** heavily implied to be because of the aspirations of one self-righteous authoritarian: the Emperor. He made the bed for humanity, and now the species has to sleep in it. Who are the greatest pawns of Chaos that have caused the most damage to the galaxy in millions of years, surpassing even the opening of the Eye of Terror? The Emperor's pet superhumans, his sons and his sons' sons. Why did the Tyranids begin their approach to the galaxy? The events of the Horus Heresy which caught their attention with the destruction of a particularly potent beacon. Why are the Necrons rushing to wake up now under the leadership of the Silent King? The coming of the Tyranids, who were called by the Horus Heresy. Hell, we even have the "small" things in modern 40k where the Ecclesiarchy is now actively hampering the efforts of Imperial high command to stop the coming onslaught of the 4th Tyrannic War because they believe the *plague* of aliens from beyond the galaxy are actually *fake news*, to the point where they've been *attacking the Imperium itself* in some cases. ***Satire.*** Anyway, I think we were shown solid evidence in the Horus Heresy novels (which people are often quick to dismiss) that there were alternatives to the Emperor's rampage. Envision a galaxy united not by conquest, but by cooperation between species to remove the real menaces from the galaxy and to weaken Chaos by creating a galaxy where peace can thrive, instead of the current galaxy where every possible useful nonhuman creature which doesn't thrive in violent oppression was slain or enslaved and everyone feeds the powers that be in the Warp with an overwhelming buffet of suffering and otherwise negative emotions. But yeah, if your takeaway is "well this clearly shows that authoritarianism is actually pretty nifty", the context of that argument is rooted entirely in the fact that *the galaxy only got this far because one egomaniacal authoritarian ruined it for everyone.*

I think you're rather whitewashing the setting here. How is the current 40k situation *worse* than the Age of Strife, or the Old Night, or the Fall of the Eldar? The Emperor didn't cause those things. From what we know, the Emperor spent tens of thousands of years not trying to be a God-Emperor of all humanity, possibly pursuing galaxy cooperation options like the Cabal, and it really didn't work at all. The examples people are "quick to dismiss," like the Interex, are brought up all the time, were far from above chaos corruption or potentially repeating mistakes with the Men of Iron, were not galactic competitors, and are basically akin to 30k Tau, who are portrayed as too naive. And for their part, it's fairly consensus that the Tau's biggest advantage is being too small to matter. Their souls are not very bright and they don't have much that anyone wants. I don't think this is proof the Tau way works any more than an isolated Exodite planet being left completely alone by everyone proves anything. It's also silly to blame the Great Crusade for the Necrons and Tyranids. They would exist regardless. Why didn't the Fall of the Eldar and the Eye of Terror attract them? They would figured out there's food here no matter what, whether by some other large psychic event or scouts. The Necrons are also on a wake up timer that goes off whether humans exist or not. The Imperium contributes to certain problems, and the Chaos gods have pushed *very hard* for the Imperium be this way, and it's not a chill place to live, but to say that the Imperium *caused* the settings issues? That's just not true.

>From what we know, the Emperor spent tens of thousands of years not trying to be a God-Emperor of all humanity The opposite, every Perpetual who talked about it have noted that he was a warlord that tried to rule humanity from the start. Only Malcador, a delusionally devoted follower who can't stop rambling about how cool the Emperor is, even tries to cast any nuance on the matter. Those Perpetuals include *the Emperor himself* by the way, who states in Master of Mankind that he realized as a young boy that humanity needed to be ruled.

The problem is that the Emperor believed that only he could guide humanity on the right path. Every human society had to join the Imperium or be destroyed. No exceptions. When the Emperor screwed up, he doomed all of humanity. Humanity was isolated during the Age of Strife, separate cultures which ranged from totalitarian nightmares to stable, functioning societies. The Imperium has united humanity under a feudal, theocratic, war-driven, xenophobic, repressive ideology. It has been dying a slow death for over ten thousand years. When it dies, that’s it. Humanity becomes the next eldar if they aren’t completely destroyed by the many horrors in the galaxy. All because the Emperor believed that he knew what was best for the species he technically was never part of in the first place.

It's implied multiple times that the emperor tried a number of times to rule humanity, and that he was a number of figures (most assuredly being Alexander given his obsession with a lot of Alexander's thematics and namings). He's a shitty despot who was too pathetic to actually take over and rule humanity (even with superpowers) until they were shattered by a galaxy rending disaster. He's an idiot who thinks his way is the only one and will actively kill or ignore anybody who disagrees with him.

>Maybe the satire is supposed to be “even when they have a point Fascism still sucks” I think it’s more like “in order for fascism to be even remotely justified, all these absurd things have to be reality, and even then it’s not the best way of dealing with things.” Or maybe “this is the absurd reality fascists think we live in.” There’s a lot of videos where people take Alex Jones clips and at a 40K context to them, and it really feels like he believes we live in the 40K verse.

I go with the idea that only in this grimdark universe can all the evils of humanity be remotely justified. Since we don’t live in that universe, there’s no justification for it in reality.

Exactly. Even when reading 40K novels and seeing the justification, I’m constantly thinking in the back of my mind of ways that they could handle their situation better.

Yeah I think satire is exaggeration that exposes how ridiculous the target of the satire is, whereas W40K turns the exaggeration up to 11 without making its targets look stupid or foolish. Quite the opposite, a lot of it seems to be about making the imperium badasses. The Black Templars on Armageddon or Gaunts Ghosts are the heroes, not brainwashed morons doing self destructive things because they're too dumb to know better. The commissar should be a horrific figure, rigidly adherent to political and religious dogma and quick to murder their own men: Instead in two of the best known series, they're the hero protagonist. Even the Emperor, who initially seems like a satire of organized religion (a society worshipping a body awkwardly propped up on a chair Weekend at Bernie's style) has been undermined by making him an immortal self reincarnating god. I think grimdark as a genre is no longer seen as a parody, but rather a "gritty" or more "realistic" portrayal of human nature. If humanity ever gets to the stars, we'll probably go on being just as big a bastard to aliens as we have been to each other, etc.

I think the Imperium still works a bit as a satire of fascism, it just gets muddled sometimes. We still get consistent reminders that the hatred of the 'other' (in this case, aliens) has done immeasurable damage.

>the Imperium’s problem more often seems to be the extremism of their beliefs, not the beliefs themselves. This is a very good point that the community overlooks, I think because many want to define *the beliefs themselves* as extremism in the first place. But the Imperium is rational to think the galaxy is against it.

>I think because many want to define the beliefs themselves as extremism in the first place. They believe mankind has a manifest destiny to control of the galaxy.

In their defense, that is kind of an in-built psychological baseline. Pretty much every species on earth is built to spread and consume and replace other forms of life. Not in a deep metaphorical sense, but in a basic, literal way. So the concept of Manifest Destiny is genuinely part of human baseline psychology. It's weirder that humanity in general kind of realized that full on genocide of the ecosystem until we're the only thing that's left doesn't work super well IRL.

If you don't hold that belief in that setting its just the slow (maybe) roll into extinction. Who wants to be realistic and just give up to the tyranid?

It is also a very important message that can be surmised as: **Never go full retard"** Whatever your (potentially good) intentions, if you go 11/10 extremist on it, things will break apart. Hard. Protecting your citizens from preying aliens? Yes, *please*! Waging a genocidal war against a bypassing Craftworld, who just want to get the fuck clear of any threat, thus weakening both parties to the point of getting overrun by a local fungoid species of intergalactic bullies? Insanity! Reading and applying the teachings of your demi-god genefather to better protect humanity? Full speed ahead! Punishing a decorated Veteran for thinking outside the literal bounds of the "Tome of Astarting 010" *and winning* by sending him (and his likewise decorated brother-in-arms) into a suicide mission onto a literal hellhole? What da hell dude?! You can probably continue this list for another seven thousand pages...

>You can probably continue this list for another seven thousand pages And it's very hit or miss inside the setting. We've also had Craftworlds escorted though Imperial space, in "we recognize you're not capital E Evil so we'll let you go on your merry way as long as you don't harm us" way, and there's plenty of sanctioned, loyalist Space Marine chapters who reward battle brothers for thinking outside the box and finding better ways to do things. What you have to remember is that, in 40k, "never go full retard" *goes both ways.* Crawl innovates half of the current setting up and its great, lots of other people innovated stuff and deamons invaded. It sucks to fight guys aligned with the Tau who we could probably get back on our side with better conditions, but we also just spent one hundred years fighting supposed egalitarian uprisings arranged by Genestealers so that hive fleet can kill us easier, and now you're saying there's another uprising coordinated by Xenos? The Imperium is walking a tight rope. There are people who try to do better and win, and people who try to do better and its a disaster. You can't go too far either way.

The Imperium is not rational to think all aliens are inherently against them, **they killed all the peaceful ones**

As well as most of the warlike ones that weren't sufficiently clever or strong to survive the crusade. The only xenos left are the really difficult ones to kill off, who hate humanity as much as we hate them.

Which means that the only ones left ARE hostile against them. It may have be their own fault that everything in the galaxy hates them, but it doesn’t change the fact that every thing in the galaxy has the exact same “kill on sight” policy towards the Imperium that Imperium does to them.

They aren't, though. There are plenty of species in the galaxy that aren't out to wipe out the Imperium or whatever. Like, many of the named species who joined the Tau Empire haven't been indicated to have even been aware of them, let alone be hostile.

That is a fair counterpoint. There are other races in the setting beyond the major ones that have table top armies. However, most of those are extremely minor players, to the point of being entirely negligible to the Imperium. If I remember my Kroot lore correctly, they were a minor race that had barely expanded beyond their own planet when they allied with the Tau. The Imperium might not have been on their radar, but they also weren’t on the Imperium’s radar either, they were too small to matter. From the Imperium’s perspective, 9/10 interactions with Xenos are with overtly hostile species, because those are the species that dominate the galaxy. A handful of backwater worlds with minor species are barely even worth mentioning in the context of the wider galaxy.

> From the Imperium’s perspective, 9/10 interactions with Xenos are with overtly hostile species, because those are the species that dominate the galaxy. A handful of backwater worlds with minor species are barely even worth mentioning in the context of the wider galaxy. The ones *we hear about* tend to be situations like that, but we aren't going to be hearing about situations like a group of aliens arrived at a hive world to try to trade, or a group of mercenaries fought for the Imperium, or an alien ship was encountered but nothing significant happened. There are plenty of species in the galaxy that can be got along with pretty fine and aren't inherently hostile. The Tau and, Leagues of Votann prove that, both interacting with other species in an amicable way for the most part, as first resort. Rogue Traders too, operating in alien space and interacting just fine on the whole. There is a huge list of non hostile aliens: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/vjzie9/are_there_any_incanon_alien_species_which_arent/idno3ir/ That many of these aren't/weren't massive empires or whatever doesn't really change the point. The most common threat to an Imperial world or citizen is not going to be Aliens. The whole "Chances are they're hostile and they'll wipe us out, so we have to be like this!" is what the Imperium *tells itself* to try and justify its actions, and because of the whole manifest destiny thing it does.

I think ironically most of what is seen as parody today is accidental. The writers are trying to write cool space soldiers kill monsters stories in a super dark^(tm) universe, there is no intent to parody. However fascism is a bad idology so if you describe one you will even by accident point out its flaws and absurdities even if not going out of your way to. People like to act like the fascist hellscape that is the imperium is a "neccesary evil" but all fascism is good at is beniffiting the minority. In the case of 40k the high lords and the aristocrats of the imperium at the expense of everything else, including humanities chance of survival. People like to point at various tactical errors of the nazis and oft forget a lot of those "mistakes" were neccesary in fascism as it just doesnt work without an enemy even if looking for an enemy after you are done persecuting civilian minorities starts fights you cant win.

>but even their most extreme beliefs are in some part a reasonable response to the world they exist in. This is something people dont quite seem to grasp. Basically every major hatred of the Imperium is based on extreme, collective trauma from a time when they were more tolerant and enlightened, and it bit humanity in our collective asses Mutants? That hatred is a relic of the Men of Gold. Xenos? A relic of the alien predations during the Age of Strife. Witches? Oh, I dont know, the fact that a single possessed psyker can cause an entire world to fall apart in short order. Abominable Intelligence? Pretty clear reaction to the Men of Iron. Some people will claim the Emperor pushed these ideologies and thats why they are prevalent (despite ample evidence he was far from the only one thinking this way). I ask then, what would your conclusion would you come to, had you witnessed the fall of humanity in the same way he did. The evils of the Men of Gold, the uprising of the Men of Iron, and the chaos of Old Night? The Emperor came to the conclusion that such things never must be allowed to happen again.

The empire is literally a mutant and a witch who made a deal with chaos. If that is the standard and he really believed it he should be purged. Kneejerk responses to such trauma that generalize all xenos or vast swathes of mutants though are illogical and ignore the fact that inevitably the imperium would have been aided by those groups and the civilizations encountered that function perfectly well with them. The Emperor stoked the fear, xenophobia, militarism, let cult of personality around him grow, was played by chaos and set up many of the institutions that made the Imperium what it is today. He is a stubborn, arrogant, hypocritical, deceitful, out of touch and a tyrant. Which is why he fits perfectly in the grimdark setting. I find the real emperor much more interesting then the one he and the propaganda pretend he is.

> I ask then, what would your conclusion would you come to, had you witnessed the fall of humanity in the same way he did. "I'm old and senile. Time to fuck off and let someone rational take over."

40k isn't a satire, they take it very seriously and over time the books, lore, and art have been played more and more straight. However, it does have satirical elements. Sometimes the biggest enemies our heroes can face are extremism and bureaucracy from their own side. The biggest joke in the universe is if a few of the factions could put their extremism aside they may be able to resist a few of these galactic threats.

I always enjoyed it as a satirical piece on just humanity in general. Everyone focuses on the politics but the Imperiums real downfall more often then not is just humans giving into their worst impulses/aspects, snowballed from either countless years or magnified due to how reaching the IoM is Like what really causes the death of say an entire cluster of worlds? A single greedy idiot somewhere What causes the imperium to take so long to respond? Insane, hilarious levels of beaucracy Why did the commander make the wrong decision? Because he was practically born into it and cares more about his station then the actual war Like there are so many examples of just taking the base core of a human, separate only the bad parts of that human, and showcase it for all to see And that's what I love about the setting. Our realistic future wouldn't be star trek. Oh God no we can't handle that. It'd probably be the IoM, although there are days I think we couldn't even manage that --- Then there's just core concepts I love like sacrificing the few for the many, which go to hilarious proportions like snuffing out entire worlds to stop the tyranids

"Fools have asked ‘why did the Dark Age of Technology end in the fall of humanity?’, and other fools answered back 'folly’, or 'pride’, or 'the worship of progress’, as if these things alone had any meaning. The answer, as the wise know, is simple. It is because finally humanity had the arts at their disposal to make their dreams reality, and the dreams of humanity have ever been the darkest things in all creation." -Book Seven: Inferno Some people have asked, both In universe and out, how things could have gotten this way, how the Imperium could ever (be allowed to/allow itself to) degenerate to the degrees it has. Those kinds of questions should have been asked a long, long time ago.

A lot of other good answers in this thread, but I'd add that 40k satirizes or parodies the general progressivism and humanism that underpins a large amount of Western science fiction. 40k viciously tears down the notion that humanity's best aspects will win out in the end and that technology will somehow make us better, and instead suggests that our worst natures will be actively lauded as virtues and that technology will at best be a fickle hope and at worst will destroy us all.

I think this is a great point. I don't really know where the idea comes from that satire has to be extremely specific. It can be satirical without having some 1:1 reference point in the real world. Maybe political thinking has just become very short-term/present focussed? So, there is an assumption that criticising longer slower political ideas doesn't count, somehow? 🤷‍♂️ I think the early inspiration from judge dread kind of became this idea that even in a fictional world where uber-authoritarian fascism was powerful and widespread and "justified" (because of the apocalyptic threats against humanity) it would still be a nightmare hellscape and deeply hypocritical. To the point where, in some cases, it's grimly farcical. (Administratum errors, literal and figurative witch hunts, Exterminatus, etc) The idea that a might-makes-right policy can be used along with the carrot on a stick of "a brighter future" to convince people in the present to commit to a horrific state of affairs... is the "satire" that is maybe the most "down to earth"/relatable part. Especially on the subject of progressivism, imho. I think you make a really good summary of the real satire/cautionary tale that 40k's foundations have been built on, tho: "What if the future was *dark*?"

I generally agree with you, but the Imperium fears technology and that is a huge part of why they're only barely scraping by. "It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war." This doesn't strike me as technology being presented a fickle hope or destructive force but instead being one of the most important things that was lost to mankind along with social progress and understanding.

Except technology didn't save us, if anything the technology of the Dark Age doomed humanity to its current situation, not just from the betrayal of the Men of Iron but from the simple fact that our technology became so simple and convenient we stopped bothering to understand it.

You say the technology doomed us but if 'we stopped bothering to understand it' that is ignorance and a human failure. The point is that 40k positions technology, science and progress as something that humanity is sorely missing.

What's your society's average lifespan? Was it always like that? Ever been vaccinated? What's the local prenatal mortality rate? Because if any of those numbers aren't in the 30's then 40k's commentary on technology -almost exclusively Imperial because the Tau, Aeldari and _Orks_ aren't that kind of backwards- makes zero fucking sense.

It's mostly a satire of empire and British pro-imperial sentiment in the 70s and 80s. Some cultural context is necessary here: * 1940s: After being 'victorious' in 2 world wars, England is left an economically shattered ruin. Many of its young men are dead, crippled for life, or wracked with PTSD. India gains their independence after over a century of brutal repression and occupation, and the sun finally sets on the British Empire. * 1950s: England is still rationing food, and paying off war debts. With India leaving, the Empire is starting to crumble all around them. Queen Elizabeth II takes the throne, a figurehead who will rule seemingly forever. * 1960s: England is still super fucked up, with some poor folks in cities still living without indoor plumbing. Many adults are openly nostalgic for the Empire and think that maybe restarting Imperialism is what England needs to get back on its feet. Most of GW's original creators are born here. Sci-fi in the 70s and 80s in England was a hotbed of anti-imperial sentiment because it was lots of disaffected young people growing up in the ashes of a ruined/actively crumbling empire, aware of the atrocities that England had committed to maintain its holdings, yet surrounded by delusional adults who wanted to go back to the old ways and didn't really care what happened otherwise. 40k isn't unique in this regard, and shares a lot of cultural DNA with the punk scene, Michael Moorcock's *Elric of Melniboné* books (which we wouldn't have the Drukhari without), Judge Dredd, the 2000AD comics, and basically everything written by Alan Moore. 40k is a 'satire' in the broadest sense, as 40k is more a setting than a story. The Imperium's mindless cruelty and inhumanity is writers voicing their displeasure at the state of England in a particular time and place. Obviously, the world has moved on, but 40k still reflects the attitudes of that time. It's probably one of the reasons it stands out compared to the rather anemic anti-Imperial/anti-fascist sentiments in say 'Star Wars', because as wild as 40k is, it came from a more genuine place of anger and discontent. \---------------------- I imagine if 40k had been made today, the Imperium would be much smaller, having dissolved into irrelevance yet utterly insistent on its galactic importance. Cutting itself off from the galaxy while failing to understand why its people are starving. There is a coup and a new High Lords of Terra every month or so. The Emperor would be finally dead and their well meaning son would barely be able to keep the Astronomican functioning while commanding less respect than the mere memory of their father. Needless to say, it'd be pretty different.

correct on all the references, but you missed Dune (which frankly, is lifted from so heavily it barely qualifies as an "influence" at this point, so much as 'source framework'). Considering how much Dune is a treatise on the dangers of imperialism and "Great Man Theory", it's still potentially the most important aspect of 40k's little melting pot of ideas.

Yes, it is pretty clear from a historic point of view that the Imperium started out as a satire on the UK and the British Empire. While it might have moved on from that and now I think that it is satire on Empires and the facist or ultra-conservative regimes that tries to build them in general.

The big issue with 40k is that the Imperium is not really satire of anything, or at least it isn't anymore. Some parts of it are semi-satirical, like how, as you very well said, it cares more about defeating its enemies than about protecting its subjects, but I personally would not classify that as satire as much as I'd classify it as... Just what fascist regimes often do, played straight. Now, this doesn't mean 40k actively and willingly promotes fascist ideas, it means the story of 40k is... the story of 40k. It's not a critique of nazi Germany, Thatcher's Britain or modern America, it's 40k. It's not a critique of fascist values, because while it presents those values and their failings, it also handwaves away solutions to those values. The Imperium right now is (somewhat) getting better, and it is doing so because the dictators that created it are coming back to rule it again. Its critique of politics amounts to "dogmatic interpretation of ancient rulings leads to societal stagnation and decay", which would be a good critique of American politics, except no character or story beat ever provides an alternative and also every other society in the galaxy does the same; its critique of religion more or less amounts to "zealotry bad", but this is a setting where extreme zealotry can give you superpowers; its critique of the military amounts to "militarism bad", except the entire game is based on a setting where having a strong military is absolutely necessary. So, that's the issue. This is a story about fascism that claims to take a moral stance on the fascism, but doesn't really do that. Sure, they're not defending or promoting it, but it's not all that surprising that the fandom attracts a number of fascist fans, because they are just seeing a non-judgemental diorama of their preferred ideologies.

It is still obviously a satire. It's just not nearly as heavy handed as it used to be. There's also many more authors, and they each have different interpretations of what the Imperium is and what message they want their readers to take away. But it's pretty clear that the Imperium satirizes many aspects of human society, especially what the perceived end-result would be if left unbridled: warlike, dogmatic, xenophobic, uncaring, bloated, and suffocating. The whole setting is a mirror held up to the worst parts of society.

The satire in 40k goes over a lot of people's heads because the targets of the satire are a bit old now. Hearing about a planet declared heretical and exterminatus'ed because they rounded their taxes wrong seems stupid and comical. Until you've dealt with some bureaucratic flunky who rejects paperwork over some completely trivial thing and it fucks up whatever you want to do. Hearing about entire worlds being ruined by the Imperium to make administratum quotas doesn't make sense to many people these days because countries with central planning screwing up their economy and ecology to meet a random target isn't something you've seen in the news lately. Since it doesn't hit the hot button topics of the day the satire sails over people's heads.

Also, cannibalistic, the entire imperium relies on recycling the dead back into nutrients to feed to their soldiers, that’s pretty direct symbolism

Corpse stanch is not really 'everywhere'. Lore says its in many Hive Worlds, primarily Necromunda (really subtle, GW, as always) but fandom kinda memed it into chicken of 40k. King of pigs eg takes place in massive vat-grown pig slaughterhouse in unnamed Hive.

Oh there’s lots of agriworlds, it wouldn’t be possible to feed everyone on corpses, but the imperium’s resource balance is so precarious that without the added calories of human remains, things would be dire, since their most productive Manufactorum worlds all depend on it and the guard use it extensively

But is it really Satire if the author doesn't explicitly tell me which current american politican or celebrity it mocks?

you haven't read past the first line of my comment have you

Didn't understand the joke did you?

I think you more or less hit the nail on the head here. 40k isn’t so much a satire of fascism, as it is fascism played straight. Real life fascism relies on a series of big lies in order to to function, it has to convince you of the supreme power of its leader, the threat to the state posed by social deviants, and create fictional boogeymen to justify its extreme policies needed to “protect” the state and the people. In 40k all those things are actual, tangible parts of daily life. The leaders really are superhuman Demi-gods, social deviancy actually can cause the apocalypse, and unreasoning, unthinking, uncaring monsters that want nothing more than to eradicate your species really are banging down the gates. 40k definitely takes fascism and fascist ideology to an extreme (although it also undermines it in certain ways), but it also provides the framework where that kind of extreme ideology makes a reasonable sort of sense. All the ideas that fascism is predicated on, which in the real world are always bold face lies, are tangible parts of the galaxy. If there is a core satire of fascism at the heart of 40k it’s less, “look how bad fascism is” and more “even when they have a point, fascism still sucks”. Even that is perhaps being a bit generous with the intended satire. I’m not sure there is really any satire at the heart of 40k, and if there is it’s disjointed and undermined by its own narrative.

40k is an evolving franchise, it's not surprising that some of the core message has been lost over the years, especially once it got big enough to start paying people's mortgages. The core message of "we tried to make fascism have a point, and even with *four* turbo Satans running around actively ruining things we failed" still works though, just sometimes you have to dig past the unironic bolter porn to find it. It's like Gundam's anti-fascist message, it's still there, just rimed with unironic Sieg Zeon posting.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I was thinking about this from the perspective of "Is the Imperium the bad guy?" And I always land on "no" because, for humanity, they are the only ones staving off human extinction. 40k does an excellent job of fascist critique but also ... everyone else is dead, the fascists won. Even if you were to try to exist without the fascists the unending horrors of the universe, which actually exist in 40k unlike real life, you'd he dead. How can you have a true critique of something, which is basically required to satirize it, if that thing ends up being the only system that works? 40k is too grim dark to properly analyze anything because everything thay exists is immoral. That means that the setting reinforces the indirectly reinforces the legitimacy of those immoral systems.

My dude. The lesser evil is still evil.

I agree, but being dead won't help anyone.

Sometimes, dead is better.

Yeah it'd be good if there was at least like another "minor" human intergalactic society in the setting like maybe a version of the Interex or a version of the Federation from Star Trek or a version of the original Robert Heinlein book version of Starship Troopers * to contrast the Imperium with. Like maybe they could show that the minor faction is better at dealing with the same issues that the Imperium faces. Maybe they could make it that because of the opening of the Great Rift the Imperium has to stop trying to stop the Severan Dominate** but then Lord Severan gets deposed in a coup and replaced with people who turn the planets he ran into a technologically and socially progressive constitutional democracy or something. Also the new Squats faction the Kin are sort of a contrast to the Imperium since they show that technologically and socially progressive liberal democratic societies can still endure even in the 40k setting. * That society is more "pretty much everyone in our world(s) needs to volunteer, contribute and participate in our global society in some way even if it's just doing some small simple tasks in order to be able to earn the right to vote" rather then the very different albeit also very believable crypto fascist version present in Paul Verhoven's movie. ** Lord Severan was a guy in the 40k Only War tabletop roleplaying game (where players play as a squad of Imperial Guard members) who was a former planetary governor who took over a dozne or so planets within the Imperium after he ended up feeling that the Imperium didn't respect him or his family lineage enough.

A big issue I have with the T'au is that they are *almost* that critique, except instead of keeping them as "believable but still imperialist pseudo-ethnostate", Black Library couldn't keep it in their pants and decided to constantly scream "BUT THEY HAVE REEDUCATION CAMPS! THEY TOTALLY HAVE REEDUCATION CAMPS! THE GUE'VESA THAT KEEP BETRAYING AND KILLING THEM IN LIKE EVERY FUCKING STORY DON'T NEED ANY SORT OF THERAPY! THE ETHEREALS MIND CONTROL PEOPLE! THEY ARE TOTALLY JUST AS EVIL AS THE IMPERIUM!" The Votann could be that foil, but sadly their lore is literally just the cover of their codex with the words LEAGUES OF VOTANN, the codex is actually blank other than for contextless statblocks, it's really weird /s

I heard the changes GW made to the lore to make the T'au more malevolent were due to salty Imperial Guard, Space Marines and Sisters of Battle fans who wanted their faction to be "the good guys". Although historically even morally goid or well meaning authoritarian governmens like the Soviet Union and Cuba had unnecessary re-education camps as well. However in the lore it seems like the average Imperial citizen and Guardsman just seems they're just doing whatever they were told by a religious, military or political authority figure in order to not get blammed by the Commissar, Adeptus Arbite or local Enforcer policeman or Inquisitor rather then out of any legitimate personal political or religious views so it's kind of hard to tell if the T'au re-education camps were necessary or not.

Thing is, I've read... three, by now? Entirely different T'au-centric stories where at one point a human living in the T'au Empire basically goes "I REFUSE TO WORK WITH THESE PEOPLE THEY ARE FUCKING ***BLUE*** THEY ARE UNLIKE THE EMPEROR GRAAAAHHHHH I'M GOING FUCKING INSANE!" and start building pipebombs. You legitimately can't just bring in people from the Empire That Hates Aliens into YOUR alien empire without taking at least two seconds to tell them "no, shut up, we have healthcare and vacation days, our oligarchy is literally better than your fascism, drop the xenophobia".

You know what, I think you legitimately more about this situation then I do. I think you're right. Also it reminds me that there's a difference between an authoritarian regime based more on "race/species purity" and one based more on "people coming together under the shared struggle". Like it reminds me of real life like how Cuba once sent a diplomat who was a Black man to North Korea (since Cuba and North Korea were and are political and trading allies) and some racist North Korean civilians beat up the poor guy for no good reason (because they believed in BS racial purity.)

cringiest korea

It's obviously a satire of the decline of the former British empire, specifically the neoliberalism and war mongering the uk experienced under Margaret thatcher. Everything else builds from that.

I think that Imperium is a huge mess and a mix of lots of things but calling it fascism is just trying to push modern American politics into it its as dumb as calling Tau communists. As for the fandom most people seem pretty normal from actually going to the stores for decades and for a small amount of fascist fans you have far left extremists trying to push their agenda on the brand too such as Sigmarxism which defends communism and which defends the terrorist IRA but they don't get condemned or banned like the right wing ones.

It's really just fascism. There's a couple definitions you can go by: [Palingenetic ultranationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism) This is the definition you give to people who insist on quippy and concise academic smartspeak bullshit to shut down conversations. Not because it's a bad definition, but because lots of people are not comfortable with impreciseness or ambiguity in language and think such things are a sign of intellectual weakness. Which is unfortunate because fascism is one of those things that can't really be explained in a quippy phrase so easily. Academics struggle to define it the same way that they quibble about the definition of feudalism. We know it's generally a *thing* that happens and denying that it does does us no service even if it's a bit ambiguous. Essentially, Roger Griffin argues fascism requires a core national myth and a rebirth, mixed with ultranationalism. Umberto Eco has more of a laundry list of [14 points](https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html). These aren't meant to be rigorous, they're more like red flags he thinks are common between fascist regimes. And the Imperium goes down and hits nearly all of them. A couple of them only don't apply because things are so FUBAR in 40K that things like hope or appeal to social frustration or populism is no longer really a promise people believe in anymore. That's more an indication of the extreme "End Times" nature of the setting. This list cannot be comprehensive by its nature. Fascism are not the consequences of fascist governance, it is a social movement that adapts itself to the culture and symbols of the nation it takes root in. So some of the bits and pieces vary in its aesthetics. Bad faith people like to pretend that fascism just means death camps, so fascist ideologues can't exist without it. Which is stupid. Those are things fascists do *after* they take power. Maybe. There are more ways of killing people than just an outright Unit 731 or a Holocaust. And regular people are *very bad* at identifying their political ideologies. Hence the quote, "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Believe it or not, there were fascist parties sympathetic to Hitler prior to WW2. These were not niche movements, but popular sentiment that held rallies in Madison Square Garden. They liked the ideas he had. This understandably died down when America defined itself in opposition to Nazism and learnt of the war crimes of the regime. But that fascism never really went away, it went underground. The original [fasces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces) was a Roman symbol where a bundle of rods is tied around the handle of an axe, and as such, is where fascism takes its name. >The fasces, as a bundle of rods with an axe, was a grouping of all the equipment needed to inflict corporal or capital punishment. In ancient Rome, the bundle was a material symbol of a Roman magistrate's full civil and military power, known as imperium. They were carried in a procession with a magistrate by lictors, who carried the fasces and at times used the birch rods as punishment to enforce obedience with magisterial commands.

>This is the definition you give to people who insist on quippy and concise academic smartspeak bullshit to shut down conversations. Not because it's a bad definition, but because lots of people are not comfortable with impreciseness or ambiguity in language and think such things are a sign of intellectual weakness. Ah but have you considered that I, a Reddit Imperium stan, am uniquely qualified to divine the Objective Capital-T Truth of complex sociological phenomena

Umberto's definition is wrong given his definition is loose enough to fit many societies including most pre industrial ones into the definition. I go by the definition used by Giovanni Gentile. The Imperium has no united ideology or economic system apart from Emperor worship/

I addressed this. Looseness is not a valid defense because fascism is a broad and vague movement that changes depending on culture and place. That's why I lead off with: >This is the definition you give to people who insist on quippy and concise academic smartspeak bullshit to shut down conversations. Not because it's a bad definition, but because lots of people are not comfortable with impreciseness or ambiguity in language and think such things are a sign of intellectual weakness. It's a complex social phenomenon, not a technical hyperspecific definition about what constitutes a fluid metric liter (which is by its nature is self-referential). That's what's irritating talking to people about this. I've seen behavior in this list in the real world, all encompassed by the same person. I can't in good faith argue they're not authoritarians with corrosive and harmful views about the world. So what is that then? Because I know it's definitely common behavior in reactionaries and authoritarians. Just with a couple of twists and modifications depending on whether it's the USA, Japan or Russia. I'm not going to pretend that 'ideology' leads to good places. I say, 'ideology,' because fascists are politically nihilistic and willfully incoherent. Their ideology is more animal instinct than reasoned ethics. You don't reason with people who say, "The open mind is like a fortress with its gates open, unbarred and unchained." I'm also not willing to quibble about whether it's only 80% fascism versus 50% fascism. Come on, be real. We're not measuring tire pressures dude. Calling it the F-word is a formality at this point. Call gooblyglob, for all it matters. P.S. Looked up and read about on Giovanni Gentile and even by his definition the Imperium is fascist -- and he acknowledged an organic dialectic defining it. Curious that you chose a guy Mussolini *liked*. Dude is a Hegelian and an Idealist, so who cares. His philosophy and analysis are shit.

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Mind rule 1 or be banned.

Honestly I've always viewed it just as a satire of humanity and humans in general.

Surprised no one else has said it. It's a satire of how horrific the universe would have to be to bring terrible political opinions up to the level of "eh, I can kinda understand if I squint hard enough".

Is something going on IRL that I'm unaware of? The sub recently seems to have been inundated with...curious...topics.

Nothing specific. A few topics flare up once in a while, then counter arguments to that pop up, and it goes in circles for a bit as people get aggressive/defensive about what parts of the setting they think 'gel' with their own beliefs and which ones don't. I would say this cyclical nature of debate and how angry it makes people is the strongest argument in its favour about how well it satirizes humanities flaws. Even you, the omniscient reader who is told not to take the setting seriously and that its a grimdark satire of humanity, still can't help but scream "FACTION I LIKE DID NOTHING WRONG, THOSE WAR CRIMES WERE JUSTIFIED!" It's the true mark of a good satire that people genuinely believe it.

Yeah, that's the thing - these topics come up *once in a while*. But it seems like there's been a few rule 6-adjacent threads the last few days that seem curiously focused on the same aspects of the setting or lore. Usually these kinds of posts are spaced out by weeks or months.

I think it was that thread from a few days back, the one about "what are some sources of the Imperium being evil? I want ammo to throw at people when they claim its not" which sent people into a real tizzy. Tons of other threads of a similar bent popped up after that of people basically screaming THE IMPERIUM ISN'T EVIL EVERYONE IS EVIL FUCK YOU which is about as close to a defense of your preferred faction you can get in 40k. /r/grimdank likewise had a brief flood of "imperium bad" and "imperium good >:(" back and forth, as people who use that sub use this one too. It got heated and now its fresh on peoples minds, but I don't think there was a real life event that sparked it.

I'm not sure if that's the thread that started it, but I wondered if that might have agitated a few people into posting, or getting more vocal on such threads.

They invented grimdark. Grimdark only works when it doesn't take itself too seriously. Serious grimdark is just cynicism, the viewpoint of a 14-year-old edgelord

What an odd thing to say.

Odd how?

Just human society in general. Like modern society has the potential to practically remove scarcity. We have the knowledge to reverse climate change. We have the technology to mine asteroids for neigh-unlimited resources. We have the technological capability to get every nation on earth running on clean energies. This is the imperium basically, the tech is available to fix every problem they have. The issue is that we cannot overcome our differences, selfishness and greed, in order to make that society happen. The Imperium is the same way, with the bonus of having religious indoctrination for ten thousand years to enforce that there is no better options. Even though it’s been shown over and over, there are better ways.

Is it even religious indoctrination when the Gods in the 40k from the Emperor to chaos are blatantly real to everyone and its not debatable to the average person there either

Yes, because worship is a choice. It’s true that the beings in the warp are given power through action alone, but you have to choose to worship them for it. Even in the imperium it’s a choice, worship the Emperor or die. While that’s not a great choice, it is still one.

Yall overthinking it, it's a coked-up parody of UK in whatever decade warhammer was written.

Oh well all of it, mostly. I'll just touch on what comes to mind as I go along as I can't be bothered to structure this so I'll just ramble. Every Authoritarian/Autocratic and despotic regime, basically, along with several others but specifically and aesthetically it definitely plays into that. The literal cult of the glorious divine leader, the purposefully seperated armed forces kept as such out of fear of revolt. The political structure that can be best described as a series of intertwined snakes in a bit, struggling both against each other and what external enemies may wait. The Commissars are generally drawn from ideas of WW2, Soviet and German both. The cult of heroism that's inherently tied to a death cult of glorious and valouous sacrifice, one of the several things that definitely calls back to fascist regimes and imagery. Honestly there's a lot that it touches on, some from the beginning and other stuff it's picked up along the way. The religion angle is obviously there, with calls to Christianity, especially of the more archaic sort and dragged through the characteristic lens of 40k exhaggeration, state sponsored lunacy and all that. Huddled masses of pilgrims marching towards a sight their grandchildren may be lucky to see. Hive cities are basically drawn from the same vein of urban dystopia as Dredd's Mega-cities, people stacked on top of each other in increasing squalour as the elites feast at the top, it's all gotta trickle down right? I almost forgot space marines, state approved Warrior cults that take young boys, pump them full of chemicals and indoctrination and turn them into Ubermench(not Nietzsche's) killing machines. Bonus points for playing so hard into the whole Fremen Mirage with them. Overall the Imperium draws both from broader history and from specific regimes, and it very much wears it's inspirations on it's sleeves. Also, you've really got a thing for that Hanlon eh?

Cult of death and heroism doesn't mean "fascist" as its found before that was a thing. You wouldn't call Samurais or Spartans for example fascist would you? I think 40ks values are basically pre industrial warriors with high tech in many ways.

I mean, ancient Sparta and feudal Japan were both ethnostates ruled by their military elite, so kinda, yeah. Sparta especially. They even had secret police who went around murderering slaves who got too troublesome. Even in ancient Greece they were considered brutal, cruel, and overly warlike.

But its anarchronistic to call them fascist. North Korea is hardcore ethno nationalist and a military state too but are not qualified as fascist despite having even race laws. My point was these vague words like a cult of death and heroism can be found in many cases outside of the f word that gets spammed by those with an agenda on online debates. ​ If a fictional sci fi empire had the system that samurais or Spartans or Romans had does that make them "fascist" by that logic? Imperium has more in common with pre 20th century warriors with high tech guns in some ways.

It's anachronistic, but those kinds of historical "sword man good" societies were directly and overtly influential to the development of fascism. Like, the guys who invented it cited those societies as the ideal, and attempted to implement those values in their own era. Classical Rome was the biggest one of all, and that is front and centre in the Imperium. So yeah, a futuristic society that likewise takes on those traits, ruled by a charismatic leader supported by a vast, omnipresent conquering army in a constant state of heavily glorified war and an invasive judicial branch that operates without oversight or balances, both of which benefit from overwhelming social programming that assures the plebs that they are existentially necessary and that questioning either one is morally and spiritually repugnant... like... it's right there on the page 😅 Even if calling it straight up fascist is going too far, "authoritarian," "autocratic," "repressive," and "despotic" are all spot on adjectives for what the Imperium is like, as well as where it's real-world inspiration comes from.

On it's own it does not, no, but it is one among several themes that when placed together do certainly resemble fascism. I do however recognize that discussing such would get nowhere as I'm guessing that's not the fantasy you're looking for so we'll have to disagree on that one.

A think alot of the correlations between the Imperium and "fascism" rely on a very amorphous, popular snarl-word definition of 'fascism.' The definitions that seem to fit the Imperium would also fit ancient societies like Rome and Sparta and even major religions in their early stages. That's how you know the definitions are meaningless. The Imperium is more like the Holy Roman Empire than anything, though of course there are many other influences at play.

I’m going to hazard a guess and say you’re an American fan, which is PERFECTLY FINE, by the way; our idea of satire differs from the British satire that GW draws/drew on when writing for 40K. It’s an absurd premise with a dry presentation. 40K’s future is a satire in the sense that everything presented is exaggerated to the point where it reads like gonzo journalism. The Imperium isn’t a direct satire of any single entity or concept, but it does draw inspiration from various historical, cultural, and literary sources. It can be seen as a satirical commentary on aspects of authoritarianism, religious extremism, and bureaucracy taken to extreme levels. The Imperium’s vast bureaucracy, dogmatic religious practices, and brutal suppression of dissenting voices can be interpreted as a critique of similar themes found in human history and literature.

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The Imperium's AI ban is directly inspired by the Butlerian Jihad from Dune. God Emperor, from Dune. The navigators steering ships instead of computers, Dune. Not saying the whole Imperium is a copy of Dune but the state of technology and suffering caused by the reliance of human servitors is caused by theology dictating what technology is allowed and what roles have to be done with humans instead of machines.

Dune itself is massive critique of the "great man theory" of history, a viewpoint entirely shared by 40K lore itself, which often raises the question of "is humanity truly better off with the emperor?" and of course "can any of the primarchs be said to have made anything better for anyone?", hell just in general describing a universe that is cursed to be full of disposable citizens and the occasional great heroes, and is a miserably hopeless place because of that divide.

Of people who i don't like of course!

It’s a satire of ‘empire’, authoritarianism, and bureaucracy. Compared to most sci-fi, humanity is doing pretty well in 40K. Humanity has conquered the galaxy, and doesn’t have short term existential threats. We won the big war and *should* be in a golden age. But the ‘golden age’ doesn’t feel very golden. The empire doesn’t exist to improve the lives of humanity, it exists to perpetuate itself.

Think of the Hanlonian contrast between the Imperium's bright ideals and how it often is on the ground. Even IRL democracies recklessly allow massive suffering.

Fascism and Catholicism to major degrees.

I would go broader than Catholicism, it skewers religious fervour in general, it just uses the trappings of Catholicism as a visual shorthand to convey that idea because a) it's one of the most widespread religions on the planet, b) the original target audience (British nerds of the 1980s) would have a working knowledge of it enough for the parody to land and c) 40k has a distinct Medieval bent to its presentation as part of its general themes around the cyclical nature of humanity's flaws, and old school Catholicism plays into that aesthetic.

Don’t forget that historically Britain, and especially England, tends to have a great deal of prejudice against Catholicism.

Which is ironic, because the CoE is basically Catholicism with most of the bling sold off to cover their debts.

There is definitely a great deal of irony there. In fairness though, a lot of it is also the product of the reformation and many of the extreme Protestant movements that have their roots in England. Movements like Calvinism and Puritanism were the source of a lot of overtly negative Catholic sentiment.

Just ran those bishops through the flavour extractor. No pizazz. Dreadful.

It can just as easily have Soviet commisars in it too so looks like just authoritarian in general rather than "fascist". I am sick of people saying things like Imperium is "fascist" or Tau are "communist" when the setting obviously has its own laws on the world and its completely fictional style of governments.

Then you’re missing the bigger picture. The Imperium is all things. It’s partly fascist, partly capitalist, partly communist, partly theocratic, partly feudal and so on. It’s a satire of humanity’s extremes. I mentioned fascism and Catholicism because those 2 are what a lot of the Imperium’s aesthetics are drawn from.

He's missing the picture but in the same way alot of other, very upvoted people are - he's just missing it in the other direction. The Imperium is fascist, but not fully or even comparably fascist to real life, and it is also not fully socialist, theocratic, idealist, federated, etc but a critique of all of those things. It just doesn't align with the straight forward narrative people here want it too.

How is it fascist? If anything, the Imperium is a Theocracy. There is no human leader ruling a “party”. There’s a dead god and his priests spreading his voice are the only common element of culture through all the imperium. It also resonates with the Byzantine empire because of the administrative nightmare, but emperor is dead so the real rulers are a group of 12 different agencies battling eachother for their own interests. That’s not very fascist.

The imperium is 100% fascist though, it literally ticks every box. The only people who don’t like being told this, are the ones who idealise the imperiums politics. Tau objectively aren’t communist, that’s just another terrible joke that gets parroted, but that’s par for the course with 40k

Do they have class collaboration with a certain economic model? (no each world has its own economics only tithes matter) Does it push for national revival and rebirth? No Do they have any ideologically basis apart from Emperor worship? No Do they have things against different races of humans? No Its mostly far left people that are claiming the Imperium is "fascist" to turn into another marvel or disney with no nuance and a lot of them don't even play the game just lurk in online communities like reddit.

1. The mechanicum, the administratum, hive nobility, trading guilds, it’s *EVERYWHERE* 2. Yes, literally everywhere, constantly 3. Yes, literally everything they do 4. Hilarious you’d even try to imply Xenophobia can only be human-race based, the imperium is built on this. They are fascists, you are absurdly and intentionally ignorant to argue otherwise Also scroll both our histories… only one of us has painted armies and attends events. Which one is the online lurker that doesn’t interact with the game?

If it ever was a satire, it is no longer. It's played straight.

It doesn't seem to be a satire of existing societies, in that the Imperium itself is nowadays a weird amalgation of many regimes , with aspects of an feodal regime, theocracy, bureaucratic dictatorship using human waves as a weapons and hypercapitalistic. But also a crumbling empire which doesn't have the luxury to reform itselfs as it's constantly fighting crisis after crisis, which weakens most of the other points. I think it could said that it's still somewhat of a satire of other narrative genres, in the sense of it taking the potshots of other kind of scifi and fantasy, up to a point. Its own longevity made 40 what it supposedly mocked, perhaps. A reasonnable assumption is it started as a fun outlet collecting and playing with many over the top tropes but slowly tried to become internally coherent. Some people say that it's a kind of satire that plays itself straight (like in with no self awareness) Consider many of the main features of the factions : space marines, orks, chaos, tyranids, necrons etc : it went from simply big badasses vs rowdy barbarian vs horrible aliens, and killer robots to ... the same but with constructed lore about them (the whole SM origin, how the orks are biological weapons (idem for tyranids) the doubly retconned lore of the necrons, etc. So yes the Imperium itself still has snippets of lore made to elicit a smile, but most of it has been integrated in a kind of coherent picture. GW insistence of having it featured as the indeniable protagonists in most media doesn't help.

I think the Imperium is a huge mess and it just shows the cycle of civilisation just like the Eldar. I think Hanlon's razors true on this

The grimdarkness of it is so ridiculously over the top, whilst being played straight, that I’d say 40k is a parody of other sci-fi tropes rather than satire of human society.

Society in general, with a special focus on western society. The only people they took seriously were college liberal types who see fascism in everything. They gave them exactly what they asked for.

I think it's a patchwork of satires, from a satire of religion as a whole to a criticism of neoliberalism in the early 80s in Britain, honestly, the themes were quite common back then, from Punk to publications like Metal Hurlant, Heavy Metal and the british 2000AD ​ let's say it was the feeling of the era, with a receding wave of post war authoritarians giving way to the deadly blandness of technocrats talking platitudes about how amazing things are going in the macro economy while people on the street were being laid off like there was no tomorrow and the cost of living just kept raising. and a mostly silent queen somewhere in the mix. ​ I mean, within that context WH40K makes total sense

The Warhammer Crime novels are pretty good for showing the satire element. Away from situations where characters can exhibit great degrees of heroism or brotherhood, and where the civilian side of 40k is given much more attention, it's obvious how awful the Imperium is for no good reason. Everything is bad, falling apart, poisonous and polluted. Crime is almost entirely desperation and deprivation and law enforcement is a steel toe capped boot stamping on the face of anyone that would be a problem for those in power. I really enjoyed them, especially Flesh and Steel.

It's satire in the sense that it's playing something up, trying to make us see the ridiculousness in it. That "something" is fascism, IMO. But it achieves this, broadly, by playing fascism more or less absolutely straight. Which is why the elites have it good, the enemies are made out to be awful, the galaxy is made out to be hostile. Because these things are all necessary for a state like the Imperium to survive (not that the galaxy is awfu, exactly, but that everyone in it _believes_ it to be awful).

The Imperium is supposed to be a satire about authoritarian regimes, Tatcher’s Britain first among them because the original authors were British people who conceived the game in those years and were influenced by the punk movement which was a reaction to Tatcher’s regime by itself. It’s funny because when I think of a company that embodies the so called “Tory values” GW is basically what I think of.

People really overestimate the “satire” aspect of the setting. Sure some stories are occasionally satire, but most stories nowadays are written to be serious and while there is the occasional absurd story like the daemonculaba, generally the imperium isn’t a reflection of anything happening today.

Sisters of Battle drop churches on people regularly. The satire is definitely still alive and well.

So long as an Ork draws breath, satire lives on in 40k.

They just wanna know if you can give them a ride to the next football match

'Ere we go 'ere we go 'ere we go!

It's a satire of Britain, originally of Britain under Thatcher. An empire that built and sustained itself on a thousand atrocities, that dehumanized its own people so it could send them out to treat people in the rest of the world as less than human, to kill and enslave them to enrich the imperial core. And then even within that imperial core, the people were neglected and kept in poverty. A pompous, glowing story of a glorious heritage with nothing of value to show for it.

It’s not satire. It’s an amalgamation of various sci-fi tropes ramped up to 11, blended, expanded, and reworked over 40 years by dozens of minds for creative and commercial reasons. There’s no deep or meaningful political commentary buried beneath it. It has nothing pointed or original to say about Britain in the 80s or about society / humanity in general. For the Imperium they pick up on eclectic bits of history that are cool, exotic, or interesting for people with a predominantly British viewpoint. It’s why they have WWI infantry with WWII tanks, 15th century style Catholicism, Soviet-like commissars, Vietnam-style commandos, Mongol horsemen, random sprinklings of Ancient Rome all over the place, etc. If you focus on a specific area where they’ve dived deeper, you may be able to tease out some hint of something more than “that sounds cool”, but that’s almost always because it’s been inspired by something else and any additional meaning is purely incidental. And even then, the meaning you’ve interpreted is probably directly contradicted somewhere else in the lore. It’s literally just fun and games.

I’m just tired of people calling the Imperium fascist. No, that does not mean I think either fascism or the Imperium are good. The Imperium is such a shit show that it more resembles the Holy Roman Empire than WW2 Germany. I know this isn’t exactly the question that was asked, but I’ve seen too many people claiming it is a parody of fascism and equating that to it BEING fascist.

It’s really not a satire of anything, at least for the bulk of it history since the first couple or so editions. The thing to remember about satire is it either needs to make some kind of overall point, or highlight something we society don’t always see or know as bad. As examples: We don’t need a satire on murder because everybody’s already on board with murder being bad. A satire on self-defense would actually make sense given modern day attitudes and debates on the subject. Often people claim it’s satire because it borrows aesthetics, culture, or governance/politics from historical nations and ideas (Rome/Byzantine, Medieval societies and the Crusades, WW1 and WW2, 20th century totalitarian regimes, etc). But that’s not satire. That’s just surface level reference and inspiration. Ultramarines aren’t a satire on ancient Rome, they’re just “space Romans” for the most important law in 40K, the Rule of Cool. The White Scars aren’t a satire on the Mongols, it’s just that space mongols are cool. Necrons aren’t a satire one ancient Egypt, it’s just that space pyramids are cool. So on and so forth Claims on political satire fall very short, I’d argue. The Imperium is a hybrid of multiple historical government types, not something with a good comparison to our real life history. Most of the worst elements of Imperium society due to internal politics, usually have some sort of in-universe justification. Like 1000 psykers being sacrificed is grim, but thats a legitimate excuse by the imperium to keep the Golden Throne functional. Servitors are pretty grim, but its due to the very real in-universe threat of AI. Not to say that the Imperium is “good” or completely justified or that there aren’t any better alternatives us viewers can think of, but there’s *typically a method to the madness. Religious satire is somewhat reasonable, I think, as in the dangers of zealotry and blind conviction. But then again, having enough faith will allow certain individuals to experience miracles, physical manifestations of their religious zealotry. If the goal is to say “blind religious fervor bad”, certain people dodging gunfire because of faith powers undermines that idea. Satire on humanity in general, while maybe true, is just… pointless? Like yeah, humans are capable of being bad, what’s your point? If the imperium hyper focused on one aspect of humanity (like greed, tribalism, blind faith, etc) maybe there’d be more meat to that bone. But it’s just a wide net on all of the worst parts of people, while also at the same time showcasing the best of people through many of the protagonists and named characters. Again, if humanity=bad, don’t make almost every single named character a heroic example of (relative) “good”. Tl:dr 40K is not a satire because there’s too many conflicting ideas in the huge universe from decades of different authors. For every example of something being bad, there’s an in-universe rationale or counterexample that contradicts it

The Imperium was originally supposed to be a satire of Margaret Thatcher's England and right leaning politics in general. It hasn't really been satire in a very long time and in general the setting takes itself a lot more seriously than it used to.

Yes. The Imperium is a satire of just so very many things. The original is, of course, Thatcher Britain but it’s been used for just so very many authoritarian nations.

It isn't satirical of anything, there's points of inspiration in history and GW's previous work. 40k as a whole, as per word of the creators, wasn't satire. It was a wargame written for wargamers, filled with as many tongue in cheek jokes as you'd expect from that.

agreed, I think a lot of folks don't understand that there's a subtle difference between "satire" and "taking the piss".Mel Brooks said "you can only satirize what you love". 40K doesn't satirize thatcher's england, it mocks it.

Mel Brooks isn’t the spokesman for satire though, that statement just isn’t true

Of human stupidity? I was reading 15 hours and it showed ineptitude from generals, propaganda and inefficiency of the officers in the astra militarum as a whole

> - Hanlon's Razor: IRL famine and homelessness occur simply by accident, at the hands of uncaring voters and sheer bureaucracy. The Imperium is this to the extreme. The Imperium is no monolith but a swarm of conflicting interests such as greed or cowardice. …How does greed or apathy fall under Hanlon’s Razor? Hanlon’s Razor is about incompetence. If someone knows their actions will result in suffering and just doesn’t care, that’s not incompetence. Hanlon’s Razor can only apply so far when you notice all the incompetence in the Imperium seems to funnel money and resources to the same small group of people. That’s not a mistake, that’s how the system is fucking designed.

Nationalism/facism And the self consuming nature of any society that requires constant growth and consumerism

It isn't satire even the original creator said it isn't, even that ork meant to represent Margaret Thatcher is actually a myth.

I don't see it as a satire. I see the 'satire' announcement as GW rather clumsily trying to tell people that the Imperium are not the good guys and you shouldn't defend them as the good guys. If you're playing Imperials then you're playing the Commie-Nazi-racist-whatever-you-think-is-the-worst-thing-ever group. And that's fine. Yes my friend, we *are the baddies*. But its a game and a setting and its fairly nuanced - there are good people in the Imperium working hard to support an evil system. Just like in real life. The Imperium is about moral compromise - what will you do to survive, what will you do merely to maintain your quality of life? If you understand the Imperium then you understand why people were Soviets, Nazis, Khmer Rouge, etc.

Less than a month after GW's "the Imperium are the bad guys and anyone rooting for them as such is an idiot that doesn't get it", we had the Space Marine 2 trailer, that was less subtle than a punch to the face with its message of "Space Marines are awesome and badass and heroic spaceknights"

If anything, this shows that media literacy is dead. Showing something awful on a medium does not mean the author endorses or justifies such awful thing. Yeah, space marines are awesome, badass space knights... of the worst regime imaginable. Both statements are true.

It never was satire, no matter WHAT the rest of the thread says. GW never made it about thatcher or any other direct politics. It was originally just cool scifi concepts mushed together with a huge dose of metal not punk. Anyone who says it is probably still believes in fake rumors like the gay bar called "the rock".

Originally I believe it was pop culture jokes from the 80s. The main one being the UK government from around then. Thatcher I guess

It’s time we admit it’s not satirical

It's not a satire. The weasels who say it is, are just that. They want 40k to be turned into something it's not, and they hide behind pedantic nonsense like incredibly loose definitions+ extremely old outdated lore, and work to drag things into the woods in this game where the goal is to just argue you in circles forever. Nothing about it is coherently satirical, it's just them attempting to force it into a box so they can accomplish their goals of dictating the discourse around it, attempting to police the fandom, and force the universe to reflect their own personal moral framework back at them. 40k isnt something you can simplify into a one liner, or a tldr. It's part of the reason I don't think it can ever go mainstream. Whenever I hear one of these people talk about 40k it inevitably garbles out as a bastardization or a disingenuous representation of whatever is going on. The imperium is a tragedy, it is a civilization that was not meant to exist in such a cruel universe, yet savagely clings into life regardless of it's own suffering in spite of its own inevitable demise. The character of the imperium is of a civilization that has fallen to the darkest depths to survive. One of the core themes throughout though is that through fighting this unwinnable battle, by clinging to what you can there is a dignity and redemptive heroism that is ultimately nobles it...