#because in 40k the imperium is called into question by its very concept

[quasitsqueeries]

Space Marines are not your friend

... and the Imperium of Man are not the good guys.

These guys, with the iron crosses and the scary face-masks, surprisingly not very nice.

So, there’s this idea that came up a bit in the discussions around space marines and gender that sometimes these guys can be heroic, and, um, actually it’s how they’re perceived as heroic that’s kind of the point, but we’ll come back to that.

Milton Bradley and Games workshop teamed up to release Space Crusade when I was 6 or 7 and I pestered my parents until they bought it for me for Christmas. Later, when I was 11 I was stuck at home with glandular fever and my family picked up some White Dwarf magazines from the local library for me to read and I realised there was more going on with this world, and I thought space marines were pretty cool. I used to imagine being a space marine. That’s because I didn’t understand what they represented. As I got older, and started to learn more about the symbols that GW were drawing on, that idea became less and less appealing.

In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man is a Fascist state. To be very clear, I don’t think it’s a bad game or fascist piece of media for depicting this. I think it was the intention of the game’s original creators to critically depict a futuristic dystopia, and the Fascist setting is part of that.

I think it’s clear that the Imperium engenders several of the 14 characteristics of Fascism identified by Lawrence Britt pretty unambiguously. The first is powerful and continuing Nationalism, Nationalism is based on the idea that a state should be congruent with a particular people, or volk, and outsiders should be excluded. Nationalism in the 41st Milennium is different to the Nationalism we’re used to because the volk in question is all of humanity, and the excluded parties are what the Imperium calls Xenos; Eldar, Orks, Tau, etc. Then there’s disdain for the recognition of human rights, human rights don’t really exist as a concept in 40K. You might ask the servitor or arco-flagellant about their human rights, or the 10 year-old child who’s taken from their home to begin the process of becoming a space marine. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause is a big one. The vilifcation of heretics, mutants and xenos is kind of a central tenet of the Imperium’s culture. There’s supremacy of the military, uh, I’m not sure I need to explain how the Imperium glorifies the Imperial Guard, the Astartes, all the chambers miltant, the knightly houses, the titan legions, the imperial navy, etc. etc. Rampant sexism, I hope my previous post has demonstrated this, but I think it’s important to note that sexism isn’t just disliking a particular gender, it’s expressed in the reinforcement of traditional and hegemonic gender roles, as I think the comparison of the Astartes’ and Sororitas’ roles demonstrates. There’s an obsession with national security, the Imperium’s entire economy is geared towards expansionism and dealing with internal and external threats. The intertwining of religion and government is pretty clear, the head of state is seen as a god and his church is the beaurecracy that runs the Imperial state. Supression of labour power is kind of assumed, there are no unions in the Imperium. The disdain for intellectuals and the arts is demonstrated by statements like “an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded” (That’s from Dawn of War). And there’s an obsession with crime and punishment, embodied by the existence of the Inquisition, in particular the Ordo Hereticus, who are a police force with unlimited power and the capacity to dragoon military units into their service.

These points often meet with the objection that the internal and external threats *do* exist and that therefor the Imperium’s response to them is justified, which kind of misses the point that this is a piece of fiction, an exploration of ideas. The existence of Xenos and the Chaos Gods doesn’t make the Imperium’s response to those things any less Fascistic, and they definitely don’t justify the existence of Fascism in the real world.

But, Warhammer 40,000 is an aesthetic game and Fascists looooove aesthetics, so I think an examination of how the Imperium draws on the aesthetics of Fascism is a bit more interesting.

Here’s a Susan Sontag quote I copied from the Wikipedia page on Fascism: “[f]ascist aesthetics ... flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, 'virile' posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death."

I’m not going to provide a reference for that because this isn’t an essay and you’re not my lecturer and someone already did all the work (it’s in the wiki, linked above). I think I’m just going to take some extracts from that and juxtapose them with 40K art. Here goes:

a preoccupation with situations of ... extravagant effort

and the endurance of pain

they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude

a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people

the turning of people into things

an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force

The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers

a congealed, static, 'virile' posing

it glamorizes death

(I thought about adding a little speech bubble saying “even in death I still serve” but I think most people reading this recognise that that’s a walking, fighting coffin, I don’t think there’s a more explicit depiction of the glamourisation of death than the idea of a warrior so commited to war they they allow their corpse to be interred in a fighting machine so they can continue to kill after they’ve died.)

I’m particularly interested in how space marines fill the role of the ‘hero’. Nazis loved art that showed idealised male figures, preferably from pagan myths. Here’s a sculpture of Prometheus that was exhibited at their “Great German Art Exhibition”:

They loved heroic figures, muscular and mythic men of action. They saw in Nietszche’s ubermensch an individual who had the strength and will to do what he wanted, and take what he wanted, without concern for the morality of the ‘sheep’. It goes without saying that these figures were meant to be of Aryan descent and in the Nazi state the SS were meant to be the modern expression of this. Recruits to the SS had to ‘prove’ their Aryan ancestry and Himmler had plans to institute requirements for appearance and height. I think it’s clear how they were meant to be a fighting force who’s superiority came from their supposed genetic superiority and connection to an idealised Aryan heroism.

And that’s where space marines come in. Astartes are the way they are because of their connection, through gene-seed, to the primarchs (The Emperor’s largest sons), heroic and promethean figures from the dawn of the Imperium who made war on a grand scale and spread the Emperor’s light to the far reaches of the galaxy. Their genetics make them into literal superhumans, able to perform heroic feats that would be impossible for a regular person. This isn’t a good thing, it’s an expression of Fascist ideology. Warhammer 40K, being satire, recognises this, and so it’s constantly made clear that these people are incapable of anything but war. Also the marinification process makes them so muscular they resemble sides of beef more than actual people, they’ve become a grotesque mockery of the ideal of the Hero.

Also there are skulls and eagles on, like, everything, and that’s normally a sign that Fascists are about. There’s also a particular fascination Fascists have with the imagery of the Roman Empire, the word Fascism comes from fasces, a bunch of rods bound together with an axe that was the symbol of Roman dicators. Ultramarines in particular use a lot of Roman inspired armour elements.

The headpiece, wreath at the midriff, and leather straps hanging between the legs are all screaming Rome at me, and I don’t think these guys are history buffs (They’re Fascists).

Anyway, there we go, I think I’ve established that the original 40K writers intended for the Imperium to be a Fascist state. I’m enjoying this, maybe next I’ll write something about the Eldar and Slaanesh and ideas aboout degeneracy that were floating around at the turn of the 19th Century.

UPDATE: I've developed my thoughts on this further here.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #imperium #space marines #adeptus astartes #imperial guard

[paraclete0407]

Feel like Du Fu dreaming of the distant capital Chang’an; ‘liang-zi’ in rain or so.  Money burns, houses burn - diamonds burn.  ‘Do not harm the wine and oil.’  People don’t even think about An Lushan Civil War and IDK if I read fake history but f-cking Hail Satan / Moloch (’Eat, Lord!’ - Salammbo) from what I read; this world; these men; ‘A Dish of Peaches in Russia.’  Can’t wait to get tortured by K-mafia in all the pornographic violation-vectors pleasures of which I investigated over the years dept. of Purgatory(?).  Sing infernal muse of orgasm-hunting and desperately personal inward contractionist odysseys; I rem. thinking ‘220K Belgian breast-implants,’ it looked like my piano-teacher’s house; Knausgaard is like ‘Time for Everything.’  I wrote ‘Success Kid Soup’ where SAmchon / Sammo is writing his Salterian gratitude-journals teaching Hyomin abt. James Salter, then, ‘final eloquence(?) of Jane Austen scholarship.  

I rem. once sleeping at Lake Park in car thinking PCH slept in cars to keep from being degen. but ppl thought I was battering old men at Children’s Grand Park or smashing up one of my favorite girls with a flashlight(!?) - it’s not even true.  

‘Do you know The Death of Ivan Ilyich,’  midnight gardens, but at this time in my life I felt I had no real program.  My only ‘take’ was if you want to talk about DoII let’s sincerely talk about it but then IDK what women ‘intend.’  Plasma-cannons, alien antennae; a while back I thought about ‘Holdings’ only there appears to be a baptism of fire in some sense or other.  I rem. psychoticization of Barry Hannah, GnR prophecies, is he burying or disinterring the AK-74.  The song from the untranslatable SF global HumDev drama where they married IRL then divorced, some Frenchman,... sexually awaken this! - that song is like... I went on Wikipedia reading about kamikaze, ‘liberty,’ bomb-interception w/ Type-0, fact that some Japanese really weren’t lip-lick daddy-daughter fake paternal colonialists (i believe) b/c a few JP probably detected Perry’s lip-lick, ShiShi, knock knock wakizahi Heaven’s Judgment to mental Cho Kuks(?) - Koreans understand Iwo Jima Lt. Gen b/c these are sacred bloodlines 

I rem. ‘when Black girls love them some white boys’ - great!  I just regret ever saying anything like TW-1 French tips it’s retarded, now abideth the face, the brows, the destiny of Woman, 

XJP probably knows all this; extend question, how to show / teach world..

‘I appreciated’... ‘Expectation’... Smoothie Kng FroYo Bella...

IDK why I feel like saying all this now; I bought a watch-head for like 50 ollars that later got humidified, the watch-repairman’s grip was excellent, but these peple are just not my constituents because at bottom they’re AmKor AAPI Twitter ‘PS always hated you’ reactionary tribalists so rape me my friend!  Leave me alone!  I liked ‘Beautiful Goodbye’ but as for the ‘Taeyeon suicide countdown types’ if you really wanted ‘My way your way anything goes tonight’ stimulation can I rip out your fingernails upside down hang baseball bat - it cost less than Six Flags and make more ‘individual special’ story.  It’s not wrong to torture, ‘better to marry than to burn’ and better to hydroelectrocute, waterboard, shortchain, airplane, than spew infernal lies.  Confucius ‘If you love your son beat him’ - I wanna beat myself, IDK if I was right or wrong but smashed ‘Ryan’ with softcover workbook 2011, different time, also turned out he was set up / falsely accused by James so I became one of those ‘ppl that made ppl hate all teachers / system / Caucasians’ - legal, other ppl were toe-kicking to back of knee and stuff.  My colleague asked the English for ‘corporal punishment’ I said ‘physical punishment’ b/c ‘corporal’ is mil. rank and ‘corporeal’ is Catholic oceanic concept.  Other ppl at that hagwon were like ‘cartoons, puns, I am “woke” and exprienced instructor, circumspect, every so often hurl lethal objects at children’ - later he said stuff like ‘pimping Incheon,’ real estate license, Canada.  ‘Korea’s got some growing up to do, libertarianism, a million year patrimony of Canadian nationhood.’  Pornhub, Hushmail, greed-immigration-laws.  I said ‘You’re the butler from Kazuo Ishiguro’ but why say anything these ppl are nail-paring... David’s harlotry, how to cancel you, fake dream, no depth of instructional design or whole school architecture, not even dream, not even waiting... Sad!  I remember Jordan Peterson calling Tinkerbell ‘the porn fairy’ I like Soshi’s ‘Tinkerbell’ from the press-motif and its echo of Emerson’s notion of the ‘scholar of one candle’ I’m not pro-pornography I just have Catholicistic aesthetics

Now I remember ‘David’ who wanted a card and considered the ‘Fnal Word’ summative statement possibilities of a mechanical pencil.  But in the future everyone already understands everything.  I remember later filing away what I had taken to be perfunctory observations based on students’ testimony such as ES = parents; MS =friends HS = [TD Jakes sermon + purposes + future spouse etc.]... My friend said sth, I get super-sick of sharing anything with anyone + fret that all my ‘good deeds’ are being rewarded in this world.  Sica’s ‘Gravity’ cover.  I just no longer understand Korean; Brooks Brothers as white supremacist(?).  LJH is like ‘walking straight up to Heaven.’  Condescending-Canada-1 on my 26th birthday was talking about ‘meting you again’ story-ideas; I had a ‘hen could fly’-esque story idea about deer or ‘hart’ and ducks but in retrospect symbolic thinking, who cares.  ‘that has expelled us and our images (Stevens’...

*

Picture of A.S. Lizzie particolor sweater Cheonggyeoncheon; New Order ‘Regret,’ Thatcher era, all these English ‘God wot Warhammer 40K’ retreat in to expressive Imperium that seems condition of fiction but is actually ‘potential prophecy’ or future certainty-world.  It was ‘Regret,’ Singapore, but the 40K people were satisfied w/ their lives and Thatcher that I know wasn’t executing them or corralling in to work-camps just saying [make do with less?]...

*

I wanted to Western fencing and ended up w/ saber/re, in the late 1990s WJC dispatched cops with MP-5′s in order to extradite or return Cuban refugee-boy to his communist homeland; coach is saying ‘Nazi.’  Did Castro threaten terror or was it just child-sacrifice.  Later my HS achieved prominence in female saber but honestly, games, toys, fake progress, fake hope, IDC don’t touch me.  I later took interest in epee, San-E ‘Feminist,’ my dad said a smart comment about ‘dissonance’ but it is still ‘representations.’  It’s Madonna ‘Holiday.’  

‘Seulgi didn’t touch flowers b/c harm them’ - Pearl Buck ‘Living Reed.’ ~ ‘harm not the Earth.’ Gym avoid, just run or work or sth.  Insane veterinarian bodybuilder ‘meat digestion enzyme - eat many animals as possible.’  ‘Isolation exercise’ - ev1 wants to believe this brililant then they spent like 3000000 dollars on gov’t money on SF training then they are ‘vastus medialis.’  I like ‘Say something nice about Seulgi’ - it’s like ES.  

Feel like what should I confess, my very fav. student, ‘the one who could be anything, whose parents maybe gave her ‘open class.’  What is someone like that to do?  

I used to drive down Capitol seeing Black people thinking ‘God’s chosen’ or so but didn’t feel compelled to add or contribute anything to them as they had a special destiny.  ‘Where do I take this love?’  Everyone wants to adopt everyone, I believe it monstrous, oppose, veto.  ‘Teach me the way’ - it’s grooming, pederasty.  I rem. ‘This Is Love’ and two words that mean ‘already.’  My old poem about S’hai-1 and ‘South of the Border West of the Sun.’  Even more now channeling ‘Evr’y Hour,’ seeing Genghis Khan books at BN,’ Beolsseo arasseo.’  I admire out-of-time rubato things, Spengler characterizing the Greco-Roman culture-soul as ‘andante.’  HUFS-1 is ‘Andante Spianato,’ ‘planing.’  I knew her hometown but she’s not my girl so.  I know no other piece with a ‘spianato’ direction.  No one plays this piece to my satisfaction it’s more Chopin monster-magic.  I liked ‘Forgefuness’ by Hart Crane in a way but weird dreams with Crane like a gelatinous turkey b/c hat is so great abt being homosexual and brilliant(?).  Power without responsibility, conceit.  There were these word-jump-around-page poems from Strand books that I wrote with great joy-generation in HS but after that decided it was madness, mental illness.  Square poem, piano reduction of insanity-pop-music, cancel manic depression.  Later tried sonnet, tangci, sijo.  I like ‘sobriety, staidness.’  ‘Letters to Auratus’ more of my writing tutoring / literary agency abt. what are you trying to convey with ASLS, surrogacy, Heideggerian being-towards-death, dying life.  I get it - for a time I always said ‘I see what you’re saying.’  Purity, remembrance.  But IDK if Auratus knows or doesn’t know b/c ‘Can’t I lie?’  Maybe it is other people’s pathos.  Surrogacy, chaebol, AI knows I like HK3 a lot but in retrospect... I had the phrase ‘autumn settlings.’  Old man waiting for his son, mitigation, train to Cheonan with this grief-blind woman or sth, are you looking at me?  My nose is not Jung Woosung’s nose.  I forgot the zeitgeists from past dramas; I ban them anyway.  ‘The Charm of Department Stores.’

‘Roads Not Taken’ or so is a book about the Vietnam War; who wrote the last word on the Vietnam War?  I felt it strange that they make monthly magazines about the past; this transport with American soldiers very washed.  Vietnam has huge butterflies.  ‘Soldier’s Wives’ ~ ‘This is her taste,’ Chris Kyle’s wife but it’s still like LBSDBS.  I remember reading the Mutual Assured Destruction guy’s theory f ‘Faustian peoples’ or so (not Spengler’s idea of all the West as Faustian-outward-historiographical+ ut sth different), my fav. K-film has always been AMFL; I started remembering ‘Insa,’ feeling autumn golden leaves thrown up by the passing SUV fall through my body.  These words mean many things and in past I took words in mouth I should keep to myself and wish to hear rather than say or wish to mull rather than flaunt... (once Grahame Greene squalor-lord met the Pope who said ‘But I’m already Catholic’ - dept. of apologetics v. present prophecy, discernment, reality-betterment).  I want to tell my most demonic sex-trafficking hallucinations like hole-in-heart zombies racism pineapple pizza, paint the apartment - this was ‘nesting.’  ‘Reflections.’  Auratus was talking of the F-22 which I wanted to tell him that’s not the fastest plane by a longshot, today too I think evth is Satan electric fields and drones thrust-vectoring is a huge toy but IDK what IDK.  I wished to send all F-22′s to Kor, I used to nickname this girl XB-70; I thought I was once the little escort just there to film the test or sth.  KJAD rapidly improved, the shrimp whale dolphin thing vanished. Creatures.  There were scramjets and that reverse dive-bombing where you climb, thrust-weight ratio, ‘arabesque.’  I used to deliberately mar my English and say ‘I think it’s good idea’ and ‘good form.’  

F-22, I feel like USA trashed their whole continent and now can’t even give good motor-vehicle?  

 Memories of KJY, ‘Black is beautiful?’  Wilberforce.  ‘Confucianism is all about the phallus(?!).’  YOU help them dept. of Maoist time-bomb.  I’ll g to Somalia, Eritrea, one day.  I know these kids have special promise; I too would take measures to make them cute and loveable.  ‘Social form.’  I love Paul Washer - ‘porn = unloving heart’ - kneel before father... but they need good police; I don’t own firearms; I don’t like to exaggerate.  Like in 2012 Doomsday in the end Africa becomes the center o human civilization... I read King Leopold’s Ghost; there was a Georgian Southerner at Beauty School so I got mad at started talking about Gen. Sherman burning down his home turf.  Believe in severity; I wanted to help them but they’re so sure they know sth but they’ve been exploding-heart-ing me since like MS; it’s part of why I just wanted to live in Redlands and write in the office ‘cause I know what they think; my name is like a Confederate general, IDK my own past, supposedly teetotaling Union officer who burned his uniform.  Tory anti-belief-niks... Let’s talk about Myeongnyang, sacrifice, simplicity, the other thing if adult job-opportunities I guess b/c I know all about being educated but underemployed but I’m not Biden; what job can I create?  Just tell them I’ve lived less than I say I’ve lived; ‘creative writing.’  I never made it to Busan, what’s in Busan?  Shanghai never made it.  Let’s talk about ‘10,000 Sorrows,’ abandonment, slavery, honor-killing, church abuses.  Jazz is neither here nor there that I can tell; body-image.  Who’s the most important person in the world today?  What’s God’s will or me?  Just delete my family name?  Of course I like ‘Deep River’ - ‘ugly and destructive’ slavery.  ‘My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.’  They think I‘m the mark / easy money / sue for punitive damages but I think they’re the marks, ‘maybe so.’  Korea’s not inlating min.-wage; wanna talk about Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin.  I know a bit about Baldwinian sin-eating like ‘I tell you all my dirty secrets then pretend I didn’t’ - it’s called US mental healthcare system.  I like that poem about the pimp but this poet also shout his mouth off talkig about firing in to crowds of protesters.  ‘Fire Next Time.’  With Covid it could well be; I was telling ex-friend about how there would just be tanks on the street again but I have come to believe I was reading the future by past.  I used to bodybuild in college and eat fish oil every 2 hours so this girl who loves Taeyang saw my fish oils and started crying since she thought they were steroids; ultra-beautiful,Bo probably / hopefully flourishing, modified spelling of the name that means ‘revelation of God.’  But Snoop?  Cardi?  Does their ethos or way of war ever ever ever prevail?  Bonhoeffer learned from the Black church; I loved his poem about feeling strangled in prison.  I wanna raze Milwaukee and build them reasonable apartments with study-desks and stuff; their neighborhoods have a soothing energy.  Someone a deacde back was eating with African-African national leaders who confided, ‘Our whole continent doesn’t have enough wisdom.’  Koreans were buying up farmland in Africa.  I was sad b/c I felt I had a chance; I checked some vaccine-info. now it’s just like in Uieongbu DJJ is some kind of bio-terrorist.  I was fond of DC Sua’s ‘Copycat’ although I backed from all that because it’s infinitely misinterpretable; I thought about ‘Love Only Me,’ now I am like ‘Love Someone Else.’  I felt as if this ought to be a lenten penitent ‘reduced circumstances’ era in remembrance of numerous mistakes, going humbly.  I liked ‘Don’t Waste Your Life Sentence,’ spring nights.  I sometimes feel as if the current POTUS will say all the right things but the drug-laws in past were merciless and what was the point?  But that’s Rome and I’ve no portfolio.  ‘Henry Fish’ my YAL from 2012 - endless sorries- with his 30-dollar military jackets, taped glasses.  ‘Glad and proud to call Obama my president.’  I’ve never voted and don’t intend to except in ‘12 I voted for Obama partly because the psychiatrist and I had a good exchange; now feel that leaving the town hall that ‘pride’ was literal pride, evil, like all these women say, ‘Why would you do that?’  ‘ObaMao.’  I PRC they called him ‘heiren.’  Syria red line ciaccona, Obergefell, strat-patience.  End Iraq then suddenly super-massive investment in modernization of nuclear forces, telling EU to pay more for defense - there’s just not gonna be Heaven on Earth & I am never gonna make it to Venus and I really walk round thinking about camping in ex-NK and I do’t mean like the drama  But he’s a great man too.  ‘Cocaine and cohabitation’ - maybe he really was pace Dreamcatcher beginning of the end, from Hawai’i, ‘From Here to Eternity,’ end of AmCent.  His ‘Amazing Grace.’  I said something really obtuse about Bloomberg, Pete Mayor, Biden; a while ago skimmed ‘Lost Victories’ about the Nazi general who drove tanks through forests and stuff, when is going to fall the sword?  I liked ‘Beethoven was Black,’ Waldstein-III, and 111 is like ‘massive slave rebellion followed by less-tn-expected final affirmation. IZ*ONE ‘Human Love’ (in respect-mode I call it Ahn Yujin and Jo Yuri ‘Human Love’ b/c they were already breaking up the GG) - I thought it was a great moment; a signature.’  Then the ILY3K, marriage bad, uneducated, omni-prostitution unrestricted war CCP-revanchism exceedingly woke but for all I know I’m just a fake cultural Christian. 

[quasitsqueeries]

Does Warhammer 40,000 need some good guys?

Firstly, 40K does have good guys, they’re called Exodite Eldar and they ride around their planets on dinosaurs they call dragons and they live an agrarian and nomadic existence, but also they’re not a playable faction because they don’t really fight anyone so on to the more relevant stuff.

Look, I’m upset about the idea too. There’s a creative purity to the idea of a setting where everyone is severely morally flawed. Here’s the thing though, 40K’s fans aren’t the community of weird nerdy punks they were in the eighties. For a long time, Games Workshop have recognised that kids are a huge market for their games, so the question is more, does Warhammer 40,00 need a faction for kids to identify with who aren’t Fascist power fantasy?

If you walk into a Games Workshop store, this is the first thing you’re likely to see:

These are the power fantasies you’re encouraged to identify with. I think we all know how appealing this stuff can be to twelve year old boys, and, sure, that’s nothing new. When I was growing up all the kids were into GI Joe and Transformers, and the generation after me were very excited about the Power Rangers and there is absolutely a discussion to be had about selling kids media that tells them violence is a good way to solve problems. In many of those cases though, the message is that the violence is in defence of some quality like freedom, justice, the earth, etc. Space Marines are Facists, they’re involved in a constant expansionist war in service of an Imperium that’s theocratic, xenophobic, and doesn’t seem to have any concept of human rights.

Sure Bernard, let’s not talk down to children, but also, let’s recognise that they don’t always have the context to be critical of the media that’s being presented to them, particularly if that media is one-sided in its narrative. This is why I think we need to be concerned about how military simulators like Counterstrike can act as recruiting tools. In the case of 40K, it’s been a long time since the game and the media around it have made it explicit that the Imperium is a Fascist state. All that’s really presented is the power fantasy associated with the ‘human’ space marines, and the values that come along with it, so I don’t think it’s really surprising that we’ve ended up here:

Trump doesn’t quite share the values of the Imperium of Man, he’s more isolationist than expansionist, and he’s more kleptocratic, while the Imperium is more Theocratic, however there are definitely similarities in how his followers see him, and how the Emperor is presented in 40K. They’re both seen as the heroic ideal of a charismatic strong-man, able to take a stand against ‘alien’ forces arrayed outside the state, and ‘degenerate’ forces inside, through a focus on militarism and national security. Again, the 14 characteristics of Fascism include a number of points where the politics of Donald Trump and the Imperium of Man intersect. I’m absolutely not saying that all kids who play 40K grow up to support Fascism, however it is likely that some people who were presented with the ideology of the Imperium as teenagers and weren’t equipped to critique it would have grown up to see something they could identify with in Trump’s politics.

It’s funny because if Trump did exist in 40K he’d be an ork, but the biggest ork already shares a name with Margaret Thatcher, and of course contemporary GW are too cowardly to name a space ork after Donald Trump.

Back to the point though. I think it’s really easy for kids to identify with Space Marines partly because they look really cool and heroic, but also in large part because they’re part of the human faction. We’re used to looking at humans as the good guys in Sci-Fi and Fantasy because it’s easy for them to act as audience inserts. There’s a common refrain in 40K spaces that ‘there are no good guys’ and I think this comes from an assumption that if humans aren’t the good guys then nobody else can be. The Eldar and Tau are definitely *less* messed up than the Imperium and I think what’s often overlooked is that their actions against humans are a response to Imperial expansionism. It seems like the Tau were originally intended as a foil to the Imperium; their value of the greater good was presented as a genuine positive, the Fire Warrior video game showed the Imperium as Fascistic and put you in the role of a Tau fighting their expansionism. These days, however, GW seem more focused on redeeming Space Marines (lol), and they’ve introduced all sorts of stuff about the Tau maintaining power through mind control (because of course nobody in their right mind would submit to Space Socialism). In any case, I think kids are less likely to associate with the Tau because they’re not human. I guess GW thought the anime aesthetics would appeal to a younger audience because kids like cartooons, right?

This is where I remembered there was an attempt a few years ago to put together some Warhammer media for kids. There’s still a website and a Youtube Channel but it doesn’t look like it went very far. Watching the Adeptus Mechanicus child inventing things with his cute Jokaero friend gave me whiplash. I’m confused that they’d make all the characters Imperials, but maybe they were giving it a bit before they showed an Eldar child setting out on their journey to become a ranger or a young Tau and their Kroot friend. Or maybe GW think only human characters are accessible to kids.

Anyway, if GW are going to be selling to a young audience (and I don’t think that toothpaste’s going back in the tube), then I think that at least for that audience they need to shift 40K’s focus a bit, it needs an outside perspective on the Imperium. One of the reasons the Imperium is so normalised is because they are the perspective faction. Most of the books, most of the video games and all of the TTRPGs are from the Imperium’s perspective. Players can’t see the Fascism for the Fascists. My suggestion would be to have the perspective characters be humans who aren’t Imperials, and who are engaged in resistance against the Imperium.

Gue’vesa by ComradeMatt on DeviantArt

They’re called Gue’vesa. Some time in the 2000s someone decided to release rules for using human auxillaries in Tau armies. It makes sense, the Tau Empire is unique in 40K in being multi-ethnic, and the Tau would much rather incorporate ex-Imperial worlds into their Empire than fight them. Having the Gue’vesa as perspective characters would work because it would put the Fascism of the Imperium into perspective. Gue’vesa characters would be aware of the tyranny that caused their planets to secede from the Imperium, as well as the threat of being reconquered, they know they’re all considered excommunicate traitoris. The Tau Empire is multi-ethnic, which is a foil to the Imperium’s xenophobia, Gue’vesa characters would likely work side-by-side with Tau, Kroot and others. The Gue’vesa can’t be Nationalistic because they’re part of a wider Empire. The wiki page describes these worlds as having freedom of religion. Also, the joke is that the Tau are Space Communists. If that’s the case then perhaps the Gue’vesa have actual trade unions. Imagine! Trade unions in the 41st Millenium! So yeah, Gue’vesa make good perspective characters because they’re humans, but they’re also involved in a Star Trek like alliance of worlds that’s a more optimistic view of the future and doesn’t bring the Imperium’s Fascist undertones.

There are some things I’d want to change about how these units are depicted though. The rules that were released just take an Imperial Guard unit and put it in a Tau army, with some Tau weapons. What this fails to recognise is that the way Imperial Guard squads work is a function of the Imperium. The Imperium just throws bodies at their problems, with little regards for human life. The Tau Empire is much more efficient, partly because they’re younger, but also because they’re smaller and can’t treat their troops with the same disregard the Imperium does. It’s likely that human troops serving the Tau Empire would be much better trained than their Imperial counterparts. Gue’vesa troops would likely be elite and highly specialised. They would have the advantage of Tau technology, but also, given Tau would have access to Imperial technology through the Gue’vesa, but without the superstiton of the Adeptus Mechanicus, there’s a possibility that Earth Caste scientists could reverse engineer Imperial technology and make improved versions of it available to Gue’vesa troops. With those kinds of advantages it makes sense for the Gue’vesa to serve not as auxilliary units but as an army in their own right.

So here’s what I’m picturing. The Gue’vesa army is made up of very small, highly trained and specialised, well equipped units. Commanders are accompanied by various T’au and human advisors. Units similar to Catachan veterans could be accompanied by Kroot trackers, while using drones and stealth battlesuit technology to keep themselves safe. They could even field something similar to a Space Marine in a melee role using battle-suit armour and power weapons. T’au likely have the technology to provide Gue’vesa with jetbikes or similar. This would all be accompanied by the standard battle suits and hover tanks.

Obviously all these units are completely mixed-gender. No more squads of dudes with a single femme head option.

(Here’s the bit where I might really upset the GrimnDark fans, but the absence of the Imperium from human worlds is likely to result in a lot of unsanctioned psykers, and there’s a possibility that Exodite Eldar seers might notice this, and grudgingly offer to train these psykers in the path of the seer so they’re equipped to resist the warp’s influence, because having daemons crawl out of their heads is a problem for everyone. So maybe they can field units of actually stable psykers)

Guard verteran units can look really cool, which is a shame because they’re likely to get annihilated just like other guard units. With a bit of extra stealth and drone technology though, (and perhaps pulse rifles) they could fill a role similar to Eldar Rangers. It’s the armoured, power weapon wielding melee units you want to make the cut-outs for the store though. They’d look badass like a Space Marine, but their fervour is about freedom from Imperialist oppression and standing side-by-side with their non-human allies. It’s still a violent power fantasy, and that’s not great, but it’s one with better values behind it and it at least makes a space for a conversation about the Imperium’s Fascism.

Anyway, that’s what I’d do if I were Games Workshop and wanted to keep selling toys to kids, but also wanted to address the shift towards Fascism in some fans. Obviously this is a long-term project but it doesn’t seem like 40K’s going away any time soon.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #tau #Imperial Guard #eldar #Imperium