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I am a huge Warhammer 40k fan and I once met someone who was also a 40k fan. Dude said he played Imperium cause he was (and he said this with zero irony) a “human supremacist.” Genuinely though the Imperium were good guys. I feel like it’s needless to say, but I stopped talking to him.
If you ask someone if they are Nazis, and their answer is to get confused and ask about the premise of the question, there is about a 90% chance they are Nazis. Non-Nazis will say, “What? No, definitely not.”
I would also accept “did you just call me a fucking nazi?”
Tbf, if someone asked to join my discord server and asked if we’re Nazis I would also ask for further clarification. Not because there’s a chance we might be Nazis but because it’s an odd question.
I’d be wondering ehat did I do to make them think I might be on a Nazi Discord server lol. I get you.
This is the answer right here.
Always amazing when people don’t get satire.
My Dad actually thought Starship Troopers was pro-military.
How?
That movie has the subtlety of a brick to the head
So did The Boys and Helldiver’s 2, and yet a substantial population of conservatives took it literally. Now The Boys has to be so blatant, it’s not as funny anymore.
Some people are just idiots, just the way it is.
Lmao about the boys. I started watching that and definitely in the first season it wasn’t even subtle, by the 4th season, which apparently is when conservatives got mad (?), it was beating you into submission with the messaging. Like, subtlety was not even in the lexicon, more like bulldozing you.
I stopped watching after season 2 because I couldn’t stand the lack of subtlety - despite loving the original comic which is… not subtle at all.
Maybe if they paid more attention in English (and history) class, they wouldn’t miss subtext the size of a tractor trailer running into them. But conservatives and STEM bros almost always seem to be on the same page with that shit “No one needs English classes, it’s always just like ‘hur the curtains are blue’ bro.”
Science here - a lot of my fellow scientists like the humanities and definitely are not missing the point. At least in the pure sciences, we tend to encourage all education, regardless of field.
Just be aware that STEM encompasses way more people than you’re specifically referring to
I know there are plenty of STEM people who get along with the humanities-- just online you run into a lot of the “bro” types specifically who don’t get it.
They see the part that gives them a confirmation bias and willfully ignore the rest of the message.
As the saying goes: Spread the facts on the floor like a fan, and throw away the ones that make you feel bad.
Because the dad read the book, and hasn’t seen the movie.
The book definitely is pro-military.
Actually, it was the movie lol.
Half of America has the literacy of a 5-6th grader. They can understand the words, but not the "deep"er meaning of things. If it’s not explicitly spelled out by name, they won’t connect the dots.
If you’ll recall, their defense of the quid pro quo during the Ukraine impeachment was that he never used the phrase quid pro quo, so he could have done that.
They’re that stupid
I’d like to know more.
In all seriousness though, I thought it had some aspects of good, which was odd given that it’s satirical commentary on fascism. For instance, gender didn’t really matter and women were promoted, and while the shower scene was meant to show how fascism castrates the masses (or something like that, iirc), I thought it was a relatively wholesome scene, all things considered.
Potentially some leakage from Heinlein’s later works?
Sorta, not really.
The book is notable for its almost complete lack of sex on any level. The protagonist goes on a date with a woman at one point. That’s about it. A shower scene where everyone is naked but nobody is horny would fit right in.
Stranger in a Strange Land, OTOH, goes completely the other way. I was reading that book on vacation, and a friend picked it up and peeked at a page about halfway through and started reading it out loud. The last half of that book is basically pornography, so . . .
Oh, I know, I was more thinking that the film makers might have thought that they could add some stuff from his later works since they basically completely changed the movie script from his book.
A brick to the head…
Good idea.
Put it in a sock first.
I like to use bars of soap personally.
I prefer cans of soup for my family
I already filled the sock with quarters.
I like the noise when it hits.
So, I have read and been told this many times before. Some times I will rewatch the movie to try and see that narrative. And I’ll admit, I’m and idiot. But I can’t get past the idea of: Bugs are just icky, no matter the size. Remove at all costs.
Except they aren’t bugs in your home, they’re isolated to their own planet already.
Plus, consider the justification for the attack;
“the bugs attacked Earth first”
REALLY?
Consider the amount of maths and physics knowledge for us to get to our own moon. We have to calculate the trajectory of our own moon, the spin of the Earth, gravity, etc.
Now, in the movie, apparently the bugs bombed Earth.
FUCKING HOW. They exist outside our solar system. The level of maths for this is impossible without computers.
Not only have you got all the complications we had for a celestial body which was closest to us, but our sun has its own orbit within the milky way.
The narrative that the bugs attacked Earth first was a false flag. It was almost certainly just a meteor which couldn’t be stopped, which gave someone a reason to keep the perpetual motion machine of Fascism alive.
Without a common enemy, Fascism turns inwards.
The film is so on the nose, that in the end they come out with actual nazi uniforms and child soldiers and people still didn’t get it.
It’s very likely that the Earth military lobbed it toward earth as a pretext for war. The big planet was light years away (across the galaxy? I forget) and there was propaganda extolling the orbital defenses of Earth right before the hit. They had an orbital ring station around the Moon! No way they could miss a rock that big.
Lol alright, so earlier in the movie, Carmen is learning to fly the spaceship and has an accident where the run into the asteroid, which changes its trajectory and sends it to Earth, where it hits Buenos Aires. Carmen caused the whole thing 🤣
Oh shit, I missed that.
Okay, sure. But how is the bugs attacking first unlikely, when they are able to calculate that kind of interstellar trajectory to colonize all the other planets in their empire? They shoot spores into space and hit other planets to colonize.
Why could the bugs not have shot a colonizing spore at earth, or another human controlled planet, and that was perceived as an attack? The bugs empire rivaled the human empire after all.
Or am I missing something obvious here?
Our galaxy has a span of ~2 million light years.
Even if the bugs could send spores to neighboring planets, it would take billions of years for them to send spores to earth, as they aren’t capable of light-speed travel.
There is too many different versions of starship troopers to have a meaningful conversation about the logistics of how they travel. But there are transport bugs capable of interstellar travel. The first one was located on Pluto, so they were already in our system. Depending on which version of Starship Troopers you bring up Buenos Aires was either attacked directly by the bugs or had a meteor destroy it.
And the bugs have to have some sort of FTL travel since the humans followed the first transport bug back to the Arachnid homeworld. If that would take billions of years then the humans wouldn’t have been able to follow them back after they left Sol.
Starship Troopers is full of plot holes and inconsistencies that would, again, likely prevent us from having a meaningful conversation about the logistics of the Arachnids.
The most satire parts are not about fighting the bugs. The “only a dead … is a good …” is a classic fascist trope, but it’s the parts about disregard of human life and health and the propaganda in the movie that really mock fascism.
Disregard to human life and health isn’t limited to a fascist government though. As for the propaganda, I always took that at making fun of the military and their over the top commercials and other media.
I never compared it to the actual government.
I watched it way back when I was young and didn’t get any of the satire. I watched in my 20s and I asked myself:
You have technology to move through space and shit, they could just rain bombs from orbit or throw asteroids onto the planet. But no! The best way to fight is to use masses of underquipped soldiers that fight the horrors of bugs.
The war seems secondary, killing soldiers looks like the first priority in these movies.
I think the while point was to hunt for the theorized brain bug which was safe underground.
Yeah but you still could clear the planet and save many people
Let’s just say that the government does just rain bombs from orbit. They are humans, there are gonna be dudes that want to get their feet on the ground to start shooting things. Regardless of the type of government, humans are creatures of destruction. People are gonna want to shoot an alien bug for a multitude of reasons. Glory, honor, to prove themselves, fascist government or not, people will be lining up around the block to sign up for an interstellar opportunity to be a ‘badass’.
I will never understand how they made the entire movie and then had any possible thought people would understand their perspective. The problem is they got lost in the utopia part of the fascist utopia. Sure their culture looks weird from our perspective and has a fascist paint job., but is it really that bad of a society to live in as depicted? Everyone is depicted as generally agreeing with society and it’s norms, society seems to filter people into the roles that actually let them reach the best of their own abilities and that of the culture. No semblance or poverty or even elitism – except against bugs which are mindless as far as the audience knows. The closest we get to seeing that the bugs might be sentient is a psychic dude telling us that a prisoner of war is feeling fear while it is bound, defeated, and surrounded by its enemies.
The bugs colonized entire planets and has an empire that rivals the humans. That is far from being a mindless, non-sentient creature. If anything that screams they are more intelligent than humans because the bugs just shoot massive spores into space to accomplish all that.
The most blatant satire part of the movie (imo) is when the recruiter with the prosthetic arm says “the mobile infantry made me the man I am today” and scoots his chair back revealing both legs missing.
Also near the end when NPH shows up in what is almost a direct copy of an SS uniform. It’s a bit on the nose.
The brilliance of the movie is you follow the main characters who are 100% indoctrinated into this shit. There’s really no voice of reason. Nothing (aside from the whole nazi uniform thing) really screams fash if you’re not paying attention.
Silkworms are bugs, as are honeybees
You won’t find me hanging out with them, I’m afraid.
Black Mirror: Men Against Fire S03E05 will help you figure it out
The book is pro military, the movie is a very intentional satire.
The book is super pro military; arguably it’s a political science treatise arguing about the nature of the monopoly of violence and, given that concept, how society inevitably flows. He also throws a few digs in there at communism.
He then dedicates the rest of the book to figuring out the training and doctrinal approaches of literal space marines.
Well, the book is… The movie tho, yeah Paul Verhoeven has opinions about fascists. 😂
His commentary on that film is truly one of the better commentary tracks I’ve ever listened to.
The book was
I know the book was but this sort of people who think that starship troopers is profascism, are also a sort of people that will definitely not be well read.
I can interpret something as pro facist without being a facist. They are not mutually exclusive things
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It’s amazing the number of people who do.
It’s got Neil Patrick Harris in it how on Earth can it possibly be pro military?
I was briefly into 40k in the 00s, but once the 2010s started I slowly started getting an ick feeling from it but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
specifically, I was still cool with most of the lore, but the Imperium fanboys were getting to be unfun to be around. As I got older and wised up, I figured out around the same time many others did, that these same people just had a fascism fetish in general.
so with all that said.
Death to the false emperor Let the galaxy burn BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
As someone who likes the Space Marines, but hates Nazis and understands that Warhammer 40k is satire, I’m greatly saddened by the Fascism fan boys in the community.
The 80s 40k is satire. That ship sailed long, long ago tho.
Stillz got Orkz
I also played around the same time as you, but by total chance almost our entire group played xenos. I was craftworlds and harlequins, there was a necron player, a tau player, a tyranids player, and an orks player. We had one space marine player, I had a very small grey knights army, the necron guy had a small guard army, and a couple of chaos players. It was quite jarring to see how much GW and the hobby at large focussed on the Imperium
i never even got to the play stage. I got frustrated with the cost of materials, and having to learn how to paint, it was like trying to run 2 hobbies at once. ended up selling my stuff. so my interest was mostly video games. and still then, theres only a handful of 40K games I liked
tried it again in the later 2010s, same effect, i wont make the mistake a 3rd time.
If the setting and tabletop gameplay interest you but the craft and painting side plus the associated cost puts you off, it might be worth looking into Tabletop Simulator. Basically a virtual tabletop, and one of the many things you can play on it is WH40k - and now, of course, all the models come pre-“painted” and at no additional cost per model
I moved into wargaming with lego instead, some of the communities / games they just make their own lore too. I find it more entertaining than subscribing to the whims of a 5 billion dollar company.
What system uses Lego?
the two largest that come to mind are Brikwars and Mobile Frame Zero.
MFZ is a “large scale by small peices” mech game where people make various fighting machines that are probably no taller than one’s finger at most.
Brikwars on the other hand, if I could compare it to anything, is to compare it to One Page Rules. In spirit at least (it has its own rulebook). but its heavily based on people just making whatever armies and battlefields they want, and declaring them to be units that follow X Y Z stats etc.
https://mobileframezero.fandom.com/wiki/Mobile_Frame_Zero:_Rapid_Attack
Im not actually all that familiar with MFZ other than being aware it exists, IDK if they have online rules like brikwars
yeah played as a child, first lotr, then fantasy and then a little bit of 40k
for 40k i had a space marine army because they where in the starter box and i liked the bolters, but besides the generic space marines (which could be painted in any color sceme you liked) there where just the wolf chapter (grey wolfs or something?) and the blood angles back then, the other armies where all different races and in my local gw every faction was present.
but a year ago i dusted off my collection, got back into lotr (now mesbg), it was always my main game, but also took a look at the warhammer stuff on the gw website:
More then half the fucking 40k factions are now different flavors of space marines! What happened to coming up with own lore for your space marine chapter/color scheme?
There are now even space marines in fantasy! WTF?! (Stormcast Eternals)
GW became a publicly traded company and has to keep the stock price up. This means flogging whatever sells and pandering to whoever will pay, which means Space Marines all the time for everyone.
Prosper like Tau shall.
I played Imps and I still cannot wrap my head around people thinking the empire is the good guy. The appeal to me is that they are normal people pulled into an unfair and cruel world led by people who are entirely indifferent to their suffering. The best IG stories always involve a lot of infighting.
These days I don’t really tell people I am into it.
It sounds like most people who are really into superhero comics, then start to question the whole “let these elites fight for their brand of justice without the consent of anyone else” and then you wonder what your principles are.
Mine currently swing between “huh, maybe elites with a good code of conduct is a net win” and “huh, maybe anarchy is ideal form of state”.
They only people I know who play 40k are obsessed with Orks. Dunno what kind of person that makes them, but at least they aren’t nazis.
It might be the same phenomenon as bimbofication / puppygirl stuff, where one longs to be released from the responsibility of thinking
Also known as “Waaaaaaagh”
We got football, pints and coke for that, mate
Wait a minute
The lore around 40k Orks is hilarious
That makes them fun
If I were a 40k player I would a Necron simp.
It’s my understanding that orks are the most luck based faction, so they are either chill people or cheaters that fix dice rolls.
It’s quite simple really.
If they play the Death Korps of Krieg, who look like
they’re probably really nice people.The funny thing is that they are closer to soviet ideology then nazi. It’s a pitty because if you understand 40k they are the poster boys for how fucked up and insane the galaxy is.
> join good group
> look inside
> neo-nazis
I need that diagram.
Same
So as someone who isn’t too familiar with Warhammer, why are Nazis drawn to it? I know a few people that are alt-right, headed toward Neo-Nazi territory, that are all deeply into Warhammer. Is it like another Punisher situation?
I don’t know much about it either, but in general conservatives and the right at large have no media literacy. Everything is shallow and face value to them. They see pro military crushing stuff deemed “lesser” and they basically get off on it.
It’s the same reason for right wing star trek fans. They see space military and ignore all the themes and other things like the fact there is no capitalism. It’s always pushed left ideas, yet only now it’s “gone woke” because it’s pushing modern left ideas, not stiff they’ve learned to ignore.
Just look at any media made by conservatives for conservatives. It’s terrible and the kind of wish fulfillment youd expect from a child telling a story.
I’m not too knowledgable on all the lore, but iirc:
- Space Marines are engineered supersoldiers who see humans as puny livestock
- The leader is an emperor, also known as god-emperor, whose word is law
- Pretty much all of their technological advancements exist to kill/control
- Their creed is basically to eradicate all non-believers (heretics) and non-humans (unless the non-humans can benefit them)
- Slavery is pretty much the standard for punishing people who oppose the god-emperor (if not death)
- A lot of other things
Basically, the entire main faction is a hyper-fascist, fundamentalist, imperial, and ultra-violent organization. A lot of the other factions operate with a similar amount of cruelty and violence.
The point is that no faction in Warhammer can really be known as “the good guys.” I always perceived the 40k universe as a caricature of some of the worst aspects of mankind, but I play along as a cog in the machine, knowing it’s bad. Neo-nazis tend to perceive the Astartes/Space Marines as glorious heroes. It’s akin to alt-righters enjoy Starship Troopers and Rage Against the Machine, without recognizing the irony.
The humans in that scenario are a group of super “racist” anti-xeno, ultra religious fascists. So less a punisher situation (which is just moron right wingers not being familiar with the source material, where punisher actually kills those things blue line corrupt cops) and more of a moron right wingers not understanding satire and taking things too seriously, thinking humans are the good guys, despite being clearly terrible.
Neo-nazi nowadays just means “people I don’t like and, or disagree politically”, WH40K tends to push the envelope and it’s edgy and over the top too, also being very conservative in its setting to the point of extremism (entirely justified in-universe), Blue sky (formerly Twitter) progressives not knowing how to separate fiction from reality tend to think and subsequently label the fans as “nazis” thinking they spouse the same ideology as the Imperium of Man (the “good” human faction). Is there Neo-Nazis among the fandom? Sure, but it’s more of a “Moustache-man drank water too” kind of situation.
I remember when one of the few games workshop stores that existed opened by me years ago so I went in to take a look. Everyone was nice and the worker there gave me a free primed mini fig. But the most memorable thing was the unwavering stench of body odor in the air
GI Robot: “Oh boy…”
Are we going to kill Nazis?
Guess I’m lucky. My LGS plays a variety of factions and does little beyond tossing old meme quotes around all day.
So, uh, where’s the diagram?
but obviously a diagram doesn’t help the willingly blind ;-)
but curious to see the slides too.
If you know what the Imperium is about, it isn’t surprising for neo-nazis to play out their fantasies that way.
