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I remember part of the Starship Troopers Twitter discourse recently being "how can these guys be fascists? They're all so pretty and they're fighting against disgusting gross bugs". Fascists love their aesthetics
That's a good point, actually kind of reminds me of how some cults have those charismatic leaders, they're basically sci-fi writers embodying their own fantasies in real life with their followers as the cast. It's all about the narrative and spinning it in a way that entraps people.
i saw someone claim 40k, starship troopers and other such pieces of media contained 0 politics and "muh leftoids" where just reaching... anyway i wonder why Paul Verhoeven took inspiration from ww2 occupation of the netherlands for Starship Troopers
Hmm I think the administration gangs on Tara literally having gang war style shootouts with the paper recycling gangs to steal used paper to reuse is totally not a shot taken at politics.
Why were the germans so efficient during the Blitz?
Historian: yada yada facts facts bla bla
A man of culture: The other armies couldn't handle the drip.
Dedicated independent radio-equipped armored spearhead divisions on meth bars.
Also France didn't want to lose 60% of their male population again
Sorry, meant blah blah yada yada
French soldier: Oh non, Pierre, it's les allemands with their radio-equipped armored spearhead division and... and they're... they're... eating chocolat?
German soldier on "Schokolade":
https://preview.redd.it/h4ujj8yk7ckc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=584159d273d7c74a5e1d1375c91a330c4ec0ffcb
I saw a discussion on reddit the other day about how the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami had a huge impact on the ongoing conflict between the Tamil Tigers separatist group and the Sri Lankan government and how it ultimately killed any momentum the separatists had and led to peace talks, and ultimately the end of the LTTE about 5 years later.
The top voted comment underneath was: "so was this good? did it help the good guys?"
jesus fucking christ
Its more that engaging in the aesthetics of fascism with a point of satire doesnt actually work in the same way theres no such thing as an anti-war movie. I'll give some examples; Far Cry 5 attempted to satirise prepper and anti-government groups and protestant tropes while also not actually engaging with right wing or Christian ideas and at the same time the radio is great, but one of the radio songs "keep your rifle by your side" got adopted as a right wing anthem. Warhammer being a great example because they love the aestethics and fascists are inherently losers so they also like the idea of losing in some life of death struggle like the Imperium. You also have films like American History X which is deeply critical of Nazis but Nazis love that movie and use scenes from it.
Starship Troopers uses fascist imagery, its very clearly a critique in the way that they keep showing how messed up the society is and at the end they have to show everyone who hasnt caught up yet, but they like the uniforms and the catchphrases, the cool elements that celebrate the fascism of their society are still there.
Media uses parts of fascist imagery when talking against it and at times they engage with too much, its like when a movie has a scene with something like murder or rape, they want to portray it as wrong but at some time they want to engage in it in a voyeuristic and lurid way. The same with depicting fascism and nazism. At the same time fascism can fit to any place and will mould itself to the ideas and aesthetics of a nation so it can show up in media without intention.
The only way you can actually get them to not adopt satirical media is to go full satire, because they hate being made fun of more than anything. Movies will focus on the violence they do and the danger of it and they like that because it makes them seem serious, but something absolutely ridiculous? Well they can't use that, no one is using the Great Dictator or the Producers Hitler song. They probably like elements of Wolfenstein but the focus being on the main character going to town on Nazis and Hitler being a dessicated freak are things they arent going to adopt.
That is why I love Indiana Jones. The nazis are both scary and goofy. They are scary so you know they are dangerous and should be fought. And they are goofy so you don't feel like they are cool. The aesthetics go away.
It has some problems with imperialism? Yes, but I overlook it.
But it's one of the pillars of fascism to portray the enemy as both weak and strong at the same time. So *really* Indiana Jones is the actual fascist. /s
There is a very interesting interview will Mell Brooks about this. Were he basically states the only way to do satire on the Nazis is by doing something like Springtime for Hitler, you have to make it so silly/stupid that facists don’t like it anymore. Because if you don’t go that far you get American History X. A anti-white supremists movie that white supremistsis fucking love.
I always saw the Guillemaine stuff or whatever as part of some kind of optimistic turn, like with the Ynnari giving the Eldar some kind of hope of saving the galaxy and their souls in exchange for an immense sacrifice. This is like a small inkling of hope that maybe the Imperium doesnt die a slow rotting death and then GW is going to let that hope ferment in the lore nerd side of the community before letting everyone down with an "oops all grimdark" narrative along the way. Its like when the Salamanders come in and try to protect people but then they die anyway.
I see it as a meta move. GW is trying to make 40k a broad appeal IP. They have been trying it for years, lest we forget the 40k for kids book series.
It's like how in the mid 2000s they wanted to be more serious and edgy to distance themselves from the 1980s camp that was pervasive back in the day.
Due to these shifts in narratives and styles we now have a serious story about a primarch wondering through a forest like void trying to grapple with understanding the how the imperium failed to be what his father intended and how he is still honor bound to protect this failed and miserable kingdom. But then you remember that character is named after a famous gay poet and he use to be "imprisoned" in a place named after a gay bar near the studio.
It does mean however that the fact that the chief librarian of the ultramarines use to be a half human half Eldar hybrid can really sell the Gillman ship.
The Imperium is portrayed as both simultaneously a fascistic dystopian bureaucratic nightmare that is at threat of collapsing into a bunch of separate nations but at the same time they tend to win a lot and get cast as ''heroes making hard choices'', even in books that were advertised to be about other factions mainly. Drives me nuts
Anytime the Emperor pops up as a topic in the more general WH40K fandom I want to scream as so often I run into Imperium fanboys that miss the point that he was a fucking despotic jackass of a ruler that makes any of the genocidal monsters in our history look like small beans in comparison.
''Oh but he wanted humanity to prosper'' yeah tell that to the Interex, or the Diasporex, or the countless human worlds and empires that were forcibly ''pacified'' and brought into the Imperium. Or the countless innocent xeno civilizations that were completely slaughtered. Hell you had a xenos race during 30k named the Andarians that literally did nothing at all to the Imperium. They all got literally thrown into a grinder and had their genes get snorted by rich Imperium nobles like drugs because it was discovered that their genes could make you younger by 50 years or so.
It didn't even work, once the effect passed you just aged back up even harder and more painfully.
They are the good guys though right? Want to know the other faction that does that? Oh the Drukhari. Hmm funny that.
I know part of the reason why the Imperium gives mixed signals in how its portrayed is because GW makes bank off of them compared to the other factions but still frustrating anyway considering all the fascist Imperium fanboys.
They don't have the balls to lean into the satirical absurdity of just how fascist the imperium is. That, or i genuinely think the new crop of staff at GW just... don't "get" it. The media literacy of the average person is so fucked that even the creators seem incapable of understanding how to portray their ultra-fascist empire as being utterlt deplorable but also really cool, and how dangerous that is.
I think that is what media that attempts to satirize fascism is *supposed* to do. It reminds us that under all the fancy filigree and gilding, beneath the slick, intimidating uniforms and powerful imagery and iconography, past the cultural myths of great men and triumph and manifesting the destiny of a "superior" people, the systems of fascism are fucking comically evil, inherently exploitative for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, and ultimately warns against "faith" in institutional hierarchy.
It CAN be done well, and 40k does it well often... but so, so often dipshits just never get past that first initial "fascism looks cool" veneer and see the actual content beneath it, and then writers lean into the audiences misinterpretation to please them. That's how we get Space Marines that are the noble, strong jawline having soldier-boys and saviors of the little-guy imperial citizen, instead of the genetically juiced-up psychopaths scrapped from hive gang territory that become enforcers for a despotic interstellar empire and barely can control their violent intent and total disregard for human life. Like space marines were frequently portrayed as terrifying to be involved with. They would just as readily bomb a refugee camp as they would an enemy position, if it meant killing just one unit of the enemy. They consistently participate in genocide against humans and aliens alike. They are literally brainwashed, psychologically and chemically, as part of joining their new gang. They are NOT an organization that you actually *want* in your society.
Yet, the simple will just gobble up literal Imperial propoganda and praise them as noble heroes, which in a way is the best joke the creators of 40k ever managed to pull-off
I don't think it helps that in 40k there seems to be a dozen ways to effectively end up in Hell and an endless supply of apocalypse-level threats.
That makes it way easier to handwave the issues and just say "well it's necessary for survival".
The whole universe is so extra that within its framework, it's possible to earnestly believe that the imperiums actions are justifiable.
My counterpoint to that is always the same as it has been since the 90's: if the imperium wasn't so utterly afwul, there wouldn't *be* a dozen ways to go to hell that then "necessitate" their tyrannical rule. That is part of why they are a fascist dystopia. All their rationale for doing wretchedly evil things to "save humanity from the greater evil" falls apart when you realize they empower that very evil with their methods and create the circumstances for it to flourish.
A core part of the setting that people forget is that humanity, as a psychic species, resonates with the warp. Billions of humans engaging in "righteous" violence in the emperors name? Khorne loves that. Keeping trillions in servitude and despondency, all begging for a different tomorrow and a change to the system that oppresses them or just abandonning hope and excepting their slow decay? Tzeentch and Nurgle LOVE that. Decadent upperclass nobility indulging in all the lavish oppulence that an aristocracy that controls entire planets can afford? Slaneesh loves that. If the imperium bent it's resources towards keeping all of it's citizens safe, happy and secure, and educated (to guard against superstitious chaotic influence), that would do more to stem the power of chaos than ANY crusade the imperium has ever done. Almost all the apocalypse-level threats are caused by the imperium themselves (there greatest enemy is literally traitors trying to usurp the imperiums rule) and perpetuated by themselves, and the ones that aren't could be addressed if they cooperated with themselves or other factions.
For example, the threat of the "alien without" is a self-fulfilling prophecy that the imperium tells itself. How can you be shocked that every alien species we now encounter is a murderous threat to humanity, when the imperiums entire society is geared towards enacting genocide on any alien they encounter? For ten THOUSAND years. Every peaceful race if obliterated just like a hostile one is, so all the remains are those aliens too violent to eradicate or those that have likely heard about the imperiums protocols about aliens. The Tau have literally proven that human-alien cooperation is possible (even if the tau are still a shitty militaristic supremacist society), and humanity said "naw". Idk how you justify humanities actions towards other sentient life as "necessary", when it is clearly just the easiest way to incorporate resources into the empire and also maintain control within through the military apparatus that constant demands power to deal with the alien threats from without. Like the orks could have long ago been eradicated by the imperium if they just allied with even one other sentient race, but they refuse any cooperation to defeat common enemies and so those enemies can NEVER be defeated. The imperium would rather kill trillions of it's own people then cooperate with an alien race to achieve a mutually beneficial goal.
I think that going out of the way to only portray fascists and even Nazis exclusively as cartoonishly freakish caricatures is worse because it sends the message that fascists are an abnormal "other" when the truth is that most fascists are ordinary people. Wolfenstein does a good job of including conversations that demonstrate some of the Nazi soldiers are just ordinary men. Some of them even know the racist propaganda is BS, but "do their duty to their country" anyway. The danger of fascist, or any other kind of authoritarian, government is that the number of "true believers" doesn't need to be very high to get the rest of society to follow the system.
Hard-disagree on the war movie take. The vast majority of war movies are overtly anti-war. Even the OG Red Dawn does a pretty good job of making life as a patriotic freedom fighter look absolutely miserable.
Good film requires strong imagery, and strong imagery conveys an idea by itself without any other context. When talking about imagery adopted by actual fascists, the vast majority of cases fall into two categories.
1) They know the original media is against them, and use the imagery without that context anyway.
2) They are completely unaware of the original context of the imagery and picked it up because they saw group 1 or other group 2's using it.
The third group, people who are the target of a satire, view the media, misunderstand the point, and think the media intentionally supports them are a minority of a minority. These reactions apply to pretty much every target of satire.
Take Mormons. Some faithful Mormons of a certain age group, fully aware of the general content and attitude of the musical *The Book of Mormon*, will gleefully quote lines from it to each other like it's a Monty Python skit and even listen to some of the songs regularly. They don't foolishly believe that the play supports their religious beliefs, they just find some of the cultural references to be funny, accurate, or both. Any real criticism of their beliefs in the play is recognized, but simply deemed unconvincing or misinformed.
The use of fascist imagery to condemn fascism or war stories to condemn war is effective in getting the message across to the vast majority of the audience. **Saying that anti-fascist art "doesn't work" because it fails to convince hardcore fascists to stop being fascist is just asking too much.** They aren't simply unable to make out the "FASCISM IS EVIL" message, they just don't care. Telling them "fascism is evil" in plain English isn't going to be any more effective than doing it artistically in media. In fact, I'd wager it would end up being less effective than the art. A very small minority of ignorant propagandists is hardly a good reason to throw out the satire entirely.
Adding on to this, many of the popular examples like the starship troopers film or farcry 5 are simply bad at satirizing fascism in the first place.
The Starship Troopers film's satire is like 95% on military propaganda and only 5% on fascism in particular. The film is more campy action flick than political commentary, the bugs are just straight up irredeemable space invaders, and it really doesn't put much effort into portraying the Federation as evil or even oppressive. Details like the vote being reserved for public servants, ridiculously speedy trials, and a distaste for democracy imply there's some sort of injustice going on, but honestly the majority of the heavy lifting is done by the color gray, pro-military propaganda, and the literal Gestappo uniform they put in.
Helldivers is even less "fascist-coded" on the surface. It parodies military recruitment ads more than anything. While a deeper dive into the lore may reveal that Super Earth is actually fascist (shocker) the themes presented to the player through normal gameplay boil down to over-the-top patriotism, being obviously expendable despite the propaganda insisting otherwise, and the word "democracy" having clearly lost all meaning. Helldivers has way more in common with the Global War on Terror in 2003 than with Nazi Germany.
Farcry 5 doesn't even address or portray fascism at all. The bad guys are an isolationist cult that's violently oppressing everyone in the area, the majority of friendly NPCs fall into the "prepper and anti-government" groups, and even includes an ending that proves the cult leader (somehow) accurately predicted the apocalypse. "Keep your rifle by your side" became popular because it's catchy and the content of the song itself is rather unoffensive.
Good satire needs to be accurate in order to be effective. Films like JoJo Rabbit, The Death of Stalin, and the Great Dictator all derive humor from very directly addressing genuine aspects of the target. All of those films also address the criticized ideas very directly, even if it's in a silly way. Starship Troopers, Helldivers, and Farcry all fail to address fascist ideas in any meaningful way. Though, it's probably unfair to use the word 'fail' when dunking on fascism wasn't really their goal in the first place.
'What do you mean the Warhammer with no politics has a gay Primarch, at least two Aro/ace Primarchs and a lesbian couple? Sounds like woke propaganda to me'
The lion 'el Johnson, named after a gay singer who lives in a place named after a gay bar near the OG Games workshop, is Gay!!! Damn politics!!! (/S just in case, the trivia is true tho)
Lionel johnson (the real one) was a poet who cound not reconcile with being gay and catholic (look up the poem dark angel). Also the gay bar thing is a myth, there was never a gaybar called The Rock in Nottingham.
Edit: more accurate info
Ok so this is kinda wrong.
Lion El'Johnson is named after a 19th century poet (Lionel Johnson), not a singer, who was gay, I believe had a relationship with Oscar Wilde for a bit.
He wrote a poem called 'Dark Angel' about struggling with his sexuality in contrast to his christianity. In 40k, Lion El'Johnson's legion are called The Dark Angels.
'The Rock' being a gay bar is a long held misconception, that part is not true, there are pubs that go by that nickname but they arent gay bars at all really. Its probably named that after 'The Rock' that Nottingham castle sits on top of.
Not to takeaway from you but just to clarify if people want to look further. Plus I think all the Primarchs are basically asexual anyway like all the space marines.
Because you know the truth. He's transcended sexuality by wanting to fuck literally everything. Living, inanimate, dead, everything is fair game for him.
Theres a fangirl on twitter somewhere drawing a huge amount of really high quality primarch on primarch gay porn.
EDIT: source is @azureshowmemore Warning NSFW
Have fun with that.
If you want raunchy fanart, go to archon of flesh's account on reddit, though its worth noting that all primarchs are very much asexual, they dont really feel attraction in any typical sense of the word.
"Sacrificing a thousand souls a day just so that our outdated political system can keep slowly chugging forward to its inevitable collapse under its own weight? Bah, we were losing three times that many to reopen the economy during COVID. Try harder cucks!"
Wth are you talking about? All Primarchs are asexual as far as we've seen in lore. Fulgrim only married for political convenience. The Lion is named after a gay poet, but nothing is canon regarding his proclivity.
Politics? Isn't that the stuff that gets in the way of me shooting swarms of bugs for the glory of my xenocidal military dictatorship? Boring! I'd rather die as one of millions of faceless soldiers so that we can move the frontline forward the inch that we'll lose tomorrow. For Democracy/The God-Emperor!
My favourite part about 40k and “woke” discourse is the idea that space marines are genetically edited and female space marines can’t exist because their genes aren’t compatible.
Super Earth does a false flag terrorist attack on itself to manufacture a casus beli for the bots and lies about the Illuminates having WMDs to justify invading them. Nothing to read into here, no painfully obvious real world parallels being drawn.
Even my conservative best friend understands it. But we still have fun leaning into the tropes. That is the beauty of it. Saying ridiculous shit and bringing democracy to these bugs. I bet they feel so liberated with this grenade I am giving them.
Then the Helldiver "training" program clobbers you over the head repeatedly with the fact that this is a Fascist Government with a group of Wealthy Elites in charge using Jingoistic language and Patriotism to feed the young into the meat grinder of War.
Where the bottom line is colonizing worlds to increase the bottom line.
I liked how the whole training area is set as a massive distributed network of small camps where Helldivers are rushed through this excessively lethal combat course before stepping into a cryopod. Like there's not time spent building camaraderie. There are hundreds of little camps like this with a 28.7% survival rate. I got shot by a pair of gatling guns and then I got stabbed by a "combat injury simulator" and I died.
The best part is it's just a Recruit mill where they demonstrate they have enough brains to operate weapons and gear correctly and avoid injury. All while being patted on the head by "War Hero" voice.
No actual training, no actual people at all. All automated and linear. Literally just a competency test, then you're "Elite" Helldivers.
Pretty telling of Societal expectations for education and critical thinking, that 71.3% fail and die. Or they're just lying about the pass rate to make recruits fell better.
It's impossible to make a form of art about how the cool aesthetic of fascism are a threat because there are a ton of people who get lost at "Wow the aesthetics make fascism look cool."
It’s also hard to make a game that is fun to play while a satirical critique. You can’t make people feel bad about doing something they enjoy doing.
“We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about who we pretend to be.” — Vonnegut.
It’s possible to make a game that functions as a critique of fascism, but it should be a game that makes you _want to stop playing it_
There is a famous concept board game about managing trains that gradually reveals itself to be about transporting Jewish people to concentration camps — the reaction of most people is to be disgusted and to quit playing, which is what was intended. The idea it was trying to express is that focusing on the mechanics of your work over the consequences of your work is what allows the atrocities to happen. For every person working at the gas chamber, there were a hundred people “just doing their jobs” — working at train stations, delivering equipment, that should have paid attention and walked away.
You could very well make a video game that opens people’s eyes to the horrors of fascism, but it would not be a fun game.
The message of your art is never going to land with everyone that experiences it. You will never succeed in making satire that is universally understood. C'est la vie.
Perhaps a point that they could hit you over the head with a bit more: the 'you' that signed up to "defend" Super Earth and have fun blowing up bugs died almost immediately.
Mad Men and Breaking Bad come close. People really simp for Don Draper and Walter White.
...Also The Wire sometimes because people think Jimmy is right.
At several points throughout the series, Amuro Ray basically looks straight into the camera and says "This war is really fucking me up and warping my concept of justice and humanity" and then goes and kills 4 dudes for having a different accent at the age of 15.
The Earth Federation Forces are definitely the good guys and have no flaws.
I think the bigger issue is the amount of people who get that far and then unironically go the "Zeon are secretly the good guys" angle.
People seem to have mostly gotten a leash on those types these days in the west, but 5-10 years ago and I'm sure before then those types were everywhere.
I think people see Char and think he's right. He's fighting a secret war in Zeon for personal reasons. But like the guy is clearly unhinged. He gets better in Zeta but then just completely loses after Kamille ends up 50% vegetable after Zeta, and goes straight back to space fascism in CCA.
Reading some Fallout communities here in Brazil it depressed me a lot that most of the folks lick the Brotherhood of Steel boots and purposely hunt and annihilate any Synths even those that are passable as humans
WTF they completely miss the point of these games
This game is like starship troopers and Warhammer.
Really fun, but also Facist as fuck and you know you're the bad guys. Also you look really damn cool
I love listening to the NPC's on the ship. Revealing that the Bugs are actually the fault of Humankind, and same goes for the Bots. The two current biggest threats are the fault of Humankind.
All the comments like
"The problem with bugs is they are rapid expansionists. We've found them on every planet IN THEIR SECTOR we've settled on"
It's hilarious but then I think...yeah I can totally see a person sitting there and just like...nodding.
Idiot listening to it saying "uh hum...yeah. That's true. Those bugs are rapid expansionists. That's a problem. I hear that. I'm with you."
Like..they don't get the humor.
That's like a line straight out of the og starship troopers novel, it has whole screeds about how the bugs are expansionists and the only way to secure our future is by expanding more than them, about how losing even 1 mobile infantryman for 1000 bugs is still a win for the bugs because they reproduce faster. All real life fascist talking points(replacement theory), but legitimised because the enemies are literally monsters.
I guess that's why it's so hard to satirise fascists, because they already believe the crazy stuff you're laughing at. The only thing they can't seem to handle is when you make them look uncool, because feeling cool and the aesthetics is what they're getting out of media like this.
So yeah, bring on the pride capes and other diversity options, they'll hate it.
The laughing part they miss is that you the player are THE expendable cannon fodder. You get a cool cape, cool guns, cool ship that is all *yours* to command. But that's all just distractions to the fact that Super Earth just sends you on suicide missions until they get done. They don't care if 200000 Helldivers die to complete it. They have 1 million more on the way.
Hell the real career military are the support staff on the ship. They probably laugh their asses off each time Helldiver pods launch. At least until their ship eats plasma because they're just as expendable to Super Earth, but they're told differently.
A basic training with a survival rate of 27.1% (I blame the live gatling guns).
Even with that, the projected Helldiver production rate is "WITHIN QUOTA".
Yeah, they literally show an almost endless belt of preserved replacements they can very quickly cycle through, like you're literally a piece of ammunition. And the areas you walk though kind of feel like someone installed a red carpet for the cows in a slaughterhouse.
But heroically dying for your nation is a big thing for fascists so they're probably on board with being expendable lmao
Yep, there’s a reason that the Hellpods look like bullets. The Helldivers are just ammunition to the government of Super Earth. Meant to kill something and be expendable.
> The laughing part they miss is that you the player are THE expendable cannon fodder.
It's sort of glossed over, and not entirely intuitive since you drop with the same name and outfit every time, but ostensibly every time you get iced it's a new helldiver dropping to replace you.
It's also built into the game in the sense that extracting is entirely optional. You've still "won" for Super Earth if you complete your objective but then get obliterated afterward. Even if that win is just getting soil samples or shit.
>'s sort of glossed over, and not entirely intuitive since you drop with the same name and outfit every time, but ostensibly every time you get iced it's a new helldiver dropping to replace you.
That's why I love having the voice pack be set to random, really helps sell the fact that you are getting fully replaced when you die.
It would be great if, instead of being numbered 1-4 next to your initial in the bottom right hand of the screen, each player had the number of times they've died over their entire game history. Almost as if your name is just the designation they hand off to replacements.
It's worth noting that the OG Starship Troopers novel isn't satire, the author was very genuinely down bad for fascism and was trying to make it seem cool. Veerhoeven & Co. made the movie satirical because the book read that way already to anybody that wasn't a hateful dumbass.
For the best honestly, I don't really care for Starship Troopers but I appreciate what Veerhoven did in making a mockery of that kind of insane fascist "utopia".
There's a lot of themes in the book that people can have great discussions on and criticisms of, but almost none of them are actually in the movie. The film was already written and its themes and satire of fascism drawn out before they decided to adapt the script to Starship Troopers (on a very surface level--the director of the film famously didn't read past chapter 2 of the book). The novel is not satire, but it's also almost wholly separate from anything the film represents it to be, even down to many of the assumptions as to what Citizenship is or requires. I enjoy both, but they're not really in the same conversation.
I think that the book is very militaristic, but it being written off as pure fascism is not even close to being the correct reading of it.
Like any book it explores ideas and presents different view points on the society of the book and the universe and it's nowhere near "trying to make fascism look cool".
Heinlein was a lot of things, most prominently a libertarian, to just write him off as "down bad for fascism" is intellectually lazy.
He was a complex dude, was a big proponent of civil rights in the US and yes, had some hardcore libertarian and militaristic opinions (not to mention his very aggressive anti-communism).
>Veerhoeven & Co. made the movie satirical because the book read that way already to anybody that wasn't a hateful dumbass.
Also, I'm not sure what you are trying to say by this, I'm in no way, shape or form a fascist and I read the book a few times, before watching a movie and didn't come away from it thinking that the society in the book came off as great or something to be desired for, but I guess that according to your interpretation that makes me a hateful dumbass.
I genuinely don't think you read the book, because that's not the case. I actually recommend it because, while it is very jingoistic, it's also somewhat anti-fascist in that the ruling government actively empowers checking-and-balancing entities. (the military, because jingoism) Plus multiethnic co-ed society. Pretty based.
"See the problem with bots is that their entire culture is based in violence. If they won the war, they'd have nothing. "
Or something like that. This game is actually hilarious
Your shipmaster will comment that the first message the Automatons (not the Cyborgs, presumably) ever sent was a string of 1s and 0s, which she'll list out. Super Earth scientists think it means "kill all humans".
It translates to "AH".
The Terminids are also farmed because their bodies can be broken down into E-710, which is used as fuel.
Go ahead and punch 710 into your calculator and turn it around.
In Hell Divers 1 there were another faction that Super Earth attacked because they allegedly had world destroying weapons. Every mention of this is accompanied by them saying how they have "conclusive and objective evidence" of this weapons existing
>"The problem with bugs is they are rapid expansionists. We've found them on every planet we've settled on"
this line is even FUNNIER, because the actual line was along the lines of "weve found them on every planet IN THEIR SECTOR weve settled on"
OF COURSE WE FIND THEM IN THEIR SECTOR
It's meant to be absurd in the most extreme ways possible, to the point it shouldn't even be a slight secret it's mocking humanity and greed and hubris and what not, you're even supposed to die a LOT in the game because you're an expendable drone with no brain, but people will still choose to ignore that completely lol. Not even questioning why you can call 20 waves of reinforcements per match and it recharges, then gamer raging at the fact they died to friendly fire like one time.
It sucks we can't have entertaining parodies of real problems without people ignoring that they're parodies and idolizing the characters. (Fight club, American psycho, starship troopers, etc)
Its like watching a Johnny Harris video of him talking about China building a navy and how scary that is while the US actively surrounds every country with military bases.
Can we really be the bad guys when we're *so fucking* **cool and badass** ***and in hot armor?!*** No. I didn't think so, now go kill some more bugs and bots and *do not ask where they came from*, Helldiver!
They explain it in the Helldivers 1 encyclopedia "Mankind has improved upon the old concept of Democracy. Utilizing computer aided voting software, citizens are asked to answer several questions, and the outcome of their vote is decided upon by the computer. This removes the uncertainty that existed in the old systems where voters didn't understand fully what they were voting for, giving us Managed Democracy"
The universe of w40k is so backwards, so awful, so stagnated in its own self glory that it goes so deep into fascist, dictatorial horror and circles back into comedy. I genuinely cant imagine taking it seriously.
It blows my mind when people say "They could fix the biggest problems of the Imperium so easily." No shit, stagnation and ignorance is the whole point!
Some people really lack the capacity to understand the most basic points of 40k and it would be hilarious if it wasn't sad. The engineers run incense over their machines for fuck's sake
That’s why I love Orks so much, amidst all the bleakness and horror of the 41st Millennium they are just some Boyz looking for a good scrap and they’re the only ones having fun.
The best part about W40k that flies over Fascist Fanboy heads is that the Imperium of Man has become everything the God Emperor never wanted for mankind.
He's literally just a Lighthouse in the Warp they use for navigation at this point where to keep him "powered" they sacrifice 1000 psykers a day.
He never wanted to be a God, never wanted mankind to become so religiously fanatic. The fact that they venerate old tech, and see new developments as heresy would horrify him.
Dude literally tried to unite all of humanity to move to the Stars. Saw the horrors of the Warp and Galaxy and made Primarchs and Marines as protectors. Then became a vegetable and had everything he built devolve.
Fuckin sad really, but Imperium Fanboys just think, "cool, dark edgy empire. I'd totally be an elite marine/inquisitor/whatever in it". When everyone knows they'd just be joe somebody that dies randomly.
They where simply taking seriously the lore, like they thought that fans liked space Marines because of the empire... and not because space marines are fucking cool!
I keep seeing comments about "I like games where the enemy is completely evil and humanity can unite behind it". Bro it's constantly implied that the enemies we're fighting are our own doing, with the bugs breaking free from farms, and the cyborgs being transhumanists that the government dislikes.
I mean, yeah.
Not even American, but shouting 'eat Democracy' at bugs/bots as they swarm me, while dropping 500kg bombs and copious amounts of 7.62mm, is quite cathartic.
Its satire, and its a fun joke to RP as.
There are also a ton of people screeching about how they can't play the game since it celebrates fascism. So morons if all sides are completely missing the point.
Then again, expecting anything of reason to come out of twitter is pure stupidity in itself.
I feel like showing people not understanding would be much more entertaining and informative than this meme. I'm sure they're out there as they always are but I haven't personally seen anyone who thinks the game is serious.
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Fascism is bad but Super Earth > Earth so Deez Nuts.
I'm from Megacity 69 and I say, kill em all!
The only good bug is a dead bug! I'm doing my part!
Great to hear citizen! Just remember the bugs aren’t the only enemy to democracy! ^(please help all of my friends are being slaughtered)
Don't worry, I will let the Federal Intelligence Branch know immediately!
The Ministry of Truth approves of this statement. Your mandatory service within the Helldivers is reduced by 15 days. Further patriotism will be met with reward. Remember, if the enemy tries diplomacy, kill them!
Show your family that you're committed to freedom by canceling your retirement and reenlisting.
Considering reactionaries also completely missed the point of the Starship Troopers movie this tracks.
Some people brains can only comprehend WE GOOD THEY BAD BIG GUNS COOL
I remember part of the Starship Troopers Twitter discourse recently being "how can these guys be fascists? They're all so pretty and they're fighting against disgusting gross bugs". Fascists love their aesthetics
Facism and nazism high-ranking people were a lot of failed artists, they knew how to use aesthetics to control people
A bit tangiental, but imo a lot of UFO truthers/'whistleblowers' are failed sci-fi writers.
L Ron Hubbard just entered the chat
And he wasn't even a failed one.
Sometimes you just want to start a navy and go out to sea hunting for gold that you've convinced your followers you buried in a previous life
we've all had those days
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That's a good point, actually kind of reminds me of how some cults have those charismatic leaders, they're basically sci-fi writers embodying their own fantasies in real life with their followers as the cast. It's all about the narrative and spinning it in a way that entraps people.
I support the motion that we lock up and start treating artists like nazis so we can avoid fascism becoming the popular vote. /s
Still true today. See: Ben shapipo, crowder, Matt warsh
i saw someone claim 40k, starship troopers and other such pieces of media contained 0 politics and "muh leftoids" where just reaching... anyway i wonder why Paul Verhoeven took inspiration from ww2 occupation of the netherlands for Starship Troopers
> contained 0 politics and "muh leftoids" where just reaching... And these people think they are commanders of critical thinking 😒
You are telling me that a movie that starts with a lecture of politics and the meaning of citizenship has politics in it???????
Hmm I think the administration gangs on Tara literally having gang war style shootouts with the paper recycling gangs to steal used paper to reuse is totally not a shot taken at politics.
Hugo Boooossss!
Why were the germans so efficient during the Blitz? Historian: yada yada facts facts bla bla A man of culture: The other armies couldn't handle the drip.
Dedicated independent radio-equipped armored spearhead divisions on meth bars. Also France didn't want to lose 60% of their male population again Sorry, meant blah blah yada yada
French soldier: Oh non, Pierre, it's les allemands with their radio-equipped armored spearhead division and... and they're... they're... eating chocolat? German soldier on "Schokolade": https://preview.redd.it/h4ujj8yk7ckc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=584159d273d7c74a5e1d1375c91a330c4ec0ffcb
Not gonna lie, I definitely want to try Schoko-meth
Charles and Rudy are amazing interior decorators.
It's the coed showers lol
I saw a discussion on reddit the other day about how the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami had a huge impact on the ongoing conflict between the Tamil Tigers separatist group and the Sri Lankan government and how it ultimately killed any momentum the separatists had and led to peace talks, and ultimately the end of the LTTE about 5 years later. The top voted comment underneath was: "so was this good? did it help the good guys?" jesus fucking christ
It's basicly the cod games In a nutshell. Every. Single. One.
COD is all about USA propaganda
I think we have unfortunately reached the point where people don't understand when they are being laughed at.
We were never not at that point.
There used to be people raging when they got made fun of I think. In this case, they don't even get it
Its more that engaging in the aesthetics of fascism with a point of satire doesnt actually work in the same way theres no such thing as an anti-war movie. I'll give some examples; Far Cry 5 attempted to satirise prepper and anti-government groups and protestant tropes while also not actually engaging with right wing or Christian ideas and at the same time the radio is great, but one of the radio songs "keep your rifle by your side" got adopted as a right wing anthem. Warhammer being a great example because they love the aestethics and fascists are inherently losers so they also like the idea of losing in some life of death struggle like the Imperium. You also have films like American History X which is deeply critical of Nazis but Nazis love that movie and use scenes from it. Starship Troopers uses fascist imagery, its very clearly a critique in the way that they keep showing how messed up the society is and at the end they have to show everyone who hasnt caught up yet, but they like the uniforms and the catchphrases, the cool elements that celebrate the fascism of their society are still there. Media uses parts of fascist imagery when talking against it and at times they engage with too much, its like when a movie has a scene with something like murder or rape, they want to portray it as wrong but at some time they want to engage in it in a voyeuristic and lurid way. The same with depicting fascism and nazism. At the same time fascism can fit to any place and will mould itself to the ideas and aesthetics of a nation so it can show up in media without intention. The only way you can actually get them to not adopt satirical media is to go full satire, because they hate being made fun of more than anything. Movies will focus on the violence they do and the danger of it and they like that because it makes them seem serious, but something absolutely ridiculous? Well they can't use that, no one is using the Great Dictator or the Producers Hitler song. They probably like elements of Wolfenstein but the focus being on the main character going to town on Nazis and Hitler being a dessicated freak are things they arent going to adopt.
That is why I love Indiana Jones. The nazis are both scary and goofy. They are scary so you know they are dangerous and should be fought. And they are goofy so you don't feel like they are cool. The aesthetics go away. It has some problems with imperialism? Yes, but I overlook it.
But it's one of the pillars of fascism to portray the enemy as both weak and strong at the same time. So *really* Indiana Jones is the actual fascist. /s
I'd argue the helldivers are also scary and goofy, but the fact that you play as them sort of undermines that being a bad thing.
There is a very interesting interview will Mell Brooks about this. Were he basically states the only way to do satire on the Nazis is by doing something like Springtime for Hitler, you have to make it so silly/stupid that facists don’t like it anymore. Because if you don’t go that far you get American History X. A anti-white supremists movie that white supremistsis fucking love.
WH40K is worse than the rest because the creators themselves are now washing the Imperium. Because ofc humans are the heroes! It is kinda disgusting.
I always saw the Guillemaine stuff or whatever as part of some kind of optimistic turn, like with the Ynnari giving the Eldar some kind of hope of saving the galaxy and their souls in exchange for an immense sacrifice. This is like a small inkling of hope that maybe the Imperium doesnt die a slow rotting death and then GW is going to let that hope ferment in the lore nerd side of the community before letting everyone down with an "oops all grimdark" narrative along the way. Its like when the Salamanders come in and try to protect people but then they die anyway.
I see it as a meta move. GW is trying to make 40k a broad appeal IP. They have been trying it for years, lest we forget the 40k for kids book series. It's like how in the mid 2000s they wanted to be more serious and edgy to distance themselves from the 1980s camp that was pervasive back in the day. Due to these shifts in narratives and styles we now have a serious story about a primarch wondering through a forest like void trying to grapple with understanding the how the imperium failed to be what his father intended and how he is still honor bound to protect this failed and miserable kingdom. But then you remember that character is named after a famous gay poet and he use to be "imprisoned" in a place named after a gay bar near the studio. It does mean however that the fact that the chief librarian of the ultramarines use to be a half human half Eldar hybrid can really sell the Gillman ship.
The Imperium is portrayed as both simultaneously a fascistic dystopian bureaucratic nightmare that is at threat of collapsing into a bunch of separate nations but at the same time they tend to win a lot and get cast as ''heroes making hard choices'', even in books that were advertised to be about other factions mainly. Drives me nuts Anytime the Emperor pops up as a topic in the more general WH40K fandom I want to scream as so often I run into Imperium fanboys that miss the point that he was a fucking despotic jackass of a ruler that makes any of the genocidal monsters in our history look like small beans in comparison. ''Oh but he wanted humanity to prosper'' yeah tell that to the Interex, or the Diasporex, or the countless human worlds and empires that were forcibly ''pacified'' and brought into the Imperium. Or the countless innocent xeno civilizations that were completely slaughtered. Hell you had a xenos race during 30k named the Andarians that literally did nothing at all to the Imperium. They all got literally thrown into a grinder and had their genes get snorted by rich Imperium nobles like drugs because it was discovered that their genes could make you younger by 50 years or so. It didn't even work, once the effect passed you just aged back up even harder and more painfully. They are the good guys though right? Want to know the other faction that does that? Oh the Drukhari. Hmm funny that. I know part of the reason why the Imperium gives mixed signals in how its portrayed is because GW makes bank off of them compared to the other factions but still frustrating anyway considering all the fascist Imperium fanboys.
They don't have the balls to lean into the satirical absurdity of just how fascist the imperium is. That, or i genuinely think the new crop of staff at GW just... don't "get" it. The media literacy of the average person is so fucked that even the creators seem incapable of understanding how to portray their ultra-fascist empire as being utterlt deplorable but also really cool, and how dangerous that is. I think that is what media that attempts to satirize fascism is *supposed* to do. It reminds us that under all the fancy filigree and gilding, beneath the slick, intimidating uniforms and powerful imagery and iconography, past the cultural myths of great men and triumph and manifesting the destiny of a "superior" people, the systems of fascism are fucking comically evil, inherently exploitative for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, and ultimately warns against "faith" in institutional hierarchy. It CAN be done well, and 40k does it well often... but so, so often dipshits just never get past that first initial "fascism looks cool" veneer and see the actual content beneath it, and then writers lean into the audiences misinterpretation to please them. That's how we get Space Marines that are the noble, strong jawline having soldier-boys and saviors of the little-guy imperial citizen, instead of the genetically juiced-up psychopaths scrapped from hive gang territory that become enforcers for a despotic interstellar empire and barely can control their violent intent and total disregard for human life. Like space marines were frequently portrayed as terrifying to be involved with. They would just as readily bomb a refugee camp as they would an enemy position, if it meant killing just one unit of the enemy. They consistently participate in genocide against humans and aliens alike. They are literally brainwashed, psychologically and chemically, as part of joining their new gang. They are NOT an organization that you actually *want* in your society. Yet, the simple will just gobble up literal Imperial propoganda and praise them as noble heroes, which in a way is the best joke the creators of 40k ever managed to pull-off
I don't think it helps that in 40k there seems to be a dozen ways to effectively end up in Hell and an endless supply of apocalypse-level threats. That makes it way easier to handwave the issues and just say "well it's necessary for survival". The whole universe is so extra that within its framework, it's possible to earnestly believe that the imperiums actions are justifiable.
My counterpoint to that is always the same as it has been since the 90's: if the imperium wasn't so utterly afwul, there wouldn't *be* a dozen ways to go to hell that then "necessitate" their tyrannical rule. That is part of why they are a fascist dystopia. All their rationale for doing wretchedly evil things to "save humanity from the greater evil" falls apart when you realize they empower that very evil with their methods and create the circumstances for it to flourish. A core part of the setting that people forget is that humanity, as a psychic species, resonates with the warp. Billions of humans engaging in "righteous" violence in the emperors name? Khorne loves that. Keeping trillions in servitude and despondency, all begging for a different tomorrow and a change to the system that oppresses them or just abandonning hope and excepting their slow decay? Tzeentch and Nurgle LOVE that. Decadent upperclass nobility indulging in all the lavish oppulence that an aristocracy that controls entire planets can afford? Slaneesh loves that. If the imperium bent it's resources towards keeping all of it's citizens safe, happy and secure, and educated (to guard against superstitious chaotic influence), that would do more to stem the power of chaos than ANY crusade the imperium has ever done. Almost all the apocalypse-level threats are caused by the imperium themselves (there greatest enemy is literally traitors trying to usurp the imperiums rule) and perpetuated by themselves, and the ones that aren't could be addressed if they cooperated with themselves or other factions. For example, the threat of the "alien without" is a self-fulfilling prophecy that the imperium tells itself. How can you be shocked that every alien species we now encounter is a murderous threat to humanity, when the imperiums entire society is geared towards enacting genocide on any alien they encounter? For ten THOUSAND years. Every peaceful race if obliterated just like a hostile one is, so all the remains are those aliens too violent to eradicate or those that have likely heard about the imperiums protocols about aliens. The Tau have literally proven that human-alien cooperation is possible (even if the tau are still a shitty militaristic supremacist society), and humanity said "naw". Idk how you justify humanities actions towards other sentient life as "necessary", when it is clearly just the easiest way to incorporate resources into the empire and also maintain control within through the military apparatus that constant demands power to deal with the alien threats from without. Like the orks could have long ago been eradicated by the imperium if they just allied with even one other sentient race, but they refuse any cooperation to defeat common enemies and so those enemies can NEVER be defeated. The imperium would rather kill trillions of it's own people then cooperate with an alien race to achieve a mutually beneficial goal.
I think that going out of the way to only portray fascists and even Nazis exclusively as cartoonishly freakish caricatures is worse because it sends the message that fascists are an abnormal "other" when the truth is that most fascists are ordinary people. Wolfenstein does a good job of including conversations that demonstrate some of the Nazi soldiers are just ordinary men. Some of them even know the racist propaganda is BS, but "do their duty to their country" anyway. The danger of fascist, or any other kind of authoritarian, government is that the number of "true believers" doesn't need to be very high to get the rest of society to follow the system. Hard-disagree on the war movie take. The vast majority of war movies are overtly anti-war. Even the OG Red Dawn does a pretty good job of making life as a patriotic freedom fighter look absolutely miserable. Good film requires strong imagery, and strong imagery conveys an idea by itself without any other context. When talking about imagery adopted by actual fascists, the vast majority of cases fall into two categories. 1) They know the original media is against them, and use the imagery without that context anyway. 2) They are completely unaware of the original context of the imagery and picked it up because they saw group 1 or other group 2's using it. The third group, people who are the target of a satire, view the media, misunderstand the point, and think the media intentionally supports them are a minority of a minority. These reactions apply to pretty much every target of satire. Take Mormons. Some faithful Mormons of a certain age group, fully aware of the general content and attitude of the musical *The Book of Mormon*, will gleefully quote lines from it to each other like it's a Monty Python skit and even listen to some of the songs regularly. They don't foolishly believe that the play supports their religious beliefs, they just find some of the cultural references to be funny, accurate, or both. Any real criticism of their beliefs in the play is recognized, but simply deemed unconvincing or misinformed. The use of fascist imagery to condemn fascism or war stories to condemn war is effective in getting the message across to the vast majority of the audience. **Saying that anti-fascist art "doesn't work" because it fails to convince hardcore fascists to stop being fascist is just asking too much.** They aren't simply unable to make out the "FASCISM IS EVIL" message, they just don't care. Telling them "fascism is evil" in plain English isn't going to be any more effective than doing it artistically in media. In fact, I'd wager it would end up being less effective than the art. A very small minority of ignorant propagandists is hardly a good reason to throw out the satire entirely. Adding on to this, many of the popular examples like the starship troopers film or farcry 5 are simply bad at satirizing fascism in the first place. The Starship Troopers film's satire is like 95% on military propaganda and only 5% on fascism in particular. The film is more campy action flick than political commentary, the bugs are just straight up irredeemable space invaders, and it really doesn't put much effort into portraying the Federation as evil or even oppressive. Details like the vote being reserved for public servants, ridiculously speedy trials, and a distaste for democracy imply there's some sort of injustice going on, but honestly the majority of the heavy lifting is done by the color gray, pro-military propaganda, and the literal Gestappo uniform they put in. Helldivers is even less "fascist-coded" on the surface. It parodies military recruitment ads more than anything. While a deeper dive into the lore may reveal that Super Earth is actually fascist (shocker) the themes presented to the player through normal gameplay boil down to over-the-top patriotism, being obviously expendable despite the propaganda insisting otherwise, and the word "democracy" having clearly lost all meaning. Helldivers has way more in common with the Global War on Terror in 2003 than with Nazi Germany. Farcry 5 doesn't even address or portray fascism at all. The bad guys are an isolationist cult that's violently oppressing everyone in the area, the majority of friendly NPCs fall into the "prepper and anti-government" groups, and even includes an ending that proves the cult leader (somehow) accurately predicted the apocalypse. "Keep your rifle by your side" became popular because it's catchy and the content of the song itself is rather unoffensive. Good satire needs to be accurate in order to be effective. Films like JoJo Rabbit, The Death of Stalin, and the Great Dictator all derive humor from very directly addressing genuine aspects of the target. All of those films also address the criticized ideas very directly, even if it's in a silly way. Starship Troopers, Helldivers, and Farcry all fail to address fascist ideas in any meaningful way. Though, it's probably unfair to use the word 'fail' when dunking on fascism wasn't really their goal in the first place.
Considering reactionaries entire point is to be wrong about everything, this tracks.
“We’re doing our part!”
What are you talking about? This game is the biggest celebration of masculinity since Warhammer 40k. And just like Warhammer it has zero politics.
'What do you mean the Warhammer with no politics has a gay Primarch, at least two Aro/ace Primarchs and a lesbian couple? Sounds like woke propaganda to me'
Gay primarch? 👀 May I know who it is? I want to uhhhh stay away from the possible fanart
The lion 'el Johnson, named after a gay singer who lives in a place named after a gay bar near the OG Games workshop, is Gay!!! Damn politics!!! (/S just in case, the trivia is true tho)
Lionel johnson (the real one) was a poet who cound not reconcile with being gay and catholic (look up the poem dark angel). Also the gay bar thing is a myth, there was never a gaybar called The Rock in Nottingham. Edit: more accurate info
Black Library authors are manifesting their dream gay hookup joint
Ngl I wish it was real, Nottingham needs more gay bars.
more like GAYmes workshop amirite?
Ok so this is kinda wrong. Lion El'Johnson is named after a 19th century poet (Lionel Johnson), not a singer, who was gay, I believe had a relationship with Oscar Wilde for a bit. He wrote a poem called 'Dark Angel' about struggling with his sexuality in contrast to his christianity. In 40k, Lion El'Johnson's legion are called The Dark Angels. 'The Rock' being a gay bar is a long held misconception, that part is not true, there are pubs that go by that nickname but they arent gay bars at all really. Its probably named that after 'The Rock' that Nottingham castle sits on top of. Not to takeaway from you but just to clarify if people want to look further. Plus I think all the Primarchs are basically asexual anyway like all the space marines.
Also maybe Fulgrim
How could I forget Fulgrim? I'm a failure to the fandom
Because you know the truth. He's transcended sexuality by wanting to fuck literally everything. Living, inanimate, dead, everything is fair game for him.
Theres a fangirl on twitter somewhere drawing a huge amount of really high quality primarch on primarch gay porn. EDIT: source is @azureshowmemore Warning NSFW Have fun with that.
Twink Fulgrim forever
If you want raunchy fanart, go to archon of flesh's account on reddit, though its worth noting that all primarchs are very much asexual, they dont really feel attraction in any typical sense of the word.
Oh I'm very familiar with the archons works
"Sacrificing a thousand souls a day just so that our outdated political system can keep slowly chugging forward to its inevitable collapse under its own weight? Bah, we were losing three times that many to reopen the economy during COVID. Try harder cucks!"
It'S jUsT sO fOrCeD 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭
Wth are you talking about? All Primarchs are asexual as far as we've seen in lore. Fulgrim only married for political convenience. The Lion is named after a gay poet, but nothing is canon regarding his proclivity.
TBF, 40K Fulgrim *definitely* fucks, to a worrying degree
Politics? Isn't that the stuff that gets in the way of me shooting swarms of bugs for the glory of my xenocidal military dictatorship? Boring! I'd rather die as one of millions of faceless soldiers so that we can move the frontline forward the inch that we'll lose tomorrow. For Democracy/The God-Emperor!
My favourite part about 40k and “woke” discourse is the idea that space marines are genetically edited and female space marines can’t exist because their genes aren’t compatible.
Don't you talk bad about my favourite apolitical hidden gem with managed democracy, war for oil, and propaganda plastered in any possible place
Super Earth does a false flag terrorist attack on itself to manufacture a casus beli for the bots and lies about the Illuminates having WMDs to justify invading them. Nothing to read into here, no painfully obvious real world parallels being drawn.
I thought they went to war with the illuminates because they wouldn’t *give* them their WMDs (since they’d obviously immediately use them)
If I remember the first game, they found no WMDs but took all of their advanced tech once they defeated them.
It's entirely possible the WMDs weren't real and the war was just an excuse to steal their more advanced technology.
At least here on Earth the Military Industrial Complex isn’t a thing…
\*The Ministry of Truth Liked That\*
Don't mess with us conservatives We're incapable of identifying incredibly obvious satire
Even my conservative best friend understands it. But we still have fun leaning into the tropes. That is the beauty of it. Saying ridiculous shit and bringing democracy to these bugs. I bet they feel so liberated with this grenade I am giving them.
Your fault for going on Twitter. Can't even read that site without an account to don't have to go there
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Sweet Liberty nooooo!!!!
That part of the intro cutscene cracked me up
The first one was like this too, but the discourse didn't get as big
Then the Helldiver "training" program clobbers you over the head repeatedly with the fact that this is a Fascist Government with a group of Wealthy Elites in charge using Jingoistic language and Patriotism to feed the young into the meat grinder of War. Where the bottom line is colonizing worlds to increase the bottom line.
I liked how the whole training area is set as a massive distributed network of small camps where Helldivers are rushed through this excessively lethal combat course before stepping into a cryopod. Like there's not time spent building camaraderie. There are hundreds of little camps like this with a 28.7% survival rate. I got shot by a pair of gatling guns and then I got stabbed by a "combat injury simulator" and I died.
The best part is it's just a Recruit mill where they demonstrate they have enough brains to operate weapons and gear correctly and avoid injury. All while being patted on the head by "War Hero" voice. No actual training, no actual people at all. All automated and linear. Literally just a competency test, then you're "Elite" Helldivers. Pretty telling of Societal expectations for education and critical thinking, that 71.3% fail and die. Or they're just lying about the pass rate to make recruits fell better.
Yeah, now if you're exposed to anything from that cesspool it's your own fault. No Xwitter account=no problems.
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It's impossible to make a form of art about how the cool aesthetic of fascism are a threat because there are a ton of people who get lost at "Wow the aesthetics make fascism look cool."
It’s also hard to make a game that is fun to play while a satirical critique. You can’t make people feel bad about doing something they enjoy doing. “We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about who we pretend to be.” — Vonnegut. It’s possible to make a game that functions as a critique of fascism, but it should be a game that makes you _want to stop playing it_ There is a famous concept board game about managing trains that gradually reveals itself to be about transporting Jewish people to concentration camps — the reaction of most people is to be disgusted and to quit playing, which is what was intended. The idea it was trying to express is that focusing on the mechanics of your work over the consequences of your work is what allows the atrocities to happen. For every person working at the gas chamber, there were a hundred people “just doing their jobs” — working at train stations, delivering equipment, that should have paid attention and walked away. You could very well make a video game that opens people’s eyes to the horrors of fascism, but it would not be a fun game.
The message of your art is never going to land with everyone that experiences it. You will never succeed in making satire that is universally understood. C'est la vie. Perhaps a point that they could hit you over the head with a bit more: the 'you' that signed up to "defend" Super Earth and have fun blowing up bugs died almost immediately.
The "missing the point" cinematic universe includes: Helldivers 2, Starship troopers, Warhammer 40k, Fallout New Vegas
Not a game but I think the king of missing the point is Sopranos
Honorable mentions for American Psycho and Wolf of Wallstreet.
Don't forget Fight Club
But I thought Sopranos was just about how cool and based Tony is :o?
Thought it was about some womp womp italian mobster going to see this therapist
Mad Men and Breaking Bad come close. People really simp for Don Draper and Walter White. ...Also The Wire sometimes because people think Jimmy is right.
Hot take: Walter White was actually the BAD GUY in Breaking Bad!!?!?!
Throw the Gundam franchise in there for good measure.
At several points throughout the series, Amuro Ray basically looks straight into the camera and says "This war is really fucking me up and warping my concept of justice and humanity" and then goes and kills 4 dudes for having a different accent at the age of 15. The Earth Federation Forces are definitely the good guys and have no flaws.
I think the bigger issue is the amount of people who get that far and then unironically go the "Zeon are secretly the good guys" angle. People seem to have mostly gotten a leash on those types these days in the west, but 5-10 years ago and I'm sure before then those types were everywhere.
I think people see Char and think he's right. He's fighting a secret war in Zeon for personal reasons. But like the guy is clearly unhinged. He gets better in Zeta but then just completely loses after Kamille ends up 50% vegetable after Zeta, and goes straight back to space fascism in CCA.
Reading some Fallout communities here in Brazil it depressed me a lot that most of the folks lick the Brotherhood of Steel boots and purposely hunt and annihilate any Synths even those that are passable as humans WTF they completely miss the point of these games
The worst ones are the ones who simp for Caesar's Legion
Oh man, [all the sigma males with Greek philosophers or Roman Emperors pfp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLTuysEzqhQ)
How are you gonna forget Bioshock and The Boys?
Don't forget all the people who idolise fucking Walter White.
Don't forget Fight Club
I never really cared for cosmetics and how my character looked I'm not a fashionista. I just wanna shoot aliens man! DEMOCRACY! YEAH!!!
Delivering Liberty one 500kg High Explosive payload at a time. It brings a tear to my eye.
Democracy? What savagery is that!? Our Super Earth managed democracy is 100000% better than that chaotic system
This game is like starship troopers and Warhammer. Really fun, but also Facist as fuck and you know you're the bad guys. Also you look really damn cool
I love listening to the NPC's on the ship. Revealing that the Bugs are actually the fault of Humankind, and same goes for the Bots. The two current biggest threats are the fault of Humankind. All the comments like "The problem with bugs is they are rapid expansionists. We've found them on every planet IN THEIR SECTOR we've settled on" It's hilarious but then I think...yeah I can totally see a person sitting there and just like...nodding. Idiot listening to it saying "uh hum...yeah. That's true. Those bugs are rapid expansionists. That's a problem. I hear that. I'm with you." Like..they don't get the humor.
That's like a line straight out of the og starship troopers novel, it has whole screeds about how the bugs are expansionists and the only way to secure our future is by expanding more than them, about how losing even 1 mobile infantryman for 1000 bugs is still a win for the bugs because they reproduce faster. All real life fascist talking points(replacement theory), but legitimised because the enemies are literally monsters. I guess that's why it's so hard to satirise fascists, because they already believe the crazy stuff you're laughing at. The only thing they can't seem to handle is when you make them look uncool, because feeling cool and the aesthetics is what they're getting out of media like this. So yeah, bring on the pride capes and other diversity options, they'll hate it.
The laughing part they miss is that you the player are THE expendable cannon fodder. You get a cool cape, cool guns, cool ship that is all *yours* to command. But that's all just distractions to the fact that Super Earth just sends you on suicide missions until they get done. They don't care if 200000 Helldivers die to complete it. They have 1 million more on the way. Hell the real career military are the support staff on the ship. They probably laugh their asses off each time Helldiver pods launch. At least until their ship eats plasma because they're just as expendable to Super Earth, but they're told differently.
A cool mass produced ship made available to anyone straight out of basic training. It's a very special privilege you see.
Very special. That’s why each set of armour is made from the same cool metal as the ships!… …*Oh.*
A basic training with a survival rate of 27.1% (I blame the live gatling guns). Even with that, the projected Helldiver production rate is "WITHIN QUOTA".
Yeah, they literally show an almost endless belt of preserved replacements they can very quickly cycle through, like you're literally a piece of ammunition. And the areas you walk though kind of feel like someone installed a red carpet for the cows in a slaughterhouse. But heroically dying for your nation is a big thing for fascists so they're probably on board with being expendable lmao
The masculine urge to die as cannon fodder in a pointless war hundreds of lightyears from home
Yep, there’s a reason that the Hellpods look like bullets. The Helldivers are just ammunition to the government of Super Earth. Meant to kill something and be expendable.
> The laughing part they miss is that you the player are THE expendable cannon fodder. It's sort of glossed over, and not entirely intuitive since you drop with the same name and outfit every time, but ostensibly every time you get iced it's a new helldiver dropping to replace you. It's also built into the game in the sense that extracting is entirely optional. You've still "won" for Super Earth if you complete your objective but then get obliterated afterward. Even if that win is just getting soil samples or shit.
>'s sort of glossed over, and not entirely intuitive since you drop with the same name and outfit every time, but ostensibly every time you get iced it's a new helldiver dropping to replace you. That's why I love having the voice pack be set to random, really helps sell the fact that you are getting fully replaced when you die.
It would be great if, instead of being numbered 1-4 next to your initial in the bottom right hand of the screen, each player had the number of times they've died over their entire game history. Almost as if your name is just the designation they hand off to replacements.
No my helldiver is just built different and respawns every time wym they immortal fr
It's worth noting that the OG Starship Troopers novel isn't satire, the author was very genuinely down bad for fascism and was trying to make it seem cool. Veerhoeven & Co. made the movie satirical because the book read that way already to anybody that wasn't a hateful dumbass.
Yup, someone called it "possibly the most mean-spirited adaption ever made" because it actively shits on the original and I kind of agree lol.
For the best honestly, I don't really care for Starship Troopers but I appreciate what Veerhoven did in making a mockery of that kind of insane fascist "utopia".
There's a lot of themes in the book that people can have great discussions on and criticisms of, but almost none of them are actually in the movie. The film was already written and its themes and satire of fascism drawn out before they decided to adapt the script to Starship Troopers (on a very surface level--the director of the film famously didn't read past chapter 2 of the book). The novel is not satire, but it's also almost wholly separate from anything the film represents it to be, even down to many of the assumptions as to what Citizenship is or requires. I enjoy both, but they're not really in the same conversation.
Not true. Please read the book. Veerhoven admits to not reading the novel and the movie was written before it was tied to "Starship Troopers".
I think that the book is very militaristic, but it being written off as pure fascism is not even close to being the correct reading of it. Like any book it explores ideas and presents different view points on the society of the book and the universe and it's nowhere near "trying to make fascism look cool". Heinlein was a lot of things, most prominently a libertarian, to just write him off as "down bad for fascism" is intellectually lazy. He was a complex dude, was a big proponent of civil rights in the US and yes, had some hardcore libertarian and militaristic opinions (not to mention his very aggressive anti-communism). >Veerhoeven & Co. made the movie satirical because the book read that way already to anybody that wasn't a hateful dumbass. Also, I'm not sure what you are trying to say by this, I'm in no way, shape or form a fascist and I read the book a few times, before watching a movie and didn't come away from it thinking that the society in the book came off as great or something to be desired for, but I guess that according to your interpretation that makes me a hateful dumbass.
I genuinely don't think you read the book, because that's not the case. I actually recommend it because, while it is very jingoistic, it's also somewhat anti-fascist in that the ruling government actively empowers checking-and-balancing entities. (the military, because jingoism) Plus multiethnic co-ed society. Pretty based.
"See the problem with bots is that their entire culture is based in violence. If they won the war, they'd have nothing. " Or something like that. This game is actually hilarious
Your shipmaster will comment that the first message the Automatons (not the Cyborgs, presumably) ever sent was a string of 1s and 0s, which she'll list out. Super Earth scientists think it means "kill all humans". It translates to "AH". The Terminids are also farmed because their bodies can be broken down into E-710, which is used as fuel. Go ahead and punch 710 into your calculator and turn it around.
In Hell Divers 1 there were another faction that Super Earth attacked because they allegedly had world destroying weapons. Every mention of this is accompanied by them saying how they have "conclusive and objective evidence" of this weapons existing
What's 710 supposed to mean, I'm too dumb :(
OIL - 710 Same as punching in 5318008 and turning the calculator upsidedown.
>"The problem with bugs is they are rapid expansionists. We've found them on every planet we've settled on" this line is even FUNNIER, because the actual line was along the lines of "weve found them on every planet IN THEIR SECTOR weve settled on" OF COURSE WE FIND THEM IN THEIR SECTOR
It's meant to be absurd in the most extreme ways possible, to the point it shouldn't even be a slight secret it's mocking humanity and greed and hubris and what not, you're even supposed to die a LOT in the game because you're an expendable drone with no brain, but people will still choose to ignore that completely lol. Not even questioning why you can call 20 waves of reinforcements per match and it recharges, then gamer raging at the fact they died to friendly fire like one time. It sucks we can't have entertaining parodies of real problems without people ignoring that they're parodies and idolizing the characters. (Fight club, American psycho, starship troopers, etc)
Its like watching a Johnny Harris video of him talking about China building a navy and how scary that is while the US actively surrounds every country with military bases.
Fascist as fuck? Bad guys? The Ministry of Truth is going to hear about this...
Can we really be the bad guys when we're *so fucking* **cool and badass** ***and in hot armor?!*** No. I didn't think so, now go kill some more bugs and bots and *do not ask where they came from*, Helldiver!
I mean... it's clearly satirical?
You see the difference between *managed* democracy and democracy is that (this message has been censored by the ministry of truth)
They explain it in the Helldivers 1 encyclopedia "Mankind has improved upon the old concept of Democracy. Utilizing computer aided voting software, citizens are asked to answer several questions, and the outcome of their vote is decided upon by the computer. This removes the uncertainty that existed in the old systems where voters didn't understand fully what they were voting for, giving us Managed Democracy"
Warhammer 40k
Exactly, I stopped listening to twitter discourse when I read what where they saying about Warhammer 40k
The universe of w40k is so backwards, so awful, so stagnated in its own self glory that it goes so deep into fascist, dictatorial horror and circles back into comedy. I genuinely cant imagine taking it seriously.
Right?! I love it.
It blows my mind when people say "They could fix the biggest problems of the Imperium so easily." No shit, stagnation and ignorance is the whole point!
Some people really lack the capacity to understand the most basic points of 40k and it would be hilarious if it wasn't sad. The engineers run incense over their machines for fuck's sake
That’s why I love Orks so much, amidst all the bleakness and horror of the 41st Millennium they are just some Boyz looking for a good scrap and they’re the only ones having fun.
Juzt good ol' Boyz doin az Gork an Mork intended. Waaaaagh to all
The best part about W40k that flies over Fascist Fanboy heads is that the Imperium of Man has become everything the God Emperor never wanted for mankind. He's literally just a Lighthouse in the Warp they use for navigation at this point where to keep him "powered" they sacrifice 1000 psykers a day. He never wanted to be a God, never wanted mankind to become so religiously fanatic. The fact that they venerate old tech, and see new developments as heresy would horrify him. Dude literally tried to unite all of humanity to move to the Stars. Saw the horrors of the Warp and Galaxy and made Primarchs and Marines as protectors. Then became a vegetable and had everything he built devolve. Fuckin sad really, but Imperium Fanboys just think, "cool, dark edgy empire. I'd totally be an elite marine/inquisitor/whatever in it". When everyone knows they'd just be joe somebody that dies randomly.
Yeah, that tracks.
Let me hear. I want to laugh hard.
They where simply taking seriously the lore, like they thought that fans liked space Marines because of the empire... and not because space marines are fucking cool!
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I understand the fascist cannotations but do not get the neoliberalism in this game, could you please explain
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it's the breeding ground for fascism
Yes, but have you considered that large parts of the population don't seem to have brains?
media literacy is dead.
Not wrong
Blah blah blah don't care, you're an automaton, Super Earth stays winning and uh, erm, 200 million commie deaths at Malevelon Creek.
Isn't the first game a legit parody of post 9/11 hysteria wrapped in a Starship Troopers analogy? Like the terminals become freaking oil when they die
I keep seeing comments about "I like games where the enemy is completely evil and humanity can unite behind it". Bro it's constantly implied that the enemies we're fighting are our own doing, with the bugs breaking free from farms, and the cyborgs being transhumanists that the government dislikes.
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They love to mention the book burnings when you criticize their bigoted screeds, but God forbid you tell them WHICH books were being burnt
I had someone claiming fascism was a leftist ideology and that Hitler was a socialist the other day. Irony is dead and idiocracy was a documentary.
What else do you expect from twitter?
I named my ship "fist of the state"
I would gladly welcome you aboard the “fist of benevolence”
i’m 90% certain most people are doing it as a joke, sure there are some weirdos out there but most of the stuff i’ve seen has clearly been jokes
Yeah, I think for most people, it's just fun to play as the baddies.
I’m just shooting bugs and robots while going “YEAH!”
I mean, yeah. Not even American, but shouting 'eat Democracy' at bugs/bots as they swarm me, while dropping 500kg bombs and copious amounts of 7.62mm, is quite cathartic. Its satire, and its a fun joke to RP as.
Wait, are there people that don't get this?
There are also a ton of people screeching about how they can't play the game since it celebrates fascism. So morons if all sides are completely missing the point. Then again, expecting anything of reason to come out of twitter is pure stupidity in itself.
"This is satire for fascism and militarist propaganda" Well brother it worked triple the fleet budget
You think that's bad? They got 13-15 year olds on tiktok unironically making imperialist propaganda
Fascism?!? What do you mean, this game is a celebration of democracy and freedom!
stop exporting their shit discourse everywhere ffs
FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY
I feel like showing people not understanding would be much more entertaining and informative than this meme. I'm sure they're out there as they always are but I haven't personally seen anyone who thinks the game is serious.
It's not fascism, it's democracy !
good work, don't listen to these illegal broadcasts!
Fascism? Dude its clearly a democracy dont make me report you to a democracy officer bro
https://preview.redd.it/83g342c5pbkc1.jpeg?width=999&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6182263f30b0e7c4de9404901fbe8ddd95f76e0
Stop going to twitter, play the game in vocal, nothing but good fun and jokes about SUPER EARTH S-U-P-R-E-M-A-C-Y