this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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If you ask someone who isn't a Nazi if they're a Nazi out of nowhere then confusion seems pretty valid. If there's a premise to it that they understand (by being Nazis or acting like ones) you'd get less genuine confusion.
E: I wasn't talking about the specific case in OP but in general
If the context is 40k, definitely not an unexpected question.
Hellsing Abridged on the topic.
Why did the guy feel the need to announce that they are, in fact, Nazis? The giant swastika is a bit of a giveaway
One would think there are "dead giveaways".
But apparently pulling a Nazi salute on stage at a presidential inauguration doesn't seem to be one. Can anyone explain why?
No, that's just an unfortunate faux-pas
Is there something about the tabletop portion of the community I don't get? I just like the lore of the universe and if someone asked me if I was a nazi based on that I would be very confused.
Think about it this way, if you joined WWII reenactment, you'll mostly come across guys that have a general interest in WWII and will play the role of most factions (including Germany if needed). But you will also run into guys who are enthusiastically on the German side 90% and less happy playing anything else. That second guy is most likely a Nazi but tries to maintain plausible deniability
I too am confused about the correlation since I've never run into nazis playing 40k. Though to be fair I run slaaneshi chaos so I don't think I'm in their demo of black templars.
Warhammer 40k lore is on the level of racism and genetic determinism that resonates with nazibrain.
Every faction is a caricature and parody of some ideological concept where every member is obligated to live and die exactly as they're supposed to.
That's not at all what I picked up from it. Could you give an example?
I mean, the space marines are genetically engineered soldiers who are locked into their roles they inherited from the primearch who's genetic ancestry they are from, all of which were crafted based on the genetically superior being of the emperor. The eldar and orcs are literally bio-engineered weapons weapons of a race that were basically gods. The Tau have a lot of layers racial hierarchy, bio-engineering, and similar levels of eugenics stuff going on. The tyranids basically just consumer biomass to filter for genes that can benefit their race and incorporate the new genetic data. I mean, unless you didn't pay any attention to the game lore, I really don't know how you missed all this. Like, this is the core of the game lore.
Beyond that GW have straight said that each faction is a caricature of some form of extreme ideology. The imperium are basically theocratic space nazis, the orcs are pretty much how the classical empires, or something like that imperium, see less developed human groups, the barbaric hordes. Etc.
The space marines regularly have groups that splinter off from their ideology (soul drinkers) or renounce it entirely (see chaos), last I knew the dark Eldar are the ones who got corrupted by a chaos God but the craft world Eldar weren't "created by a deity", the orks are space fungus that have a psychic connection which creates their deities of Gork and Mork.
I can see how it can be interpreted that way and the gene seed is a really good point but I'm having a hard time making all the other connections. Even the inquisition has tons of characters that either change their ideology or side entirely.
The old ones are who created the eldar, not literal gods, but a race that was so powerful they wielded cosmic power. They disappeared 10s of millions of year ago, and you can still see how deeply their bio-engineered structure is still influencing their creations. However, in their absence, the eldar have replaced them with new gods, and had to adapt to how the galaxy is post war in heaven. The Orks are a fungus, that was created as a bio-weapon race by the Old ones. The war in heaven, which was old ones vs C'tan, cause the psychic/spirit/whatever aspect of the universe to be corrupted into the warp. That taint is what caused most of these splinter groups. However the whole structure of things is based of lineage, everything important is the result of, and/or practices eugenics of some sort. You can even see it in the structure like how Hive cities are organized. Just because there are splinter groups doesn't mean this stuff isn't that. If anything it leans into it because the biggest reason things splinter from the groups largely have to do with warp influence, which is what real groups, like the nazis, would call degeneracy. Also, if you look at groups like Nazis there was always infighting, fractional groups, internal rebels, etc. The existence of things resisting the system doesn't mean that isn't what the system is, and that it isn't the preeminent concept at the foundation of everything.
Goddamn, I missed an entire section because I don't remember the old ones and I've been playing for decades. Got any books to recommend so I can catch up?
honestly, I haven't read any WH books since the 90s. Most of what I know recently is from my friends who are really into it.
here is a YT channel with a bunch of lore playlists, and isn't a right wing weirdo
https://www.youtube.com/@ArbitorIan/playlists
The Imperium fanboys that only play with regular Space Marines, Custodes, and the like seem to be the demographic. If they complain about playing any xeno races, that can be a tip. Then again, some of them are just really autistic. It's not an absolute guarantee, but yeah, the Imperium, understandably, attracts fascists.
Ahh so the ones chasing the Roman empire feeling (that's what I always got from custodes)
Little Kitten (The Captain General) is definitely not a fascist. Not sure about the rest of them, I'm pretty sure they went entirely around the bend once Big E got confined to the golden throne.
(This is fourth degree TTS warpfuckery)
I must be behind on the heresy lore, I had no idea they were named little kitten
Oh boy! This isn't actually canon, it's a fan made YouTube series that GW killed off a couple years ago.
If The Emperor had a Text To Speech device
His (The Captain General's) full name is literally hours in length.
I feel like we probably need to address the fact that, unfortunately, the rigid fix rules based world views of society are inherently appealing to those on the spectrum. By no means does being autistic make one automatically tolerant or decent. Autistic people can vote, can endorse the violent oppression of those found disagreeable, can persuade others to their view, and be all manners of discriminatory.
I believe being on the spectrum may make it easier to open constructive dialog, but not always.
Being on the spectrum myself coming from a conservative upbringing, i am in no illusion of what kind of person i could have been. It has been countless peoples conflicting perspectives and patience that has lead me to (what i hope to) be fair and tolerant to other perspectives and backgrounds
Right, in that context it wouldn't be.
Meh depends on the setting. My partner and I are organizing smaller concerts from time to time. If we are about to book an unknown band sooner or later we have to ask the Nazi question.
The setting here feels similar.
what do you look for in their responses?
surely they dont go „oh yeah we are nazis, you got us“
Of course setting, their actions and whatnot matter. It isn't out of nowhere if there's some context for it that the recipient also understands.
In 40k where the Imperium are outright fascists, the context is already there
Isn't that just roleplay, though? Don't know much about 40k, but I imagine someone's got to be the bad guys, right?
Yes
Yeah but even if there's some initial confusion, most normal people will get to a clear negative answer pretty quickly.
That's true. But I'd definitely also want to know what prompted the question
it's a warhammer 40k group.
There's a 50/50 chance they're neonazis. (ask if they ever play as Imperium... that's a solid way to find out.)
Same with Fallout fans who are oddly obsessed with The Brotherhood of Steel.
I wore a brotherhood pin in high school. But that was before fallout 3 was released when the brotherhood were essentially militaristic hermits. I loved fallout when it was essentially an anarchist propaganda piece that satirized all power structures as eventually toxic in rebuilding the apocalypse. The only good guys were the followers of the apocalypse who were strictly anarchist.
The brotherhood were portrayed as ineffectual and the enclave were essentially the brotherhood if it became less isolationist. Both were obviously satirizing American political ideologies. Fallout 3 decided to throw all that out and make the brotherhood interventionist, meaning the theme was a fight between good America world police with the brotherhood and bad America world police with the enclave. A suitable post 9/11 liberal who lives in Bethesda's view of the world, but largely uncritical to power structures. You got to vote for the "lesser of two evils" in that game, but that fact was presented uncritically and not satirized at all.
The Brotherhood has been authoritian racist tech bros since FO1, with most of their expanded lore coming out of Tactics long before FO3 was even a concept. Their goals were to take technology (that they didn't even understand) to keep it out of the wrong hands, while also eliminating any non-humans they encounter. They grew in rank by essentially running protection rackets and straight up conscripting wastelanders into slavery.
They are portrayed this way right from the get go, you just have to actually do some digging and read their holotapes to find out how bad they really are in the first two games if you didn't get the hint from your first encounter with them where they literally send you to a giant irrated hole in the ground, expecting you to die as a way of saying "get lost and go fuck yourself."
Bethesda tried to make them less evil and less stupid in 3.
I kind of ignore tactics and I think I made my actual distain of them pretty clear. The problem was fallout 3 making them into the good guys. They never were. My pin was as tongue in cheek as the naming of the primary fan site at the time "no mutants allowed."
Enclave is probably more accurate
Caesar's Legion is the most accurate
We were talking generally
If you know anything about 40K, the prompt should be self-evident