Greentext

The Imperium is a blatant dry satire of authoritarian bigotry, and it turns out authoritarian bigots are immune to satire. Goes clean over their pointy little heads.

I don't know much about it either, but in general conservatives and the right at large have no media literacy. Everything is shallow and face value to them. They see pro military crushing stuff deemed "lesser" and they basically get off on it.

It's the same reason for right wing star trek fans. They see space military and ignore all the themes and other things like the fact there is no capitalism. It's always pushed left ideas, yet only now it's "gone woke" because it's pushing modern left ideas, not stiff they've learned to ignore.

Just look at any media made by conservatives for conservatives. It's terrible and the kind of wish fulfillment youd expect from a child telling a story.

I'm not too knowledgable on all the lore, but iirc:

• Space Marines are engineered supersoldiers who see humans as puny livestock
• The leader is an emperor, also known as god-emperor, whose word is law
• Pretty much all of their technological advancements exist to kill/control
• Their creed is basically to eradicate all non-believers (heretics) and non-humans (unless the non-humans can benefit them)
• Slavery is pretty much the standard for punishing people who oppose the god-emperor (if not death)
• A lot of other things

Basically, the entire main faction is a hyper-fascist, fundamentalist, imperial, and ultra-violent organization. A lot of the other factions operate with a similar amount of cruelty and violence.

The point is that no faction in Warhammer can really be known as "the good guys." I always perceived the 40k universe as a caricature of some of the worst aspects of mankind, but I play along as a cog in the machine, knowing it's bad. Neo-nazis tend to perceive the Astartes/Space Marines as glorious heroes. It's akin to alt-righters enjoy Starship Troopers and Rage Against the Machine, without recognizing the irony.

The humans in that scenario are a group of super "racist" anti-xeno, ultra religious fascists. So less a punisher situation (which is just moron right wingers not being familiar with the source material, where punisher actually kills those things blue line corrupt cops) and more of a moron right wingers not understanding satire and taking things too seriously, thinking humans are the good guys, despite being clearly terrible.