The Political Side of 40k

[Balloonacorn]

I found this article while browsing my Canadian news. It details the connect of 40k to some political groups. I am not sure it is all... valid? The picture of Trump as God Emperor of the Imperium is thought-provoking though

https://www.cbc.ca/radiointeractives/do ... hammer-40k

[me_in_japan]

That's a decent article, and thanks for posting it. Tbh, what I find more interesting than the article itself is that anything in it was considered news (and I can see from the comments below the article that many folks appear to be treating it as such). I mean that genuinely - I don't consider myself especially tapped into the 40k community at large. Heck, I don't even play the game any more, but the prevailance of right wing adjacent (or just straight up right wing/white supremacist/incel) peeps in the hobby has been very obvious to me over the past few years. Images of God Emperor Trump abound on the internet, and there seems to be a loooooot of (mostly American - sorry American friends) folks who don't see the Space Marines as anything other than conquering heroes. I dunno, maybe it's because I started early, back in the RT days when Space Marines were literally drugged up psycho killer gangers, scraped up off the streets and sent into warzones to do the bidding of a mass-murdering racist ideology, but I've never really understood why people see the Imperium as the "good guys". I guess that image has been gradually undermined by the past twenty odd years of publicity/Ultrasmurf poster boys, but still...

I do think, however, that GW were commendably clear on their stance a week or so ago when they posted their "nazis fuck off" message. I especially approved of the "we don't want your money" part. That shows they meant it I even went so far as to "like" their post on facebook, which believe me is a rarity indeed.

Finally, who are these people that say "keep your politics out of my wargaming"? Cos, 1) It's always been there, and 2) it aint your wargaming, and 3) if you think politics can be removed from anything, then you're living in fantasyland already and don't need wargaming to get there.

ah, people. I'll never understand em...

[Jye Nicolson]

I do think, however, that GW were commendably clear on their stance a week or so ago when they posted their "nazis fuck off" message. I especially approved of the "we don't want your money" part. That shows they meant it I even went so far as to "like" their post on facebook, which believe me is a rarity indeed.

My feelings exactly, though I was liking on Twitter instead

I saw a lot of folks debating the nuances of the "satire" angle and I felt that was missing the point; yes that argument may not hold water over the whole history of the company and the game, but the "we don't want your money" to Nazis in 2021 is exactly what I want to hear from the company. I don't mind if the lore is a mess and sometimes/often problematic if GW keeps beating that drum explicitly in the real world.

[Primarch]

WW2 Historical Gaming says "Hi!"

Sadly there are people with questionable political/social views in all walks of life. There have always been people like that in our hobby, we're just noticing them more now as a lot of them were emboldened by having ol' 45 in the White House.

40K went through a big tonal shift between RT and 2nd ed, and again when the new CEO took over. This is not a bad thing by any means, but it did dilute the 'Imperium is EVIL,' message.

And to be honest, the marines and guard do come across as the good guys, (in as much as any faction in 40K are the good guys). They are the humans fighting for humanity against aliens and daemons. Sure, it's the worst possible version of humanity, but it's better than being dissolved for your biomass. The majority of the setting's heroes are honourable, noble and have recognizable human traits and flaws, so it is entirely understandable that people would see them as being the goodies, because they are the most relatable things in the setting. The Imperium as a whole is a horrendous thing, but the characters in it aren't always portrayed as being equally as horrible.

So we have this situation where something that should be terrifying is being marketed as something cool. Where being a xenophobe is shown as the ideal to maintain society. Where ethnic cleansing (exterminatus) is the preferable option in most situations. And all of this being sold to predominantly white, male kids who haven't yet developed a full understanding of exactly what those things really mean. Is it any wonder that some of them grow up with a very skewed take on it all? Mix that with nationalistic, right wing propaganda and you have the current situation.

[The Other Dave]

Yeah, it’s complicated.

On the one hand, there is a problem with racism and sexism in the hobby - you don’t need to know a whole lot of people in the hobby who aren’t, y’know, cishet white dudes, before you hear stories, ranging from annoying micro-aggressions to extremely shitty “my hobby is not for people like you” gatekeeping and outright racist/sexist/transphobic “humor”. (And these stories are almost always answered by, again, cishet white dudes saying ‘well, I’ve never seen that kind of thing, therefore it must not actually be a problem’ blindered-thinking responses.) GW saying straight up “we don’t want that in the hobby” is a good thing!

But, as Primarch says, there’s some extreme mixed messaging going on. The “you will not be missed” message, while, again, good, is not nearly as strong as the “buy these cool, heroically-presented, space marine models” message - take a look at the recent black templars release (easily the most xenophobic, fashy subfaction in the range) with its heroic presentation of the chapter and its “burn the heretic, tee hee” ad copy and you can see why some people might choose to buy into that side of the story. GW saying “40K is satire,” while not wrong per se (its roots are definitely satirical, and there are still strains of it - the AdMech turning Cadian refugees into servitors is particularly on-the-nose in modern Britain and America - it’s fighting against a lot of messaging that’s very easily read as supporting xenophobic / sexist / what-have-you points of view. And a lot of people do, there’s some extremely extremely shitty groups on FB dedicated to it.

(A recent Twitter conversation where someone was trying to argue that 40K has never been satirical because “even if Rick Priestley said it is he wasn’t actually involved in creating 40K” was pretty hilarious, though.)

[Primarch]

I think it's also worth remembering that a lot of people have a hard time understanding the culture of people who aren't a part of their own class/gender/nationality. How many times have you had questions or comments from people from other countries where you thought 'Surely everyone knows that?' It's not a racist thing, it's just a cultural difference.

The "I've never seen that kind of thing," is probably true for most people, but largely because they were never looking for it or thought anything about it. So the majority of the wargaming crowd doesn't see an issue with a lot of things, because to them there is no issue. It's only when some moron goes full on with painting swastikas on their minis* that the community gets up in arms about it.

As I mentioned above, Warhammer is, for the most part, aimed at kids. Our group is fairly old by the standards of a GW store's local crowd. Politics and satire aren't something people that age usually spend a lot of time contemplating. "What are the social ramifications of a society that wants to purge the unclean?" doesn't get as much head space as "My army is a group of genetically enhanced, super human, space vampires!"

Whatever the community at large finds acceptable or not, I'm glad that our small part of it is well behaved and tolerant of others.


* I feel that I should point out that I do own several WW2 German armies for Bolt Action, including some SS troops (I also own multiple armies for the Allies too). I do so fully aware of the history of such forces, having put some time and effort into studying them. I don't condone their actions in any way, but it's hard to wargame the period without someone being the bad guys.
I'm happy to explain my reasons for the forces I chose, and if anyone feels uncomfortable about playing with/against a certain army, I am fine with using something else.

[me_in_japan]

There’s definitely a difference between historical gamers who have armies of l’il SS dudesmen and a certain type of gamer who plays Black Templars and thinks they’re cool. I think Stuart hit the nail on the head when he explained that he’s done his research and that, basically, in historical gaming somebody has to be the bad guys. I think, also, there is some middle ground. For example, on Facebook just today, in the I Love Scale Models group, a dude posted a (frankly astounding) model he’d built of the Bismarck. I’ll attach a couple of screenshots, but there was a pretty surprising diversity of reaction to his post (keeping in mind this was in a dedicated scale models group - nobody was like “why would you do that?” or anything.)

I have to say, I fall down on the side of the commenter who said “great model, but why the rant?”. Like, I kind feel that some folks just like to feel oppressed? By all means make accurate historical models - I strongly believe in remembering history, especially the bad bits, but don’t for a minute think that makes it ok to glorify it.

[The Other Dave]

The "I've never seen that kind of thing," is probably true for most people, but largely because they were never looking for it or thought anything about it. So the majority of the wargaming crowd doesn't see an issue with a lot of things, because to them there is no issue. It's only when some moron goes full on with painting swastikas on their minis* that the community gets up in arms about it.

Well, yeah, and that's sort of my point, with a bit of a caveat about "most people." "Most people" in the hobby have never really seen racism or sexism, because most of us in the hobby are white men, and we may not even notice if it does occur around us, or it may happen around us rarely enough that we can brush it off as an aberration. The problem I'm describing is the jump from the extremely-probable "I've never seen or experienced sexism or racism in my group" (as a hypothetical white guy in a group composed more or less entirely of other hypothetical white guys) to "therefore this person sharing their story of sexism or racism must be exaggerating or outright lying," which sadly is a response you see a lot.

As for swastikas in particular (building mostly on Dave's post here), I think that while on historical models there's certainly a case to be made for being accurate, it's also true that that symbol in particular is used pretty actively by hate groups today, and of course was used prominently by one particular hate group rather less than a human lifetime ago, so some people feeling uncomfortable with having to look at it is entirely reasonable. There's a reason lots of scale modelers go to pains to model nazi vehicles so that the few swastikas that would actually have been on display on vehicles are obscured by stowage and so on. Now, I certainly wouldn't say that "any historical modeler that displays swastikas on their models is a secret nazi," far from it, but there is something to be said for that sensitivity, y'know?

That said, yeah, for the particular post Dave shared, being a person who would jump to calling people who are uncomfortable with swastikas "Nazis" raises many many many many red flags - it's extraordinarily insensitive at best, and displaying your model on a table draped with a big ol' Nazi flag is also extremely yikes. I don't think it's a big ask that if you're into the history enough to want to scratch-build a 1/100 scale model of the Bismarck that you ought to be sensitive to that kind of thing.

[Primarch]

I think that using a real naval flag as table covering for your massive scale model ship is generally kind of a cool idea. No one would think twice about a US Naval Ensign under a model of the USS Enterprise for example. It's also not hard to realize that the same does not hold true when it's that flag.

[The Other Dave]

Pree-cisely!

I was going to say that this is all kind of tangential to 40K, but then remembered that the inciting incident to the latest GW announcement was a chud showing up to a Spanish tournament with Nazi imagery displayed proudly on his jacket, so...