Gotta get all the budgeted horror in before the end of the fiscal year

Though I think like you've said before, because the 40k history is so huge, there are easily parts of it that would be great grounds for exploring specifically fascist movements.

It is too bad in a sense that, facism invents external and internal enemies to justify constant repression but there are absolutely real hordes of demons and orks and tyranids that want to kill everything, which undercuts the xenophobia criticism a bit.

Theres also the crumbling feudal empire, a by and large useless figurehead monarchy, sclerotic beaurocracy.

I think its just such a mixture of ideas that it isn't really a coherent criticism of specifically fascism via parody.

Also im just going to say it, I don't even think 40k is just "fascist" dystopia, I think its more like British Empire dystopia at its core (gee where is GW from?)

And i know everybody loves the f word these days but not every bad political system is fucking fascism come on.

Oh certainly. I mean if the premise is: any depiction of "bad stuff" could be misinterpreted as endorsement, then we might as well give up on creating media.

Hell, non dystopian fantasy books, like say LoTR are pretty cool with monarchy and feudalism but I don't think all these authors are like, hey kings are great, let's do that again.

Sometimes you pick a setting cause it's engaging and not a political endorsement.

Yeah fucking not great

I wonder if it has something to do with how nerd culture went from being a niche thing to pretty much pervasive, and the need for these big events was part of keeping the "culture" alive and celebrating it.

And then covid just kicked over the slowly rotting house and nobody rebuilt.

Ah, how MANY times did you read it as an 8 year old?

The free propaganda victory of just calling military units "Guards"