That’s almost verbatim one of the things Umberto Eco writes in ur-fascism iirc. I love how heavy handed Warhammer occasionally feels it has to be in order to hammer in the satire.
**[World War Z](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z)**
>World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The novel is broken into eight chapters: “Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”, “Turning the Tide”, “Home Front USA”, “Around the World, and Above”, “Total War”, and “Good-Byes”, and features a collection of individual accounts told to and recorded by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following a devastating global conflict against a zombie plague. The personal accounts come from individuals from different walks of life and all over the world, including Antarctica and outer space.
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Came here to say this. Glad to see someone beat me to it. Sadly such heavy handed satire requires people knowing about the source material they're quoting, and I don't encounter as many people I don't have to explain who Eco was to as I would like.
Depends on the author. Some of them are just in it to show wars and bloody grim dark struggle. Others see the politics and either write like a fascist propagandist, or write satire and irony. The good ones in any of those spaces make it hard to tell
yeah like some writers portray the imperium as a functioning society where the inquisition is a serious organiuzation and give more of a sci fi feel to it like the eiserhorn novels, while others just make bullshit
Mike Brooks has proven himself one of my favorite writers. I’m so glad he was given the Lion and more so the Fallen so people would be forced to read him
Almost everything I've seen of the Alpha Legion that doesn't involve their stupid "I am ten parallel universes ahead of you" / "not even the Legion knows what they're fighting for" is super interesting. They seem the most rational, anti-imperial, pro-humanity CSM of all the Traitor Legions.
Hummm … eversince I read Neal Stephensons Diamond Age, I get sceptical, whenever I read about hypocrisy …
> “You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices, Finkle-McGraw said. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticize others—after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? …
>
> Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticize others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticize another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behavior—you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy."
From my point of view, the problem at hand in the imperium is not, hypocrisy but utilitarianism. Or to quote from the former TV-Tropes introduction to 40k …
> “40K, especially the Imperium of Man, is a fascinating universe in part because it accomplishes something that can only be done when you play some of these tropes perfectly straight. It constructs an Alternate Universe where fascist policies are not just justified, but absolutely required for mere survival. As someone else put it, ‘if you let me put my thumb on the utilitarian scales, I can get you to agree that you have an affirmative moral duty to torture a three-year-old child to death.‘ Indeed.”
(The quote inside this quote is by Belle Waring from the 2004 Blogpost ["By The Power of Stipulation: I Have The Power!"](https://crookedtimber.org/2004/06/18/by-the-power-of-stipulation-i-have-the-power/)).
… and the fact, that utilitarianism seems so logical to many people, that the turning up utilitarian scales does not feel like a satire to them, but like a logical continuation of what they intuitively think is rightful.
sorry for commenting my own comment, but, now that I think of it, it's getting even better: For the utilitarian arguments to work right, 40k needed threats to the very existence of mankind. And not one, but multiple and each alone a merely hopeless fight. That's why 40k came up with absurd things, like Orks (self-replicating-sporebased intelligent life forms with no other interest but war), tyranids (life forms, that eat all other life) and the most extreme of all: Chaos Gods. You virtually need to buy into all of them to get the utilitarianism working. Or to put it the other way round: You really need to ignore the very core of these factions, to not see the satire of the setting.
Pretty much the only faction that actually needs outright force is the Tyranids. Almost every other faction can be reasoned with (even Orks) and Chaos can be mitigated by simply not being so shitty to everyone everywhere all the time.
I'm not very into Orks in 40k (which is an error, I'll make sure to correct in the future), but I'm quite surprised to hear, that they can be reasoned with …
I'm not an expert but if I had to guess, Orks just love fighting. There's really no malice or anything to it. Give them a good enough fight somewhere else and they might just leave you alone if it sounds cool enough.
That’s almost verbatim one of the things Umberto Eco writes in ur-fascism iirc. I love how heavy handed Warhammer occasionally feels it has to be in order to hammer in the satire.
It's Mike Brooks, no way he didn't know exactly what he was doing
I mistook "Mike" for "Max" there for a second there and I was like, [WTF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z)?
Honestly an oral history format would be a really interesting structure to apply to an Alpha Legion story (or anything 40k tbh)
Dan Abnett sorta does it in Ghostmaker but that's really more of a collection of short stories with a framing device.
**[World War Z](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z)** >World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The novel is broken into eight chapters: “Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”, “Turning the Tide”, “Home Front USA”, “Around the World, and Above”, “Total War”, and “Good-Byes”, and features a collection of individual accounts told to and recorded by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following a devastating global conflict against a zombie plague. The personal accounts come from individuals from different walks of life and all over the world, including Antarctica and outer space. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Sigmarxism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Mel Brooks?
No, his son, who wrote an excessively lib-brained book about a zombie apocalypse.
Came here to say this. Glad to see someone beat me to it. Sadly such heavy handed satire requires people knowing about the source material they're quoting, and I don't encounter as many people I don't have to explain who Eco was to as I would like.
sometimes they know how to show the reality, the other they ignore it, the other they show it isnt like that. its confusing sometimes
Depends on the author. Some of them are just in it to show wars and bloody grim dark struggle. Others see the politics and either write like a fascist propagandist, or write satire and irony. The good ones in any of those spaces make it hard to tell
yeah like some writers portray the imperium as a functioning society where the inquisition is a serious organiuzation and give more of a sci fi feel to it like the eiserhorn novels, while others just make bullshit
Fascism be like
Mike is the best author they have, honestly.
Don't say that too loud! They have a habit of dumping their really good ones.
Josh Reynolds, my beloved...
You share my pain!
Harrowmaster was wicked good, can't wait for it to get a sequel!
Mike Brooks has proven himself one of my favorite writers. I’m so glad he was given the Lion and more so the Fallen so people would be forced to read him
Almost everything I've seen of the Alpha Legion that doesn't involve their stupid "I am ten parallel universes ahead of you" / "not even the Legion knows what they're fighting for" is super interesting. They seem the most rational, anti-imperial, pro-humanity CSM of all the Traitor Legions.
"The Imperium is riddled with corruption and hatred. We have made sure of it."
Hummm … eversince I read Neal Stephensons Diamond Age, I get sceptical, whenever I read about hypocrisy … > “You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices, Finkle-McGraw said. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticize others—after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? … > > Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticize others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticize another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behavior—you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy." From my point of view, the problem at hand in the imperium is not, hypocrisy but utilitarianism. Or to quote from the former TV-Tropes introduction to 40k … > “40K, especially the Imperium of Man, is a fascinating universe in part because it accomplishes something that can only be done when you play some of these tropes perfectly straight. It constructs an Alternate Universe where fascist policies are not just justified, but absolutely required for mere survival. As someone else put it, ‘if you let me put my thumb on the utilitarian scales, I can get you to agree that you have an affirmative moral duty to torture a three-year-old child to death.‘ Indeed.” (The quote inside this quote is by Belle Waring from the 2004 Blogpost ["By The Power of Stipulation: I Have The Power!"](https://crookedtimber.org/2004/06/18/by-the-power-of-stipulation-i-have-the-power/)). … and the fact, that utilitarianism seems so logical to many people, that the turning up utilitarian scales does not feel like a satire to them, but like a logical continuation of what they intuitively think is rightful.
sorry for commenting my own comment, but, now that I think of it, it's getting even better: For the utilitarian arguments to work right, 40k needed threats to the very existence of mankind. And not one, but multiple and each alone a merely hopeless fight. That's why 40k came up with absurd things, like Orks (self-replicating-sporebased intelligent life forms with no other interest but war), tyranids (life forms, that eat all other life) and the most extreme of all: Chaos Gods. You virtually need to buy into all of them to get the utilitarianism working. Or to put it the other way round: You really need to ignore the very core of these factions, to not see the satire of the setting.
Pretty much the only faction that actually needs outright force is the Tyranids. Almost every other faction can be reasoned with (even Orks) and Chaos can be mitigated by simply not being so shitty to everyone everywhere all the time.
I'm not very into Orks in 40k (which is an error, I'll make sure to correct in the future), but I'm quite surprised to hear, that they can be reasoned with …
I'm not an expert but if I had to guess, Orks just love fighting. There's really no malice or anything to it. Give them a good enough fight somewhere else and they might just leave you alone if it sounds cool enough.
Mike Brooks the goat black library writer (except maybe dan abnett)
And who says 40k lost its satirical edge?
This is just average fascism moment