Greentext

As someone who likes the Space Marines, but hates Nazis and understands that Warhammer 40k is satire, I'm greatly saddened by the Fascism fan boys in the community.

I also played around the same time as you, but by total chance almost our entire group played xenos. I was craftworlds and harlequins, there was a necron player, a tau player, a tyranids player, and an orks player. We had one space marine player, I had a very small grey knights army, the necron guy had a small guard army, and a couple of chaos players. It was quite jarring to see how much GW and the hobby at large focussed on the Imperium

Prosper like Tau shall.

I played Imps and I still cannot wrap my head around people thinking the empire is the good guy. The appeal to me is that they are normal people pulled into an unfair and cruel world led by people who are entirely indifferent to their suffering. The best IG stories always involve a lot of infighting.

These days I don't really tell people I am into it.

It might be the same phenomenon as bimbofication / puppygirl stuff, where one longs to be released from the responsibility of thinking

The lore around 40k Orks is hilarious

That makes them fun

If I were a 40k player I would a Necron simp.

It's my understanding that orks are the most luck based faction, so they are either chill people or cheaters that fix dice rolls.

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.