There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
If they want Nazis to stop liking Warhammer, they should try putting the satire back in it. It’s been fascist sympathy for decades at this point.
Short of the Emperor coming back and correcting his title to “Dictator of the Proletariat” I don’t even know how’d they’d fix it now.
Canonize Chaos just being rebels with no demons? Horus Heresy already canonized them as being even more fashy than the Imperium. Tyranids or Necrons or whoever winning wouldn’t do shit either. The chuds would just whine about people diverting resources from the war by fighting for “rights” and “food”