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.

  • melpomenesclevage
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Are you high?

    Fascists are really good at misreading shit. They can assume ethnic homogeneity

    ‘Double that if youre an ancap’ wut?

    ‘Everybody likes Mussolini’ citation n… No. I like that he was dragged around on a meat hook. Nobody left of an ultraconservative like Obama likes any fascist (though if we time travel to kill 40s nazis, i call coco Chanel; and yes I’m stealing most of her wardrobe after, no you can’t have any. I have a seam ripper for those parts, or I’ll buy a trophy case)

      • melpomenesclevage
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        2 months ago

        I heard an argument that they put style before function and that’s why so many froze to death.

        So maybe a few of them deserved the jackets.

      • melpomenesclevage
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        He was though? He was absolutely not a fascist, which is what we mean when we say ‘conservative’ today, but if you put him in white face, or included some ‘magically not be racist’ in your ‘magically bring back the dead’ spell, onald Reagan and Winston Churchill would’ve both adored him.

        • Belastend@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Sure, Ronald “let the poor die” Reagan, Ronald “cuts for welfare, debt for military expenses” Reagan wpuld have adored Obamacare, stronger Wallstreet Regulations and the most extensive climate protection bills up that üoint. Yeah, thats what Reagan stood for.

    • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Are you high?

      No but the fumes off of this comment might get me there.

      Fascists are really good at misreading shit. They can assume ethnic homogeneity.

      Ok, important distinction: fascists don’t give a shit about race, identitarians (nazis) do. And yes, it’s different, that’s why I used the word “identitarian” and not “fascist.”

      Nazis would literally never assume homogeneity, nazi groups purity spiral around what ethnic group you belong to, let alone fucking skin color, they would absolutely want it to be an explicit ethnically homogenous group.

      Everybody likes Mussolini

      Which, not whom. The pronoun refers to the world in the prior phrase, not the person.

      And on that topic, a lot of people really really like the idea of being free to remove people they disagree with from society, either by straight up violence, or by starving them out of work, civil liberties, protections, etc, regardless of political side.

      Which is basically exactly what fascism is in thoery and in practice. Fascism is a non-ideological anti-liberal totalitarian government.

      It explicitly has no tenets other than “whatever the few running the party believe works” and “you disagree, you disappear”.

      And I’m going to go out on a limb that since you called fucking Obama an ultraconservative, you probably have a sizeable list of people you’d get rid of “after the revolution,” so forgive me if I’m not surprised that you don’t see that the fascists’ mentality is a lot more widespread than you think.

      • melpomenesclevage
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Totally, that’s me, ms. ‘Kill em all, God will know his own’ human disposability advocating authoritarian.

        Everything else you said is wrong, except that fascists hate libs-but hate fucking and hatesturbation in front of a mirror I think still counts.