Why 40k?
The growing fascination of young, especially right-wing men, and the fictional hellscape of Warhammer 40,000
“Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.”
Warhammer 40,000, generally referred to as “40k” has been around for generations now, and is the origin of the genre name grimdark. While the earliest iterations of the tabletop war game and it’s scraps of lore were intentionally infused with comedic jabs at a bloated and hopelessly overstretched interstellar empire, a paintjob of punk haircuts and social parody of a cartoonishly evil regime set against even MORE evil aliens, rebels and literal demons, it has always tugged at a very specific masculine impulse of making a last stand.
The Imperium of Man is perpetually standing on top of a ruined hill, holding aloft a tattered banner and roaring defiance while shooting at some sharp-toothed alien/demon/traitor doom bearing down on it.
40k’s always had a cult following, but with the success of video games like Space Marine 2 and the interest of figures like Henry Cavill and Amazon delving into the grimdark world, the game, and it’s associated stories, have seen an eruption of interest.
As time went on and small allusions to a grander story written into rulebooks became full-fledged novels, became series nearing the hundreds of books… the tone of 40k became at once more serious, and it’s portrayal of the usually-human protagonists became more hopeful, or a better word would be determined.
But why does it resonate? A world intentionally written to be as grim, as dark, as seemingly hopeless as possible doesn’t sound like it would be particularly engaging. I think there is a deeper tonal shift not only in the science fiction sphere, but in our media in general which coincides with the growing popularity 40k. The death of “progress.”
There is only war
I’ve made many allusions before to the contrast between the social and scientific progress imagined by a series like Star Trek against the cyclical history and inevitability of dogma displayed in Dune. It’s no coincidence both Dune and 40k are seeing revivals currently, and the latter borrows heavily from the former, all the way down to having an undying God-Emperor as the leader of humanity.
In short, Star Trek feels more like a history than a future at this point. It’s vision of a rational, ascendant humanity exploring the stars with only altruistic motives and abandoning religion, money and social class for one great explorative endeavor seems about as likely as the “1950’s in space” as portrayed by The Jetsons, without even considering technology.
The kind of society which the Boomers and Gen X’ers grew up seeing in Trek shows, and believed they were living in, or working towards living in, was in fact a product of the unchecked military and economic dominance of the United States following the second world war, not it’s generator.
Like a virus burning through a host’s body until it destroys the organs from within, “progress” carried the West on a collision course with reality from the 1960’s to the 2020’s and for young people today (even more so than the original creators of 40k in the 80’s) it’s plain to see that collision has happened and progress did not survive.
Great power conflict is back on the menu, main battle tanks — which strategists presumed would be outdated by now — are a hot commodity and the conflict in Ukraine looks like (a very 40k-like) smashing together of modern drones and sensitive missile systems with WW2-era self-propelled guns and armored divisions, with WW1-period trench warfare and a severe reliance on conscript infantry, throwing thousands of 19-year-olds into the charnel pit just to fill the gap.
Even modern Star Trek shows made by jaded progressives shows this, with the Federation depicted as actually being a severely corrupt plutocracy. It’s not that we stopped believing the world of the original series is possible… it’s that we can’t.
Younger people are profoundly more cynical about the future, and mankind, than their parents could have been. They watched ISIS executions on Liveleak when they were 13, can you blame them?
This doesn’t mean that things can’t get better, it means we no longer see progress as an essential part of the universe like gravity. History does not have a single direction, things don’t just “get better” because we’re ten years further along than we were ten years ago. In fact they can get much, much worse, and it can always get worse.
The Imperium of Man is full of horrific evils, but what makes it a compelling faction is that — arguably — these evils are all necessary for the survival of mankind. A good example is the “Servitors,” lobotomized prisoners that are literally fused into machinery because of a strict ban on thinking machines. The work-around is that these robots still have flesh-and-blood components (i.e. a person) so they can be managed more successfully. This is because AI once nearly destroyed mankind, so from that point on it’s become essential to make sure you can put down your tech in a hurry if you have to.
(40k) operates on a narrative assumption that the constant force in the world is not progress, but decay.
40k doesn’t just literally include examples of cyclical history, from a Golden Age of Technology to an apocalyptic Age of Night to the rise of the Imperium and fall of the Horus Heresy, it operates on a narrative assumption that the constant force in the world is not progress, but decay. Chaos, which only an enforced Order can hold at bay. This is a theme you will begin to see more and more in both other forms of cultural work, and simply in life around you, as things get worse (and they will get worse.)
For the Emperor!
If the optimism of Star Trek has died a horrible, ignoble death in the past 20 years, what then is a motivating force for young people? The God of Progress is gone, what rises (or could rise) in it’s place?
The collapse of reason and it’s replacement with faith as a motivating force is ironically central to 40k’s plot itself, with the Emperor of Humanity being an atheist, scientifically-minded tyrant until he is nearly murdered by his son Horus Lupercal during the eponymous Horus Heresy and entombed in a life-support system to become… the God-Emperor of Mankind.
Like so much else in 40k, the Emperor’s continued un-death is a necessary evil, as his soul is what keeps the psychic beacon of the Astronomicon lit, so ships can navigate the living hell of the Warp to cross the gulfs between stars.
To draw this out into an analogy for our own time, the modern nation-state is frankly a piss-poor motivator of loyalty or service. The idea of working, let along fighting, for a godless oligarchy that thinks you’re scum and has a high-minded idea of progress - without you in it - is not going to make young men leap out of trenches carrying the flag. There’s no scientific model to explain to hot-blooded young men to convince them to protect your global, rootless, capitalist pipe-dream.
But in 40k, in the wild-eyed zealotry of the Black Templars and stone-cold faith of the Maccabian Janissaries, the professional candor of the Cadian Shock Troops and near-suicidal devotion of the Death Korps of Krieg, we find a mythos of absolute loyalty and belief, something young men are starving for.
No apologies, no rationalizing, no long-winded moralizing screeds. In the words of the Black Templars chapter of the Adeptus Astartes “NO PITY, NO REMORSE, NO FEAR!”
40k is a narrative where mankind isn’t locked in existence with the crushing cosmic and alien horrors of an evil universe… there’s locked in here with us. Teeming trillions of chainsaw-sword wielding religious maniacs with a near-suicidal drive to destroy the Alien, the Heretic, and the Mutant because they are so absolutely posessed of a motivating belief in the greater whole and a moral necessity of humanity’s survival that surrender is a disgusting heresy to them. At once perpetually a single step back from defeat… and a single step forward from victory. The polar opposite of the craven, pathetic and self-hating western world we currently live in. We’re in a grimdark timeline too, just a fucking lame one.
We, (young men) crave a banner, a nation, an Emperor, a point to rally around and 40k is at once a tragedy beyond imagining, and the courage to spit in the demon’s face before it eats you.
Stories around the fire
Stepping back from the narrative itself into the meta, the community of 40k is countless talented artists, writers, video creators and animators who have breathed a depth and exploration into the setting which the game’s owners can only (and do) envy.
In particular, my mind is drawn to the popularity of lore and audiobook channels on Youtube and Spotify, who bring the lengthy narratives of the setting to life with sound effects, voice acting, and droning gothic chants and industrial machinery sound effects.
This has become something of a new oral tradition of martial mythology, and it’s no marvel the phenomenon has been accompanied by several high-profile fitness and lifting accounts that are specifically 40k-themed.
20, 30-somethings are listening to the lore of the Aett warriors of the Vylka Fekryka, the hopeless last stands of the Astra Militarum, and the vengeance of Rylanor the Ancient while throwing around barbells.
A new generation of young men, hardened by their broken families, shattered nations, and sisters and peers poisoned by the self-destructive rainbow social religion are finding in 40k both a language to elaborate their own seemingly hopeless situation… and to find a mythos, inspiring figures of legend, to drive them to cast down Despair, to pick their detritus-strewn hill, plant the flag of the Imperium and declare “here, and no farther, for Humanity, FOR THE EMPEROR!”