In the Grim Darkness of 2024, There is Only War
It’s always a matter of when—not if—when wokeness comes to claim your hobby. It has toppled virtually every franchise and IP, defacing and vandalizing all with the same calls for diversity, inclusion, and representation. It becomes tiresome after a while, hearing the same arguments made verbatim across all entertainment. I’ve heard them. You’ve heard them. I’m sure there’s no need to go in depth here, but below are a few choice favorites from the latest controversy over female custodians:
I quite love that last one. It is very reminiscent of “Star Wars is a franchise about space wizards!” In my mind, it’s one of the ugliest tactics the Left will play. Even as they make a big deal about adding representation to a landmark IP, they will stomp on fans’ faces and say they should accept those changes because their favorite property is childish. Of course, if it was only silly and childish, then the Left wouldn’t have bothered to begin with.
The rank and file Leftists are an interesting sort. Their unofficial job is to run cover for these changes, making up obfuscating arguments, crying out for their own representation, and demoralizing and insulting the masses when they fail to get their way. They are ultimate of gaslighters, creating problems that don’t exist so companies can excusably kowtow to their “customers”. They are to convince you that what is happening is the will of the masses, and if they can’t do that, to beat you down and make you think your hobbies aren’t worth fighting for.
But in 2024, I hope we’ve learned the lesson that all entertainment is important, no matter how childish or silly it seems. Because if you care about something, that means it’s a potential weapon the Left can and will turn against you. That investment in established IPs puts people in movie theaters. It makes them subscribe to streaming services. It makes them purchase toys and clothing and merchandise. That investment is control over the masses, and the Left love nothing more than using that to lecture to the untouchables.
Put simply, diversity and inclusion are humiliation rituals. If they happen to fit in the established canon, then so much better. It’s plausible deniability to gaslight those who don’t know any better. But as the internet autists rush to say whether the representation does or does not fit in the lore, the rest of us know the real reason behind these changes.
It’s to flex.
It’s to say this thing that you love is no longer yours. It’s ours, and there is nothing you can do about it. And it isn’t a mistake or a well-meaning push for a broader audience. It’s to cause outrage. It’s to scorn the people the Left despise. It’s civilizational trolling, and it’s done because not only won’t they face consequences, they know they’ll be rewarded for it.
But ultimately, this was a long time coming for Warhammer 40k. Female custodians aren’t the toppling of a based company finally succumbing to Leftist screeching. It’s a victory lap after a very long and slow defeat. The battle was lost long before any changes made their way into codexes or lore. It was lost with the company’s hiring practices, its changes in work culture, its phasing out of the old guard. Warhammer 40k was lost the way all IPs were lost—with its HR department.
Even so, I’m not interested in covering the defeat of yet another IP and yet another company. Warhammer 40k is not remarkable because it’s turning woke. It’s remarkable because it’s still turning woke in the year 2024. The question is not why we lost another hobby. The question is why Warhammer 40k lasted as long as it did. And I think in pondering such a topic, we can find strategies to future proof our culture against the Leftist corrosion.
To begin, let’s define the “woke” as phenomenon. Many Leftists have made fun of the Right for frequently being unable to nail a solid definition, but that’s because wokeness isn’t a coherent set of principles one can point to on a paper somewhere. Anytime someone on the Right tries to encapsulate the concept, the Left will deny it or otherwise reframe the discussion.
Putting it simply, wokeness is an intersectional political coalition that is anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-masculine, and anti-hierarchical in nature. It will take whatever outlying form to denigrate those concepts, whether that be a feminist shitlib, an immigration advocate, or an oppressed trans person. Wokeness is the dissolution of all ingrained distinction, cultural identity, and social norm into what the Right affectionally refers to as gay space communism. It is the homogenization of the human race into the same brownish diversity cast, and if you want any proof of that, just look at what Hollywood produces.
All woke entertainment looks alike. All woke entertainment speaks the same message. All woke entertainment smiles the same narcissistic grin to the masses. This is because it is not an avenue to explore the human condition. It is the political propaganda of a system that can no longer deliver on its promises. We were promised the atheistic, rationalist utopia of Star Trek, and instead we were delivered a society that can no longer speak basic truths for fear that it may be “intolerant”.
Wokeness is nothing more than a Leftist covering their ears and shouting “Nuh uh!” to the concerned citizen noticing the increase in crime in their neighborhoods and their ever rising grocery bills. It is the denial of basic truths, and therein lies the secret of claiming an independent culture from the Left.
Warhammer 40k was resistant to the Left for so long because it was a universe that (unintentionally) founded itself in very basic truths of mankind. And it presented those truths in such an obvious way that it was next to impossible for the Left to deny. It is difficult for the woke to corrupt a property that outright acknowledges how the woke corrupts IPs to begin with.
Shall we raise a few examples? In 40k, there are the Chaos Gods which are the Sci-Fi equivalent of the devil. The woke can try to depict heroic gay romances and represent obese persons, but to anyone with common sense, these narratives ultimately twist themselves into the corruptions of Slaanesh and Nurgle (two of the Chaos Gods). In outlining the existence of a hell, the Right now has the vocabulary (and the canon) to section off Leftist controlled portions of the narrative.
You might have an atheistic character, but when the God-Emperor of Mankind is raising up saints, that character goes from a noble objector to a skeptic fool. When you create a definite good and evil in a fictional universe, then it becomes ever more difficult for the Left to pervert. And the more unabashed you portray these truths, the more tenuous the Left’s depictions become.
The Left can easily get away with perverting Star Wars because Star Wars is a quasi Buddhist Sci-Fi adventure. But what happens if there were definable universal constants that went against Leftist interpretations? What if the Jedi Order were explicitly defined as a male only society and that to deviate from this was heresy? Yes, the Left can go and insert their narratives, but there is now plausible deniability from the Right.
What if we can create a fictional universe so grounded in obvious realities that any Leftist interpretation could be canonically discarded as a sham? I know there’s no such thing as an airtight creation, but it would be a tremendous leap forward if we could create spaces resistant to Leftist encroachment. The concept of a Rightwing fictional universe has always been tantalizing, but what makes a fictional universe Rightwing? It is grounding those narratives in the Truth.
I don’t have all the answers, but I think the future of Rightwing entertainment is creating properties which explore the truth in very basic ways that the Left cannot. In acknowledging the truths of the human existence, we can come to art that inherently resists Leftist adaption. In delving into the deepest parts of the human condition, we can better understand the world and better condemn the perversion the Left wants to create.
It is in speaking the truth that we win, and I think… that might be enough.
I wish this were true but I don't think it is. The left didn't come after WH40k until now because it's only recently spiked in popularity. The original authors could get away saying it's a "satire" even though it's never written satirically. But as soon as the public attention is fixated on something, that is a signal for the left to attack it.
Despite the wealth of world building, WH40k survived by being a relatively small IP. This implies the keys to avoid convergence are more about financials and selective hiring. We can't rely on people who sometimes get it right. We need people who fanatically get it right.
Absolutely true, and this is why I write fantasy fiction; the genre long since fell to these clowns and the only way to resist and take back what is ours is to write new 'Dragonlances' 'new Warcrafts', 'new LOTRs' and so on. Definitely liked this article of yours Isaac Young!