![]() Games Workshop’s messaging represents a new approach for a company that previously kept fans at arm’s length. According to Games Workshop, the authoritarian society depicted in the setting is “satirical,” an exaggerated “amplification of a tyrannical, genocidal regime” rather than an endorsement of it. In 2021 a man wearing Nazi symbols and playing under a Hitler-related pseudonym showed up at a tournament in Talavera, Spain, prompting Games Workshop to make another statement condemning hate. This statement did not put the problem to rest. Games Workshop remained silent on this issue at first, but during the George Floyd protests of June 2020, the company released a statement affirming that everyone is welcome in the Warhammer community and promising “to continue to diversify the cast of characters” portrayed in its games and related media. LA9Wt9TXmf- WarhammerCommunity June 4, 2020įascist trolls occasionally appeared around the hobby in the years after the election, but they stayed mainly in the comments sections of YouTube channels and other online spaces. He suggests that most people sharing these memes were more attached to the imagery rather than to actually playing the game. Ian Williams, a game designer and teaching fellow in communication at UNC Chapel Hill, suggests that alt-right fans of Warhammer 40,000 tend to be isolated individuals rather than a mass movement. At least some of these reactionaries intended to advocate for the kind of dictatorship featured in the game. The alt-right began circulating Warhammer 40,000 memes during the run-up to the 2016 election, welcoming Donald Trump as god-emperor, humanity’s all-powerful ruler. Some of the extreme right’s most vocal opponents in the hobby include an irreverent group of YouTubers and other online personalities committed to anti-racism and progressive politics. In recent years, Games Workshop started to speak out about this problem, and many fans have begun resisting fascist infiltration as well. Alt-right partisans have tried to co-opt the hobby, using images of brutal despotism from its dystopian setting to further their cause. Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 setting has a problem with fascist fans.
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