The idea that the Imperium is justified in its extreme measures has always struck me as very repugnant. Not because I'm opposed to grimdarkness, but because it carries the implicit notion that the things the Imperium does are actually efficient or effective. And they aren't. At all. Like, we've tried this stuff in real life and the end result is pretty much that a bunch of people died for no reason. The real world's most terrifying war machine runs on the fact that weapons engineers want the new iPhone and will invent new and exciting ways to murder people to get it, which in a lot of ways is a lot more grim than anything the Imperium gets up to. On the other hand, we've seen the longterm dividends of the Imperium strategy in the real world too, in the form of North Korea. During the Korean War, just a few years after going fascist? Terrifying. Fifty years later? A technologically outdated, economically crippled joke that people only care about because of their ability to potentially set bigger nations with meaningful force projection capabilities against one another. What emergency measures do is burn your longterm economic viability in exchange for a short term burst in productivity (this is why they are reserved for emergencies), and the Imperium doesn't fight short wars.

And the Imperium is unable to realize this because those same emergency measures (plus the instability of faster-than-light travel and communication) choke off their ability to collate data and analyze data, and in any case the High Lords would probably rather execute any scribe who comes to them and says "the evidence suggests you're all morons doing almost literally the exact opposite of what you should be" than admit to perpetuating a system that qualifies for the galaxy-spanning empire version of a Darwin Award. So the Imperium is slowly strangling itself. And now it's too late. They no longer have the breathing room to back up and rebuild reserves. The galaxy is going to die in screaming agony not because the Imperium couldn't stop it, but because a hundred generations of its nobility chose to pass the buck for getting to work on a longterm solution to the next generation and now there are no generations left.

Heresy!!! Blasphemy!!! Betrayal of the Emperor!!! Repugnant lies!!! False facts!!! Incorrect ideas!!!

And we continue...

I see what you mean and it does make sense but get this. Fascism works. Yes now everyone is going to brand me as a Nazi which is ironic because I was born in the USSR (now Russia) and they lost about 25 million people against them. That was Nascism they fought. Same system just with an extremely rascist and cruel touch. Italy became more powerful thanks to Fascism however they fell in with the wrong crowd. Roosevelt had to use fascism to end the great depression. And by the way North Korea is communist. However past the fact that your references are wrong you are definetely right about the Imperium is getting weaker and will die.

Don't trust dictators with mustaches, that's my motto.

On the other hand, we've seen the longterm dividends of the Imperium strategy in the real world too, in the form of North Korea. During the Korean War, just a few years after going fascist? Terrifying. Fifty years later? A technologically outdated, economically crippled joke that people only care about because of their ability to potentially set bigger nations with meaningful force projection capabilities against one another.

North Korea is a horrible place to be, but you have to admit that - looking at it in a cold, calculating way - it speaks for the concept when it's still around.

If North Korea would be surrounded by Orks, Tyranids, Eldar raiders and Chaos incursions like the Imperium is, as opposed to more advanced nations where the standard of living for human beings is a thousand times better, then one could see value in such a system.

tl;dr: Considering the Imperium to be justified may be a cruel assertion, but when the alternative is eradication ...

Of course there may be alternative ways to approach such a problem, but whether you consider them actually viable or not depends a lot on how optimistic you are. Fear is a powerful tool to keep people in line, and as a concept is not unknown to the citizens of western nations (starting with the seemingly innocent -- what colour are the uniforms of cops where you live?).

Also, there are things in the Imperium that are inexcusable simply because they are unnecessary, so it also depends on whether we'd be talking about specific measures, or the IoM as a whole.

And by the way North Korea is communist.

Ehh ... just because a country calls themselves communist - or is called that way by western media to demonise the concept of communism - does not mean they actually are. Just like not all countries that ostensibly feature a democracy are very democratic (bad analogy, as communism is a form of economy and democracy is a form of governance, but you get the idea).

I see what you mean and it does make sense but get this. Fascism works.

No, it doesn't. Nazi Germany sustained momentum on plundered wealth and their economy entered into an immediate tailspin when they could no longer conquer more territories, because their economy was utterly dependent upon those conquests just to continue functioning. Also, as mentioned earlier, North Korea is not communist. They're Juche, which is a fascist variant. And in any case, brutal communist dictatorship and brutal fascist dictatorship have pretty much the same end result so far as sacrificing longterm economic viability for a shortterm burst in military power.

@Lynata: I dunno if you've noticed, but I am extremely cold and calculating. And North Korea isn't speaking to the success of the Juche system, but to its abject failure. Its military hasn't seen a significant update since the 60s. If North Korea were surrounded by actively hostile neighbors, they'd be stomped flat, because being technologically backwards and economically crippled is very, very bad for the effectiveness of your ground troops and the sustainability of your logistics trains. The alternative to the Imperium of Man is not eradication, it's having a functioning economy that can better supply a large number of troops with fewer internal rebellions. Now granted, without access to the Webway the Imperium is never going to have a logistics train as stable as they'd like, but being stupidly repressive isn't doing them any favors in the meantime.

Being ruthless doesn't mean being a jackass all the time for no reason. It means doing what works. Cruelty isn't the magical productivity amplifier that people think it is. It's usually a waste of resources employed by someone without the finesse to maintain control without it.

Anyone heard the fact Roosevelt had to use fascism to stop the Great Deppression. Of course not. Anyone heard that thanks to Fascism Italy was able to make affordable cars (same did Germany) oh and fascism took Germany out of the ashes. However Hitler was too big for his boots (so was Mussolinni) and in that he ended his country by war. In those cases the fault lies in bad leadership and terrible descisions. If Italy joined the allies, who knows it is possible that they might be fascist nowdays. By the way fascism is an Italian idea not German. Fascism only works with the right descisions.

And ah yes Communism. The government system I grew up to. While N. Korea might not be a true communist no one can. Communism is a rather utopian idea where everyone is equal, there are no gods or daemons to tell us what to do and so on. All the communistic countries differ from that idea. So technically N. Korea is communist. Its just that theirs borders on Juche. For all intents and purposes they are communist. The true government type is a utopian dream, it cannot be done because all humans want to be higher than the rest. Just a little fact, it was a German-English man who thought up the ideals of communism.

Don't trust dictators with mustaches, that's my motto.

Always with some humour!

About the ' Being ruthless doesn't mean being a jackass all the time for no reason' you are correct. But those modernly advanced countries such as America, Britain and others have other ways to be ruthless. I know this is an old movie but anyone heard of Capricorn One. Thats a good film but it raises the question, just because we're living in a much safer country than N. Korea are we really safe?

Misha, I'm not sure you know what fascism is. I know that sounds dickish and I'm not trying to be, I just really think you don't know. Fascism has xenophobia and authoritarianism as some of their core tenets, and in fact these are often their most radically pushed tenets (not just by the leadership, actual ground-level fascists almost always have xenophobia as the strongest tenet of their philosophy, and while authoritarianism being #2 isn't as ubiquitous, it is certainly very common). Roosevelt never outlawed elections, nor did he pass any particularly xenophobic laws, and in fact his insistence on collecting poll data is in many ways not just non-fascist but directly anti-fascist. He also didn't have the emphasis on social conservatism that most fascists do (though so far as I know he wasn't much for social liberalism either, being mainly focused on economic issues), and far from having the fascist opinion that feeble people and bankers were parasites on society, he introduced welfare programs and significantly increased government regulation of banks, and while the latter doesn't usually make bankers happy it also entrenches banks in society and recognizes the vital role they serve to the economy, whereas fascists condemn bankers as parasites who make profits off of loans while producing nothing, completely ignorant of the fact that loans (or else outright grants) are absolutely necessary to getting starting capital to get a lot of businesses off the ground and get labor and capital flowing. To call Roosevelt's reforms communist or socialist is an arguable position. To call them fascist is completely wrong. Communists were avowed enemies of fascism (you may have noticed), and there is a reason for that.

And no, North Korea does not border on Juche. They believe that the Korean people are a superior people and that the glorious leader will lead them to triumph over the nest of vipers which besiege them, whereas communists believe that the proletariat will rise up to overthrow their capitalist overlords and replace them with the Party who, as Dave Barry put it, are basically the same but at least have the decency to wear ill-fitting suits. North Koreans are Juche fascists who make no attempt to be communist and haven't been for decades. Their lip service to communism is purely in order to maintain their alliance-of-convenience with China, whose own lip service to communism long ago became nothing but a means of distinguishing themselves from their American rivals.

And also, just so we're clear, I'm not saying that the American system is all sunshine and rainbows. Like I said, the notion that the bedrock of a war machine that devours entire nations is a middleclass who invents newer and more terrifying weapons of war so that they can buy the new iPhone is, in a lot of ways, more grim than 40k. Sure, there's less total misery, but there's also a class of people who could bring that misery grinding to a halt and refuse basically because they can't be bothered. But what I am saying is that America produces results like North Korea can't even dream of, so if you want an effective military-industrial machine, you want something that resembles America more than North Korea.

And North Korea isn't speaking to the success of the Juche system, but to its abject failure. Its military hasn't seen a significant update since the 60s. If North Korea were surrounded by actively hostile neighbors, they'd be stomped flat, because being technologically backwards and economically crippled is very, very bad for the effectiveness of your ground troops and the sustainability of your logistics trains.

I was referring not to the success of the country itself, but by the leadership still being in power. I am convinced that this , not the well-being of the people or the advancement of the nation, is the primary purpose of that nation's current government, and as such, as much as it pains me to say it, it seems to be doing a "good" job.

I attribute this more to the oppressive police state tactics than the actual system of governance, however. And just like Stalin's perversion of communism did not last forever, so too do I believe that at some point in time, NK will experience a little revolution. It will not be initiated by the masses of the people, who are too oppressed and terrorised to act, but it will originate within the higher circles of power by a military official or politician with a better conscience, like Khrushchev.

Or at least I hope that the system in NK has not yet eroded the minds of the people there so much that this would never happen. In that case, it might take far longer for the country to progress on the path of liberation, as its people would have to re-discover many of the humanitarian concepts that modern day civilisation has inherited from its own past. It'd still happen some day, but I'm pretty sure a military conflict would forcefully end NK as it exists now before. For the time being, China still likes the existence of NK as a buffer state, but it has already begun to slowly withdraw its support as NK keeps setting new records when it comes to causing international awkwardness.

The alternative to the Imperium of Man is not eradication, it's having a functioning economy that can better supply a large number of troops with fewer internal rebellions. Now granted, without access to the Webway the Imperium is never going to have a logistics train as stable as they'd like, but being stupidly repressive isn't doing them any favors in the meantime.

That's what I meant when I mentioned optimism.

Given the incredible unreliability in terms of interstellar transportation and communication, the Imperium as a whole can only rely on reputation to keep its member states in line. To combat the manifold threats arrayed against humanity, the IoM is attempting to combine the sum of its parts into a greater whole, and if you allow individual worlds the freedom to decide for themselves whether or not they want to "donate" those troops and resources for a war that isn't even close to their own border, I would not expect them to act rationally, simply because = humans. Look at how people in the US behaved before Pearl Harbour.

The Imperium's oppressive policies mean that people by and large are actually afraid to rebel against Terra, to the point of refusing to fight for their leader if the governor has some grand idea of seceding from the IoM. Without fear you would not have this buffer - this is literally the Tarkin doctrine in effect (except that unlike in Star Wars, the planets in 40k have no chance of actually organising a resistance).

If the Imperium would not be surrounded by so many threats to the very existence of mankind,

If communication and travel times would be quicker and more reliable than they are,

If the most important worlds in the Imperium would not be so ridiculously overcrowded and undersupplied,

If humans (and Primarchs) in general wouldn't be egoistic dicks but genuinely care for what's best for their people,

.. then I'd agree that this terrible level of oppression is not only unnecessary but a hindrance.

But the way things are, I feel we're going to have to agree to disagree, as I still think that, all in all, the Imperium as-is would indeed be a lesser evil as opposed to a complete lack of fear and oppression that crumbles to dust under the pressure arrayed against individual worlds incapable of pulling on the same rope. You could probably live a nicer life on those worlds, but it'd be on borrowed time, as mankind's enemies would have far less resistance to deal with.

Why did Eastern Germany or the Soviet Union eventually fall? Not because they were too oppressive, but because the lack of oppression (compared to Stalinist times) and a series of liberating government reforms allowed a disgruntled people to topple a more democratic government, believing things would certainly change for the better if they start from scratch rather than believing in gradual evolution. As a former East German who emigrated to another country to find work, and looking at both eastern Germany as well as Russia today, I am not convinced the whole thing played out like the people had hoped. I suppose this may have shaped my opinions on humanity a bit.

So technically N. Korea is communist. Its just that theirs borders on Juche. For all intents and purposes they are communist.

NK's propaganda may call juche an "advanced" form of communism, but that doesn't change that when you actually compare its principles, it stands in direct opposition to communism. Do you really believe Syria is a republic or that Botswana is a democracy, just because the ruling party says so?

Communism isn't even a form of governance, but a form of social economy, like capitalism. You can have a communist democracy just like you can have a capitalist dictatorship. In fact, both these models have been tried in the past (though the latter has, unsurprisingly, proven to be much more successful).

It's true that a repressive dictatorship can, and in fact is very likely to go to pieces if they permit enough freedom for the people to begin organizing against them, violently or non-violently. It's also true that the nations resulting from these revolutions are not usually a significant improvement. And both of these play into the reasons why the Imperium is doomed: It's too late for them to pull back on this. They're past the point of no return, all they can do is double down on their inefficient and wasteful policies and hope that they might be able to buy another century or two before they are inevitably extinguished by the enemies chipping away at them from all sides. They don't have time to establish a middle class in such a way as to not foment rebellion.

But if they had time, and if they weren't idiots, they could . I will again point you to America, where vast swaths of the population despise the military-industrial complex completely, yet no one does anything to actually stop it. Tranquilizing a civilian population is not about giving them say in their fate. As mentioned, that does the opposite, it excites them, but also makes them more efficient (no bureaucrat managing dozens of people will manage them as effectively as they would manage themselves if you can devise an incentive system that drives them towards doing what you want). The tranquilizing factor is wealth, comfort, things that they have to lose and which you can threaten to take away from them if they do not comply. A wealthy population will be nearly as afraid of losing their stuff as losing their life, and a homefront war will grind your stuff down whether you win or lose. The Imperium doesn't need brutal repression to keep their people in line. In fact, this is exactly the opposite of true. In order to make rebellions less frequent (and the Imperium deals with rebellions all the time, which interrupts whatever supply chain the rebelling planet is part of and costs resources to deal with) the last thing you want to do is give your people even less to lose. Instead, give them more to lose, and give them something which will be lost whether they win or lose a rebellion. Like stuff. It doesn't matter if you win the rebellion in the end, your house still got blown up by artillery in the first volley.

It is entirely true that people must be willing to submit to wartime taxes and drafts even when the war they are supplying is so far away that it cannot, no matter how badly lost, reach their planet within their lifetime. And it is entirely true that people are shortsighted dicks who will have to be intimidated into providing them. Where we disagree is that I believe that people who are soft with wealth are far more easily and reliably intimidated than people hardened by poverty and oppression.

It's not exactly that I don't think you don't have a point - it's just that the situation the Imperium is in cannot really be compared to anything we saw in real life so far. Part of this is due to the Imperium having doomed itself, not just by locking itself into a spiral of self-serving violence, as you correctly say, but also by overextending its borders beyond what it would logistically and culturally be capable of supporting in a sustained manner without resorting to such extreme measures. Quite similar to the old Roman Empire, really, where a splintered, egoistic leadership and cultural issues eventually sundered an empire that may well have been in the position to unify the entire world, a long time ago.

That being said, since you did bring up America, we should not forget the resistance the population had developed against the Vietnam War, where entire generations would burn their draft notifications and simply refuse to show up, not to mention the clashes between civilian protesters and police or the military on the streets. As much as the Establishment is capable of manipulating the populace via the media and fear of people losing their jobs or privileges, there still comes a breaking point where the people, for better or worse, will simply demand things to change, and won't back down unless they see results. It is at this point that the government must either show its true face (Libya, Syria, and it seems Turkey too) or submit to the demands of the people and at least preserve the appearance of following their will (Paris Peace Accords).

In regards to the general poverty of citizens in the Imperium, however, I would add that I consider this a separate matter from the tyranny of Imperial law. The development of individual worlds is mostly left in the hands of planetary nobility and as such not a direct fault of Imperial control. Furthermore, I consider it a result of the ongoing decline that these worlds and cultures have experienced over the millennia. One could argue that this is a fault of Imperial policies, but even then it is more a matter of the role of religion (both the Ecclesiarchy and the Mechanicus) rather than its oppressive nature.

Besides, prosperity and satisfaction do not necessarily go hand in hand: Libya, Soviet Russia and East Germany are all examples where people have experienced an ever-increasing standard of living over the decades (primarily in health and education), yet still felt compelled to rebel against the government. The reason? Personally, I attribute much of it to an ancient human flaw: the grass is always greener on the other side.

What this means to the Imperium is that perhaps this feeling does not quite apply, simply because there is no other side, or at least not normally. What people consider normal or ideal changes depending on perception and exposure, so I daresay that the opinions of the unwashed masses of the Imperium are a lot closer to medieval Europe or feudal Japan etc than to contemporary western citizens, who actually know a lot about their neighboring countries and how people are living elsewhere in the world, or used to live in our history.

Coincidentally, this is why I consider the Tau Empire to be a considerable threat to Imperial stability, as this is an enemy that may present an "other side" that people may believe is actually worth living in. The Tau may literally be perceived as an eye-opener making Imperial citizens see that, yes, things can be different.

Of course, the Tau may at some point in time run into much the same problems as the Imperium did; they just did not overextend their reach yet , so it is easier for them to retain unified control.

tl;dr: The larger a nation grows, the more likely it becomes that someone wants to secede. The only way to counter this is by force (in one way or another), and the more larger you become, the more force you need to apply.

Coincidentally, this is currently a plot element in Elite Dangerous , too.

The problem of draft dodging during Vietnam is quite horribly overstated. This is unsurprising, since the people who dodged the draft were making a big huge political statement out of it, but still, the numbers are seriously not all that bleak. There were over eight and a half million soldiers in Vietnam (many, many more of them were volunteers than is commonly understood) and 120,000 people accused of draft dodging. So while the numbers aren't perfectly accurate because draft dodgers don't register on the census, some number of those who dodged were never accused, and some number of the accused never dodged, the numbers available suggest that the US faced a draft dodging problem of 1.5% during the Vietnam War. That's way better than dealing with internal rebellions semi-regularly, and nobody's going to fight a war of rebellion to avoid going to war. The Guard doesn't even have to pick up the tab for hunting draft dodgers, since that's the PDF's job. The modern American military-industrial machine still suffers from major protests, but has developed what is as-yet a foolproof response to them: Ignore it until it goes away. The Occupy movement can't actually do anything unless people in power decide to actually listen. Likewise the People's Republic of China doesn't really do the whole Tiananmen Square thing anymore, they let protests happen and then quietly arrest a handful of ringleaders in the aftermath (the People's Republic is potentially another good model for unstoppable military machines, since they're a rising star and America appears to have entered decline, but it will be many decades at least before we can say for sure what the PRC will look like at the height of its power or even if there will be a height of its power).

It's true that standards of living are relative, but it is manifestly obvious that the Imperium has failed to use information control to limit the knowledge of how greater wealth works because rebellions keep happening. This is probably due, in part, to the fact that planetary governors rarely make any effort to keep gross wealth inequity from spiraling out of control even within their own planets, plus if people have any knowledge of nearby planets and those are better managed you'll get the same problem plus Chaos is there to paint pictures of impossibly green grass and the Imperium has a standing policy to avoid educating people to the fact that daemons are all liars plus the nature of dictatorships means that better times can be within living memory even if you are completely unaware of anything that ever goes on outside your hive. Also, feudal Europe suffered peasant rebellions on an almost generational basis and had a crippled economy, so while the comparison between the Imperium and feudal Europe is apt it is also a further condemnation of Imperial policy, particularly since we've seen what happens when fuedalists try to fight actually competent governments. Crusades tended to go really poorly for the Crusaders, with the exception of the one they fought against the Seljuk Turks, who appear to have been legitimately disliked by some kind of higher power considering their luck.

This economic wastefulness may indeed be the fault of planetary governors being given free reign to rule as they please and being appointed based on either a hereditary or military nature, meaning almost none of them are competent statesmen, but that is itself an imperial policy and indeed the root of much of the Imperium's problem, because these clowns are exactly the kind of people who will try to solve all unrest with more oppression and end up crippling their own economy and eventually causing rebellion. The Officio Assassinorum should be knocking people off for that kind of gross incompetence.

The Imperium may indeed have stretched itself past what it can govern given its present communication and transport technology, but again: Governing like idiots isn't going to help that situation.

That's the thing, I don't necessarily see it as "governing like idiots", but rather just trying to maintain control by all means necessary. If it takes years or even decades to even notice that something is wrong with an entire planet in your empire, and years or decades more to mobilise an army to go there, I just can't see how you can rely on trust alone. And it will be either trust or fear, as with such massive delays in communication and travel times the opportunities for personal gain grow so huge that rational unity will eventually degrade.

In regards to draft dodgers, though, I would also point towards how this resistance has not been a single occurrence in a single year, but a growing trend that would have continued to grow for as long as the war lasted. And Vietnam was "only" 19 years - imagine how the same population would react to being permanently at a state of war, over countless generations being forced to send its sons and daughters away to never see them return, fighting against an enemy that is not even anywhere near their homes.

Commoners who are not used to the crass disparity in wealth (justified by their own religion, just like in medieval Europe) are uncommon. Commoners who travel the stars are uncommon. Chaos incursions are uncommon. By and large, the people simply seem to be much too occupied with just staying alive than to bother with plotting rebellion. The Industrial Revolution in England may be a good example, given the living conditions of the average factory worker and their children, all working 18-hour-shifts in the manufactorium.

Yes, rebellions still happen from time to time, just like in medieval Europe. And just like in medieval Europe, they are put down with uncompromising violence and retribution to serve as a reminder for people to know their place.

On a sidenote - ironically, there never was a massacre in Tiananmen Square , but western media conveniently "forgot" to correct themselves due to obvious reasons. Not that the PRC's response to the demonstrations should not be considered heavy-handed and overly brutal, but it seems to be far from the bloody myth that is alluded to again and again.

EDIT: Okay, so I had a long frustrated response here initially, but you know what, if 1) your response indicates you're barely even reading what I write (when did I ever say it mattered whether or not the rebellions won ?) and 2) you are declaring something so weasely as "England never had any rebellions in the industrial revolution" (technically true if you don't count Ireland but ignores the fact that every other industrial nation did , so this clearly does not describe a general trend of how populations react to those circumstances) then you are done actually having a conversation with me, you're just repeating mantras and whacking a strawman, and instead of getting frustrated I'm just going to walk away.

I specifically mentioned rebellions and pointed them out to be a persistent factor under all these circumstances. I have absolutely no idea how you would come to such a conclusion as me indicating that "England never had any rebellions in the industrial revolution" - but I suppose this indicates that we are just talking past one another.

Fine, so be it. Let's agree to disagree.

Woot, here's to avoiding Flame Wars!

Has anyone ever cosnidered that from an Orks POV the WH40K universe is Noble Bright?

Except in a galaxy of millions of worlds even the Orks are only fighting on a fraction on them. Maybe it is Grim Dark after all.

Anyway comparing the Imperium to real world regeimes is pointless because the Imperium faces challeneges that would destroy a liberal secular society very quickly. Lets be fair it would be cult activity 101 for a genuine Chaos cult to overthrow present day Earth.

Has anyone ever cosnidered that from an Orks POV the WH40K universe is Noble Bright?

Except in a galaxy of millions of worlds even the Orks are only fighting on a fraction on them. Maybe it is Grim Dark after all.

Anyway comparing the Imperium to real world regeimes is pointless because the Imperium faces challeneges that would destroy a liberal secular society very quickly. Lets be fair it would be cult activity 101 for a genuine Chaos cult to overthrow present day Earth.

For all we know, Scientology is really a Chaos cult playing the long con.

Lets be fair it would be cult activity 101 for a genuine Chaos cult to overthrow present day Earth.

I'm not sure you've thought this one through. Have you ever tried to convince someone on present day Earth to begin worshiping a new god?

Also, the people of the Imperium by and large don't have a **** clue what Chaos is or why worshiping it never ends well in the long run. Present-day Earth is going to spread information much faster and people will very rapidly catch on that these creatures are not to be trusted. Much like just about every other terrible thing it does, the Imperium's information blackout on Chaos is counterproductive because Chaos is really, genuinely bad for people but requires the help of the people it's bad for to propagate, and the way you fight that is to spread information about it as fast and as far as possible. Some idiots will ignore it and turn to daemon worship anyway, but most people in modern western civilization have enough to lose that they wouldn't risk it, and in any case they're going to learn about Chaos sooner or later anyway, because the daemons proselyte and the Imperium is evidently incapable of stopping them.

While hardly immune, present-day Earth does in fact represent a much harder target for Chaos corruption than your average Imperium world.

Lets be fair it would be cult activity 101 for a genuine Chaos cult to overthrow present day Earth.

I'm not sure you've thought this one through. Have you ever tried to convince someone on present day Earth to begin worshiping a new god?

Also, the people of the Imperium by and large don't have a **** clue what Chaos is or why worshiping it never ends well in the long run. Present-day Earth is going to spread information much faster and people will very rapidly catch on that these creatures are not to be trusted. Much like just about every other terrible thing it does, the Imperium's information blackout on Chaos is counterproductive because Chaos is really, genuinely bad for people but requires the help of the people it's bad for to propagate, and the way you fight that is to spread information about it as fast and as far as possible. Some idiots will ignore it and turn to daemon worship anyway, but most people in modern western civilization have enough to lose that they wouldn't risk it, and in any case they're going to learn about Chaos sooner or later anyway, because the daemons proselyte and the Imperium is evidently incapable of stopping them.

While hardly immune, present-day Earth does in fact represent a much harder target for Chaos corruption than your average Imperium world.

Nope thought it through in quite a bit of detail actually.

Convincing someone to worship a new god would be incredibly easy if you could literally magic gold out of thin air, win someone an election or create a very 'friendly' simulcra of any hollywood actor/actress you care to mention.

I would humbly suggest that you haven't read enough about the fictional source material, particularly regarding Chaos. Purposfully spreading information about Chaos is about as stupid a plan as you can think of to stop Chaos.

Chaos isn't a toxic material that can be codified and locked away. Chaos can infect computers, can infect vehicles, it can corrupt you without you even knowing that it is happening. One Chaos engineer working for an arms company could twist the designs of military vehicles and turn an entire nations armed forces against itself (see Battle Fleet Gothic for examples of this).

Information spreading fast is exactly why a planet like present day Earth would fall so quickly. Imagine an event that demonstrably proves that magic exists. Imagine filming this event and putting it on youtube. Imagine putting the 'spells' on the internet for every lunatic to give it ago. Before you know it you'd have plauge bearers stalking through Central Park and a Bloodthirster hacking his way down Oxford Street.

In many countries in the world a Chaos cult could quite openly begining worshipping their chosen power as long as they didn't break any laws. Considering that their 'patrons' would undoubtably provide them with wealth and temporal power they would find gathering new followers incredibly easy. They wouldn't need to do anything openly to attract the attention of the authorities. At a certain point the cult would have enough followers to enact a ritual to open a warp gate. Game over.

"Chaos is really, genuinely bad for people but requires the help of the people it's bad for to propagate" The same can be said of crack cocaine but that hasn't stopped anyone. For that matter are we really thinking that members of the Mexican cartels or other criminal organisations wouldn't use deamons if they were available to them?

You casually state "Some idiots will ignore it and turn to daemon worship anyway, but most people in modern western civilization have enough to lose that they wouldn't risk it"

Lets think about this for a moment.... a) If some idiots turn to deamon worship then they have an army of deamons at their disposal and the world ends. b) there are millions of people in the western world who would happily trade a soul they don't believe in for a chance to gain temporal power c) Why the focus on the western world anyway. Just because they are the most powerful at the moment doesn't mean alot when you have deamonic legions marching across the face of the Earth.

Present day Earth right now has zero defences against a deamonic incursion.

The Imperium has very few defences against a deamonic incursion, in the grand scheme of things. What they do have however is the ability to prevent the vast majority of the Imperium even realising that summoning a deamon is possible. They excercise this power. The consequence of which is that ignorance and fear prevails.

In many countries in the world a Chaos cult could quite openly begining worshipping their chosen power as long as they didn't break any laws.

Not to mention clandestine research by governmental factions. Organisations capable of kicking off stuff like MK Ultra would be all over the potential "benefits" of Warp Magic, of course justified by the belief in having to defend against the nation's supposed enemies surely doing the same.

A bit like the nuclear arms race .. except this time, the nukes have a will of their own.

In many countries in the world a Chaos cult could quite openly begining worshipping their chosen power as long as they didn't break any laws.

Not to mention clandestine research by governmental factions. Organisations capable of kicking off stuff like MK Ultra would be all over the potential "benefits" of Warp Magic, of course justified by the belief in having to defend against the nation's supposed enemies surely doing the same.

A bit like the nuclear arms race .. except this time, the nukes have a will of their own.

And they want to be used.

In many countries in the world a Chaos cult could quite openly begining worshipping their chosen power as long as they didn't break any laws.

Not to mention clandestine research by governmental factions. Organisations capable of kicking off stuff like MK Ultra would be all over the potential "benefits" of Warp Magic, of course justified by the belief in having to defend against the nation's supposed enemies surely doing the same.

A bit like the nuclear arms race .. except this time, the nukes have a will of their own.

That last line reminded me of the ghost rock bombs from Deadlands: hell on earth.

Think nuke with bound daemons

Convincing someone to worship a new god would be incredibly easy if you could literally magic gold out of thin air, win someone an election or create a very 'friendly' simulcra of any hollywood actor/actress you care to mention.

This is the stupidest thing Chaos could do. Their biggest advantage is surprise, the fact that people don't know that completing a Chaos ritual will summon up a Bloodthirster, and setting off alarm bells that this Chaos **** is serious and governments should be extremely interested in its ability to affect the economy, government, and the world of espionaige robs them of that advantage immediately. Now it's true that Chaos could get themselves a win if they're smart enough to operate as a normal religion for a few decades until they have the followers needed for a big ritual, summon up an army of daemons, and then roflstomp the world's militaries, but that's a problem exacerbated by, not stymied by, a lack of knowledge and information networks. It's things like the internet that give governments the ability to monitor people closely enough to have a fighting chance of catching things like Chaos worship before they get out of hand.

You say Chaos isn't a material that can be locked away, then go on to explain how it works exactly like a material that can be locked away and which contaminates only physical objects. Which it doesn't, it's got daemons who go out of their way to make contact with mortals and can do so without those mortals having any prior knowledge of Chaos. The fact that Chaos doesn't work like a material that can be locked away is part of why an information blackout on it is a bad idea. People don't need to know about daemons to be contacted by them, and the fact that no one knows they're bad news means that when they are contacted they are near-guaranteed to succumb. The ability of daemons to come in sideways is why an information blackout doesn't contain them. Your weapons engineer will fall to Chaos anyway, and his buddies won't know to report him because they don't know what Chaos is.

As for why the focus on the western world, because post-apocalyptic worlds resembling the third world and authoritarian worlds resembling the second are really common in 40k and are presumably exactly as resistant to Chaos as the Imperium. Which is not at all. Seriously: Some Mad Max tribesmen on Baal fall to Chaos. Who stops them? The Blood Angels? How do they know? There's only a tiny handful of them compared to the population of even a post-apocalyptic nation, even counting their serfs (do the serfs know about Chaos in the first place?), and most of their energy is dedicated away from their homeworld anyway. The Inquisition? Same numbers problem. And the problem on Necromunda is amplified a million times. With 50 billion people to keep track of and no internet, how can you possibly keep track of everyone who falls to Chaos? Chaos cults could grow to enormous size and no one would notice because the number of people who know enough to notice is ridiculously trivial compared to the total population.

Also, crack cocaine doesn't require the help of the people it's bad for to propagate. Some sellers are also users, but the higher-level ones are very often too smart for that. Cocaine thrives because a dealer can profit off of someone else's ruin rather than being forced to sacrifice his own life. Also because cocaine doesn't pose an existential threat to entire nations. And are you suggesting that crack cocaine's sales would be inhibited if there was a government blackout on information? There's a reason anti-drug efforts are focused on pushing knowledge of the results rather than trying to cover up its very existence.

Also note that your fundamental argument here is that Games Workshop is staffed by political geniuses whose methods can't be improved on.

You say a lot of words, but none of them actually support your point and many of them actually support mine. So I ask again: Are you sure you thought this through?

Convincing someone to worship a new god would be incredibly easy if you could literally magic gold out of thin air, win someone an election or create a very 'friendly' simulcra of any hollywood actor/actress you care to mention.

This is the stupidest thing Chaos could do. Their biggest advantage is surprise,

Suprise, fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope...

Nobody expects the imperial Inquisition!

Also (and i'm being serious here) stop trying to bring logic into the 40k setting , it won't work (they are using the same weapons they had 10.000 years ago for example)

Remember the MST3K mantra: It's just a show Game setting I should really just relax.

You don't seem to grok what I'm arguing. I'm okay with just letting the Imperium be idiots or even just letting things not make sense entirely. What grates on me, and grates on me a lot , is people claiming that the Imperium's repugnant and counterproductive policies do make sense . Because they don't. That people think fascism works when in fact it does not is an actual real world problem. That people believe this because a bunch of wargame devs told them so is even more so.

If Matt Ward can convince you that fascism is necessary "under certain circumstances" even when they can't coherently explain how fascism actually provides any benefits for those circumstances, you don't stand a chance against narratives spun by people who are actual professional spin doctors.

Let me get this straight, the same government system that turned a poor, weak, undefended country from that into a relative super-power in Europe, in a couple of years does not work? Yeah you know what you are right about that. However when you say fascism is Xenophobic... Thats not fascism, thats the Nazism. Italians were not Jew-hating xenophobes who would as soon as kill you if you were an outlander, however the Germans at the time were. I can understand what you mean, by in the long run fascism doesn't work. Now on to the other are the 'Western' nations really are a Democracy? Sure they are if you count several politicians as the 'people'. So technically its impossible to be true Communist and true Democratic. Now if you start arguing that the 'people' get to put those politicians in power think about this, how easy is it to smudge the result? And do you actually make a difference? Will your vote really stop say Blundenberg from attacking Stoopidville? No it will not. Alright now I'll put on my hard hat, ready my guns and stay down from incoming fire (don't worry, counter arguments are recommended). All Hail Stoopidville!