Xenophobia isn't just race, it's also nationality. Italian fascists were very much big on the superiority of the Italian nation and Italian heritage, and loved to trumpet the ancient glory of Rome. Fascism absolutely does have as one of its core tenets that our race/culture/nation/whatever is superior and that we can't allow it to be contaminated by outside influence. It also has imperialism as one of its core tenets, and that's a suicidal combination.

You make a sarcastic point about how Nazi Germany got very powerful in the shortterm and then a few sentences later point out your own strawman by remembering that I'm talking about the longterm, because that's the scale the Imperium operates on (and also the scale most fascists intend to operate on, even though it usually ends poorly because running your nation on a philosophy that specifically declares that all your neighbors are evil is a terrible, terrible idea). For the record, the point when fascism begins to expire as an effective policy is the point about twenty years in when a full generation has been raised under its thought-stopping propaganda, which dramatically inhibits a fascist nation's ability to produce new engineers or scientists, and their military, espionaige, and economy all enter into a decay soon after - at least, if their combination of xenophobia and imperialism hasn't caught them in the jaws of a destructive war against a vast alliance of nations by then.

The whole post is kind of incoherent. You bring up democracy, a word which literally does not appear once in any of my posts (until now, at least). You make a rambling point that seems to be making some kind of point about how even nations thought of as democracy don't tend to be genuinely representative of their people, but you fail to connect that to the actual conversation or explain how that makes the Imperium's philosophy less catastrophically inefficient. Just because the Imperium's particular brand of autocracy is counterproductive doesn't mean all autocracy is counterproductive.

But I'm not even sure if that's what you were getting at, because your post is just shy of being word salad. Seriously man, are you drunk?

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

Sorry what?

I feel like I've turned two pages at once.

Anyway.....

The problem with the presentation of your argument is that you are arguing two things at once.

You are arguing that you don’t like that people use the Imperium to justify real world fascism on the basis that in some circumstances fascism can work. I agree with this objection real world fascism is always wrong and superficial economic arguments don’t take into account the counterfactual.

e.g Germany has had two post war periods and it was the post war period where they chose democracy and stable economic policies that led to the longer term recovery while choosing fascism led to unsustainable expansionism and ultimately another unwinnable war.

However you are also arguing the seperate point.

That given the circumstances and threats the Imperium faces, an authoritarian theocratic government is entirely the wrong policy to choose.

As said on point a) I agree. However on point b) I disagree. The Imperium could make better decisions and is in stagnation. This is primarily in my view due to their attitude to technology (which is an entirely separate debate) but is exacerbated by a dissolute and venal nobility.

However their theocratic authoritarian view point does not stifle them in containing Chaos. Their policy of keeping knowledge of the Ruinous powers amongst the general population down to a bare minimum ensures that there is enough fear amongst the population that they do not want to know about Chaos much less use it.

In this discussion you are at an advantage in that we all know what the Imperium’s manifesto for containing Chaos is and also their methods. We also can see its results. A horribly oppressive cruel regime that has incidentally lasted for 10,000 years.

However beyond generalities we don’t know anything about how you think present day Earth governments would contain Chaos, especially after they have embarked on a policy of educating the population about it. I have assumed that what you are advocating is that a liberal secular western democratic society with open information provision would be the best policy to choose in combating the threats the Imperium faces. If this incorrect then please do clearly state what kind of political regieme you would choose.

A few questions also:

What does the government do if someone sets up a cult worshipping Tzeentch but doesn’t break any present day laws?

What happens if a child is born with a mutation?

What does the world do if they find out a third world country is using demonic familiars to construct its roads and infrastructure?

What happens if someone posts an entire library of Chaos manuals on the internet?

What happens if someone runs an election on the basis that they plan to introduce Slaneesh based policies?

While educating the population do you tell them that if they are super dedicated to their patron then they could achieve immortality? For that matter even if they don’t become a daemon prince they might still achieve boons and power?

Do you tell the population that souls do in fact exist and faith does in fact have real power?

This is on top of the fact that you haven’t addressed how you intend to deal with the lunatics, disposed and criminal elements that you have educated about Chaos and are now expecting just to sit around not using this gateway to easy power.

Incidentally we have concentrated on Chaos though we should probably also acknowledge that the Imperium also faces Alien and Psychic threats as well.

The Imperium's people are, with a few exceptions, not scared of Chaos, because they don't know that Chaos even exists . They know that "heresy" exists and that people occasionally get executed for it, but they don't have a **** clue what it is. So when a daemon shows up and says "the emprah sent me to recruit you to summon a bunch of angels to fix all your world's problems," they have no idea that they're being lied to. That cultist can then go around with the star of Chaos stamped on his forehead and no one will even know that something's wrong unless the Inquisition happens to be in town, which is extremely unlikely because 1) there aren't enough of them to patrol the ~2 quintillion people of the Imperium by a long shot and 2) their own information blackout policy has prevented them from establishing the kind of web of hungry/terrified informants that secret police need to have in order to know that something is up and they should be secretly investigating.

It's a situation where Games Workshop has piled one nasty thing on top of another to make things more grimdark and either doesn't care (which I suspect for early era) or doesn't even realize (which I think is more the case now) that the drawbacks of one nasty policy have totally annihilated what benefit the other nasty policy was providing. Secret police don't work if they have a standing policy of executing all of their informants for knowing too much, nor do they work if their only informants are several levels up in the hierarchy above the people who are struggling just to survive. Those people are the most vulnerable to Chaos' lies so the Imperium dedicates a lot of effort into making sure they don't learn about Chaos, and thus denies themselves a network of informants who can inform them when someone has fallen to Chaos and have thus shot themselves in the foot. And honestly, I think that's great storytelling even if it's accidental, because it's the kind of believable counterproductivity that can drive bleak tragedy and dark comedy alike. But what it isn't is good at fighting Chaos.

You also talk about how we've "seen the results." What results? The results that Games Workshop made up? The argument isn't about whether the Imperium's methods work in-universe , because that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes any goddamn sense that they work in-universe. Chaos is ascribed so many vast powers and the Imperium's response is so boneheaded that it's a wonder they lasted six months, let alone 10,000 years. The only reasonable explanations are that Chaos seriously just doesn't bother attacking very often or else that it doesn't actually have all these super powers that people say it has, because nearly every single world on the Imperium has a population much too high to be monitored by the Inquisition (or other people in the know), much too miserable to be remotely likely to refuse a daemon's offer, and prevented by information blackout from knowing that this offer is almost always a trap. Almost any world should fall to Chaos within a few years of a daemon first making contact with it.

Given the absurd amount of powers assigned to Chaos, no society yet conceived is very likely to survive against it very long, however there are certainly things you can do to give yourself better odds and they bear only the vaguest similarity to the Imperium's tactics. A "liberal secular western democratic society with open information" is possibly a technically correct but still misleading way of putting it (for power done right, my #1 go-to example is the United States and my #2 is the People's Republic, because those two get results , especially for information warfare), because if you want to fight Chaos what you need is actually effective information control, which means priority one is information access because you can't control information you don't have which means you need to actually know who is and isn't a heretic, which means Facebook and GPS-enabled cell phones in every pocket is very helpful. An implanted GPS-tracked microchip would be even better, particularly if you pair it with the functions currently served by a driver's license and debit/credit card to make paying for things and identifying yourself an easy and instantaneous process, something which both allows the government to monitor 100% of all monetary transactions and identify anyone with a quick sensor sweep. Obviously people are going to find workarounds for this, and some of them will even be really low-tech (any sufficiently powerful gang can set up their own currency, and any sufficiently useful item will become a currency), but some of it won't which means the ability of heretics to maneuver through society undetected is inhibited. You also want the closest equivalent to Facebook and a data collection/storage/retrieval scheme as you can get with cogitators. People on different worlds or even different hives don't need to be able to talk to each other, but people do need an incentive to volunteer incredibly detailed information on their personal lives that the government can record and sift through. That's a terrifying invasion of privacy and all, but it's also effective so it isn't going anywhere.

Q&A:

"What does the government do if someone sets up a cult worshipping Tzeentch but doesn’t break any present day laws?"

Chaos cults present an existential threat to the government, and they will be illegal within hours of the government figuring this out. Whatever the legislative body is, there'll be an emergency session and new laws will be drafted, passed, and spammed to enforcers ASAP. Of course, now we get back to modern Earth's biggest weakness which is that nobody knows that Chaos cults are an existential threat, and if they play their cards right nobody will until it's too late, but the Imperium's strategy actually perpetuates this weakness rather than sealing it up.

"What happens if a child is born with a mutation?"

Depends on the mutation. Anything that's known to be a natural (if horrifying, if you value your sanity do not look up harlequin babies ) pre-Chaos mutation, we turn them over to the doctors and hope for the best. Anything unknown and therefore possibly/probably Chaos-induced is kind of like asking "what happens when a child contracts ebola?" You quarantine him and possibly also his family and the public is so terrified of the infection spreading that there is no outrage.

"What does the world do if they find out a third world country is using demonic familiars to construct its roads and infrastructure?"

What does the world do if a third world country starts a nuclear weapons program? You don't **** around with WMDs. Operation Khornate Freedom would be authorized by the weekend.

"What happens if someone posts an entire library of Chaos manuals on the internet?"

That depends on how much of an internet you can actually have before Chaos' ability to infect computers makes it useless as a means of transmitting information. The reliance on digital records that can be tampered with is something of a problem even without daemons posessing Wikipedia. Assuming that the internet can even be a thing in the post-Chaos world (and again we run into the problem of not being able to shut down the internet until after we know Chaos is a problem, and if Chaos is smart it won't give us the chance, but again, that is the opposite of there being too much information on Chaos in the world) we use total government control over ISPs to shut down the hosting server immediately, and hopefully trace both anyone who downloaded as well as whoever uploaded and send party vans to have a friendly chat with them about the dangers of Chaos addiction, like, for example, the danger that you will be caught and sent to federal prison/death row. But if Chaos manuals can spread Chaos corruption which can infect computers which can prevent us from noticing the download in the first place until we hear about it through analogue, then we just can't have an internet in the first place. Also, without an internet we can't monitor the population for Chaos corruption which means Chaos wins, period. Nothing can stop Chaos if it can corrupt the only means we have of detecting them before it's too late. In that case, shutting down the internet entirely would buy time but only that. Chaos daemons will use direct contact with mortals and grow their cults in secret from there, and at that stage we can only hope we notice the heretics before it's too late. To do that, we need as many people on the ground as possible who know what Chaos cultism actually looks like.

"What happens if someone runs an election on the basis that they plan to introduce Slaneesh based policies?"

What happens if someone runs an election on the basis that they will nuke Iowa?

"While educating the population do you tell them that if they are super dedicated to their patron then they could achieve immortality? For that matter even if they don’t become a daemon prince they might still achieve boons and power?"

Serving Chaos ends one of two ways: As a Chaos spawn or a daemon prince. Now, the existence of daemon princes is not something we will be able to cover up and the Imperium is stupid to try. But what we can do is spread a narrative that the daemon prince is not actually the same person as the host body it's inhabiting, and that the host's consciousness is in fact killed. Push that through the media and most people will buy that narrative without even thinking about it - except for the ones who decide to buy the daemons' narrative without even thinking about it, but our only hope of stopping those guys is to find them before it's too late, because the daemons are already talking to them. To do that, we want as many informants and concerned citizens on the ground as possible to know what Chaos corruption looks like.

"Do you tell the population that souls do in fact exist and faith does in fact have real power?"

Why not?

"This is on top of the fact that you haven’t addressed how you intend to deal with the lunatics, disposed and criminal elements that you have educated about Chaos and are now expecting just to sit around not using this gateway to easy power."

Are you suggesting that the Imperium's usage of outdated criminal investigation techniques, techniques which were specifically abandoned because they do not work, will be more effective in catching dangerous criminals before it's too late as compared to more modern techniques? Yes, Chaos' ability to worm their way into a world through omnipresent elements of society like criminals is an enormous and possibly unstoppable advantage, but since daemons do not need the government's permission to make contact with mortals, the Imperium's information blackout does not actually stop Chaos from doing this.

You might notice that while all of this is a lot nicer than the Imperium, it's also not exactly a rah rah democracy cheerleading routine.

I'm also not super-impressed by your assertion that fascism is bad in the real world. Of course you believe that now . How many narratives are spun saying that the Nazis were the good guys all along? Nazis are so reviled that they've become a generic insult. All you're demonstrating is the ability to come up with clever-sounding arguments to reinforce the narrative you've been given, but I already knew you could do that since you first started defending the Imperium's counter-productive anti-Chaos measures. Your ability to make an argument to defend something appears to be entirely divorced from whether or not there is any truth to it, which is sort of the problem.

What I'd actually care about is if you demonstrated an ability to question a narrative that has actually been pushed more recently than 1945. Otherwise, you haven't demonstrated any ability to actually resist propaganda and I have every reason to suspect that the next time someone rolls out their brilliant five-step plan to grind the people and resources of an entire nation into dust for their personal profit, you'll buy into it hook line and sinker because the latest insane autocrat won't be waving a swastika or any other convenient identifying features in your face.

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

Sorry what?

I feel like I've turned two pages at once.

Anyway.....

The problem with the presentation of your argument is that you are arguing two things at once.

You are arguing that you don’t like that people use the Imperium to justify real world fascism on the basis that in some circumstances fascism can work. I agree with this objection real world fascism is always wrong and superficial economic arguments don’t take into account the counterfactual.

e.g Germany has had two post war periods and it was the post war period where they chose democracy and stable economic policies that led to the longer term recovery while choosing fascism led to unsustainable expansionism and ultimately another unwinnable war.

However you are also arguing the seperate point.

That given the circumstances and threats the Imperium faces, an authoritarian theocratic government is entirely the wrong policy to choose.

As said on point a) I agree. However on point b) I disagree. The Imperium could make better decisions and is in stagnation. This is primarily in my view due to their attitude to technology (which is an entirely separate debate) but is exacerbated by a dissolute and venal nobility.

However their theocratic authoritarian view point does not stifle them in containing Chaos. Their policy of keeping knowledge of the Ruinous powers amongst the general population down to a bare minimum ensures that there is enough fear amongst the population that they do not want to know about Chaos much less use it.

In this discussion you are at an advantage in that we all know what the Imperium’s manifesto for containing Chaos is and also their methods. We also can see its results. A horribly oppressive cruel regime that has incidentally lasted for 10,000 years.

However beyond generalities we don’t know anything about how you think present day Earth governments would contain Chaos, especially after they have embarked on a policy of educating the population about it. I have assumed that what you are advocating is that a liberal secular western democratic society with open information provision would be the best policy to choose in combating the threats the Imperium faces. If this incorrect then please do clearly state what kind of political regieme you would choose.

A few questions also:

What does the government do if someone sets up a cult worshipping Tzeentch but doesn’t break any present day laws?

What happens if a child is born with a mutation?

What does the world do if they find out a third world country is using demonic familiars to construct its roads and infrastructure?

What happens if someone posts an entire library of Chaos manuals on the internet?

What happens if someone runs an election on the basis that they plan to introduce Slaneesh based policies?

While educating the population do you tell them that if they are super dedicated to their patron then they could achieve immortality? For that matter even if they don’t become a daemon prince they might still achieve boons and power?

Do you tell the population that souls do in fact exist and faith does in fact have real power?

This is on top of the fact that you haven’t addressed how you intend to deal with the lunatics, disposed and criminal elements that you have educated about Chaos and are now expecting just to sit around not using this gateway to easy power.

Incidentally we have concentrated on Chaos though we should probably also acknowledge that the Imperium also faces Alien and Psychic threats as well.

Xenophobia isn't just race, it's also nationality. Italian fascists were very much big on the superiority of the Italian nation and Italian heritage, and loved to trumpet the ancient glory of Rome. Fascism absolutely does have as one of its core tenets that our race/culture/nation/whatever is superior and that we can't allow it to be contaminated by outside influence. It also has imperialism as one of its core tenets, and that's a suicidal combination.

You make a sarcastic point about how Nazi Germany got very powerful in the shortterm and then a few sentences later point out your own strawman by remembering that I'm talking about the longterm, because that's the scale the Imperium operates on (and also the scale most fascists intend to operate on, even though it usually ends poorly because running your nation on a philosophy that specifically declares that all your neighbors are evil is a terrible, terrible idea). For the record, the point when fascism begins to expire as an effective policy is the point about twenty years in when a full generation has been raised under its thought-stopping propaganda, which dramatically inhibits a fascist nation's ability to produce new engineers or scientists, and their military, espionaige, and economy all enter into a decay soon after - at least, if their combination of xenophobia and imperialism hasn't caught them in the jaws of a destructive war against a vast alliance of nations by then.

The whole post is kind of incoherent. You bring up democracy, a word which literally does not appear once in any of my posts (until now, at least). You make a rambling point that seems to be making some kind of point about how even nations thought of as democracy don't tend to be genuinely representative of their people, but you fail to connect that to the actual conversation or explain how that makes the Imperium's philosophy less catastrophically inefficient. Just because the Imperium's particular brand of autocracy is counterproductive doesn't mean all autocracy is counterproductive.

But I'm not even sure if that's what you were getting at, because your post is just shy of being word salad. Seriously man, are you drunk?

Personally, I find that you both bring up valid points.

The the average person doesn't know about demons and their lies, they are likely to believe the bull that they claim. However, if you make everything open to the public **** is going to hit the fan in a major way.

There is however a middle ground.

Let people know that there are monsters living in the warp; A breed of foul xeno monsters that can't exist outside of it without the aid of beings living in reality. These monster aliens will say anything to trick some poor bastard into letting them run loose; normally offering false promises of wealth, power or whatever the listener desired to bring them under their sway. Once freed of the warp, there traitorous xeno monsters will kill their puppet fool (If the fool is lucky ) or violently mutate them into a mindless blob that can feel nothing but agony until someone puts them out of their misery or worse before the beast goes on a killing spree.

Anyone who gets their minds enslaved by such dangerous demonic xeno beasts should be put down as shifty as possible in order to save them further torment.

Make the face of the campaign the most revolting, pathetic cowardly cultist you can capture (Rip out his tongue and claim they bit it out themselves at the command of their alien overlords for a cheap laugh).

An actual captured cultist is a bad idea. People might get suspicious that it's the same guy over and over again. They will be instantly suspicious about who actually cut out his tongue, and in any case having no tongue will make it really hard to despise him. If he can't communicate, you may invoke pity rather than revulsion, and pity might in turn be spun into a narrative that it is your government and not the daemons responsible for this. Plus, he's been in contact with Chaos and might be some kind of sneaky Tzeentchian time bomb just waiting to go off on international television.

Far more reliable to just hire completely untainted actors to pretend to be cultists. Making sure they never reveal the truth for the length of their natural lives will still be a lot easier than keeping an actual cultist under control.

You don't need the cultist for long. Just long enough for one video. Make his execution a mercy killing because anyone who falls under the sway of demonic xeno's deserves the pity of a quick death.

The point of the campaign would be to make it clear how low and pathetic those who willingly fall under the sway of aliens can become. Make the people of the Empire feel superior for not being such a lowly creature and they will definitely think twice before trusting the words of 'Warp Xeno's'.

One video has a limited shelf life. Actors can give you more videos. Also, the ability to speak means he can say things which are dumb, but in such a way that you might believe a stupid person would fall for it. Only even the stupid people won't actually fall for it, because they'll do what everyone else is doing, which is avoiding Chaos. If you let a real cultist speak, you're taking a risk that he'll actually say something compelling. If you have a real cultist who cannot speak, people will suspect it was you who silenced him, because you're afraid of what he has to say. It is very easy for daemons to take advantage of that. What you want is a fake so bad at articulating points that he just barely passes the sniff test for actually trying. Like a Fox News liberal, but for Chaos.

...Keep in mind that Imperial policy for heresy is execution. People will expect the 'cultist' to get put down.

Of course, we don't really need actors. A quick trip to a penal colony to pick up some 'volunteers', a bit of mutilation and mind wiping/controlling techniques and you've got yourself some disposable cultists you can trust to say stupid **** on cue and who are easily replaced after you blow ones brains out for the viewers at home.

...Keep in mind that Imperial policy for heresy is execution.

Imperial policy is also to police quintillions of potential cultists and psykers with an Inquisition stretched so thin that many worlds do not see an inquisitor for decades or centuries. That the Imperial policy is execution is a great reason to strongly consider the possibility that an ideal policy should be anything else except execution. Now, as it happens, due to the way Chaos corruption works (which varies depending on the writer, but whatever), execution might actually be the best response, but even so there's no reason to do it on film.

You might notice that while all of this is a lot nicer than the Imperium, it's also not exactly a rah rah democracy cheerleading routine.

What I've noticed is that in a few short questions you have proposed:

Banning religious beliefs and ideas that are contrary to the humanities existence

Disappearing children and families when they represent a threat to humanities existence

Lying to the public about the true nature of Chaos.

A policy of international supression of beliefs and resource use that do not accord with your own (and happen to represent a threat to humanities existence).

Shutting down the greatest repository of information and free speech has humanity has ever seen in the name of saving humanity from itself

Educating the population that one of the greatest weapons they have against Chaos is faith.

Congratulations I agree with all these policies when dealing with Chaos so would the Imperium. The Imperium just have more experience of this so go further. We'll make an Inquisitor of you yet.

Also you've made some mistakes about the WH40K universe

First and crucially, it is actually quite rare for a deamon just to be able to pop into the material world and start 'tempting people.

They broadly need one of three things

1. A soul that has either conciously or unwittingly dedicated itself to Chaos. For example a complete degenerate noble may not be worshipping Slaneesh but may still end up being contacted a deamon. The same couldn't be said of some random factory worker.

2. An actual spell or ritual that breaks the seal between the material and immaterial world.

3. A phyisical location or object that has been thoroughly infected or tainted with Chaos. Handling such objects can cause the bearer to be contacted by warp entities.

This is why ignorance is powerful. If you encourage complete devotion and faith in a cause then you mitigate Against the first danger. If you encourage ignorance then you mitigate against 2. And if you use your resources wisely you can quarantine areas and mitigate against 3.

Secondly the level of knowledge that the general population have about Chaos varies from world to world (and also within sources). However it is highly doubtful that it is not universally known across the Imperium that the 8 pointed star is an evil symbol. It is also well known that mutation is associated with the warp and the 'Ruinious Powers'. Basically the Imperium operates on a need to know basis.

Thirdly the technology and techniques the Imperium use are actually incredibly advanced. Incredibly advanced. It's just that they are used by people with a 12th century mindset (ramped up to 11 so to speak). As examples read how Adeptus Arbite Verispex agents work, or how Adeptus Mechanicus interrogators can extract information from someones brains.

Fourthly it isn't just the Inquisition who guards against Chaos. The Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Arbites also do the same. On more advanced worlds the local law enforcement will at least no enough to organise a lynching where necessary.

I am coming to the conclusion that the disagreement in this argument really comes from your lack of familiarity with the WH40K universe. Which is cool. We all have to start somewhere.

For your interest in how the Imperium fights Chaos I'd probably suggest reading Deamonhunters and Book of Judgement. Possibly Radicals Handbook as well.

You might notice that while all of this is a lot nicer than the Imperium, it's also not exactly a rah rah democracy cheerleading routine.

What I've noticed is that in a few short questions you have proposed:

Banning religious beliefs and ideas that are contrary to the humanities existence

Disappearing children and families when they represent a threat to humanities existence

Lying to the public about the true nature of Chaos.

A policy of international supression of beliefs and resource use that do not accord with your own (and happen to represent a threat to humanities existence).

Shutting down the greatest repository of information and free speech has humanity has ever seen in the name of saving humanity from itself

Educating the population that one of the greatest weapons they have against Chaos is faith.

Congratulations I agree with all these policies when dealing with Chaos so would the Imperium. The Imperium just have more experience of this so go further. We'll make an Inquisitor of you yet.

Also you've made some mistakes about the WH40K universe

First and crucially, it is actually quite rare for a deamon just to be able to pop into the material world and start 'tempting people.

They broadly need one of three things

1. A soul that has either conciously or unwittingly dedicated itself to Chaos. For example a complete degenerate noble may not be worshipping Slaneesh but may still end up being contacted a deamon. The same couldn't be said of some random factory worker.

2. An actual spell or ritual that breaks the seal between the material and immaterial world.

3. A phyisical location or object that has been thoroughly infected or tainted with Chaos. Handling such objects can cause the bearer to be contacted by warp entities.

This is why ignorance is powerful. If you encourage complete devotion and faith in a cause then you mitigate Against the first danger. If you encourage ignorance then you mitigate against 2. And if you use your resources wisely you can quarantine areas and mitigate against 3.

Secondly the level of knowledge that the general population have about Chaos varies from world to world (and also within sources). However it is highly doubtful that it is not universally known across the Imperium that the 8 pointed star is an evil symbol. It is also well known that mutation is associated with the warp and the 'Ruinious Powers'. Basically the Imperium operates on a need to know basis.

Thirdly the technology and techniques the Imperium use are actually incredibly advanced. Incredibly advanced. It's just that they are used by people with a 12th century mindset (ramped up to 11 so to speak). As examples read how Adeptus Arbite Verispex agents work, or how Adeptus Mechanicus interrogators can extract information from someones brains.

Fourthly it isn't just the Inquisition who guards against Chaos. The Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Arbites also do the same. On more advanced worlds the local law enforcement will at least no enough to organise a lynching where necessary.

I am coming to the conclusion that the disagreement in this argument really comes from your lack of familiarity with the WH40K universe. Which is cool. We all have to start somewhere.

For your interest in how the Imperium fights Chaos I'd probably suggest reading Deamonhunters and Book of Judgement. Possibly Radicals Handbook as well.

I didn't here any feedback from you on my plan. Good or bad do you think?

"Banning religious beliefs and ideas that are contrary to the humanities existence"

If you ban temples to Tzeentch, you aren't banning a religious belief or an idea. You're banning a weapon of mass destruction. Are you shocked and amazed to learn that it's illegal to build unshielded nuclear reactors in your backyard in pretty much every nation?

"Disappearing children and families when they represent a threat to humanities existence"

"Quarantine" is not the same as "disappear" and is something which modern first world nations already do. Like, seriously, do you watch the news? People got quarantined for ebola in the United States like a month ago. That's just how you deal with lethal contagions.

"Lying to the public about the true nature of Chaos."

Again, something modern first world nations already do. Not to mention the extent of the lie is actually really minor and doesn't hold a candle to some of the things modern media has been caught doing, for much flimsier reasons. Granted, that's actually part of the problem: People need to trust the media, and presently they don't because they've gotten much too brazen with their distortions of truth.

You seem to be under the impression that you're changing my mind or even that I'm proposing particularly drastic measures. All I'm telling you is how the United States would likely respond to a threat of Chaos, and most of it involves adding tiny updates to existing laws that say "X Chaos thing counts as Y already illegal thing which is basically the same in terms of end result."

"A policy of international supression of beliefs and resource use that do not accord with your own (and happen to represent a threat to humanities existence)."

...What? No, I'm suggesting that data which is actively harmful be policed. The fact that this data is Chaos and not a computer virus isn't a substantial change from existing laws. The only major difference is that a Chaos virus can reach through your computer and make your eyeballs explode.

"Shutting down the greatest repository of information and free speech has humanity has ever seen in the name of saving humanity from itself"

No, I'm suggesting shutting down the internet if and only if it can be puppeted at-will by extradimensional monsters that want to eat our souls. The problem with the internet is not that it's a means of rapidly transmitting information, but that Chaos can edit it at-will to send mis information. In other words, if the internet actually serves its purpose after Chaos shows up we need to keep that thing online because it is our only chance of actually finding Chaos cultists before it's too late. The fact that we have to give that up if computers can be possessed is in fact why we are doomed if the daemons can possess computers. We can't fight Chaos cults for long without the internet, and if the daemons can possess computers we cannot rely on the internet to fight Chaos.

"Educating the population that one of the greatest weapons they have against Chaos is faith."

Read up on the Word Bearers.

"They broadly need one of three things"

You forgot thing four: A psyker. That's their easiest, most omnipresent, and almost impossible to catch point of contact. Planetary governments can't catch 100% of psykers unless they can catch 100% of all criminals. Their ability to catch 100% of all criminals is obviously a pipe dream, so you WILL have a Chaos problem sooner or later. The question is when, not if, and you need a plan to actually catch the cults when they pop up before they can build themselves up to the size they need to be to pose an existential threat to the world. That means you need as many people as possible who know what a Chaos cult looks like and will report it to the authorities if they see one growing. The Imperium actively impedes both knowledge of what to look for and a community's willingness to report.

"Thirdly the technology and techniques the Imperium use are actually incredibly advanced."

No it isn't. It's a bunch of 12th century idiots with their hands on tech they can't make adequate use of. There's an inquisitor who uses trials by ordeal and who let a heretic go because he used his Chaos powers to survive the trial, so the inquisitor assumed he was blessed by the Emperor. It doesn't matter how advanced your tech is, a 12th century mindset absolutely will not produce results. Law enforcement works best when trusted, and a 12th century approach means nobody ever trusts you. This means nobody wants to give you any information which means when people happen across a Chaos cult they won't tell you , especially if you go around executing people left and right. They'll want nothing to do with you. Advanced technology doesn't do jack if you don't have basic law enforcement figured out.

Also: Less poverty leads to less crime because people are much less likely to risk rocking the boat if they have something to lose (something brought up before), so the Imperium's godawful logistics and feudal government structure is actively creating a larger criminal class which generates more Chaos cults.

"Fourthly it isn't just the Inquisition who guards against Chaos. The Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Arbites also do the same."

If you scroll up a bit, you'll notice I've referenced non-Inquisition anti-Chaos forces before. It's still not enough people. Not even close. If the Adeptus Arbites were the entire police force rather than just a small detachment of it that receives assistance from the PDF, they'd at least be in the right ballpark, but they're not. By the time you have enough people in on the secret of Chaos, everyone will know pretty soon, because if one in every twenty people in your population knows a secret, it won't be secret for long. Plus, the Adeptus Arbites are seriously kicking that whole "community trusts you enough to actually report suspicious activity to you" thing in the nards, so you'd probably be better off without them anyway.

I offer my apologies Lupa about my incoherent ramblings. I did have ah, a bit too much to drink. Sorry about all that. Your reasonings are quite good though I do believe that Chaos could corrupt this world. There are many cases of corrupted videos, cassetes and sounds in Warhammer 40K. You did mention the fact of shutting down the Internet but thats like the Imperiums blackout you keep mentioning. Chaos cultists could put several corrupting videos that make all who watch them become zombies (cliche I know) that worship Chaos. Thanks to the speed many people would become Chaos worshipping zombies. However this wouldn't really affect the Government, unless they spend their time on Youtube. So what would be better? Corrupt the people or corrupt those in power first? I believe corrupting the Government would be better because then the cultists could proceed of corrupting the people. There would be no one to stop them from putting tainted information on the web, because the Government controls the Internet and so the Internet won't be shut down. Of course a Chaos Invasion of Daemons would work as well. Also about the Inquisitor trial thing. In my experience they just kill anyone who looked funny at them. Which still can't be good for society. Basically their belief is kill a thousand innocents in the hope of killing one 'bad-guy'. Note the quotation marks because is the Imperium a lot better? In the current case the Imperium is going to die but until then, FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

I offer my apologies Lupa about my incoherent ramblings. I did have ah, a bit too much to drink. Sorry about all that. Your reasonings are quite good though I do believe that Chaos could corrupt this world. There are many cases of corrupted videos, cassetes and sounds in Warhammer 40K. You did mention the fact of shutting down the Internet but thats like the Imperiums blackout you keep mentioning. Chaos cultists could put several corrupting videos that make all who watch them become zombies (cliche I know) that worship Chaos. Thanks to the speed many people would become Chaos worshipping zombies. However this wouldn't really affect the Government, unless they spend their time on Youtube. So what would be better? Corrupt the people or corrupt those in power first? I believe corrupting the Government would be better because then the cultists could proceed of corrupting the people. There would be no one to stop them from putting tainted information on the web, because the Government controls the Internet and so the Internet won't be shut down. Of course a Chaos Invasion of Daemons would work as well. Also about the Inquisitor trial thing. In my experience they just kill anyone who looked funny at them. Which still can't be good for society. Basically their belief is kill a thousand innocents in the hope of killing one 'bad-guy'. Note the quotation marks because is the Imperium a lot better? In the current case the Imperium is going to die but until then, FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

Wait- chaos corrupted VHS tapes? So Sadoka is actual a Daemon? That would explain a lot.

Plenty of corrption on youtube

What makes you think this world hasn't already been corrupted?*

we are up to our ears in war, porn and diseases

* actualy this gets hinted at in one HH novel. Earth had chaos induced mutants in the PREHISTORIC AGE!

You did mention the fact of shutting down the Internet but thats like the Imperiums blackout you keep mentioning.

No it isn't. I'm not going to bother to explain why because I already have, and actually reading my posts is a pre-requisite to getting a serious response from me.

Reading your posts is a pre-requisite for me to go to sleep. (Joke, bad I know)

Also if you don't bother to explain then I won't bother to notice. And I seriously cannot bother to go up look up your posts and then read them. I've got better things to do. So maybe shutting down the internet isn't the same but why should I notice that if you aren't even going to explain. Just a sentence or two maybe?

If you didn't read it the first time I said it, I have no reason to believe you'll read it the second time around. The words are still there. You can read them whenever you want.

... how did you... what the...

... how did you... what the...

Don't worry Misha you got it right the first time, as I pointed out there is no difference between Lupas policies and the Imperiums. The areas of disagreement occur because of his (her? Shouldn't be gender normative of course) unfamiliarity with the WH40K universe and how either the Imperium or Chaos works.

Oi. Quit being a condescending *******. I have explained at length how the policies I suggested diverge from those of the Imperium (and are also, with one exception, almost identical to real world policies used almost ubiquitously by modern first world nations), and it is particularly worth noting that the actual original policy under dispute, that limiting information about Chaos is somehow good, is something which I have absolutely never agreed with even a little bit. In point of fact, my list of stated criticisms of the Imperium's policies is growing since I have additionally discussed how their approach to law enforcement tactics is never going to get the kind of results they need to fight something like Chaos, and no, your red herring about law enforcement technology does not constitute a rebuttal to my point about law enforcement techniques . If you want to make a counterargument to my post, make the argument - preferably one that doesn't rely on pretending that all words that start with "tech" are completely interchangeable. Just declaring yourself to be correct and circlejerking with the people who already agree with you is both immature and dishonest.

EDIT: While I'm at it, I'll also note that you've completely ignored Senshuken even after he specifically and explicitly asked for your opinion, which is also a **** move. Quit being a jerk to everyone who doesn't already agree with you.

@Misha: Seriously, you can scroll up and read what I wrote about the internet and the reasons why shutting it down might be necessary in the event of a Chaos attack anytime you want. I could copy/paste that paragraph here, but it would hardly make a difference since it would be literally the same words. I could also rephrase that paragraph, but the actual content of the paragraph would still be the same. Seriously, either you're willing to read what I write or you aren't, and if you aren't, why on Earth should I bother writing more?

Hey guys what's u....

Okay I'm out, too much nerd rage.

Edit: I guess it wasn't as bad as I first thought it to be. I just went straight to the last posts.

Edit again: I was right the first time.

I didn't here any feedback from you on my plan. Good or bad do you think?

My apologies for not providing feedback. I think parading a cultist around for propaganda purposes has merit assuming you prevent him being able to spout Chaos nonsense. Using stooges is probably easier however. They mention similar tactics in 1984.

@Lupa. Thanks for the clarification. Apologies if my tone came across as condesending. I will try to be both more assertive and sensitive.

I re-read all your posts, and the responses and I think I'm going to have to continue to agree with my post to Misha. Fundementally I think the areas of disagreement arise because of what I perceive as your unfamiliarity with the setting. That is my genuinly held opinion. It appears to me that you are not willing acknowledge this or take the opinions of other forum members into genuine consideration. Therefore I see little utility in long replies to your points.

Sorry.

Hey guys what's u....

Okay I'm out, too much nerd rage.

Edit: I guess it wasn't as bad as I first thought it to be. I just went straight to the last posts.

I dunno, my finger is sore from scrolling past them walls of text.

I wish this wouldn't happen everytime people try to compare real world politics and the imperium...

Hey guys what's u....

Okay I'm out, too much nerd rage.

Edit: I guess it wasn't as bad as I first thought it to be. I just went straight to the last posts.

I dunno, my finger is sore from scrolling past them walls of text.

I wish this wouldn't happen everytime people try to compare real world politics and the imperium...

I think these types of discussion are awesome just because you can see how Inquisitors/Ecclesiarchy/Administratum figures would act in correspondence to each other.

Hey guys what's u....

Okay I'm out, too much nerd rage.

Edit: I guess it wasn't as bad as I first thought it to be. I just went straight to the last posts.

I dunno, my finger is sore from scrolling past them walls of text.

I wish this wouldn't happen everytime people try to compare real world politics and the imperium...

I think these types of discussion are awesome just because you can see how Inquisitors/Ecclesiarchy/Administratum figures would act in correspondence to each other.

You mean them always bitching at each other at cross purposes?