But it's fiction, not real life. Of course if it was a real thing happening the faithful and the churches would be the better option. But that's the issue, it presents this world of an endless stream of disgusting horrors only held barely at bay by the monstrous acts committed to maintain purity by what is considered the cultural authority. When you explicitly prevent any other options than fascism and worse fascism from being in your setting, all you do is just make fascist apologia. You're viewing it diegetically, or at least think I am arguing diegetically, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way the world is presented and how that affects real life.
And the USA was, if not fascist, at least colonialist since its very beginning. And one could argue it's fascist too, especially given the direct inspiration the objectively fascist countries (Nazi Germany, for example) took from it. And arguing about the specifics of what counts as fascism is pointless. Even if no one even knows what fascism is in a setting, it at the bare minimum presents the monarchist, feudalist, theocratic or colonialist societies fascists worship due to twisted nostalgia for oppressing and dominating others.
It presents this world where the only options are bowing to an arbitrary and cruel God because they are an authority and therefore deserving of respect, or turning against them and in the process turning against all good things, a world that fits perfectly within the fascist mind. In fact it is exactly what most fascists perceive reality as.
Or in other words, of course the USA should be given critical support in WWII but deleting the USSR from your account of it too tends to just be Nazi shit.
If you look at the actual subreddit you got people who eat this shit up with exactly that mindset. People talking about how god fulfill's people's "needs" and not their "wants" and how the faithful became evil because of what they're fighting. I just saw someone say unironically on that subreddit, referring to IRL, that God saves women from becoming scarred by Satan by saving them from sex without love.
It's just a generic fascist setting where they make a normal shitty monarchist/imperialist/colonialist/fascist power and than retroactively justify it by making a more monarchist/imperialist/colonialist/fascist power that makes them look good. If you don't believe me now you'll believe me a couple years from now when all the treat hogs are braying "SACRIFICE FOR THE METACHRIST" or some shit. Helldivers is EXPLICITLY meant to paint Super Earth as the only main bad guy, but people still spam slopified "freedom" memes. Do you really think a setting where one nation is portrayed as the best option, and just happens to share core beliefs with the primary form of explicit fascism in the modern day, is going to have people analyze it better? Of course not, any criticism of Christianity in the setting is so pointless in the face of literal Hell that even those who do understand satire will miss it.
Of course if you had better options and they just haven't caught on yet or aren't powerful enough, not due to it being intrinsically impossible, but other conditions, THAN you can have a trash bag world like this without veering into Hitlerite apologia. But either groups like that don't exist in this setting or aren't talked about like. At all
And please dont think I'm picking on this setting specifically. I'm not! This is a core problem with the entire grimdark genre. When your setting is predicated on there being no good options, than people will look at your least bad option as being endorsed, and unless you're able to write a group that's flawed but good but also not some form of Hitlerism (which white men seem fundamentally incapable of), it's going to just be Hitlerism apologia anyways
And before you mention the Islamic nations, apparently they just straight up take children to make soldiers for war so while that isn't nearly as bad as a lot of the other stuff I heard, it's still theocratic nationalism and also a racist depiction of it too because I doubt people would just statically stay fine with that practice for hundred+ years
But it's fiction, not real life. Of course if it was a real thing happening the faithful and the churches would be the better option. But that's the issue, it presents this world of an endless stream of disgusting horrors only held barely at bay by the monstrous acts committed to maintain purity by what is considered the cultural authority. When you explicitly prevent any other options than fascism and worse fascism from being in your setting, all you do is just make fascist apologia. You're viewing it diegetically, or at least think I am arguing diegetically, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way the world is presented and how that affects real life.
And the USA was, if not fascist, at least colonialist since its very beginning. And one could argue it's fascist too, especially given the direct inspiration the objectively fascist countries (Nazi Germany, for example) took from it. And arguing about the specifics of what counts as fascism is pointless. Even if no one even knows what fascism is in a setting, it at the bare minimum presents the monarchist, feudalist, theocratic or colonialist societies fascists worship due to twisted nostalgia for oppressing and dominating others.
It presents this world where the only options are bowing to an arbitrary and cruel God because they are an authority and therefore deserving of respect, or turning against them and in the process turning against all good things, a world that fits perfectly within the fascist mind. In fact it is exactly what most fascists perceive reality as.
Or in other words, of course the USA should be given critical support in WWII but deleting the USSR from your account of it too tends to just be Nazi shit.
If you look at the actual subreddit you got people who eat this shit up with exactly that mindset. People talking about how god fulfill's people's "needs" and not their "wants" and how the faithful became evil because of what they're fighting. I just saw someone say unironically on that subreddit, referring to IRL, that God saves women from becoming scarred by Satan by saving them from sex without love.
It's just a generic fascist setting where they make a normal shitty monarchist/imperialist/colonialist/fascist power and than retroactively justify it by making a more monarchist/imperialist/colonialist/fascist power that makes them look good. If you don't believe me now you'll believe me a couple years from now when all the treat hogs are braying "SACRIFICE FOR THE METACHRIST" or some shit. Helldivers is EXPLICITLY meant to paint Super Earth as the only main bad guy, but people still spam slopified "freedom" memes. Do you really think a setting where one nation is portrayed as the best option, and just happens to share core beliefs with the primary form of explicit fascism in the modern day, is going to have people analyze it better? Of course not, any criticism of Christianity in the setting is so pointless in the face of literal Hell that even those who do understand satire will miss it.
Of course if you had better options and they just haven't caught on yet or aren't powerful enough, not due to it being intrinsically impossible, but other conditions, THAN you can have a trash bag world like this without veering into Hitlerite apologia. But either groups like that don't exist in this setting or aren't talked about like. At all
And please dont think I'm picking on this setting specifically. I'm not! This is a core problem with the entire grimdark genre. When your setting is predicated on there being no good options, than people will look at your least bad option as being endorsed, and unless you're able to write a group that's flawed but good but also not some form of Hitlerism (which white men seem fundamentally incapable of), it's going to just be Hitlerism apologia anyways
And before you mention the Islamic nations, apparently they just straight up take children to make soldiers for war so while that isn't nearly as bad as a lot of the other stuff I heard, it's still theocratic nationalism and also a racist depiction of it too because I doubt people would just statically stay fine with that practice for hundred+ years