I choose to ignore all the “Actually the Tau are grimdark brainwashed eugenics North Korea” and just write it off as Imperial propaganda.
I mean my understanding was that they were functionally updated to be more like the actual Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere, which is obviously kinda what they were going for initially anyways with the whole "Caste-Based Society + Coerced Unification w/ dubious degrees of social & economic equality between species", gist.
because there was always a faux-commie undertone to how they’re portrayed.
See that's something that I have always disagreed with strongly. Their society assumes & inscribes into it's basic organizational framework a Social & Economic Caste system that at the very least accepts a basic division between the working classes & the people who are supposed to benefit from & direct their labor.
The "Faux-Commie Undertone" was mostly, in my opinion, racially motivated fanbase memes & headcannon. :shrug-outta-hecks:
People looked at them & the fact that they were Asian-Coded & did not have an explicit program of pan-galactic genocide, and had a social structure that was more historically advanced than that of a Bronze Age Temple Economy (like the Imperium has) & concluded "dae T'au Commiez?"
In terms of their actual economic & social structure in the lore, they're way closer to something like Fully Automated Military Keynesianism, or a bizarre kind of BNW-esque Social Fordism (which, hmm...) However, you & I should know that these kinds of social structures are unsustainable without Imperial Peripheries; which obviously explains the need & desire for the T'au to assimilate other species through Spheres of Expansion, rather than by trying to pull some insane galaxy-encompassing Lebensraum bullshit like the Imperium.
They are certainly a more Rational & more "Egalitarian" social order than that of most other species in WH40K, that doesn't make them "The Good Guys" though.
I mean my understanding was that they were functionally updated to be more like the actual Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere, which is obviously kinda what they were going for initially anyways with the whole "Caste-Based Society + Coerced Unification w/ dubious degrees of social & economic equality between species", gist.
I guess I never saw Japan because there was always a faux-commie undertone to how they're portrayed.
See that's something that I have always disagreed with strongly. Their society assumes & inscribes into it's basic organizational framework a Social & Economic Caste system that at the very least accepts a basic division between the working classes & the people who are supposed to benefit from & direct their labor.
The "Faux-Commie Undertone" was mostly, in my opinion, racially motivated fanbase memes & headcannon. :shrug-outta-hecks:
People looked at them & the fact that they were Asian-Coded & did not have an explicit program of pan-galactic genocide, and had a social structure that was more historically advanced than that of a Bronze Age Temple Economy (like the Imperium has) & concluded "dae T'au Commiez?"
In terms of their actual economic & social structure in the lore, they're way closer to something like Fully Automated Military Keynesianism, or a bizarre kind of BNW-esque Social Fordism (which, hmm...) However, you & I should know that these kinds of social structures are unsustainable without Imperial Peripheries; which obviously explains the need & desire for the T'au to assimilate other species through Spheres of Expansion, rather than by trying to pull some insane galaxy-encompassing Lebensraum bullshit like the Imperium.
They are certainly a more Rational & more "Egalitarian" social order than that of most other species in WH40K, that doesn't make them "The Good Guys" though.