WEBVTT - Bonus Episode: Untitled Warhammer 40,000 Podcast 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:13.000 All Zone Media. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.600 Hey everyone, Joe here. I also host the Alliance at 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.240 by Donkeys podcast, a military history podcast. We talk about 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.840 all eras of history, trying to make things funny and interesting. 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.560 And if that sounds cool to you, you can come 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.520 see us live May twenty ninth at the Rich Mix 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:36.400 in London. There will be tickets available for live show 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.920 and a ticket available for live streaming with video on 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.199 demand so you can watch it later. So get your 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:45.519 tickets now. They will be in the show notes and 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:46.400 I hope to see you there. 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.880 Oh, welcome back to Well. This is the Behind the 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.159 Bastard's feed and this is normally where you get new 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.960 episodes Behind the Bastard's but every now and then we 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.600 try something new. And in the not too distant future, 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.760 I'm planning to be launching a new podcast with my 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:08.240 friend and fellow Giant nerd Joe Kasabian, also a fellow 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:09.880 podcaster or Hey Joe, how are you doing? 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:12.800 Hey buddy, it's good to be here. 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:15.520 Yeah, and we're wanting to do We're planning to do 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.319 a podcast on Warhammer forty thousand, which is a game 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.600 system that some of you are probably aware of and 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.920 others of you maybe aren't. I think a lot of 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.720 people know about this now it's reached kind of a 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.800 point of cultural critical mass. I think a significant chunk 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:34.560 of people on the Internet are just kind of casually 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:36.520 aware it exists in a way that they weren't when 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:38.160 we were kids and started playing this. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.720 Yeah, one hundred percent. I remember back when I first 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:47.920 heard about Warhammer through the books, like nobody really knew 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.160 what it was other than other people that would fall 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:55.800 into that fan zone. But now anybody who doesn't even 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:57.920 know it's a miniature, maybe they know it from like 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.200 the Total War games or whatever. Yeah, it's definitely the 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:01.120 biggest it's ever been. 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.040 Yeah, and I the podcast, we'll you know, talk later 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.080 about what exactly the podcast kind of things the podcast 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.680 will be covering, But this episode, I specifically wanted to 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.200 talk about the intersection of Warhammer forty k and like 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:18.760 pop culture and pop politics in the United States and elsewhere, 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.560 because it's one of having a surprisingly large impact on 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.480 like the way people communicate on the Internet and the 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.280 way people talk about Donald Trump in particular, that's really weird. 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:31.280 But before we get into that, because I think that's 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.919 the thing that's going to be relevant to everybody, even 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.160 the people who you know aren't into the game at 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.080 least can get something out of this stuff, which is 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:40.400 why we're putting this up as our teaser episode in 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.799 the Bastard's Feed. But before we do that, Joe, you've 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:43.840 got a book to plug. 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:49.760 I do my debut gunpowder fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.880 comes out May twenty ninth, so you can pre order 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:55.280 it now, which is the best time to get it, 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.840 so when you when it arrives it'll be nice and. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:02.040 Fresh, excellent. Well, everyone one should do that, and everyone 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.560 should listen to the episode, which you have no choice 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:06.520 but to listen to because I'm going to start reading 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.440 it to you and you're already listening to the podcast, right. So, 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.120 if you're at all into social media and up to 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.240 date on the current political hors of our age, you've 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.560 probably heard President Donald Trump referred to as God Emperor Trump. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.960 Currently that phrase alone returns about four million results on Google, 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.640 and that is a reference to Warhammer forty thousand in 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.400 forty k as its fans call it. The God Emperor 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.120 is the founder in deity of the Imperium, a vast 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.800 million world empire that includes nearly all human beings. He 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.840 was once a mighty warrior and a deadbeat dad, but 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:43.080 he spent the last ten thousand years or so hooked 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.640 up to life support. So you can already see. You know, 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.440 the guy likes gold. He's always covered in gold, and 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.640 he's a terrible father. So you can see why Donald 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:53.160 Trump gets compared to him from time to time. 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:58.440 Right, Hey, I mean recently Trump posted a picture of 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.200 himself as Jesus Christ, so maybe he's maybe starting to 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:01.960 buy miniatures. 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.320 That's right, that's right. And the Emperor, being a being 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:06.720 who's lived tens of thousands of years, is kind of 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.240 insinuated to maybe have been Jesus or at least somebody 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.440 who like profited, you know, was influential in starting the 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:19.240 early Church. He's been insinuated to have been basically everybody. 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.679 But you know, getting beyond that, if you haven't don't 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:26.360 know anything about Warhammer and you just heard the phrase 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.240 God Emperor Trump, you probably didn't think too much about 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:32.000 it outside of like, oh, people are being weird about 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:36.000 politics again in the United States, right, can you? It 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.400 couldn't be right. Trump is kind of a singular figure 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.039 when it comes to global media attention, so it's not 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.600 all that noteworthy that fans of a game would reference 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.720 him in memes. What makes this one unique is that 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.520 people using the phrase and spreading memes about it are 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:52.680 kind of as likely to be mocking the president as 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.160 praising him. It's a real Schrodinger situation, and this aspect 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.840 of it is really well embodied by something very funny 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.360 that happened on February eleventh, twenty nineteen, over in Italy. 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.160 The Via Reggio Carnival is an event held in via Reggio, 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:08.600 a city in Tuscany, and has been a yearly parade 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.520 in celebration since eighteen seventy three. It started when a 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.120 bunch of rich guys decided to make a parade with 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:16.640 floats that would help put the city on the map 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.159 in a cultural sense, and rather than funding the parade themselves, 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.400 they push to increase taxes on working class citizens and 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:28.120 poor people protested by wearing masks and presumably committing petty crimes. Right, 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.640 So you've got like a classic story here. It really 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.440 is a beautiful thing. I love a good carnival, And 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.320 kind of the key feature of this is there's these 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.599 huge paper machet floats, the largest of which weighs like 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.719 forty tons that people make spend the year making. There's 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.440 are massive things, they're the size of buildings. And then 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.160 like walk through the street, right, and there are drive 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:51.240 through the street I think now, and there's these big 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.760 drunken parties and everybody wears masks and it's a great time. 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.560 About half a million people attend each year. And twenty 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.680 nineteen was like any other year, except that the pride 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.839 of the was a sixty five foot tall sculpture of 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.400 Donald Trump as the God Emperor. 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:09.080 Of maid Joe, would you showed me this picture? I 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.120 lost my shit. I had never seen this. 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:15.200 It'll be the thumbnail image of this. This one's not 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.760 going to be a video episode because it's a special one, 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:19.840 but I do kind of want people to see it. 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:23.640 If you just google like Trump God Emperor, float, parade 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:25.719 float or something like that, you'll see pictures and it 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:27.520 really is something. It's massive, right. 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:30.920 I would love to be into the planning meeting on 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.159 that one, because you know, it took a small to 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.800 medium sized team to build this monster. Yes, someone had 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:38.839 to pitch that idea to the rest of them and 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:40.880 explain exactly what the fuck it was. 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:46.080 It was several people's whole year. The guy behind it 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.560 is artist Fabrizio Golly, who created it as a critique 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.240 of Trump's presidency. Some of this is obvious if you 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.480 like really look at the details of the statue. There 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.400 are like four blue twitter birds flying around the sword 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.240 handle the Emperor. Like this is based on off of 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.320 like a drawing in several drawings of the Emperor where 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.160 which is these guys wearing huge a huge golden suit 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:08.920 of power armour with like eagle's wings on it. He's 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:13.040 got a massive flaming sword. Everything about him is gold. 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.560 Often he has glorious long flowing hair, the kind that 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:21.040 Trump doesn't. But yeah, in the float this big Sordi had, 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.920 there's like twitter birds flying around the handle, which Fabrizio 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.360 put there to make the point that Trump had weaponized 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.160 Twitter against his enemies. And written on the blade in 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:34.120 Italian was the phrase your taxes and your duties, and 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.400 the specific way that these were written in Italian was 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.400 meant to be like bring up a different phrase, which 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.160 Galley summarized as meaning, here's your fucking tariffs, right, like 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.400 that's the blade is the tariffs, which is kind of 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.280 like prescient that he really picked those out as being 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:53.120 a weapon in a way, they weren't nearly as much 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.400 in twenty nineteen as they are now. 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.360 Yeah, and it still kind of works as a bit 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:01.720 of imperial propaganda. Yeah, Like this is one hundred percent 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.720 something that that the Emperor would have said to like 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:06.440 a planet in revolt, like here's your. 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.400 Here's your fucking tariffs with a literal sword. Yeah, Fabrizio 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:13.960 said of this quote, it's a joke, but in fact 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.360 he's trying to destroy nations with the economy instead of 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:19.000 nuclear missiles. This is one of the strongest actions let's 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.920 say that powerful people like Trump can use. So we'll 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:23.960 go back to Fabrizio in a bit. But what's relevant 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.000 to my point here is the point I was making 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:28.720 earlier is that as soon as pictures of this float 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.960 get online, they go viral. People are sharing this like crazy, 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:36.280 and Fabrizio's meaning sailed right over a lot of people's heads. 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:38.400 I'm going to quote now from an article in Time. 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.400 Many conservative commentators on Twitter appeared to interpret the float 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:44.920 as a tribute to Trump. Several tweeted that was a 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.800 parade for Trump. Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.640 right wing Channel one American News wrote, this carnival in 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:53.960 Italy looks a lot more fun than the Thanksgiving Day 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.360 parade in New York. Just look at this Trump float. 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.000 Ah incredible. Everybody knows it can't be a Trump float 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.480 because it wasn't sponsored by coinbase or right like. 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.360 Right, no one was selling crypto. It was twenty nineteen. 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:06.880 It couldn't have been affiliated with Trump. 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.640 Yeah, exactly, nobody could rug pull the parade. 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.760 Oh man, I do you know if the Emperor was 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.400 a real character, he's got to be a lie. He's 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:19.040 he should be alive then, because he's like thirty thou 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.400 forty thousand years old when the game starts, which means 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.959 theoretically the Emperor could have bought in fts. Right, that's true, 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:29.440 his madness could be entirely driven by all of his 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.400 apes getting stolen. He set him down the. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.200 Path the thing that really drove him to combat chaos. 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.840 If someone tried to explain the concept of a slurp 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:40.680 juice to him. 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.920 No, I got a ruled humanity. You people can't cover yourselves. 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.640 Fuck, you can't be fucking trusted. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.240 Yeah, so Warhammer forty thousand and the God Emperor character 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.400 have existed since the nineteen eighties. For most of the 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.120 time that the game has existed, it's been a fairly 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:00.360 obscure pastime. It requires a lot of money in order 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.360 to actually play the game, and it used to require 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:04.839 a lot of money just to like buy all of 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.679 the books and guides that would teach you anything about 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.280 the game at all. But social media and video games 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.200 have introduced forty K to the masses in a way that, like, 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.200 you don't have to spend a lot or even any 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.800 money to at least consume the lore. A lot of 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:22.160 people who are fans have never played the game. You know, 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:23.839 maybe they play some video games, but a lot of 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.320 people just like watch hours of YouTube videos, and those 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:30.360 YouTube videos are largely regurgitating decades worth of lore that 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:32.760 have been like written and stored in websites or put 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.560 in wikis. Like that's all. That's the hobby to quite 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.640 a few people who call themselves fans, and so as 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.920 a result, when the long simmering US culture war ignited 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:45.960 the world of gaming a year or so prior to 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.600 the start of the Trump campaign, forty K became a 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.880 battleground too. The fact that the imperium that the god 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.640 Emperor ruled was in the text of the game a 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.920 fascist state, which was you know, largely the subject of 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.040 satire in thee made it kind of an obvious inspiration 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.040 for white nationalists looking to hide propaganda in memes. 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:06.319 Right. 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.360 The fact that, like, people who were playing forty K 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.600 were usually playing one of the factions affiliated with this 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.160 evil fascist space space Empire. Even though the game was 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.400 satirizing the evil fascist space Empire, part of it all 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.280 meant that there was like some room wiggle room for 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:24.920 folks to get in and try to like propagandize to people. 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.080 The all they need is a tiny bit. There's always 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:31.800 enough wiggle room. It's like a mouse smashing itself under 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:33.760 a door. There's nothing you can do. 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.560 Right, right, especially since like it's it's part of its 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:38.160 wiggle room, and part of it's like, well, what do 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:40.400 you like Angry young men who aren't great at like 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.640 being socialized to do well? They spend way too much 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:46.080 time playing games. I say, as an angry young man 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.880 who wasn't well socialized, but it was, you know. 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:50.640 Sensing myself in these comments. 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:54.800 Yeah, playing a lot of Warhammer, right, and hey, I'm 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:57.560 well socialized now and I still love Warhammer. 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:02.120 That's fine, goddamn right, which is always wild to because 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:05.880 Warhammer's inherently a social game. It is like even with 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:07.400 all the video games or whatever. If that's how you 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:09.319 want to consume it, great, But the second you cross 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:11.439 that line and start buying mini is you have to 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:13.319 go into a room and start talking to him. 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:15.600 Yeah, at some point you're going to have to be 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.560 around other people if you really want to do it. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:22.240 So God Emperor Trump memes started spreading on four Chan 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.600 back in twenty fifteen, right around the same time Trump 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.480 announced his campaign, and December twenty fifth, twenty fifteen, a 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.000 YouTuber named Talent uploaded a video that collected a bunch 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.679 of early memes, entitled it Donald Trump Emperor of Mankind. 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:38.680 Talent was a very small time creator. We're talking about 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.440 a thousand subscribers, but this particular video broke half a 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:46.120 million views, and part of it, like the imagery in 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.319 the video, is there's a famous piece of art from 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.640 the lore of the game. That's the emperor fighting his 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.480 son who betrayed him, over the body of one of 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:57.760 his other sons that was murdered by the betrayers. It's 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.720 a very famous drawing and they just included that, but 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.120 they hadn't swapped out the Emperor with Donald Trump very crudely, 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.520 and I believe Hillary Clinton was playing the role of Horace, 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.360 his evil son. I'll do a screen share so you 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:11.360 can see this, Joe. 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:13.640 That is very confusing. 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:17.720 This is a real beautiful find. I think that's Hillary 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:19.760 in there. Yeah, that's Hillary. 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:22.040 Oh yeah, that's Hillary. That's Hillary. 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:24.280 And then there's a there's Donald. 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:25.840 Who would have thought? Who would have thought that Donald 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.960 Trump was Hillary Clinton's gene seed father. 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:33.160 Yes, it is implied the meme because again, this is 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.120 his son, who is the evil he's fighting. So yes, 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.200 this kind of is implying that Hillary Clinton was created 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:40.160 by Donald Trump. 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.000 And she's absolutely towering over him. 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:49.560 She was way cooler. She just killed an angel. It's 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.120 pretty sweet. So the meme broke. The God Emperor meme 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.319 broke mainstream awareness in twenty sixteen when New York Times 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.280 reporter Jonathan Weisman wrote about the hate mail and threats 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.880 that he received online from Trump supporters. Quote from that article, 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.760 the anti Semitic hate, much of it from self identified 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.240 Donald J. Trump supporters, hasn't stopped since Trump God Emperor 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.760 sent me the Nazi iconography of the shiftless hook nosed 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.240 jew I was served in an image of the geists of Auschwitz. 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.480 The famous words are bite, mocked, fry replaced without irony 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:20.920 with maccin America. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:21.280 Great. 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.640 So again, this guy and this journalist like Weiseman doesn't 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.760 recognize that this guy's making a warhammer reference or at 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:33.560 least right about Yeah, it's just like the the username 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.560 of the guy messaging him, and again like why would 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:38.720 he have right, Like if you don't, like, you wouldn't 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.600 assume Trump God Emperor is someone referencing a video game. 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:43.840 You just in this context, you just assume it's a 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:45.240 crazy fascist. 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:46.040 Right right. 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.400 Yeah. But about two months after that column came out, 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.360 a writer with the Huffington Post, Nico Pitney, wrote an 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:57.840 article about the growing Trump God Emperor meme phenomenon quote 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.600 among Trump's active online supporters, the nickname is now commonplace. 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.160 The post announcing Trump's participation in the Q and A 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.800 heralded our God Emperor, and a search of the phrase 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.560 returned over two hundred posts in the day after Trump's appearance. 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.360 Some forum members say God Emperor is simply a tongue 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:14.520 in cheek attempt to rile up Trump opponents who fear 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:16.760 he would be a strong man as president. The term 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.640 is attributed variously to God Emperor, characters in the science 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.680 fiction series Dune and a tabletop game called Warhammer forty thousand. 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:26.680 We know he can't literally be one, wrote member in 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:28.880 New Jersey nine oh eight, but the phrase whip people 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:31.640 into a frenzy saying that we literally want a dictator. 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:36.080 Oh okay, okay. Funding that marketing back then. 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.960 Yeah, it was nicer back then when they had to 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:43.240 pretend it was a bit and I do lo well 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.480 it could be Dune, Well, Dune, it could be, but 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.920 it's not. Warhammer is kind of like a lot of 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:54.200 Warhammer was originally ripping off Dune, and the Emperor characters 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.960 based heavily on on Leo A. Trades Right, Like there's yeah, 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:02.240 that's certainly like like Warhammer is essentially all of the 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.360 sci fi that was bigg in the nineteen eighties and 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.760 before getting put into a blender and like merged together 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:09.480 right with. 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.400 Thatch, right uk, Yeah. 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:16.520 As we'll talk about yes, so like the journalist there 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:18.560 is correct that like, yeah, I mean they could have been, 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.040 but in this case they definitely weren't. They were talking 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.200 about the Emperor from forty k Now, a big part 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:26.880 of the appeal of the god Emperor character for these 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.400 people is that he was explicitly in the lore of 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.480 the game genocidal. The way the backstory goes, you know, 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.160 Warmer forty thousand is set in the forty first millennium, 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.200 like like thirty nine or zero thousand years into the future, 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:40.640 but in the lore of the game, and like the 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.520 year thirty thousand or so, about ten thousand years before 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.240 the current day of the setting. The Emperor, while he 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.120 was still alive and healthy, launched a great crusade after 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:51.960 unifying Earth. You know, there had been a big space 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.280 empire before, but it all crashed after the Ai, you know, 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.800 went crazy and fucked everything up. So Earth was just 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.720 like this warring mess of techno barbarians and shit. And 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.240 the Emperor takes over. He unifies Earth, and he makes 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.399 a bunch of gene modified super soldiers called space Marines, 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.520 and he sends them out into the galaxy to commit 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.480 mass genocide against all of the different alien species that 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:18.400 he considered a threat in any human world. That wouldn't 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.200 bend the need to him, right, They just do thousands 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:23.639 of genocides out in the galaxy. They take over like 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.280 a million worlds, and this all does end badly for 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.119 the Emperor, like his sons, who were his main generals 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.040 that he had created in a lab to eventually a 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.320 bunch of them betray them and he's badly wounded and 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:37.639 has to be on like this life support system forever 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.720 and ever, which leads to the nightmare future that the 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:43.639 game itself is set in. But the fact that like 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.399 none of this works for the Emperor, and that again 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.000 kinda in the lore, you're not supposed to be like, ah, 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.399 the Emperor, what a good guy who was doing a 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.280 good thing. You're supposed to be like, oh, he's just 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.399 like wiping people out for no reason, Like he was 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.040 just a real real dick. Yeah. 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:01.800 People always like to say like, oh, it's you know, 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.359 and nobody's good in the world of Warhammer Force, okay, 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:10.600 which the other crue yes, but specifically the Imperium is horrible. 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:15.119 Yeah, absolutely horrible. And in the books about this genocide, 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.600 there's like moments where your favorite characters are wiping out 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.040 a species and like the last members of the species 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.520 will be like, we just wanted to be left alone, 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:26.120 Like these are. They're not subtle, like the writers are 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.480 not super subtle about them being the baddies. 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.639 Say what you will about Warhammer forty k, but subtle 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:33.440 is not one of them. 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.800 Subtle is not something you can apply to this game. However, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.000 some people fail to see the broader message in the 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:40.919 lore and just hone in on the things that appeal 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:43.480 to them. And there's a great four Chan post I 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.720 found from dis the I think July twenty first, twenty fifteen, 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:50.400 where someone posts a picture and it's yet another one 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.280 of those like photoshop things where you've got like Donald 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.879 Trump in the place of a space marine. Year is 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.160 now forty thousand. Trump turned out to be the God 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.520 Emperor and initiated the imperium of man killing Xenos all day, 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.240 every day in his honor. Life is good. Get like 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.880 in the game, things aren't good in the forty first millennium. 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.159 The Emperor's stuck in a life support chair and everyone 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.320 worships him even though he was a major atheist, and 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:19.720 everything's falling apart all the time. Life is not in 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:20.560 fact good. 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:25.080 And anywhere the space Marines came from is by design terrible. 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:30.360 Right, Yeah, they're abducted child soldiers who are like genetically 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.600 enhanced so they can go crack down on rebellions against 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.639 the state. They're not like, it's not a like, it's 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:38.480 like it's a fun game. There's a lot of like 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.520 the lore is interesting and the models are cool, but 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:43.560 you're not supposed to think, boy, I wish I lived 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:45.520 in that world. That would be silly. 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.520 Imagine if RFK Junior got the keys to the space 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:50.440 marine program. 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:51.399 Absolutely not. 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.720 He's already got a strategic stockpile of trend and like, yeah, 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:56.760 butter ready to go. 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.320 Yeah, yeah, that's the first step towards having space marines. 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.760 Should just let RFK cook up like whatever kind of 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:09.320 like mammal penis based potion he can to invent the 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.160 extra organs that make you a super soldier. 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.439