It's possible to be an anarchist while roleplaying a hardcore fascist in a tabletop RPG. It's fantasy. Fascism's best kept as a non-tenable, mockable idea for fiction.
If you were to go into a bar today and shout out "Join the army! All bugs must die!" or something, do you think everyone would know exactly what you were talking about? Or would they maybe think you were promoting some fascist, hateful action among the many others taking place currently? Satire is a very thin line, and without context (which most people aren't going to have regarding this), role-playing this stuff just comes off as the exact thing that is being satirized.
If you were to go into a bar today and shout out "Join the army! All bugs must die!" or something, do you think everyone would know exactly what you were talking about? Or would they maybe think you were promoting some fascist, hateful action among the many others taking place currently?
First, this isn't a bar. This is Lemmy, a community on the internet mostly filled with nerds. This is one of the most popular games at the moment. Also, even if they didn't know the game, odds are they know Starship troopers, and this is just an expanded meme of that.
Second, no I don't think anyone hearing you say to kill all the bugs will think you're a fascist. They might think you're crazy, but, as far as I'm aware, there aren't giant bugs we're at war with in real life.
I think there's almost zero chance of this being mistaken as a sincere fascist post, and it's pretty much harmless.
You might be thinking of the movie series, not the novel. In the book humans were essentially fascist, you could alternatively label it as "democracy" managed by a military dictatorship.
The bugs were not fascist, they were meant to represent communist China. Hienlien wrote starship trooper in a couple weeks, as a response to America announcing they were scaling back their nuclear arsenal.
I was speaking in reference to Helldivers 2, because the parent comment was talking about roleplaying and people don’t usually use that language around books or TV shows.
Fwiw, I was indeed taking about Helldivers, though I was referring to the irl "roleplay" of it in memes and in social media, even in communities completely unrelated to the game, like this one.
Same goes for those that take stuff like Fallout's Brotherhood of Steel or Warhammer's Imperium of Man too seriously. This stuff is better left in the context of the game. Bringing it into real life is sketchy at best.
I know this is was crossposted to the helldivers sub, tbh i duno anything about it.. but the meme image is from starship troopers and its defo a fash government
The headline, which very likely isn't even real, is also not inherently fascistic. If anything its more a statement on people being so stressed with life, that a fantastical idea of going off to live a sci-fi movie life is appealing.
You're pulling the fascism from the movie, which is inherently satirical. It makes sense something like that, which was already popular, continues to be so when the satire has more real world connections. You're on a platform with a ton of nerds, they're gonna reference sci-fi classics. If anything I'd say that's a healthy sign. Satire is arguably one of the strongest forces pushing back against fascism and the like on a cultural level.