Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Why Warhammer Keeps Winning

Jan. 10, 2026 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

21:05

Why Warhammer Keeps Winning

Warhammer 40,000 has become an accurate description of our current political climate. Buy Islander #5 here: https://shop.lotuseaters.com/
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	Why is Warhammer 40,000 more popular than ever?
	It's a strange thing that such a long-running franchise as Warhammer has become such a relevant cultural staple.
	Not only is it odd that 40k as a setting is nearly 40 years old and still going strong, its political salience is only increasing as time goes by and everyone is forced to address it.
	Why is this?
	Most other long-running franchises tend to wane over time, become less impactful as the years go by, as the logic of the setting plays itself out and becomes predictable, hackneyed, stale.
	But not Warhammer, for some reason.
	For some reason, Games Workshop are posting record profits.
	And I think it's actually explainable and worth exploring.
	Warhammer 40,000 was originally published way back in 1987 under the name Rogue Trader and designed primarily by Rick Priestley.
	Looking back at it, you'll notice that it's come a long way in that time, but all the core themes and tropes are present right in this first edition.
	The Imperium and Man, the Space Marines, Eldar, Chaos, Gene Steelers, Orcs, Tyrannids, and the proto-grimdark aesthetic.
	They're all present, although in a much more primitive form than you'll know them now.
	It was in 2nd edition that Warhammer 40,000 was properly codified into the form it essentially has this day, and this is where the factional law became fixed via the codexes, and the Horus Heresy became a mythic event that set the stage for the current state of the Imperium.
	From the period of the late 2nd edition to the third edition, the Space Marines transformed into high Gothic knightly warriors, and the God Emperor of Mankind was properly established on his golden throne.
	Chaos became more than merely evil aliens from hell, but instead became a kind of metaphysical corruption that carried moral weight, which would imperil the entire Imperium, and framed humanity as a doomed, decaying civilization.
	The third and fourth editions of Warhammer transformed the setting into a kind of locked stage, in which the icons do not change and the timeline is static.
	The Imperium is always about to fall, but never does.
	And from fifth to seventh edition, the law, trapped in this stasis chamber, became increasingly exaggerated within its own archetypes, and internally mythologised.
	The boundaries are set, and the concepts are pushed to their extremities into the realm of caricature.
	And it's from 8th edition onwards that the law was finally allowed to change and develop, and the tone shifted somewhat from gothic to what people call tacticool.
	Even the grim dark nature of it has become something of a pastiche, and is decidedly less grim and dark than it used to be, as innovations are allowed to creep into the setting, and something approaching hope is actually introduced.
	Law-wise, the Imperium has become more overtly centralised, theological and fascistic, and it's also more desperate as the galaxy has been rent in half, the Primarchs have begun to return, new marines are introduced, and the Apocalypse in Waiting theme transitions into an apocalypse in motion.
	But the essence of the factions has remained the same since 2nd edition where they were first established, properly anyway.
	For anyone not familiar, the Warhammer Galaxy is populated by various factions, all at war with one another.
	It is, after all, a tabletop wargame.
	The Imperium of Man is the universal empire of humanity, a deeply intolerant, theocratic regime which is tasked with upholding a certain kind of moral order against the destructive forces arrayed against it.
	And ranged against us are all kinds of hostile enemies from within and without which seek to overthrow this order and either pervert humanity or destroy it.
	Those bellicose alien species which seek to subjugate or just eradicate us are the Necrons, Orcs, Aldar, Tyranids, and Tao.
	But I think the most interesting aspect of Warhammer is the tension between the Imperium and Chaos.
	The Chaos Gods are the dark reflection of mankind that exist in a parallel dimension called the Warp.
	There are four primary evil gods, Korn, Nurgle, Slanesh, and Zench.
	They are the psychic shadow of humanity, and each embodies a different vice.
	Corn represents violence, Nergle represents uncleanness, Slanesh represents perversion, and Zench represents subversion.
	Each of these vices takes something whole, functional, and decent, and changes it from its current worthy state into something unworthy, fallen, or ruined.
	They are deconstructive powers, not constructive powers.
	They can only take what is and make of it something that it was not.
	There is no generative strength within them, only degenerative.
	In this way, they take on a predatory aspect.
	They cannot subsist without something else providing the raw material upon which they work.
	In contrast to this, the Imperium represents the virtues of order, tradition, duty, self-sacrifice, and honour.
	In order to ensure that humanity exists as humanity, it must propagate the imperial truth, and protect the orthodoxy of its doctrines, the purity of mankind's genetics, and the strength of its armies to defend its territory.
	Whether you agree with the Imperium or not, it itself is a generative force that seeks to create something.
	It establishes rules and boundaries that produce a standard for mankind to uphold.
	The Imperial Truth is the metaphysical creed of the Emperor of mankind, and he spread it across the galaxy by force in what is called the Great Crusade.
	Long story short, the Emperor was a new atheist shitlib who insisted that the universe was rational, materialistic, and comprehensible.
	The Emperor was a positivist, and to him there was nothing that was not physical.
	There was no magic, there were no gods, there was only science, and the emperor imposed this doctrine through war.
	Moreover, the emperor knew that the imperial truth itself was not true, and he kept this knowledge from his sons, the primarchs.
	This is the root cause of the Horus Heresy, a galactic civil war in which half of the Space Marine legions rebelled against the Emperor.
	The Emperor eventually won the civil war, but was mortally wounded, and now exists entombed on the Golden Throne, where a thousand or perhaps ten thousand psychers a day are sacrificed to maintain him so that his spiritual essence can defend humanity in this alternative dimension of the warp.
	Warmer 40,000 is of course layered in irony, and one of the most core aspects of the setting is the irony that, in universe, there are gods.
	Not only are there gods, but they are powerful gods, in fact so powerful that the emperor himself ends up becoming the secular god of humanity in order to defend us from them.
	And to defend the imperial truth and the order that the emperor has brought into being, a vast bureaucracy, theocracy and military had to be established.
	Utterly intolerant in every way, it uses its genetically engineered super soldiers to eradicate, mercilessly, the enemies of the Imperium.
	Burn the heretic, kill the mutant, purge the unclean.
	It's a pretty uncompromising doctrine of how mankind can be kept human in the horrific vastness of the 41st millennium.
	The Space Marines are justified in what they do because it is necessary that they do it.
	Even though they are fighting for a lie, there is an inner truth concealed within, which is that without such resistance, mankind itself will be debased or destroyed.
	40k also has the added advantage of looking cool as hell.
	There is power in this mythology and it has an innate appeal.
	Who doesn't see ranks of Space Marines marching and feel the hairs on the back of their necks go up?
	Who doesn't want to know that they are upholding a righteous order against the forces of entropy?
	Who doesn't want to act to preserve something glorious and good in the face of debauchery and destitution?
	But why does this have such political salience now?
	Why is it that after 40 years, Warhammer is more relevant than ever?
	Well, all of this was brought home to me and wouldn't have been possible without Morgoth's article in issue 5 of Islander magazine.
	I had never connected the dots, but Morgoth is more perceptive than I am, and he explains it all in such a brilliant and innovative way, I was kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.
	In his article Why Warhammer Cuts Through, he lays it out clear as day.
	Back in the 1970s and 80s, popular media was awash with straight white male action heroes.
	Think of practically any character played by Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kevin Sorbet.
	The list goes on and on and on.
	Straight white men heroically defeating the bad guys was the stock in trade of Western entertainment for decades.
	And this was one of the primary complaints the left advanced in their war against us and our civilization.
	Where is the representation of disabled trans lesbians of colour? They asked.
	This is oppression.
	You must change.
	You must hire non-white, non-male people to do things, which is why now films and television series are full of bizarre casting choices that make no sense, but more than that, are an obvious attempt to dethrone the straight white man from his conceptual place as the hero of Western civilization.
	This kind of left-wing deconstructionism has completely captured all aspects of Western cultural production, but it is most striking in the movie industry, which appears to be the most shameless about it.
	You doubtless have a hundred examples of Western characters that are described and written as straight white men who have been replaced with either women or non-white men.
	And there are just so many examples, let's pull one off the top of my head, 2021's The Green Knight, where Sir Gwain is played by an Indian actor.
	One can't help but come away from this kind of thing, thinking that this has been a conscious attempt by the subversive leftist to literally replace Western man in his own mythology.
	And where Western man is not outright replaced, he is subverted.
	If they must allow a straight white man to be the main character of the piece, then he cannot be the hero.
	His name must be polluted, his character denigrated, so that he is no longer noble and valiant, but instead bitter and resentful.
	Our heroes are no longer models to be emulated, only broken men to be pitied.
	This kind of subversion happens all the time, and it is not subtle in any way.
	Only this week, Hugh Jackman's The Death of Robin Hood was announced, with the poster proudly proclaiming that he was no hero, and the production company A24 Studios announced the film with the tagline, The Legend was a lie.
	Oh, yeah, very nuanced.
	Yeah, very clever.
	Very original, too.
	As you can imagine, people have been mocking this new trope because it doesn't produce anything good.
	It's clearly just a spiteful attempt to steal something of value and ruin it to advance a political agenda that requires first the demoralisation of straight white men.
	And it is in this context that Warhammer has found its own political relevance increasing.
	As the years have gone on and the deconstructionist agenda has advanced, there have been fewer and fewer properties for which the heroic straight white man has been able to justly maintain himself.
	The Space Marines of Warhammer 40,000 have practically been the sole survivors of this.
	Though not necessarily white men, they are necessarily human and necessarily men.
	In a universe of aliens, being human is metaphorically translated by the progressive mind as being white, and being men creates something that is exclusive and ensures that the Space Marines have a firm barrier between them and not them.
	The Space Marines are charged with a moral mission to burn the heretic, kill the mutant, purge the unclean, to keep humanity human.
	And they don't need to think very deeply about it because the alternative is the total obliteration of everything mankind has and to give ourselves over completely to the ruinous powers.
	Not only are the Space Marines in the Imperium completely exclusionary, they are subversive to materialism itself.
	They invert the tropes of actually there are no gods and actually the hero is not the hero.
	As Morgoth brilliantly puts it One of the great many lies embedded within Warhammer's law is that when the Emperor of Man sent out his Primarch sons to lay waste to the entire galaxy, he did so on the premise that there were no metaphysical truths and that the religion was childish nonsense.
	In a subversion of standard deconstruction's tropes, this turned out to be a complete falsehood and the Emperor knew it.
	The truth of the galaxy is not that there is no god, but that there are many and they view you as less than an ant fit only for eternal torment.
	The only hope humanity has, as Primarch Logar realised, is to deify the oddly immortal and powerful man who rules as a god despite his express wishes.
	Thus, a giant caramette gauntlet fist smashes through the god delusion, driven by a heart filled with anger and hatred at the deception.
	That deception, at its core, is the belief that there is no metaphysical truth.
	The veil drawn across humanity's eyes was nothing more than a secular post-modern con.
	The change in modern culture, combined with the constancy of the principles of Fortique's Law, has meant that Games Workshop have found themselves in the position of accidentally standing as a bulwark against the way the political wind is blowing.
	The people who run Games Workshop are not right-wing or reactionary in any way.
	They are as woke as everyone else.
	But they've found themselves left holding one of the most right-wing media properties around, which itself subverts the moral paradigm they themselves profess.
	And Games Workshop have realized this too.
	In recent years, they've put out multiple statements, which are essentially them disavowing their own product, and its poster boys, The Space Marines.
	In June 2020, they released a statement entitled Warhammer is for Everyone, in which they proclaimed that their fantasy settings might be grim and dark, but that isn't a reflection of who we are or how we feel the world should be.
	Warhammer is for everyone.
	And if you don't feel the same, ironically, you should leave and will not be missed.
	A year later, they published another statement entitled The Imperium is Driven by Hate, Warhammer is not, in which they disavowed the Imperium of Man specifically, describing it in the way it is described by chaos itself, declaring the Imperium was not the hero of the setting, and calling the God Emperor a living corpse.
	Quote, it's numberless legions of soldiers and zealots bludgeon their way across the galaxy, delivering death to anyone and anything that doesn't adhere to their blinkered view of purity.
	There's a turn of phrase I have seen around on the internet many times, and it goes something like, Everything is 40k and all we are doing is picking sides.
	And I think this resonates for a reason.
	Korn is literally the god of murder.
	Nurgle is literally the god of putrescence.
	Slanesh is literally the god of rape, and Zench is literally the god of lies, and yet, Games Workshop found it not politically relevant to disavow these things because they are sanctioned by the ruling liberal morality.
	They are part and parcel of living in a modern city.
	With this statement, Games Workshop picked a side, and they chose the side of evil.
	And so, of course, they themselves joined the chorus of voices agitating for female Space Marines, modifying their own law, and slyly introducing female characters into this brotherhood.
	Why do they want to do this?
	Well, because it is a core part of a fashionable political zeitgeist.
	No, you can't have a boys-only club, because that would be mean to girls, even if changing the Space Marine, whose law has always stated that they have to be male, would substantially change the nature of the thing itself.
	The only reason that they haven't introduced female Space Marines properly is a fear of a backlash from their own consumers.
	And the closest they've yet come is a retcon of the Emperor's elite guard and decided that actually some of them were always women, actually, because there's no difference between men and women, so why not?
	In this era of hyper-liberalism, in which the dissolution of all barriers, the liberation of all peoples, and the reduction of all things to the mere material is the telos of all political action.
	The Imperium of Man and its valiant Space Marines stand as a metaphorical fortress against this kind of thinking.
	The Imperium as a faction stands for order, duty, self-sacrifice, and purity.
	And because it enforces these values with extreme intolerance, it becomes a heretical example to the current liberal order, because they have the opposite in mind for our countries.
	This is why they have sided with the chaos gods.
	This is why, nearly 40 years later, Warhammer 40,000 is more relevant than ever.
	It contains within itself an accurate metapolitical description of our current environment.
	And this makes the Imperium of Man more important than it has ever been.
	Yes, it is a representation of our civilization.
	And yes, the Space Marines are the heroes.
	And yes, the Space Marines are an embodiment of the straight white Western man.
	If you have enjoyed this video, I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of Islander 5.
	Without this, this video would not have been possible.
	The theme of Islander 5 is heroism and modernity, and I have only touched on the depths of it here.
	It's actually 20 pages longer than the previous editions, and there are 13 superb articles contained within from the best that the intellectual right has to offer.
	We have an exclusive interview with Rupert Lowe about Oliver Cromwell, and an illustrated philosophical dialogue, as well as in Letters to the Editor page, which I actually found very interesting.
	And for those asking, no, the cover or the dialogue are not AI generated.
	They are hand-drawn by Rory, the editor and designer of the magazine.
	Each article is brilliant, and I am particularly proud of my own contribution to this station, which is an examination of the metaphysics of heroic society and modernity's effect upon it.
	So if you'd like to purchase a copy, you can go to shop.lotace.com and order now.
	We deliver worldwide.
	The link will be in the description.
	And like all editions of Islander, it's only on sale for a limited time, and once it's gone, we will not be reprinting it.

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