grimdark ie ‘there is only war’ I do agree that you can’t have a binary view of any of the factions- they all have their internal motivations and frankly the reason why I brought up the Imperium in the first place is more because a common thing I ran into back when I played was that from a surface reading people would take away that the imperium are the good guys. I absolutely appreciate that there is nuance there and there aren’t really good or bad guys in the setting.

As an aside I always had a soft spot for the Craftworld Eldar myself.

I also agree that a hard binary is not a helpful way to view any conflict- war breaks out because of the diplomatic failures that preceded it, and that’s almost always going to implicate both parties.

I think this is where characterizing any leader as ‘insane’ is doing a disservice to our own understanding of the situation- at the end of the day they are responding to both internal and external pressures to act a certain way. From my perspective there was really a missed opportunity to bring Russia into NATO/EU decades ago so that these issues could have been resolved diplomatically rather than via a pile of bodies on both sides.

I get a bit touchy on the ‘tankie’ term because it just feels like a thought-terminating cliche/epithet to use on someone disagreeing, assigning them a bunch of straw positions in the process. I do anarchist organizing IRL, I read books from every tendency (as well as their critics). You would be surprised how often you can present an anarchist critique of marxism to a marxist and they will agree with it- self-criticism is an important marxist concept and leads to both refining and correcting mistakes.

I would contend that they’re extremely motivated to make up anything they can that will get traction in media- I don’t think it’s that the ROK is treating them especially well, they’re more engaging with what the broader media apparatus wants to hear. Worth noting the Korean war never really ended and thus we’re still getting that type of propaganda as a result. From both directions. You have the DPRK presenting itself as they want to be seen while the west is demonized, and the west portraying them however they want to as well because it’s not like those portrayals will ever really get challenged.

My perspective is that like it or not this is still connected to the same national liberation struggle from decades ago, and the US using the UN to force an intervention was a catastrophic choice that led to a mass slaughter via air campaign. It’s hard for me not to have sympathy for them in that situation regardless of their ideology. At the end of the day this partition has been artificially created and implemented with one side cut off and sanctioned (sanctions are still warfare) while the other has been uplifted. Just from watching what’s happened in the last year in Gaza it’s exceptionally clear to me how when the media is motivated to pick a side in a conflict they will turn a blind eye to all sorts of brutality only to fixate on when ‘the bad guys’ did something that can be criticized. Again I would agree that nuance is needed rather than a binary view.