2d4chan - User contributions [en]

Eurogames

2020-07-07T15:20:27Z

2600:387:A:19:0:0:0:1B:

{{Stub}}

'''Eurogames''' are /tg/s made by continen/tg/uys or continen/tg/als.

These games tend to have an unnatural interest in the subject of buying and selling beans. The rules are almost without exception based on a non-simulationist paradigm, meaning they have not attempted to be a realistic reflection of reality. In a Eurogame, the mechanics that apply to the Conquest of Feudal Japan could also be used for a Hungry Wolverine Feeding Game. These games tend to follow a rather strict formula that can get old very, very quickly.

These games tend to suffer from being considered either [[awesome]] or [[FAIL|unholy pieces of toxic human waste]], depending on who's playing them. This means you ''must'' get people together who you ''know'' will like what you're about to play, which can be hard to do. In contrast, a typical [[Ameritrash]] often suffers for its failure to meet hyped expectations when played, but won't get you lynched by several of your "friends" when you suggest playing it.

Eurogames are highly strategic, with very limited use of random chance, and an emphasis on player-versus-player play. Eurogame rules are often easy to learn but difficult to master, leaving many players asking "why bother". Some can be fun, but [[Settlers of Catan]] [[skub|should be burnt]], because while competently put-together it is terribly overrated.

== List of Eurogames ==
* [[Settlers of Catan]]
* [[Carcassonne]]
* [[Dominion]]

See also [[Ameritrash]], Eurogames direct opposites.

{{Board Games}}
[[Category:Board Games]]

/pol/

2020-07-07T14:43:17Z

2600:387:A:19:0:0:0:1B: Did a bit of research on Sigmarxism, corrected one of my points

{{editwar}}
{{Flamewar}}
{{fail}}
{{heresy}}
{{delete| Lets just delete this and, as its eventually gonna become spammed by /pol/'s many idiotic supporters. Besides, we could always redirect this page to skub. If we don't delete this, then please permanently protect it.}}

[[File:QnVjrKW.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]

{{topquote|Gas the kikes! [[Racial Holy War|Race war]] now!|/pol/'s battlecry}}
{{topquote|1=Gentlemen, I had a vision of the future. One day because we won [[The_World_Wars#The_First_World_War|this war]], a man called Adolf Hitler will take power and he will make a lot of people angry about the Jewry. And also romani. And also the blacks. And the non-whites. Except for the Japanese, they're honorable Aryans, I guess. Also there will be a website called 4chan.org, and there will be a board called /pol/, and it will just be about what I have described. Its kind of a [[My Little Pony|one-trick-pony, except the pony is retarded]].|2=[https://youtu.be/Tj-nCjnVDKM?t=2133 The Fresh Sorcerer's accurate summary of /pol/]}}

[[Skub]]'s OTHER final form, and the polar opposite of [[SJW]].

'''/pol/''' is 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" board, nowadays mostly <s>populated by</s> used for incarcerating <s>people who identify as</s> neo-nazis, alt-righters, ancaps, edgy contrarians, and other colorful characters who rant on Jews, black people, women, Marxists, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and every variety of white depending on the time of day. This also entails dumb shit such as long passionate debates on whether Slavic or Southern European people count as white, or complaints about Jews causing everything from financial crises to World Wars to hurting your toe on a table leg (the phrase "[[Meme|Baton Roue]]" might come to mind).

If you ask /pol/, they'll claim to be the best and most enlightened board that can see through the lies of society, while everyone from the other boards will call their userbase arguably the most obnoxious and [[cancer]]ous board on the whole site and nothing more than a far-right [[My Little Pony|containment board to prevent them spreading their cancer elsewhere]].

People who frequent /pol/ usually refer to themselves as /pol/lacks, but much more terms have been used to describe them by people outside of /pol/ such as /pol/io, /pol/luters, /pol/tards, /pol/yps, tad/pol/es, /pol/esmokers, and /pol/tergeists. The recently coined-term "alt-right" has quickly become for the right what the term SJW is for the left. On that note, some SJWs and /pol/acks aren't above having similar ''fundamental'' attitudes towards both their ideology and people who don't agree with it, which may seem odd - unless you're familiar with the idea of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory horseshoe theory] as it applies to political radical behavior, though that in itself isn't always the case.

==Origins==
...What, the above wasn't enough?

Do you REALLY want to know more about this?

...alright, fuck it. Put on the helmets and bring the bleach, this is going to be real long and real boring.

4chan's userbase is naturally a product of the industrial society, i.e. it bred a lot of NEETs and frustrated people who are largely kept in line with entertainment and porn and economic welfare, and will [[Roman Empire|gladly support any political party as long as their needs are met, inasmuch as they don't bother thinking about anything beyond their immediate well-being]]. Additionally, /b/ in particular had a history of racial supremacy expressed via memetic bigotry (i.e. using "nigger" as an insult, "faggot" as an endearing word, and "jewgolds" or "shekels" as the term for money) since around 2008, prior to the Anonymous v. Scientology clashes that brought them into more of a "spotlight". Most times it was considered little more than a joke by its userbase, just another way of ensuring that people who couldn't demonstrate thick enough skin to handle the typical level of discourse on /b/ would be driven off.

However, as time went on, people who took such things at face value began to show up more and more often - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498 it's been said that] "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." Eventually, some of the aforementioned idiots began espousing positions that couldn't be dismissed as attempts at humor any longer, but were soon seen for the representation of their values that it really was.

...Then along came the economic housing bubble of 2009, and said NEETs found their bread and circuses were not enough in the face of concepts such as "darkening future" and "imminent poverty". And that opened Pandora's box, unleashing the suppressed anger (normally kept in check by porn, cheap entertainment and welfare) of the NEETizens of 4chan. Unsurprisingly, the first mention of the "alternative right" coincides around the bubble, with this "internal" discontent playing a part in their rise alongside the external 'friction' that social justice represented.

People can get defensive about their opinions about Kirk vs Picard or their taste in anime or opinions about Warhammer fluff or berate others for having opinions which they disagree with, but in the end that's just talking about fiction. In contrast politics is about stuff which actually matters to you in the Real World. Political discussions, especially online, are volatile things at the very best of times. Given that 4chan is '''''the''''' place where reasonable discussion goes to die, it was inevitable that even the calmest attempt at discussing politics quickly devolved into extremist arguments. Trolls and fanatics alike, in many points, became impossible to distinguish from one another - they either forgot whatever original aims they may have possessed, or else simply used those aims as a cover for something they now legitimately believed in and gained validation from.

''If I'm damned anyway, then what is my incentive to be "good"?'' - ''Anonymous reacting to [[SJW|Identity Politics]]''

While they gleefully embraced the Nazi accusations that both sides of a debate would make at each other - and invariably decided to supercharge the politically incorrect arguments with shitposting just to enrage their opponents further - they did all of it with only a marginal knowledge of what the issues they were arguing about even entailed at any given time, if they remotely cared at all. Thus many political arguments far too numerous to count here, from immigration to crime and race, began to take root in /b/ and quickly spread elsewhere; Moot, being the [[Tzeentch|Eternal Planner]] that he is, created /n/ (what /pol/ started as) to corral the arguments.

As you can see, [[Not as planned|it's gone swimmingly for everyone involved.]] Sort of like a multilayered monkey's paw of pure [[fail]].

===Containment Board===
[[File:Pol leaves containment.png|thumb|right|200px]]
As stated earlier, /pol/ is meant to contain the population of stormweenies (named for Stormfront, a website that can be considered a precursor to /pol/, and whose community still overlaps with them) on 4chan. Pretty much everyone, including both Moot and most of /pol/ itself, has acknowledged this; Global rule #3 was once 'Keep /pol/ in /pol/'. The rule has since been changed to a more general version saying not to post flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled-for catch phrases and other things that are unhelpful to a board, but since that's what /pol/ shitposting essentially IS, the rule is still the same in spirit. Several boards have a sticky at the front page telling people to keep politics in /pol/ as well.

Though /pol/ isn't the only containment board on 4chan, the other containment boards such as /mlp/ and /soc/ are considered to have better userbases - those users have (mostly) less volatile baggage and the sense to leave it ''on'' those boards. When they venture onto another board, they stay on topic and only ''occasionally'' derail threads or start inflammatory ones (complete with /tg/ [[rage|deriving]] [[lulz|entertainment]] from it), but overall aren't ''nearly'' as insufferable in comparison.

Most attempts to curb /pol/, on the other hand, result in them [[Cancer|spreading to other boards]], where they will try to de-rail the threads on those boards to whatever political event that is galvanizing them and spreading around conspiracy theories. Whenever they are told to fuck off and quit derailing threads, they will change the subject, gaslight, and say whatever it takes to counter any arguments to the point of self-contradiction - in short, anything but backing down or even just going on the defense. This hasn't stopped the board from being deleted twice throughout their history, mind, but the inevitable spread forced it to be brought back both times. Even to this day, you'll still get threads here and there that fall victim to politically-based derailing.

==/pol/ using [[Warhammer 40,000]] as propaganda==
{{topquote|Suffer not the [[xenos]] to live!|Battle cry of the [[Deathwatch]]}}

One of the greatest [[RAGE|headaches]] that /tg/ in particular has with /pol/ is the misuse of the [[grimdark]]ness and xenophobic policies of the [[Imperium of Man]] by /pol/'s [[Neckbeard|Trump supporters]], who apparently believe that he is quite possibly a modern day incarnation of [[The Emperor]], and that the Western world should really become an IRL Imperium with zero tolerance against "Xenos" and "[[Tau|Cultural Marxists]]", with lots of conspiracy theories that Trump is fighting an endless battle against the "Ruinous Powers" of Liberalism supposedly led by [[Tzeentch|George Soros]]. It's basically yet another "Jews secretly controlling the world" episode on top of the usual boogeyman of "The All-Powerful Left" already invoked by many of the "cuckservatives" the alt-right railed against at their inception.

Initially, they "helped" him the only way they knew how: shitposting about [[anime]], Pepe the Frog, and [[Touhou|Momiji Inubashiri]] in a MAGA hat. One of their most widespread propaganda involving 40k was the complete stereotyping of all Muslims as [[Ork|ultraviolent savages who reproduce by the thousands and have no other instinct than to kill, maim and pillage]], Mexicans being cast [[Tyranids|an all-consuming swarm migrating to America to consume all of its resources]], and that every single one of them should be subject to [[Exterminatus]]. AS if that wasn't insulting to all parties real and fictional, eventually they finally "invented" a shitty forced meme where [[Heresy|they put Donald Trump's head on images of the great God-Emperor of Mankind]]. Not many people find them funny, even in the rare case of the Photoshop job being decent, and the Trump buzz started to fade anyway as reality promptly ensued and people realized he was largely more of the same checkers-level propaganda volleys designed to sway voters (if "[[Derp|uber-rich American politician claiming to be the champion of the poor]]" sounds familiar to you, anyway).

The new wave of French elections brought a more horrific wave of shitposting, with [[Extra Heresy|Marine le Pen being photoshopped into Sister of Battle pictures]]. However, Le Pen lost the French election by [[Fail|a 30% margin]], much to the [[Butthurt|chagrin]] of various /pol/tards. This was possibly compounded by the fact that Le Pen's campaign partly ran off the idea of a 'Frexit', only for Le Pen to abandon the entire idea post-election; between this and the Trump supporters in the userbase becoming nigh-indistiguishable from the more stereotypical ones, it proves for the umpteenth time that relying on any kind of political figurehead for overall validation is a universally bad idea.

Given 40k had its start as a ''satire'' of dystopian fiction and a bitter, ironic reflection of right-wing 80s Britain (see also: [[Rogue Trader]]), other right-wingers latching onto 40k-memery as a vehicle for demagoguery, propaganda and appeals to emotion, and further conflating it with modern politics is perhaps a schadenfreudish circle finally come complete. Without the original context, they see nothing more than an unironic heroic fantasy that validates their beliefs, rather than the proper mockery that it constitutes. Needless to say, many in /tg/ find such inclusion of real world politics in our 40k to be a sad, idiotic and pathetic phenomenon that should be punished by summary [[Exterminatus|SAGE'ing]].

==Ideology and Methodology (such as it is)==
While the full history of the SJW phenomenon is way too complicated to describe on their page and is usually less relevant to /tg/ (at least far less so than interactions with other boards on the site), suffice to say that while SJWs are the product of modern civil rights movements [[Ultramarines|who blindly adhere to the LETTER of a given progressive political creed's code of conduct without understanding the spirit of it]], /pol/acks essentially aspire to become the uber-racist, sexist, [[Chaotic Stupid|hyper-reactionary]] [[Marines Malevolent|card-carrying degenerates]] they think the other side believes them to be.

That this is (again) close to the same way some SJWs would come to conduct themselves - down to and including the general rudderlessness, the ''typical'' response to anyone who doesn't share their opinion, and the general prevalence of bullshit artists as figureheads - may explain why /pol/, by and large, seem so eager to join them in the race to the bottom. However, the horseshoe theory only holds water if you have the most basic and binary grasp of the political spectrum; everyone likes to think their "side" is the most rational.

Admittedly, badly implemented and ham-fisted progressive policies tend to alienate the people not supported by them, just like any other political policy, and it's not uncommon for social justice narratives (or ANY kind, really, but specifically these) to be astroturfed and exploited by politicians and corporations alike, as well as the grifters out for social currency. Thus, some people feel an instinct to rebel against a status quo that supposedly coddles and encourages "white guilt" and "political correctness gone mad", while others seek out the "rightful" social positioning they couldn't get elsewhere - and still others are looking for fresh marks after their recruitment pool in other activist circles went dry. From these groups, the edgiest and the craziest form the core of /pol/.

However, any analysis going beyond the surface for more than five minutes would recognize progressive lip service to be just that - lip service designed to appease 'SJW' demands rather than actually meet them. In addition, the "horseshoe theory" school of thought seems slightly more merited upon recognizing that, when they're not using it as a thoroughly cynical ploy to draw attention and stir shit, /pol/acks will use eerily similar rhetoric to signal their own virtues of traditional values, being "rational" thinkers, and otherwise acting in defense of "freedom", at least when they're genuinely believing anything beyond what directly benefits them. The words "refuge in audacity" should come to mind for the [[TVTropes|tropers]] in the audience, albeit in a far more disingenuous sense - the right to offend and be irreverent is elevated to a sacred cow, which is about as self-defeating as it sounds.

That said, most /pol/tergeists have no idea how anything actually works - even the basics of their own most common political beliefs are notoriously flimsy (if not OUTRIGHT blatant) myths and lies, often more than the SJWs they denigrate. The average /pol/ user tends to conduct themselves and their approach to politics across the board with all the nuance and subtlety of any given sportsball fandom, even '''before''' the slow bleeding of the glorified sportsball spectacle that is modern mainstream politics into the board itself commenced. While 4chan at large is and always has been something of a self-sustaining shitshow even at its best, /pol/ is (ostensibly) despised even by the rest of the userbase because they take their views to the logical "conclusion" and render themselves little more than bizarre caricatures.

Example of such nonsensical claims include: Stalin being a Jew (he was Georgian and a major anti-Semite to boot; the Jewish influence, of course, was mainly from Trotsky, which makes it all the more ironic); the first reports of Nazi death camps came from the Soviets (it came from Poland); most welfare recipients being unemployed black people (evidencing a misunderstanding of "majority" and "disproportionate number", as most people on welfare are white and only use it for 3 years or less); and the British Empire started declining by 1800 (their Golden Age was from 1816-1915, with Jews very well represented). And the coup de grace theory to rule over them all is another theory, "The Khazar Theory", that the real good Jews are actually all white people (Jacob's sons), while all the stereotypical Jews are [[Mongols|Khazar nomads' descendants]]. [[What|Yes, this is your brain's sound when it shifts without the clutch.]]

This is indicative of one of the biggest problems with /pol/, even more than not staying in their containment board: its denizens suffer from a board-wide Dunning-Kruger effect, believing themselves expert authorities on a multitude of subjects that individually take years of study at minimum, and shitpost and overuse bad memes as a substitute for wit and intelligence, ignoring that even the most casual Googling could debunk most of their narratives. Even Stormfront (which was run by an actual member of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, if it somehow still isn't) had ''slightly'' more principle; gods help you if you enter /pol/ from Israel.

Whenever a meme becomes popular on /pol/, they will begin forcing the meme on every other board, rapidly driving it so far into the ground that it will come out on the other side of the planet before the day is out. The memes they spam tend to be childish insults that will only impress people below 18. It says a lot about their board when getting merged with /mlp/ during an April Fools' joke '''improved''' it.

'''TL;DR:''' Even ignoring their disgusting traits AND putting aside "keep /pol/ in /pol/" talk, /tg/ remembers first and foremost that /pol/ is a containment board for a ''very good'' reason.

===Connections with the Christchurch Mosque Attacks===
{{BLAM|This section concerns the attacks on the Christchurch Mosques in New Zealand, the consequences of which affected the entire board, and by extension /tg/.}}

Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old man who attacked two Mosques in Christchurch, NZ, apparently identified as a "/pol/ack" and made a <s>detailed</s> barely literate manifesto mostly in the form of a "Q&A," containing absolutely zero original political thought and nary a trace of coherent ideology besides repetition of the basic White Nationalist complaints of a Western demographic upheaval (the "fourteen words," basically). It is all the more pathetic because he characterizes the poorly-formatted PDF as a ''magnum opus'' of three years' worth of political growth; one critical point of [[Derp|critical fuckstupid]] is his admiration for Communist China, known for its violation of basic human rights, especially free speech, against the Muslim Uyghurs of and even its Han (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) citizens.

Even '''/pol/ itself''', for all its numerous faults, practically worships the concept of the free exchange of ideas: A common point of contention with SJWs, perceived and otherwise, is freedom of debate and free speech at all costs, especially when it's offensive...at least, up until the point where their '''''own''''' views are challenged, of course. Then they suddenly decide that maybe censorship isn't so bad after all, which explains quite a lot about the board's fascist sympathies.

Said manifesto referenced several questionably tasteful memes (prominently, "remove kebab"), and the fucking degenerate actually went so far as to shout out those memes in public and play [[/v/|video game soundtracks]] and songs that /pol/ has turned into memes, while actively shooting people and live-streaming it. Sick fuck. Naturally, this means more conversations about the impact of the Internet/social media and technology in general and its role in the lives of disaffected millennials (and doing it full justice is a tall order and a half); the level of disconnect displayed, even by the expected standards of radical politics, that would allow a person to take a life while joyfully shouting silly sayings from the Internet like he was at an anime convention is disgusting and hard to fathom.

His goal, apparently, was to cause more hysteria and retribution: in his manifesto, he specifically spoke of wanting to stir up shit regarding ''inter alia'', laws regarding the rights of free speech and bearing arms which, in his mind, would lead to civil war and an ultimate victory for his ideology, such as it is. He imagined himself becoming a full martyr for the cause, or else incarcerated and (if the latter) perhaps later to be broken out of jail by a movement inspired by his "noble actions"...and yet few people online seem to consider his actions or their results desirable, even among those who would inevitably be even ''remotely'' 'sympathetic' to his cause. The only ones who would wholeheartedly support him were likely deadset on their ideology to begin with.

This, along with his choice to attack extremely soft targets (including women, children, and mainstream, non-radical places of worship), is enough to demonstrate that he was not a political actor in any real sense, but rather amounts to the perpetrator of an incident far more serious and tragic. Rather than a "proper 'domestic [i.e. white] terrorist'" (say, Timothy McVeigh), he comes across more as an aimless man on a demented rampage.

By virtue of being a white man in a European culture instead of, say, a member of a rival sect in an Islamic country, his attack on a mosque actually makes international headlines for more than five minutes; with his point well out the window, his pathetic attempts at justifying his attack only harmed his cause in the imagination of the general public and even amongst his peers. Needless to say, the consequences of his actions were quite serious: political groups of which he was a member or tangentially related to are being attacked by the government, despite their having no part in the violence, and the blood was not yet dry when the PM said that New Zealand's already highly restrictive gun laws "had to change". Most directly relevant to /tg/, their neighbor Australia [[Exterminatus|banned access]] to 4chan, 8chan and ''even fucking LiveLeak'' for distributing video of the massacre, which indirectly fucks over that entire sector of the userbase(s), likely due to the fact that the shooter, Brenton, is an Australian.

As if that wasn’t enough, the level of irony to Tarrant’s actions defies reality. Tarrant was fixated on mass migration in his manifesto, but thanks to his attack, New Zealand (and possibly other western countries) will accept EVEN MORE migrants from the Middle East and Africa in an effort to show that they’re tolerant of said migrants despite Tarrant’s attack. Way to go.

Though /pol/, with its vulgar and juvenile approach to issues of demography and race, is a tempting target to assign blame for his actions, 4chan might not be the genesis of his personal dissatisfaction; if the manifesto is to be trusted (itself a dicey proposition) he had apparently become interested in racial questions while touring the world and seeing the demographic changes which are afflicting Europe first hand. The problem is that when shitposting manchildren drink their own Kool-Aid and take up their guns alongside to murder innocent people, the average reasonable person can make a connection between the violence and the [[Star Wars|wretched hives of scum and villany]] said bad actors frequent, and so here we are.

This isn't entirely news to these folks, of course: "screw your optics, I'm going in" was how the last significant /pol/ terrorist put it, before attacking a defenseless synagogue which had no remote relation to any of /pol/'s 'concerns'. The inherent cowardice in that aspect of ''that'' attack and the most recent one are only one of the ways in which they are alike, but one of the most telling, not least because it begs the question of why the phrase "the last significant /pol/ terrorist" is even applicable.

Any reasonably well-adjusted person from anywhere on the political spectrum can see that the culture and posters of /pol/ are what give it its unfathomably bad name, which by extension affects already-considered-malignant *chan subculture such that one would be hard-pressed to assert otherwise. Inasmuch as /pol/acks even take their own putative ideas seriously, they don't tend to do themselves any favors - on- OR off-line. In addition, despite 4chan supposedly not being the birthing place for the ideals of Mr. Tarrant, the fact that it can now be tangibly tied to such people AND the resulting Australian lockdown on 4chan/8chan/etc. is certain to impact perception of the board and anyone seen as aligned with them - likely for the worse.

==What Do?==

{{editwar}}

If you encounter a /pol/ack, treat them with love and respect, and politely but firmly tell them to live. Set the better example. They are human beings suffering from hatred and ignorance. Set a good example of what a human should be like. If you are not capable of remaining calm, avoid and move on. The Overton Window is extremely skewed against them, and as such they are easier to ignore and kick out than [[SJW]]s.

Keep in mind that some are otherwise good people who are hurting and tired. Their hearts may be in the right place, they are just going about it the wrong way. They need to be challenged amicably, given empathy, and be shown that the world isn't a burning cesspit. To say that these people do NOT deserve to have their views debated and only deserve ostracization (let alone ''violence'') only pushes them deeper into an inescapable corner, with no choice but to join truly dangerous groups for social acceptance or survival. Lastly, to uniformly dismiss and hate them all is to spit on the legendary efforts of stellar individuals like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis Daryl Davis], a black man who went out of his way to befriend and deradicalize KKK members in real life, ''face to face''. It is no better than calling Daryl a white supremacist to his face, [https://www.facebook.com/daryl.davis.104/posts/10217755060641033 something which actually happened].

It's a bad idea to challenge /pol/ users on their home turf echo chamber. If somehow encountering one outside of 4chan, gauge the user to determine if said debatee is 1) good but misguided, 2) a believer that's not beyond redemption, 3) a true believer that's beyond redemption or 4) purely a shit-stirring troll. Avoid the latter two, and guide the former two away from their influence. Remember: Amicability and empathy. [[This Guy|Be like Daryl]].

==Do They Have a Point?==
tl;dr Mostly no, but a broken clock is sometimes right.

Almost everything about racism is utterly indefensible<s>, but</s>

While /pol/acks are usually fucking retarded, they do raise valuable points about SJWs and <s>marxist infiltration of the hobby.</s> “Cultural Marxism is [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory|literal Nazi propaganda]. For example, redditards have created <s>a hub to attack our hobby known as "Sigmarxism", which is intent on destroying the hobby as we know it and transforming it into a leftist pipe dream where anyone with a dissenting opinion is kicked out of your local game store.</s> If you believe this, you bought the fearmongering hook, line, and sinker. Sigmarxism is a sub explicitly created for those on the political left to talk about the game without having shit thrown at them by the sort of people this article is meant to condemn. We may not agree with them, and in fact reading it will probably lower your brain cell count, but they don’t want to lynch everyone who has a different opinion than them. <s>And they are gaining influence, with GW releasing a press statement saying anyone who disagreed with the controversial "BLM" and "Antifa" movements isn't welcome in the hobby regardless of freedom of speech.</s> The statement said [https://casualhammerer.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/img_0805.jpg?w=1024|that racists had no place in the hobby], not that people with political disagreements with a movement had no place in the hobby. That is a statement that needs to be made, if only because behavior not tolerated in society shouldn’t be harbored amongst ourselves, lest we prove the worst beliefs about those who play the game. Besides, getting more diverse model features is literally an improvement if only because it forces them to update older casts or make new ones.

But because of the racism and fascism /pol/ is tainted with, do not let yourself be drawn into them just because you are against far leftism because you will be proving the far left is right. There are tons of much more reasonable progressives fighting to oppose the far left and you will not find them on /pol/. They make the same good points against far leftism without the racism.

==See Also==
*[[SJW]]s, the (mostly) left-leaning "contrast" to /pol/'s alt-right twattery, subjected to constant, though often inaccurate, comparisons due to hypocrisy and similar but better justified zealotry. Some major distinctions are that SJWs have much more influence in the media and their goals are generally noble and idealistic, though they go about accomplishing those goals the completely wrong way, which can make them slightly obnoxious.
*[[/k/]]
*[[Board-tans/pol]]
*[[Racial Holy War]], for what the rest of 4chan thinks would happen if a /pol/ack made an RPG.
*[[MYFAROG]], for when a /pol/ack actually made an RPG.
*[[Nazi]], what these guys ''wish'' they were.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpijRDDOxQ An appropriate response] to the forced Trump meme.

==Gallery==
<gallery class="center">
File:First_visit_to_pol.gif
File:1477229948688.jpg
File:Never Relax.jpg
File:1491144651231.png
File:1475903382909.jpg
File:Global Rule -3.jpg
File:Shitpost.png
File:1490344868585.jpg
File:1518620305269.jpg
File:1517880145411.png
File:Srgfd.png|All anyone needs to know.
File:1495590391196.png|Same as before but adapted to new memes.
File:5680446+_b10ddaacb84c03cf89b71c1f1327e25b.jpg|Cap doing what Cap does best.
File:Back_to_pol.jpg|The appropriate dismissal of all /pol/tards.
File:1481725926368.jpg|Some guy on Stormfront planning on using /pol/ as ''agitprop''.
File:1488601566861.jpg|/pol/tards delude themselves into thinking that it's only liberals who dislike them.
</gallery>

[[Category: Meme]]
[[Category: 4chan]]
[[Category: RAGE]]
[[Category:Pure Evil]]
[[Category:Sick]]

/pol/

2020-07-07T14:37:14Z

2600:387:A:19:0:0:0:1B: Refuted the incorrect claims of the original “do they have a point” section

{{editwar}}
{{Flamewar}}
{{fail}}
{{heresy}}
{{delete| Lets just delete this and, as its eventually gonna become spammed by /pol/'s many idiotic supporters. Besides, we could always redirect this page to skub. If we don't delete this, then please permanently protect it.}}

[[File:QnVjrKW.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]

{{topquote|Gas the kikes! [[Racial Holy War|Race war]] now!|/pol/'s battlecry}}
{{topquote|1=Gentlemen, I had a vision of the future. One day because we won [[The_World_Wars#The_First_World_War|this war]], a man called Adolf Hitler will take power and he will make a lot of people angry about the Jewry. And also romani. And also the blacks. And the non-whites. Except for the Japanese, they're honorable Aryans, I guess. Also there will be a website called 4chan.org, and there will be a board called /pol/, and it will just be about what I have described. Its kind of a [[My Little Pony|one-trick-pony, except the pony is retarded]].|2=[https://youtu.be/Tj-nCjnVDKM?t=2133 The Fresh Sorcerer's accurate summary of /pol/]}}

[[Skub]]'s OTHER final form, and the polar opposite of [[SJW]].

'''/pol/''' is 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" board, nowadays mostly <s>populated by</s> used for incarcerating <s>people who identify as</s> neo-nazis, alt-righters, ancaps, edgy contrarians, and other colorful characters who rant on Jews, black people, women, Marxists, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and every variety of white depending on the time of day. This also entails dumb shit such as long passionate debates on whether Slavic or Southern European people count as white, or complaints about Jews causing everything from financial crises to World Wars to hurting your toe on a table leg (the phrase "[[Meme|Baton Roue]]" might come to mind).

If you ask /pol/, they'll claim to be the best and most enlightened board that can see through the lies of society, while everyone from the other boards will call their userbase arguably the most obnoxious and [[cancer]]ous board on the whole site and nothing more than a far-right [[My Little Pony|containment board to prevent them spreading their cancer elsewhere]].

People who frequent /pol/ usually refer to themselves as /pol/lacks, but much more terms have been used to describe them by people outside of /pol/ such as /pol/io, /pol/luters, /pol/tards, /pol/yps, tad/pol/es, /pol/esmokers, and /pol/tergeists. The recently coined-term "alt-right" has quickly become for the right what the term SJW is for the left. On that note, some SJWs and /pol/acks aren't above having similar ''fundamental'' attitudes towards both their ideology and people who don't agree with it, which may seem odd - unless you're familiar with the idea of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory horseshoe theory] as it applies to political radical behavior, though that in itself isn't always the case.

==Origins==
...What, the above wasn't enough?

Do you REALLY want to know more about this?

...alright, fuck it. Put on the helmets and bring the bleach, this is going to be real long and real boring.

4chan's userbase is naturally a product of the industrial society, i.e. it bred a lot of NEETs and frustrated people who are largely kept in line with entertainment and porn and economic welfare, and will [[Roman Empire|gladly support any political party as long as their needs are met, inasmuch as they don't bother thinking about anything beyond their immediate well-being]]. Additionally, /b/ in particular had a history of racial supremacy expressed via memetic bigotry (i.e. using "nigger" as an insult, "faggot" as an endearing word, and "jewgolds" or "shekels" as the term for money) since around 2008, prior to the Anonymous v. Scientology clashes that brought them into more of a "spotlight". Most times it was considered little more than a joke by its userbase, just another way of ensuring that people who couldn't demonstrate thick enough skin to handle the typical level of discourse on /b/ would be driven off.

However, as time went on, people who took such things at face value began to show up more and more often - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498 it's been said that] "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." Eventually, some of the aforementioned idiots began espousing positions that couldn't be dismissed as attempts at humor any longer, but were soon seen for the representation of their values that it really was.

...Then along came the economic housing bubble of 2009, and said NEETs found their bread and circuses were not enough in the face of concepts such as "darkening future" and "imminent poverty". And that opened Pandora's box, unleashing the suppressed anger (normally kept in check by porn, cheap entertainment and welfare) of the NEETizens of 4chan. Unsurprisingly, the first mention of the "alternative right" coincides around the bubble, with this "internal" discontent playing a part in their rise alongside the external 'friction' that social justice represented.

People can get defensive about their opinions about Kirk vs Picard or their taste in anime or opinions about Warhammer fluff or berate others for having opinions which they disagree with, but in the end that's just talking about fiction. In contrast politics is about stuff which actually matters to you in the Real World. Political discussions, especially online, are volatile things at the very best of times. Given that 4chan is '''''the''''' place where reasonable discussion goes to die, it was inevitable that even the calmest attempt at discussing politics quickly devolved into extremist arguments. Trolls and fanatics alike, in many points, became impossible to distinguish from one another - they either forgot whatever original aims they may have possessed, or else simply used those aims as a cover for something they now legitimately believed in and gained validation from.

''If I'm damned anyway, then what is my incentive to be "good"?'' - ''Anonymous reacting to [[SJW|Identity Politics]]''

While they gleefully embraced the Nazi accusations that both sides of a debate would make at each other - and invariably decided to supercharge the politically incorrect arguments with shitposting just to enrage their opponents further - they did all of it with only a marginal knowledge of what the issues they were arguing about even entailed at any given time, if they remotely cared at all. Thus many political arguments far too numerous to count here, from immigration to crime and race, began to take root in /b/ and quickly spread elsewhere; Moot, being the [[Tzeentch|Eternal Planner]] that he is, created /n/ (what /pol/ started as) to corral the arguments.

As you can see, [[Not as planned|it's gone swimmingly for everyone involved.]] Sort of like a multilayered monkey's paw of pure [[fail]].

===Containment Board===
[[File:Pol leaves containment.png|thumb|right|200px]]
As stated earlier, /pol/ is meant to contain the population of stormweenies (named for Stormfront, a website that can be considered a precursor to /pol/, and whose community still overlaps with them) on 4chan. Pretty much everyone, including both Moot and most of /pol/ itself, has acknowledged this; Global rule #3 was once 'Keep /pol/ in /pol/'. The rule has since been changed to a more general version saying not to post flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled-for catch phrases and other things that are unhelpful to a board, but since that's what /pol/ shitposting essentially IS, the rule is still the same in spirit. Several boards have a sticky at the front page telling people to keep politics in /pol/ as well.

Though /pol/ isn't the only containment board on 4chan, the other containment boards such as /mlp/ and /soc/ are considered to have better userbases - those users have (mostly) less volatile baggage and the sense to leave it ''on'' those boards. When they venture onto another board, they stay on topic and only ''occasionally'' derail threads or start inflammatory ones (complete with /tg/ [[rage|deriving]] [[lulz|entertainment]] from it), but overall aren't ''nearly'' as insufferable in comparison.

Most attempts to curb /pol/, on the other hand, result in them [[Cancer|spreading to other boards]], where they will try to de-rail the threads on those boards to whatever political event that is galvanizing them and spreading around conspiracy theories. Whenever they are told to fuck off and quit derailing threads, they will change the subject, gaslight, and say whatever it takes to counter any arguments to the point of self-contradiction - in short, anything but backing down or even just going on the defense. This hasn't stopped the board from being deleted twice throughout their history, mind, but the inevitable spread forced it to be brought back both times. Even to this day, you'll still get threads here and there that fall victim to politically-based derailing.

==/pol/ using [[Warhammer 40,000]] as propaganda==
{{topquote|Suffer not the [[xenos]] to live!|Battle cry of the [[Deathwatch]]}}

One of the greatest [[RAGE|headaches]] that /tg/ in particular has with /pol/ is the misuse of the [[grimdark]]ness and xenophobic policies of the [[Imperium of Man]] by /pol/'s [[Neckbeard|Trump supporters]], who apparently believe that he is quite possibly a modern day incarnation of [[The Emperor]], and that the Western world should really become an IRL Imperium with zero tolerance against "Xenos" and "[[Tau|Cultural Marxists]]", with lots of conspiracy theories that Trump is fighting an endless battle against the "Ruinous Powers" of Liberalism supposedly led by [[Tzeentch|George Soros]]. It's basically yet another "Jews secretly controlling the world" episode on top of the usual boogeyman of "The All-Powerful Left" already invoked by many of the "cuckservatives" the alt-right railed against at their inception.

Initially, they "helped" him the only way they knew how: shitposting about [[anime]], Pepe the Frog, and [[Touhou|Momiji Inubashiri]] in a MAGA hat. One of their most widespread propaganda involving 40k was the complete stereotyping of all Muslims as [[Ork|ultraviolent savages who reproduce by the thousands and have no other instinct than to kill, maim and pillage]], Mexicans being cast [[Tyranids|an all-consuming swarm migrating to America to consume all of its resources]], and that every single one of them should be subject to [[Exterminatus]]. AS if that wasn't insulting to all parties real and fictional, eventually they finally "invented" a shitty forced meme where [[Heresy|they put Donald Trump's head on images of the great God-Emperor of Mankind]]. Not many people find them funny, even in the rare case of the Photoshop job being decent, and the Trump buzz started to fade anyway as reality promptly ensued and people realized he was largely more of the same checkers-level propaganda volleys designed to sway voters (if "[[Derp|uber-rich American politician claiming to be the champion of the poor]]" sounds familiar to you, anyway).

The new wave of French elections brought a more horrific wave of shitposting, with [[Extra Heresy|Marine le Pen being photoshopped into Sister of Battle pictures]]. However, Le Pen lost the French election by [[Fail|a 30% margin]], much to the [[Butthurt|chagrin]] of various /pol/tards. This was possibly compounded by the fact that Le Pen's campaign partly ran off the idea of a 'Frexit', only for Le Pen to abandon the entire idea post-election; between this and the Trump supporters in the userbase becoming nigh-indistiguishable from the more stereotypical ones, it proves for the umpteenth time that relying on any kind of political figurehead for overall validation is a universally bad idea.

Given 40k had its start as a ''satire'' of dystopian fiction and a bitter, ironic reflection of right-wing 80s Britain (see also: [[Rogue Trader]]), other right-wingers latching onto 40k-memery as a vehicle for demagoguery, propaganda and appeals to emotion, and further conflating it with modern politics is perhaps a schadenfreudish circle finally come complete. Without the original context, they see nothing more than an unironic heroic fantasy that validates their beliefs, rather than the proper mockery that it constitutes. Needless to say, many in /tg/ find such inclusion of real world politics in our 40k to be a sad, idiotic and pathetic phenomenon that should be punished by summary [[Exterminatus|SAGE'ing]].

==Ideology and Methodology (such as it is)==
While the full history of the SJW phenomenon is way too complicated to describe on their page and is usually less relevant to /tg/ (at least far less so than interactions with other boards on the site), suffice to say that while SJWs are the product of modern civil rights movements [[Ultramarines|who blindly adhere to the LETTER of a given progressive political creed's code of conduct without understanding the spirit of it]], /pol/acks essentially aspire to become the uber-racist, sexist, [[Chaotic Stupid|hyper-reactionary]] [[Marines Malevolent|card-carrying degenerates]] they think the other side believes them to be.

That this is (again) close to the same way some SJWs would come to conduct themselves - down to and including the general rudderlessness, the ''typical'' response to anyone who doesn't share their opinion, and the general prevalence of bullshit artists as figureheads - may explain why /pol/, by and large, seem so eager to join them in the race to the bottom. However, the horseshoe theory only holds water if you have the most basic and binary grasp of the political spectrum; everyone likes to think their "side" is the most rational.

Admittedly, badly implemented and ham-fisted progressive policies tend to alienate the people not supported by them, just like any other political policy, and it's not uncommon for social justice narratives (or ANY kind, really, but specifically these) to be astroturfed and exploited by politicians and corporations alike, as well as the grifters out for social currency. Thus, some people feel an instinct to rebel against a status quo that supposedly coddles and encourages "white guilt" and "political correctness gone mad", while others seek out the "rightful" social positioning they couldn't get elsewhere - and still others are looking for fresh marks after their recruitment pool in other activist circles went dry. From these groups, the edgiest and the craziest form the core of /pol/.

However, any analysis going beyond the surface for more than five minutes would recognize progressive lip service to be just that - lip service designed to appease 'SJW' demands rather than actually meet them. In addition, the "horseshoe theory" school of thought seems slightly more merited upon recognizing that, when they're not using it as a thoroughly cynical ploy to draw attention and stir shit, /pol/acks will use eerily similar rhetoric to signal their own virtues of traditional values, being "rational" thinkers, and otherwise acting in defense of "freedom", at least when they're genuinely believing anything beyond what directly benefits them. The words "refuge in audacity" should come to mind for the [[TVTropes|tropers]] in the audience, albeit in a far more disingenuous sense - the right to offend and be irreverent is elevated to a sacred cow, which is about as self-defeating as it sounds.

That said, most /pol/tergeists have no idea how anything actually works - even the basics of their own most common political beliefs are notoriously flimsy (if not OUTRIGHT blatant) myths and lies, often more than the SJWs they denigrate. The average /pol/ user tends to conduct themselves and their approach to politics across the board with all the nuance and subtlety of any given sportsball fandom, even '''before''' the slow bleeding of the glorified sportsball spectacle that is modern mainstream politics into the board itself commenced. While 4chan at large is and always has been something of a self-sustaining shitshow even at its best, /pol/ is (ostensibly) despised even by the rest of the userbase because they take their views to the logical "conclusion" and render themselves little more than bizarre caricatures.

Example of such nonsensical claims include: Stalin being a Jew (he was Georgian and a major anti-Semite to boot; the Jewish influence, of course, was mainly from Trotsky, which makes it all the more ironic); the first reports of Nazi death camps came from the Soviets (it came from Poland); most welfare recipients being unemployed black people (evidencing a misunderstanding of "majority" and "disproportionate number", as most people on welfare are white and only use it for 3 years or less); and the British Empire started declining by 1800 (their Golden Age was from 1816-1915, with Jews very well represented). And the coup de grace theory to rule over them all is another theory, "The Khazar Theory", that the real good Jews are actually all white people (Jacob's sons), while all the stereotypical Jews are [[Mongols|Khazar nomads' descendants]]. [[What|Yes, this is your brain's sound when it shifts without the clutch.]]

This is indicative of one of the biggest problems with /pol/, even more than not staying in their containment board: its denizens suffer from a board-wide Dunning-Kruger effect, believing themselves expert authorities on a multitude of subjects that individually take years of study at minimum, and shitpost and overuse bad memes as a substitute for wit and intelligence, ignoring that even the most casual Googling could debunk most of their narratives. Even Stormfront (which was run by an actual member of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, if it somehow still isn't) had ''slightly'' more principle; gods help you if you enter /pol/ from Israel.

Whenever a meme becomes popular on /pol/, they will begin forcing the meme on every other board, rapidly driving it so far into the ground that it will come out on the other side of the planet before the day is out. The memes they spam tend to be childish insults that will only impress people below 18. It says a lot about their board when getting merged with /mlp/ during an April Fools' joke '''improved''' it.

'''TL;DR:''' Even ignoring their disgusting traits AND putting aside "keep /pol/ in /pol/" talk, /tg/ remembers first and foremost that /pol/ is a containment board for a ''very good'' reason.

===Connections with the Christchurch Mosque Attacks===
{{BLAM|This section concerns the attacks on the Christchurch Mosques in New Zealand, the consequences of which affected the entire board, and by extension /tg/.}}

Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old man who attacked two Mosques in Christchurch, NZ, apparently identified as a "/pol/ack" and made a <s>detailed</s> barely literate manifesto mostly in the form of a "Q&A," containing absolutely zero original political thought and nary a trace of coherent ideology besides repetition of the basic White Nationalist complaints of a Western demographic upheaval (the "fourteen words," basically). It is all the more pathetic because he characterizes the poorly-formatted PDF as a ''magnum opus'' of three years' worth of political growth; one critical point of [[Derp|critical fuckstupid]] is his admiration for Communist China, known for its violation of basic human rights, especially free speech, against the Muslim Uyghurs of and even its Han (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) citizens.

Even '''/pol/ itself''', for all its numerous faults, practically worships the concept of the free exchange of ideas: A common point of contention with SJWs, perceived and otherwise, is freedom of debate and free speech at all costs, especially when it's offensive...at least, up until the point where their '''''own''''' views are challenged, of course. Then they suddenly decide that maybe censorship isn't so bad after all, which explains quite a lot about the board's fascist sympathies.

Said manifesto referenced several questionably tasteful memes (prominently, "remove kebab"), and the fucking degenerate actually went so far as to shout out those memes in public and play [[/v/|video game soundtracks]] and songs that /pol/ has turned into memes, while actively shooting people and live-streaming it. Sick fuck. Naturally, this means more conversations about the impact of the Internet/social media and technology in general and its role in the lives of disaffected millennials (and doing it full justice is a tall order and a half); the level of disconnect displayed, even by the expected standards of radical politics, that would allow a person to take a life while joyfully shouting silly sayings from the Internet like he was at an anime convention is disgusting and hard to fathom.

His goal, apparently, was to cause more hysteria and retribution: in his manifesto, he specifically spoke of wanting to stir up shit regarding ''inter alia'', laws regarding the rights of free speech and bearing arms which, in his mind, would lead to civil war and an ultimate victory for his ideology, such as it is. He imagined himself becoming a full martyr for the cause, or else incarcerated and (if the latter) perhaps later to be broken out of jail by a movement inspired by his "noble actions"...and yet few people online seem to consider his actions or their results desirable, even among those who would inevitably be even ''remotely'' 'sympathetic' to his cause. The only ones who would wholeheartedly support him were likely deadset on their ideology to begin with.

This, along with his choice to attack extremely soft targets (including women, children, and mainstream, non-radical places of worship), is enough to demonstrate that he was not a political actor in any real sense, but rather amounts to the perpetrator of an incident far more serious and tragic. Rather than a "proper 'domestic [i.e. white] terrorist'" (say, Timothy McVeigh), he comes across more as an aimless man on a demented rampage.

By virtue of being a white man in a European culture instead of, say, a member of a rival sect in an Islamic country, his attack on a mosque actually makes international headlines for more than five minutes; with his point well out the window, his pathetic attempts at justifying his attack only harmed his cause in the imagination of the general public and even amongst his peers. Needless to say, the consequences of his actions were quite serious: political groups of which he was a member or tangentially related to are being attacked by the government, despite their having no part in the violence, and the blood was not yet dry when the PM said that New Zealand's already highly restrictive gun laws "had to change". Most directly relevant to /tg/, their neighbor Australia [[Exterminatus|banned access]] to 4chan, 8chan and ''even fucking LiveLeak'' for distributing video of the massacre, which indirectly fucks over that entire sector of the userbase(s), likely due to the fact that the shooter, Brenton, is an Australian.

As if that wasn’t enough, the level of irony to Tarrant’s actions defies reality. Tarrant was fixated on mass migration in his manifesto, but thanks to his attack, New Zealand (and possibly other western countries) will accept EVEN MORE migrants from the Middle East and Africa in an effort to show that they’re tolerant of said migrants despite Tarrant’s attack. Way to go.

Though /pol/, with its vulgar and juvenile approach to issues of demography and race, is a tempting target to assign blame for his actions, 4chan might not be the genesis of his personal dissatisfaction; if the manifesto is to be trusted (itself a dicey proposition) he had apparently become interested in racial questions while touring the world and seeing the demographic changes which are afflicting Europe first hand. The problem is that when shitposting manchildren drink their own Kool-Aid and take up their guns alongside to murder innocent people, the average reasonable person can make a connection between the violence and the [[Star Wars|wretched hives of scum and villany]] said bad actors frequent, and so here we are.

This isn't entirely news to these folks, of course: "screw your optics, I'm going in" was how the last significant /pol/ terrorist put it, before attacking a defenseless synagogue which had no remote relation to any of /pol/'s 'concerns'. The inherent cowardice in that aspect of ''that'' attack and the most recent one are only one of the ways in which they are alike, but one of the most telling, not least because it begs the question of why the phrase "the last significant /pol/ terrorist" is even applicable.

Any reasonably well-adjusted person from anywhere on the political spectrum can see that the culture and posters of /pol/ are what give it its unfathomably bad name, which by extension affects already-considered-malignant *chan subculture such that one would be hard-pressed to assert otherwise. Inasmuch as /pol/acks even take their own putative ideas seriously, they don't tend to do themselves any favors - on- OR off-line. In addition, despite 4chan supposedly not being the birthing place for the ideals of Mr. Tarrant, the fact that it can now be tangibly tied to such people AND the resulting Australian lockdown on 4chan/8chan/etc. is certain to impact perception of the board and anyone seen as aligned with them - likely for the worse.

==What Do?==

{{editwar}}

If you encounter a /pol/ack, treat them with love and respect, and politely but firmly tell them to live. Set the better example. They are human beings suffering from hatred and ignorance. Set a good example of what a human should be like. If you are not capable of remaining calm, avoid and move on. The Overton Window is extremely skewed against them, and as such they are easier to ignore and kick out than [[SJW]]s.

Keep in mind that some are otherwise good people who are hurting and tired. Their hearts may be in the right place, they are just going about it the wrong way. They need to be challenged amicably, given empathy, and be shown that the world isn't a burning cesspit. To say that these people do NOT deserve to have their views debated and only deserve ostracization (let alone ''violence'') only pushes them deeper into an inescapable corner, with no choice but to join truly dangerous groups for social acceptance or survival. Lastly, to uniformly dismiss and hate them all is to spit on the legendary efforts of stellar individuals like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis Daryl Davis], a black man who went out of his way to befriend and deradicalize KKK members in real life, ''face to face''. It is no better than calling Daryl a white supremacist to his face, [https://www.facebook.com/daryl.davis.104/posts/10217755060641033 something which actually happened].

It's a bad idea to challenge /pol/ users on their home turf echo chamber. If somehow encountering one outside of 4chan, gauge the user to determine if said debatee is 1) good but misguided, 2) a believer that's not beyond redemption, 3) a true believer that's beyond redemption or 4) purely a shit-stirring troll. Avoid the latter two, and guide the former two away from their influence. Remember: Amicability and empathy. [[This Guy|Be like Daryl]].

==Do They Have a Point?==
tl;dr Mostly no, but a broken clock is sometimes right.

Almost everything about racism is utterly indefensible<s>, but</s>

While /pol/acks are usually fucking retarded, they do raise valuable points about SJWs and <s>marxist infiltration of the hobby.</s> “Cultural Marxism is [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory|literal Nazi propaganda]. For example, redditards have created <s>a hub to attack our hobby known as "Sigmarxism", which is intent on destroying the hobby as we know it and transforming it into a leftist pipe dream where anyone with a dissenting opinion is kicked out of your local game store.</s> If you believe this, you bought the fearmongering hook, line, and sinker. Sigmarxism is a joke sub. <s>And they are gaining influence, with GW releasing a press statement saying anyone who disagreed with the controversial "BLM" and "Antifa" movements isn't welcome in the hobby regardless of freedom of speech.</s> The statement said [https://casualhammerer.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/img_0805.jpg?w=1024|that racists had no place in the hobby], not that people with political disagreements with a movement had no place in the hobby. That is a statement that needs to be made, if only because behavior not tolerated in society shouldn’t be harbored amongst ourselves, lest we prove the worst beliefs about those who play the game. Besides, getting more diverse model features is literally an improvement if only because it forces them to update older casts or make new ones.

But because of the racism and fascism /pol/ is tainted with, do not let yourself be drawn into them just because you are against far leftism because you will be proving the far left is right. There are tons of much more reasonable progressives fighting to oppose the far left and you will not find them on /pol/. They make the same good points against far leftism without the racism.

==See Also==
*[[SJW]]s, the (mostly) left-leaning "contrast" to /pol/'s alt-right twattery, subjected to constant, though often inaccurate, comparisons due to hypocrisy and similar but better justified zealotry. Some major distinctions are that SJWs have much more influence in the media and their goals are generally noble and idealistic, though they go about accomplishing those goals the completely wrong way, which can make them slightly obnoxious.
*[[/k/]]
*[[Board-tans/pol]]
*[[Racial Holy War]], for what the rest of 4chan thinks would happen if a /pol/ack made an RPG.
*[[MYFAROG]], for when a /pol/ack actually made an RPG.
*[[Nazi]], what these guys ''wish'' they were.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpijRDDOxQ An appropriate response] to the forced Trump meme.

==Gallery==
<gallery class="center">
File:First_visit_to_pol.gif
File:1477229948688.jpg
File:Never Relax.jpg
File:1491144651231.png
File:1475903382909.jpg
File:Global Rule -3.jpg
File:Shitpost.png
File:1490344868585.jpg
File:1518620305269.jpg
File:1517880145411.png
File:Srgfd.png|All anyone needs to know.
File:1495590391196.png|Same as before but adapted to new memes.
File:5680446+_b10ddaacb84c03cf89b71c1f1327e25b.jpg|Cap doing what Cap does best.
File:Back_to_pol.jpg|The appropriate dismissal of all /pol/tards.
File:1481725926368.jpg|Some guy on Stormfront planning on using /pol/ as ''agitprop''.
File:1488601566861.jpg|/pol/tards delude themselves into thinking that it's only liberals who dislike them.
</gallery>

[[Category: Meme]]
[[Category: 4chan]]
[[Category: RAGE]]
[[Category:Pure Evil]]
[[Category:Sick]]

/pol/

2020-07-07T14:10:47Z

2600:387:A:19:0:0:0:1B: /* Do They Have a Point? */

{{editwar}}
{{Flamewar}}
{{fail}}
{{heresy}}
{{delete| Lets just delete this and, as its eventually gonna become spammed by /pol/'s many idiotic supporters. Besides, we could always redirect this page to skub. If we don't delete this, then please permanently protect it.}}

[[File:QnVjrKW.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]

{{topquote|Gas the kikes! [[Racial Holy War|Race war]] now!|/pol/'s battlecry}}
{{topquote|1=Gentlemen, I had a vision of the future. One day because we won [[The_World_Wars#The_First_World_War|this war]], a man called Adolf Hitler will take power and he will make a lot of people angry about the Jewry. And also romani. And also the blacks. And the non-whites. Except for the Japanese, they're honorable Aryans, I guess. Also there will be a website called 4chan.org, and there will be a board called /pol/, and it will just be about what I have described. Its kind of a [[My Little Pony|one-trick-pony, except the pony is retarded]].|2=[https://youtu.be/Tj-nCjnVDKM?t=2133 The Fresh Sorcerer's accurate summary of /pol/]}}

[[Skub]]'s OTHER final form, and the polar opposite of [[SJW]].

'''/pol/''' is 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" board, nowadays mostly <s>populated by</s> used for incarcerating <s>people who identify as</s> neo-nazis, alt-righters, ancaps, edgy contrarians, and other colorful characters who rant on Jews, black people, women, Marxists, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and every variety of white depending on the time of day. This also entails dumb shit such as long passionate debates on whether Slavic or Southern European people count as white, or complaints about Jews causing everything from financial crises to World Wars to hurting your toe on a table leg (the phrase "[[Meme|Baton Roue]]" might come to mind).

If you ask /pol/, they'll claim to be the best and most enlightened board that can see through the lies of society, while everyone from the other boards will call their userbase arguably the most obnoxious and [[cancer]]ous board on the whole site and nothing more than a far-right [[My Little Pony|containment board to prevent them spreading their cancer elsewhere]].

People who frequent /pol/ usually refer to themselves as /pol/lacks, but much more terms have been used to describe them by people outside of /pol/ such as /pol/io, /pol/luters, /pol/tards, /pol/yps, tad/pol/es, /pol/esmokers, and /pol/tergeists. The recently coined-term "alt-right" has quickly become for the right what the term SJW is for the left. On that note, some SJWs and /pol/acks aren't above having similar ''fundamental'' attitudes towards both their ideology and people who don't agree with it, which may seem odd - unless you're familiar with the idea of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory horseshoe theory] as it applies to political radical behavior, though that in itself isn't always the case.

==Origins==
...What, the above wasn't enough?

Do you REALLY want to know more about this?

...alright, fuck it. Put on the helmets and bring the bleach, this is going to be real long and real boring.

4chan's userbase is naturally a product of the industrial society, i.e. it bred a lot of NEETs and frustrated people who are largely kept in line with entertainment and porn and economic welfare, and will [[Roman Empire|gladly support any political party as long as their needs are met, inasmuch as they don't bother thinking about anything beyond their immediate well-being]]. Additionally, /b/ in particular had a history of racial supremacy expressed via memetic bigotry (i.e. using "nigger" as an insult, "faggot" as an endearing word, and "jewgolds" or "shekels" as the term for money) since around 2008, prior to the Anonymous v. Scientology clashes that brought them into more of a "spotlight". Most times it was considered little more than a joke by its userbase, just another way of ensuring that people who couldn't demonstrate thick enough skin to handle the typical level of discourse on /b/ would be driven off.

However, as time went on, people who took such things at face value began to show up more and more often - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498 it's been said that] "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." Eventually, some of the aforementioned idiots began espousing positions that couldn't be dismissed as attempts at humor any longer, but were soon seen for the representation of their values that it really was.

...Then along came the economic housing bubble of 2009, and said NEETs found their bread and circuses were not enough in the face of concepts such as "darkening future" and "imminent poverty". And that opened Pandora's box, unleashing the suppressed anger (normally kept in check by porn, cheap entertainment and welfare) of the NEETizens of 4chan. Unsurprisingly, the first mention of the "alternative right" coincides around the bubble, with this "internal" discontent playing a part in their rise alongside the external 'friction' that social justice represented.

People can get defensive about their opinions about Kirk vs Picard or their taste in anime or opinions about Warhammer fluff or berate others for having opinions which they disagree with, but in the end that's just talking about fiction. In contrast politics is about stuff which actually matters to you in the Real World. Political discussions, especially online, are volatile things at the very best of times. Given that 4chan is '''''the''''' place where reasonable discussion goes to die, it was inevitable that even the calmest attempt at discussing politics quickly devolved into extremist arguments. Trolls and fanatics alike, in many points, became impossible to distinguish from one another - they either forgot whatever original aims they may have possessed, or else simply used those aims as a cover for something they now legitimately believed in and gained validation from.

''If I'm damned anyway, then what is my incentive to be "good"?'' - ''Anonymous reacting to [[SJW|Identity Politics]]''

While they gleefully embraced the Nazi accusations that both sides of a debate would make at each other - and invariably decided to supercharge the politically incorrect arguments with shitposting just to enrage their opponents further - they did all of it with only a marginal knowledge of what the issues they were arguing about even entailed at any given time, if they remotely cared at all. Thus many political arguments far too numerous to count here, from immigration to crime and race, began to take root in /b/ and quickly spread elsewhere; Moot, being the [[Tzeentch|Eternal Planner]] that he is, created /n/ (what /pol/ started as) to corral the arguments.

As you can see, [[Not as planned|it's gone swimmingly for everyone involved.]] Sort of like a multilayered monkey's paw of pure [[fail]].

===Containment Board===
[[File:Pol leaves containment.png|thumb|right|200px]]
As stated earlier, /pol/ is meant to contain the population of stormweenies (named for Stormfront, a website that can be considered a precursor to /pol/, and whose community still overlaps with them) on 4chan. Pretty much everyone, including both Moot and most of /pol/ itself, has acknowledged this; Global rule #3 was once 'Keep /pol/ in /pol/'. The rule has since been changed to a more general version saying not to post flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled-for catch phrases and other things that are unhelpful to a board, but since that's what /pol/ shitposting essentially IS, the rule is still the same in spirit. Several boards have a sticky at the front page telling people to keep politics in /pol/ as well.

Though /pol/ isn't the only containment board on 4chan, the other containment boards such as /mlp/ and /soc/ are considered to have better userbases - those users have (mostly) less volatile baggage and the sense to leave it ''on'' those boards. When they venture onto another board, they stay on topic and only ''occasionally'' derail threads or start inflammatory ones (complete with /tg/ [[rage|deriving]] [[lulz|entertainment]] from it), but overall aren't ''nearly'' as insufferable in comparison.

Most attempts to curb /pol/, on the other hand, result in them [[Cancer|spreading to other boards]], where they will try to de-rail the threads on those boards to whatever political event that is galvanizing them and spreading around conspiracy theories. Whenever they are told to fuck off and quit derailing threads, they will change the subject, gaslight, and say whatever it takes to counter any arguments to the point of self-contradiction - in short, anything but backing down or even just going on the defense. This hasn't stopped the board from being deleted twice throughout their history, mind, but the inevitable spread forced it to be brought back both times. Even to this day, you'll still get threads here and there that fall victim to politically-based derailing.

==/pol/ using [[Warhammer 40,000]] as propaganda==
{{topquote|Suffer not the [[xenos]] to live!|Battle cry of the [[Deathwatch]]}}

One of the greatest [[RAGE|headaches]] that /tg/ in particular has with /pol/ is the misuse of the [[grimdark]]ness and xenophobic policies of the [[Imperium of Man]] by /pol/'s [[Neckbeard|Trump supporters]], who apparently believe that he is quite possibly a modern day incarnation of [[The Emperor]], and that the Western world should really become an IRL Imperium with zero tolerance against "Xenos" and "[[Tau|Cultural Marxists]]", with lots of conspiracy theories that Trump is fighting an endless battle against the "Ruinous Powers" of Liberalism supposedly led by [[Tzeentch|George Soros]]. It's basically yet another "Jews secretly controlling the world" episode on top of the usual boogeyman of "The All-Powerful Left" already invoked by many of the "cuckservatives" the alt-right railed against at their inception.

Initially, they "helped" him the only way they knew how: shitposting about [[anime]], Pepe the Frog, and [[Touhou|Momiji Inubashiri]] in a MAGA hat. One of their most widespread propaganda involving 40k was the complete stereotyping of all Muslims as [[Ork|ultraviolent savages who reproduce by the thousands and have no other instinct than to kill, maim and pillage]], Mexicans being cast [[Tyranids|an all-consuming swarm migrating to America to consume all of its resources]], and that every single one of them should be subject to [[Exterminatus]]. AS if that wasn't insulting to all parties real and fictional, eventually they finally "invented" a shitty forced meme where [[Heresy|they put Donald Trump's head on images of the great God-Emperor of Mankind]]. Not many people find them funny, even in the rare case of the Photoshop job being decent, and the Trump buzz started to fade anyway as reality promptly ensued and people realized he was largely more of the same checkers-level propaganda volleys designed to sway voters (if "[[Derp|uber-rich American politician claiming to be the champion of the poor]]" sounds familiar to you, anyway).

The new wave of French elections brought a more horrific wave of shitposting, with [[Extra Heresy|Marine le Pen being photoshopped into Sister of Battle pictures]]. However, Le Pen lost the French election by [[Fail|a 30% margin]], much to the [[Butthurt|chagrin]] of various /pol/tards. This was possibly compounded by the fact that Le Pen's campaign partly ran off the idea of a 'Frexit', only for Le Pen to abandon the entire idea post-election; between this and the Trump supporters in the userbase becoming nigh-indistiguishable from the more stereotypical ones, it proves for the umpteenth time that relying on any kind of political figurehead for overall validation is a universally bad idea.

Given 40k had its start as a ''satire'' of dystopian fiction and a bitter, ironic reflection of right-wing 80s Britain (see also: [[Rogue Trader]]), other right-wingers latching onto 40k-memery as a vehicle for demagoguery, propaganda and appeals to emotion, and further conflating it with modern politics is perhaps a schadenfreudish circle finally come complete. Without the original context, they see nothing more than an unironic heroic fantasy that validates their beliefs, rather than the proper mockery that it constitutes. Needless to say, many in /tg/ find such inclusion of real world politics in our 40k to be a sad, idiotic and pathetic phenomenon that should be punished by summary [[Exterminatus|SAGE'ing]].

==Ideology and Methodology (such as it is)==
While the full history of the SJW phenomenon is way too complicated to describe on their page and is usually less relevant to /tg/ (at least far less so than interactions with other boards on the site), suffice to say that while SJWs are the product of modern civil rights movements [[Ultramarines|who blindly adhere to the LETTER of a given progressive political creed's code of conduct without understanding the spirit of it]], /pol/acks essentially aspire to become the uber-racist, sexist, [[Chaotic Stupid|hyper-reactionary]] [[Marines Malevolent|card-carrying degenerates]] they think the other side believes them to be.

That this is (again) close to the same way some SJWs would come to conduct themselves - down to and including the general rudderlessness, the ''typical'' response to anyone who doesn't share their opinion, and the general prevalence of bullshit artists as figureheads - may explain why /pol/, by and large, seem so eager to join them in the race to the bottom. However, the horseshoe theory only holds water if you have the most basic and binary grasp of the political spectrum; everyone likes to think their "side" is the most rational.

Admittedly, badly implemented and ham-fisted progressive policies tend to alienate the people not supported by them, just like any other political policy, and it's not uncommon for social justice narratives (or ANY kind, really, but specifically these) to be astroturfed and exploited by politicians and corporations alike, as well as the grifters out for social currency. Thus, some people feel an instinct to rebel against a status quo that supposedly coddles and encourages "white guilt" and "political correctness gone mad", while others seek out the "rightful" social positioning they couldn't get elsewhere - and still others are looking for fresh marks after their recruitment pool in other activist circles went dry. From these groups, the edgiest and the craziest form the core of /pol/.

However, any analysis going beyond the surface for more than five minutes would recognize progressive lip service to be just that - lip service designed to appease 'SJW' demands rather than actually meet them. In addition, the "horseshoe theory" school of thought seems slightly more merited upon recognizing that, when they're not using it as a thoroughly cynical ploy to draw attention and stir shit, /pol/acks will use eerily similar rhetoric to signal their own virtues of traditional values, being "rational" thinkers, and otherwise acting in defense of "freedom", at least when they're genuinely believing anything beyond what directly benefits them. The words "refuge in audacity" should come to mind for the [[TVTropes|tropers]] in the audience, albeit in a far more disingenuous sense - the right to offend and be irreverent is elevated to a sacred cow, which is about as self-defeating as it sounds.

That said, most /pol/tergeists have no idea how anything actually works - even the basics of their own most common political beliefs are notoriously flimsy (if not OUTRIGHT blatant) myths and lies, often more than the SJWs they denigrate. The average /pol/ user tends to conduct themselves and their approach to politics across the board with all the nuance and subtlety of any given sportsball fandom, even '''before''' the slow bleeding of the glorified sportsball spectacle that is modern mainstream politics into the board itself commenced. While 4chan at large is and always has been something of a self-sustaining shitshow even at its best, /pol/ is (ostensibly) despised even by the rest of the userbase because they take their views to the logical "conclusion" and render themselves little more than bizarre caricatures.

Example of such nonsensical claims include: Stalin being a Jew (he was Georgian and a major anti-Semite to boot; the Jewish influence, of course, was mainly from Trotsky, which makes it all the more ironic); the first reports of Nazi death camps came from the Soviets (it came from Poland); most welfare recipients being unemployed black people (evidencing a misunderstanding of "majority" and "disproportionate number", as most people on welfare are white and only use it for 3 years or less); and the British Empire started declining by 1800 (their Golden Age was from 1816-1915, with Jews very well represented). And the coup de grace theory to rule over them all is another theory, "The Khazar Theory", that the real good Jews are actually all white people (Jacob's sons), while all the stereotypical Jews are [[Mongols|Khazar nomads' descendants]]. [[What|Yes, this is your brain's sound when it shifts without the clutch.]]

This is indicative of one of the biggest problems with /pol/, even more than not staying in their containment board: its denizens suffer from a board-wide Dunning-Kruger effect, believing themselves expert authorities on a multitude of subjects that individually take years of study at minimum, and shitpost and overuse bad memes as a substitute for wit and intelligence, ignoring that even the most casual Googling could debunk most of their narratives. Even Stormfront (which was run by an actual member of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, if it somehow still isn't) had ''slightly'' more principle; gods help you if you enter /pol/ from Israel.

Whenever a meme becomes popular on /pol/, they will begin forcing the meme on every other board, rapidly driving it so far into the ground that it will come out on the other side of the planet before the day is out. The memes they spam tend to be childish insults that will only impress people below 18. It says a lot about their board when getting merged with /mlp/ during an April Fools' joke '''improved''' it.

'''TL;DR:''' Even ignoring their disgusting traits AND putting aside "keep /pol/ in /pol/" talk, /tg/ remembers first and foremost that /pol/ is a containment board for a ''very good'' reason.

===Connections with the Christchurch Mosque Attacks===
{{BLAM|This section concerns the attacks on the Christchurch Mosques in New Zealand, the consequences of which affected the entire board, and by extension /tg/.}}

Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old man who attacked two Mosques in Christchurch, NZ, apparently identified as a "/pol/ack" and made a <s>detailed</s> barely literate manifesto mostly in the form of a "Q&A," containing absolutely zero original political thought and nary a trace of coherent ideology besides repetition of the basic White Nationalist complaints of a Western demographic upheaval (the "fourteen words," basically). It is all the more pathetic because he characterizes the poorly-formatted PDF as a ''magnum opus'' of three years' worth of political growth; one critical point of [[Derp|critical fuckstupid]] is his admiration for Communist China, known for its violation of basic human rights, especially free speech, against the Muslim Uyghurs of and even its Han (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) citizens.

Even '''/pol/ itself''', for all its numerous faults, practically worships the concept of the free exchange of ideas: A common point of contention with SJWs, perceived and otherwise, is freedom of debate and free speech at all costs, especially when it's offensive...at least, up until the point where their '''''own''''' views are challenged, of course. Then they suddenly decide that maybe censorship isn't so bad after all, which explains quite a lot about the board's fascist sympathies.

Said manifesto referenced several questionably tasteful memes (prominently, "remove kebab"), and the fucking degenerate actually went so far as to shout out those memes in public and play [[/v/|video game soundtracks]] and songs that /pol/ has turned into memes, while actively shooting people and live-streaming it. Sick fuck. Naturally, this means more conversations about the impact of the Internet/social media and technology in general and its role in the lives of disaffected millennials (and doing it full justice is a tall order and a half); the level of disconnect displayed, even by the expected standards of radical politics, that would allow a person to take a life while joyfully shouting silly sayings from the Internet like he was at an anime convention is disgusting and hard to fathom.

His goal, apparently, was to cause more hysteria and retribution: in his manifesto, he specifically spoke of wanting to stir up shit regarding ''inter alia'', laws regarding the rights of free speech and bearing arms which, in his mind, would lead to civil war and an ultimate victory for his ideology, such as it is. He imagined himself becoming a full martyr for the cause, or else incarcerated and (if the latter) perhaps later to be broken out of jail by a movement inspired by his "noble actions"...and yet few people online seem to consider his actions or their results desirable, even among those who would inevitably be even ''remotely'' 'sympathetic' to his cause. The only ones who would wholeheartedly support him were likely deadset on their ideology to begin with.

This, along with his choice to attack extremely soft targets (including women, children, and mainstream, non-radical places of worship), is enough to demonstrate that he was not a political actor in any real sense, but rather amounts to the perpetrator of an incident far more serious and tragic. Rather than a "proper 'domestic [i.e. white] terrorist'" (say, Timothy McVeigh), he comes across more as an aimless man on a demented rampage.

By virtue of being a white man in a European culture instead of, say, a member of a rival sect in an Islamic country, his attack on a mosque actually makes international headlines for more than five minutes; with his point well out the window, his pathetic attempts at justifying his attack only harmed his cause in the imagination of the general public and even amongst his peers. Needless to say, the consequences of his actions were quite serious: political groups of which he was a member or tangentially related to are being attacked by the government, despite their having no part in the violence, and the blood was not yet dry when the PM said that New Zealand's already highly restrictive gun laws "had to change". Most directly relevant to /tg/, their neighbor Australia [[Exterminatus|banned access]] to 4chan, 8chan and ''even fucking LiveLeak'' for distributing video of the massacre, which indirectly fucks over that entire sector of the userbase(s), likely due to the fact that the shooter, Brenton, is an Australian.

As if that wasn’t enough, the level of irony to Tarrant’s actions defies reality. Tarrant was fixated on mass migration in his manifesto, but thanks to his attack, New Zealand (and possibly other western countries) will accept EVEN MORE migrants from the Middle East and Africa in an effort to show that they’re tolerant of said migrants despite Tarrant’s attack. Way to go.

Though /pol/, with its vulgar and juvenile approach to issues of demography and race, is a tempting target to assign blame for his actions, 4chan might not be the genesis of his personal dissatisfaction; if the manifesto is to be trusted (itself a dicey proposition) he had apparently become interested in racial questions while touring the world and seeing the demographic changes which are afflicting Europe first hand. The problem is that when shitposting manchildren drink their own Kool-Aid and take up their guns alongside to murder innocent people, the average reasonable person can make a connection between the violence and the [[Star Wars|wretched hives of scum and villany]] said bad actors frequent, and so here we are.

This isn't entirely news to these folks, of course: "screw your optics, I'm going in" was how the last significant /pol/ terrorist put it, before attacking a defenseless synagogue which had no remote relation to any of /pol/'s 'concerns'. The inherent cowardice in that aspect of ''that'' attack and the most recent one are only one of the ways in which they are alike, but one of the most telling, not least because it begs the question of why the phrase "the last significant /pol/ terrorist" is even applicable.

Any reasonably well-adjusted person from anywhere on the political spectrum can see that the culture and posters of /pol/ are what give it its unfathomably bad name, which by extension affects already-considered-malignant *chan subculture such that one would be hard-pressed to assert otherwise. Inasmuch as /pol/acks even take their own putative ideas seriously, they don't tend to do themselves any favors - on- OR off-line. In addition, despite 4chan supposedly not being the birthing place for the ideals of Mr. Tarrant, the fact that it can now be tangibly tied to such people AND the resulting Australian lockdown on 4chan/8chan/etc. is certain to impact perception of the board and anyone seen as aligned with them - likely for the worse.

==What Do?==

{{editwar}}

If you encounter a /pol/ack, treat them with love and respect, and politely but firmly tell them to live. Set the better example. They are human beings suffering from hatred and ignorance. Set a good example of what a human should be like. If you are not capable of remaining calm, avoid and move on. The Overton Window is extremely skewed against them, and as such they are easier to ignore and kick out than [[SJW]]s.

Keep in mind that some are otherwise good people who are hurting and tired. Their hearts may be in the right place, they are just going about it the wrong way. They need to be challenged amicably, given empathy, and be shown that the world isn't a burning cesspit. To say that these people do NOT deserve to have their views debated and only deserve ostracization (let alone ''violence'') only pushes them deeper into an inescapable corner, with no choice but to join truly dangerous groups for social acceptance or survival. Lastly, to uniformly dismiss and hate them all is to spit on the legendary efforts of stellar individuals like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis Daryl Davis], a black man who went out of his way to befriend and deradicalize KKK members in real life, ''face to face''. It is no better than calling Daryl a white supremacist to his face, [https://www.facebook.com/daryl.davis.104/posts/10217755060641033 something which actually happened].

It's a bad idea to challenge /pol/ users on their home turf echo chamber. If somehow encountering one outside of 4chan, gauge the user to determine if said debatee is 1) good but misguided, 2) a believer that's not beyond redemption, 3) a true believer that's beyond redemption or 4) purely a shit-stirring troll. Avoid the latter two, and guide the former two away from their influence. Remember: Amicability and empathy. [[This Guy|Be like Daryl]].

==Do They Have a Point?==
tl;dr Mostly no, but a broken clock is sometimes right.

Almost everything about racism is utterly indefensible<s>, but</s>

While /pol/acks are usually fucking retarded, they do raise valuable points about SJWs and marxist infiltration of the hobby. For example, redditards have created a hub to attack our hobby known as "Sigmarxism", which is intent on destroying the hobby as we know it and transforming it into a leftist pipe dream where anyone with a dissenting opinion is kicked out of your local game store. And they are gaining influence, with GW releasing a press statement saying anyone who disagreed with the controversial "BLM" and "Antifa" movements isn't welcome in the hobby regardless of freedom of speech.

But because of the racism and fascism /pol/ is tainted with, do not let yourself be drawn into them just because you are against far leftism because you will be proving the far left is right. There are tons of much more reasonable progressives fighting to oppose the far left and you will not find them on /pol/. They make the same good points against far leftism without the racism.

==See Also==
*[[SJW]]s, the (mostly) left-leaning "contrast" to /pol/'s alt-right twattery, subjected to constant, though often inaccurate, comparisons due to hypocrisy and similar but better justified zealotry. Some major distinctions are that SJWs have much more influence in the media and their goals are generally noble and idealistic, though they go about accomplishing those goals the completely wrong way, which can make them slightly obnoxious.
*[[/k/]]
*[[Board-tans/pol]]
*[[Racial Holy War]], for what the rest of 4chan thinks would happen if a /pol/ack made an RPG.
*[[MYFAROG]], for when a /pol/ack actually made an RPG.
*[[Nazi]], what these guys ''wish'' they were.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpijRDDOxQ An appropriate response] to the forced Trump meme.

==Gallery==
<gallery class="center">
File:First_visit_to_pol.gif
File:1477229948688.jpg
File:Never Relax.jpg
File:1491144651231.png
File:1475903382909.jpg
File:Global Rule -3.jpg
File:Shitpost.png
File:1490344868585.jpg
File:1518620305269.jpg
File:1517880145411.png
File:Srgfd.png|All anyone needs to know.
File:1495590391196.png|Same as before but adapted to new memes.
File:5680446+_b10ddaacb84c03cf89b71c1f1327e25b.jpg|Cap doing what Cap does best.
File:Back_to_pol.jpg|The appropriate dismissal of all /pol/tards.
File:1481725926368.jpg|Some guy on Stormfront planning on using /pol/ as ''agitprop''.
File:1488601566861.jpg|/pol/tards delude themselves into thinking that it's only liberals who dislike them.
</gallery>

[[Category: Meme]]
[[Category: 4chan]]
[[Category: RAGE]]
[[Category:Pure Evil]]
[[Category:Sick]]

Roman Empire

2020-07-07T13:31:03Z

2600:387:A:19:0:0:0:1B: /* The Punic Wars */

[[image:Roman Empire at height.png|thumb|300px|right|A map of the Roman Empire at it's height, civilizing the fuck out of unwashed barbarians.]]
The '''Roman Empire''' ('''[[Imperium of Man|IMPERIVM ROMANVM]]''', or as they called themselves '''SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS''', the Senate and People of Rome, aka '''SPQR''') was a civilization based out of the Italian City of Rome. It was notable for unifying half of Europe and all of the Mediterranean under their rule and being one of the most advanced civilizations of Classical Antiquity. Even today, its system of Government, and its language of Latin, formed the basis of modern Law and Politics all throughout the World e.g. the United States of America. Its only rivals were the [[China|Chinese Han Dynasty,]] Indian Satavahana Empire, and the Parthian Empire (Persia).

==Roman History 101==

=== The Early days ===
According to the legends, the ancestry of the Romans can be traced back to the once-powerful city state of Troy. Initially, Troy was winning, but thanks to a [[tactical genius]] named Odysseus, they were tricked into accepting a gift horse statue... which contained Greek warriors who [[Exterminatus|sacked and burned the city and all its inhabitants]]. Troy's salvation would only come when a Trojan aristocrat, Anchises, managed to impregnate nobody else but Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, herself. Aphrodite gave birth to whom the Romans consider their Saviour and Ancestor: the man, the myth, the legend, Prince Aeneas.

Aeneas and his surviving Trojans sailed from Asia Minor (Turkey) all throughout the Mediterranean, fighting monsters and disasters through the way, eventually landing in what is now Tunisia, ruled by a city called Carthage: Hera's favourite city, and dominion of the queen Dido. Hera hated the Trojans, doing in all her power to prevent them from accomplishing their destiny, and hence manipulated Dido and Aeneas to fall in love so that they could waste their time fucking each other for so many years. Zeus, realising what Hera had done, came down and bitched-slapped Aeneas to fulfilling his destiny of making a new Troy in the unknown lands of Italia. Aeneas came to his senses and left Carthage, but in doing so, Dido fell into a massive depression, killing herself in a pyre while cursing him and all his descendants.

One of Aeneas's descendants in Italia, Princess Rhea, would be impregnated by the God of War himself, Mars. Their children would be known as Romulus and Remus. After rebelling against the Etruscans, they formally founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE... unfortunately Romulus accidentally killed his brother over a dispute on where to place the Pomerium (i.e. city borders). Rome, as the city was known, was underpopulated, consisting mostly of refugees. In order to populate his new city, Romulus enticed Sabine women to come to their little city, and while everyone was drunk, Romulus would then signal to rape (meaning [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rape#Etymology_1 abduct]) every Sabine woman in sight, which naturally pissed off the Sabine men. Luckily however, Stockholm Syndrome prevented war from breaking out and Rome got to live on. What we actually know of that time period was that Rome was one of several minor city states in that area and was ruled by Kings. Somewhere down the line the Roman kingdom is no longer ruled by a Roman, but by an Etruscan, whose son named Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (yes, his name was [[awesome|Superbus]]) rapes (meaning [[rape]]s) a girl named Lucretia. The Romans decide that kings are bad, and reforms as a Republic.

=== The Punic Wars ===

Meanwhile, Carthage, the city once ruled by Dido, was the dominant superpower of the Western Mediterranean, unmatched in wealth and influence, able to bend the Greek kings to their will. Eventually there began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia, compromising Roman trade in the Mediterranean. This led to three wars called the Punic Wars where the descendants of Aeneas and Dido clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians and its Greek allies over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. Rome suffered massive casulaties at first, until they reverse-engineered a Carthaginian ship and started pushing back (with the incredible innovation of adding a ramp to the front). Instead of letting the war draw out, Carthage sued for peace, and gave Rome very generous terms and conditions. This lead to resentment in Carthage, and set the stage for part two.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony and war sparks again. A guy named Hannibal, whose father commanded the Carthaginian forces last time, swears [[Princess Bride|revenge on the Romans]]. He invades Spain, brings elephants over the Alps and into Italy (at heavy cost), and generally starts wrecking shit, obliterating every Roman army he comes across. The only thing stopping him from destorying Rome is his army is too small to lay siege properly so the Roman regroup under Fabius "[[Troll|The Delayer]]" Maximus, who used hit-and-run tactics to keep the army away from Rome, intending to starve him out rather than risk a direct fight.. Meanwhile, Roman general Scipio Africanus leads his army through Carthagian Spanish colonies all the way through Africa to Carthage itself, Hannibal is called back to defend his home, and gets defeated. Carthage then becomes a dependent "ally" to the Republic, basically being sucked dry of its resources. Eventually around 149 BC Carthage was rebelling and pissing off the Romans again thus resulting in the Third Punic War. A few years later [[Exterminatus|Carthage itself was destroyed, the earth around the city was salted,]] [[Grimdark|and the surviving population was sold into slavery]]...or so the legend goes, as there isn't really any good evidence for the Romans having salted the land but there's evidence ''against'' it (Rome rebuilt and recolonized the area later, and salt was probably too valuable in those times for that to happen).

=== The Height of the Roman Republic===
While Rome's citizen-armies were quite successful militarily, there was a minor crisis brewing; many of these citizens found themselves homeless upon returning from campaign, their land having been sold off in their absence. To deal with this growing problem came the Marian reforms, in which the Roman state (through its generals) would instead raise armies of dedicated professional soldiers ala Sparta: the [[Space Marines|Legions]]. While this solved the immediate problem of soldiers having nowhere to go back to, this created a new one; generals, particularly the emergency military position of Dictator (who had complete control over the armies *and* power to rewrite the constitution), became quite powerful as a result; especially the change of upkeep. The old field-tending citizen soldiers' upkeep was land and they bought their own weapons; now the new, state-funded army needed cold cash, and more taxes during their service AND needed land for retirement. In short, the end of the Republic had become an inevitability, and Rome needed to constantly fight, enslave and plunder to keep the [[Warmachine]] going. Almost immediately, civil wars centered on factional power struggles started erupting, and the office of Dictator was revived when it had been unused since Hannibal's invasion.

By the end of the Republic, the real power was held by the so-called "Triumvirate" of Rome's three most powerful men: Gaius Julius Caesar, Pompeius Magnus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. After Crassus died in Persia (Hilariously, his captor poured molten gold down his throat after seeing his insane greed for gold), tensions between Caesar and Pompey grew. With Carthage destroyed, there was nothing left that could stop Rome from taking over the Mediterranean world. When Rome wanted to conquer an area they gave the local rulers two choices: [[Tau Diplomacy|Surrender and pay taxes to Rome]], or resist and [[Blam|be purged]]. Either way, Rome got more territory, more wealth, and more slaves, and expanded more or less uncontested until they got to Gaul. These uncivilized brutes continued to resist until the Romans got sick of their bullshit and sent in Caesar with a few legions to deal with it. He did just that, and became very popular as a result.

Too popular for the liking of Pompey and the Senate, not to mention now possessing an enormous army complemented with Germanic (Ubian) cavalry and allied tribes: They ordered him to disband his armies or be labeled an enemy of the state. Caesar's response was "you first"; thus [[Age of Apostasy|embroiling Rome in a civil war]], which he won by Zerg Rushing the city and scaring the fuck out of his rivals. He uses this popularity to become Dictator for life, essentially restoring Rome back into an absolute monarchy. As a result his close friend [[Horus|Brutus]] and his former allies in the Roman Senate stabbed him to death. [[Horus Heresy|This caused another Civil War]], now between Octavian, Caesar's nephew out for revenge, and the [[Traitor Legions|Senators]], led by Mark Antony and allied with Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra lost and committed suicide, while Octavian was proclaimed Augustus, the revered one, and establishing the [[Imperial Cult|Imperial cult]]; due to Caesar's supposed descent from the Gods (the gens Julii from were Caesar was born were directly descended from both Venus and Mars, respectively through Aeneas and Romulus), he was therefore venerated as the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God-Emperor of Romankind,]] and marking the transition from the Roman Republic to the '''Imperium of Rome'''.

Just go and watch the 2-season TV Series Rome, which is ''quite historically accurate''.

For next two hundred years the Imperium ruled the Mediterranean and Europe as one of the ancient world's most influential superpowers, with many states either conquered or offered Protectorate Status under the Pax Romana (they'll allow you independence, as long as you pay taxes and venerate the God-Emperor in some way). It sees a [[Goge Vandire|few bad emperors like Nero]], [[Reasonable Marines|some good philosopher-kings like]] [[Roboute Guilliman|Marcus Aurelius]], and a lot of stability, wars of succession notwithstanding. Then it goes to the shithouse from there, because...

===The Collapse of the Imperium===
Rome's fall can be attributed to any number of reasons, and any self-styled amateur historian would be more than happy to explain to you his opinions on the subject, but it's widely agreed that there were a number of contributing forces, including but not limited to:
* Increased logistical sluggishness of maintaining a sprawling empire, such that it had to split itself into two because it had become too large for a single Emperor to rule on their own. This solution caused problems of its own as the Western and Eastern halves of the empire tended to squabble among themselves as well.
* The various Legions becoming more loyal to their generals than the Imperium; throughout Rome's history, the Empire had always struggled with the fact that the Roman legions trusted their allegiance more to the their local generals than the will of the Senate (although by the time the empire started to collapse, the senate had virtually no power anyway) or the Emperor. Said generals frequently followed Caesar's example and got it into their heads to make themselves Emperors; some of them turned out to be pretty good at the job, but far more tended to be better at leading armies than ruling over an empire.
* Economic and famine crises as Roman farmers were outpriced by foreign imports; Egypt and Carthage completely shifted the wheat production to the east, and fields in the west were converted to fruit and vegetable orchards, which were quite perishable. By contrast the Eastern half of the empire did just fine since they were the half with all the valuable land.
* A disastrous combination of heavy urbanization without understanding germ theory led to events like the [[Wikipedia:Antonine Plague|Antonine Plague]].
* [[Barbarian|Germanic barbarians]], who were fleeing from the Huns and usually rebelled after being constantly treated like shit. In hindsight, forcing them to sell their children into slavery for a bit of dog meat was a real dick move.
* [[Game of Thrones]]-style court intrigue: Emperors killing emperors, perpetual backstabbing between dynasties, trading places like it's fucking musical chairs, made even worse by the fact that the Empire never had any kind of consistent succession rules. At least the [[Adeptus Custodes|Praetorians]] were ready to off an aspiring Emperor if they found out he was too insane to hold office...or if they felt they weren't getting paid enough or thought they could get more benefits from someone else. On one occasion the Praetorians even sold the position of Emperor to the highest bidder; the "lucky" buyer didn't even last three months before getting overthrown and executed by a rival claimant.
* Lead poisoning from Roman sewage systems.
* Terminus, God of Borders asking Dream to speak to Caesar Augustus in a vision, to let the empire die so he may live on. The alternative was to let Rome conquer the world and the universe, effectively destroying Terminus. (Yes we are comic nerds)
* The rise of the Christian faith to political dominance, which resulted in A: a mass transference of manpower from the military to the priesthood (this was LONG before Christian monks and priests were required to practice celibacy & austerity, so the average young Roman man decided that it was way easier, safer and more comfortable to join the clergy than the army), forcing an ever-increasing reliance on mercenaries (always a bad thing, for an empire), and B: the ever-increasing drain of funds away from infrastructure maintenance to pay this increasingly bloated priesthood to do nothing but sit around, give sermons, and hold councils arguing over theological trivia like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" and "was Mary still a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus?" Note that this contribution is highly [[skub]]by, and people argue '''bitterly''' over whether it's true or not. Most people believe it's not true... but then, most people believe that the Christian church ended the [[gladiator]]ial games, when in fact they continued for 200 years after the Christians took charge - they were only canceled when the empire became too broke to pay for them any more.

Heck, even the cooling solar cycle that made the Huns break out in two, one to Europe, another to India, is said to be the driving force in its collapse since before them came every other tribe that wanted to get the fuck away from [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|the teaser trailer of a certain swell guy's antics]]. The East splitting off didn't do the Western lands any favors either, especially when said wheat and exotic produce was utterly cut off. Eventually, the barbarians got all the way to Rome, sacked it, and made one of their own the king of Italy. This is the part where most experts say the Western Roman Empire was well and truly dead.

===The Byzantine Empire===

Things were a bit better in the wealthier Eastern Roman Empire after the split. The Byzantine Empire, as it's now called though they still identified as Romans, drifted from Rome in culture and aesthetic to the Greek trend, and more or less carried on much as it had before (including the palace intrigue, which in fact became even worse than ever before). On a couple occasions, they came close to recapturing the glory of the old Roman Empire, but this was foiled by the first known outbreak of the Black Death (the Plague of Justinian) the first time and the coming of the Seljuk Turks (and the rise of the Sultanate of Rum) the second time. The Byzantines' call for aid in the aftermath of the latter ended up leading to the First Crusade.

Fast-forward to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Crusaders lacked the money to sail to the Ayyubid Sultanate as they had initially planned, and were deeply in debt to Venice, who refused to let them disband or leave without paying their debts. The exiled Byzantine prince Alexios IV promised to pay the debt for them in exchange for deposing the current emperor and placing him on the throne. While successful at gaining the throne, the new emperor quickly realized that he didn't actually have the funds to fulfill his promises. Anti-Crusader sentiment eventually led to his deposition and execution, which the Crusaders used as an excuse to sack the city for its wealth.

Following the sack, the Crusaders named one of their own as emperor of the new "Latin Empire" (torpedoing any hope of reconciliation between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in the process), with the old Byzantine state being dispersed between three smaller rump states- the Empire of Trebizond, the Nicene Empire, and the Despotate of Epirus. You probably never heard of them, and for good reason- they didn't accomplish much of interest while they were around. The next few decades were dominated by fighting between the Latins, the rump states, the Sultanate of Rum, and the nearby Bulgarian Empire.

1n 1261, the Nicene Empire was able to reclaim Constantinople and restore the Byzantine Empire, but the resources from the old Byzantine provinces had been bled dry from decades of war. The new emperors proved to be incompetent and alienated their people through heavy taxation and continued strife with the Latins, and after yet another civil war the Byzantines were forced to become vassals to the Ottoman sultan. However, their relationship with the Ottoman Turks was strained at best and when hostilities resumed the Byzantines were reduced to Constantinople alone. The city (now Istanbul) fell in 1453, and the Byzantine Empire collapsed with it. Trebizond and Epirus limped on for slightly longer, but both had fallen by 1479, ending the last direct political rule of the Roman world.

=== Legacy ===
Even after its fall, the Roman Empire left a mark on western civilization in terms of writing, language, military organization, architecture, legal systems and philosophy. Many major European cities like London or Milan started out as Roman Colonies. In certain fields (in particular medicine, sanitation and plumbing) the Romans were more advanced than their European counterparts up until fairly recently. The end of the middle ages is generally known as "the Renaissance", the rebirth of western civilization which did involve some attempts by the upper class to recreate the better aspects of the Empire. For this reason various subsequent western cultures attempted to try to recreate some of Rome's Grandeur. The most obvious of these was the Unholy German Abomination called "Holy Roman Empire", which was neither Roman nor an empire (and was only "holy" because the current Pope said it was) but whatever. The Tsardom of Russia proclaimed itself as The Third Rome. Numerous other European monarchs as well as Ottoman Sultans declared themselves as being Emperors or Czars/Tsars/Kaisers/Kayzar-i-Rum ([[Troll|yup, Mehmed II named himself the real successor to Caesar after sacking the city of Constantinople for 3 days]]). Monarchs drew upon the idea of the authority and splendor of the Emperors, Republics drew on the roman concepts of rule of law, elected governments and civil rights.

Arguably its greatest legacy, in the sense of most significant cultural/historical impact, is Christianity and the relations between it and the Empire. Christianity formed and was developed in the Roman world, and was used to preserve various Roman traditions, particularly the military and the government. One of the largest sects of adherents in early Christian history was from the Army; the first non-Jewish Christian was a centurion, and Orthodox processions during the Liturgy are heavily derived from procession of the standards of the legions. On the other hand, Christianity basically divinized the concept of the Roman Empire and office of the Emperor to the point that the majority of Christian kingdoms and empires had a persistent obsession with being the true heir of Rome (which would basically mean that the realm would head the Imperium and thus have a legitimacy to lead the entirety of Christendom, as it is mentioned above).

== Roman Army ==

While the military of Rome went through centuries of evolution in its equipment and tactics, as a whole the armies of Rome can be divided into three parts, one of which is the skirmishers, the cavalry another, and finally the infantry.

Roman infantry went through many iterations but the typical Legionary would take the field wearing a metal helmet with metal and leather armor, a broad, curved shield, a gladius (a short, heavy stabbing sword), and one or more pilum (a hybrid javelin-spear effective against armor). Legionaries would typically fight in a tight formation behind their shields, throw or stab with their pilum and then finish with the sword.

Roman cavalry (equites) were, historically, useless, famous for a number of extremely high profile defeats. In equipment they were similiar to greek cavalry, using flat shields and spears with long swords and leather/maile armor. But for most of the history of Rome, cavalry were drawn from the richest echelons of society and were not known for being particularly disciplined or brave.

The skirmishers (velites) were mostly a Republic thing and largely vanished with the appearance of professional armies. Typically they were poor young people armed with javelins and slings, put out ahead of the line to soften up the enemy before contact with the infantry.

Where Rome really outperformed its peers was in logistics and military engineering. Wherever the legions went, they build roads and networks of forts and courier stations. During Caesar's invasion of Gaul, his legion famously bridged the Rhine in 18 days (and again later in a week). After the defeat of Carthage, Rome burned the city for two weeks, tore down its walls and enslaved every survivor. In sieges, where other armies might try ladders, Rome would build a wall around the enemy's wall, and then a wall around THAT wall to protect them from forces trying to break the siege, and finally start slowly building a dirt ramp; in the siege of Alesia this amounted to 20 km worth of wall building. '''Roman legions do not fuck around.''' They'll go to any length, and they don't leave things half-done.

== Roman Empire Analogs in Fantasy ==
To save time, let's just say the Roman Empire is one of the most heavily copied Cultures in fiction, what with it being precisely what any given European would think of upon hearing the words "ancient empire" (not to mention much of it more or less remaining in use today, like its calendar, alphabet, military structure...it's not for nothing the Founding Fathers of the U.S.A. decided the Senate would be a part of the federal government). A certainly-incomplete list of fantastical models from them follows:

*[[Imperium of Man]] - While the Imperium also draws inspirations from other political systems and cultures, like Medieval Europe and the British Empire, its aesthetics and government are strongly based around Roman designs.
**[[Ultramar]] - Ultramar, [[Roboute Guilliman]]'s home system, is heavily based around a Greek-Roman hybrid empire. With Guilliman's return he may or may not be setting himself up as a Roman style dictator: one who holds absolute power so that he can deal with a crisis. Given the [[Grimdark|fun times]] he's living in this can last quite a while.
*[[Empire|The Empire]] The human Empire of Warhammer Fantasy is an amalgamation of the14th-15th century Holy Roman Empire and Rome proper.
*Codex Alera - Romans end up in a fantasy world and learn how to train spirit Pokémon. That may sound odd but that's actually the literal origin of how the books were written in fact, the author Jim Butcher, was challenged to write a book using two "lame" ideas, the idea in question were "lost Rome legion" and "Pokémon", then went one further by throwing in the Zerg.
*The Galactic Empire of [[Star Wars]] fame, which also evolved from a Republic which gave one of its leaders supreme power. More of a combination of Rome and Nazi Germany than anything.
*[[Pathfinder]]'s Taldor is an empire that was once the center of human civilization but has been decaying and losing territory for centuries. Their founder, Taldarius, is unmistakably Roman looking. Like Rome, their breakaways (Andoran and Cheliax) are waxing while Taldor is waning.
[[Category:History]]

== Running a Game in the Roman Empire ==
The Roman Empire can make an excellent campaign setting. That being said, there are a few things that should be kept in mind when doing so.

* The Lex Iulia - The Lex Iulia was a very important law, and one of the things that allowed to Roman Empire to last so long. This law forbade normal citizens from owning martial weapons and armor unless you were serving in the military. While it allowed for things like bows and hunting knives, things like swords, spears, or actual armor were something reserved for the military. This means that unless your PCs are all members of the military or can loot something from one, they will have very little equipment.