Fascism is basically "authoritarian regime I don't like" but after decades of writing the Imperium itself is really not that authoritarian and instead more a republic that won't take no for an answer. A planet within it doesn't have a lot of rules to follow and has to pay its tithes that decide how much the Imperium cares about it. The planet itself can be whatever the people on it want and while the Lords of Terra can do everything they want, it is never worth it to micromanage a planet.
The Imperium would be more accurately described as a medieval aristocracy, with the Lords of Terra, planetary governors, Space Marine chapter masters, ecclesiarchs, techpriest magi, and all manners of local rulers having power, nominally answering to a monarch, like the Emperor or Primarch Guilliman.
Maybe under the Emperor, you could describe it as a fascist state since he had power over everyone, but after he was interred in the Golden Throne and the loyalist Primarchs started disappearing, the Imperium became more feudal in its ways of governance, which is the farthest thing you can get from being fascist.
A centralized democratic state with a federal government can vote itself into fascism within a single generation, but a feudal state with mini-states all over the place can't, since each mini-state is its own thing, and you can't just do away with all those mini-rulers to create a centralized fascist government. You'd have to subdue them all first or get them to sign away their rights to self-rule, which is far harder than it looks. That would probably entail a war of its own, the way European monarchs used marriages and summer wars for centuries to absorb duchies, fiefdoms, and local lords' territories into a centralized state ruled by the crown.
The Tau are far more fascistic with their caste system and mass sterilisation of undesirables.
True. The Tau government is far more centralized than the Imperium.
Ya gonna tell me chucklefucks like Dark Angels, Dark Crusaders, Marines Malevolent arent fascists? Heck, you can even say that Lion is kinda a fascist prick
They're just assholes; not every asshole is a fascist. Otherwise everyone from Renaissance monarchs to old-world Roman Emperors would be counted as fascist.
Also, fascism usually gets backed up by capitalists, who last I checked are right-wingers usually.
LOL more leftist BS. The capitalists of the 1930s only backed the fascists because they were scared of the Commies. If it wasn't for the USSR, the capitalists in London and Paris would have crushed Adolf and Benito before they could gain any real power. That, and fascist dictators tell businesses what to make. Tojo tells Mitsubishi to go make airplanes, and they do it. Hitler tells BMW to go make Volkswagens, and they go do it. If they don't, there's severe consequences. That is not how capitalism runs. Capitalism is free market; a business can refuse an order and pass the buck to someone else. You can't do that in a fascist system.
The Dark Angels, Dark Crusaders and Marines Malevolent are soldiers and not rulers, with the former being a highly secretive and insular order of knights, to the point they were paranoid of Guilliman killing them all, so I don't see how they could politically be Fascists if they aren't imposing a system of government on any given planet or group of people. The Marines Malevolent are just assholes who don't care about civilian casualties, which is not a unique feature of Fascism.
Exactly. Authoritarian assholes predated fascism, yet these clowns call anything authoritarian ''fascist''.
I remember some left-wing reactors watching Avatar the Last Airbender call Fire Lord Sozin a fascist, even though he's just an expansionist and an old-world absolute monarch; they don't even know what socialism or capitalism is, yet. To have a concept of fascism, you have to know what capitalism, socialism, and democracy are, since fascism stands against all three, considering them to be wrong.
That doesn't make sense, Fascism is a spin on Socialism, Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile were both Socialists before they decided to create Fascism to appeal to the Italian Syndicalists and make a return to the guild system by federating all businesses as their own departments of government, only with the government being a check on the guilds rather than the inverse.
Depends on the fascist. German and Italian fascists are a mix of nationalists and socialists trying to create a new socialist party free from Soviet influence. Spanish fascists appealed to tradition and religion and only wanted to restore the monarchy and the church to power, making them right-wing as opposed to the center-left position the German fascists had. If the German fascists were right-wing, they would've restored the Kaiser the way Franco restored the Spanish Monarchy as an institution.