Why is the Imperium so Xenophobic?

[grailkeeper]

One of the great things about the Horus Heresy series is we see a lot of the reasons why the Imperium develops into what it develops into. In particular we see a lot of the reasons behind its hatred of chaos, combined with its blanket censorship of even the merest hint of chaos. Many Imperial citizens don't even know about the heresy in 40k in case knowing about Horus might lead to them knowing about chaos and the inexorable descent into corruption that accompanies that knowledge.

 

One of the other defining traits of the Imperium is its absolute hatred of Aliens and anything related to them. One of the three main branches of the Inquisition is dedicated to rooting out alien corruption. There are countless creeds about despising and fearing the alien. Alien hating is one of the main traits of humanity. Even Chaos Space Marines who have cast of the shackles of the Imperium for the most part appear to hate Aliens almost as much as the Imperium, although some might hang out with the odd alien or two and they are less forward about their hatred, for the most part they'd rather hang out with daemons than with aliens. (The justification for this probably dates back to the very early days when chaos war-bands could be made up of random collections of models)

 

Its understandable enough to hate and fear Aliens in the 40k universe. Most of them are horrifying beings and the whole universe is a war over territory- neither of those factors lead to much in the way of making friends. There are some nice aliens which in the fluff have either been exterminated completely or occasionally adopted into the Imperium- in the same way perhaps that pyskers are part of the Imperium despite the taint of Chaos. Jokaero etc date back again to the very early days of the game when the fluff was pretty different. Nevertheless the odd times I've read about the Imperium coming across non-threatening aliens their response tends to be of extermination rather than enslavement or adoption.

 

Given that Alien hate seems so deeply ingrained in humanity its probably the case that Humanity had some really really bad encounters with Aliens when they first started to explore the galaxy and meet other races. Heresy level bad for it to have had an equal effect on their culture. I think one of the Ork Codexs says that Imperial Scholars speculate that Orks were the first race humanity came across. If thats true it would go a long way to explaining things. Its likely that the root cause of this dates back to before the Age of Strife and we'll therefore never know the reason why. Although the obvious out of character reason why the Imperium is so bent on conflict with Aliens is because 40k is a war game, its still fun to speculate as to what caused them to hate.

[Michaelum]

"The Galaxy is humanities birthright"

 

The Emperor said that or we secure the Galaxy or we go extint, xenophobia was a means to an end. Probably he was expecting the Chaos Gods to strike back on one way or another (and they did) and He didn´t want to deal with xenos and his posible warp corruption (Fulgrim *cough* *cough*)

[Guest Triszin]

During the golden age humans were fine with aliens. when the golden age fell, those aliens humans thought were friends instantly turned on them, raided them, killed them, enslaved them and stole there resources.

 

so its pretty clear why the current imperium is very much anti xeno. They tried it once, and when humans needed their alien friends to help, their alien friends all became enemies and attack humanity along with the men of iron.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Remember that during the Long Night, on of the reasons for humanity's decline was that numerous alien species conquered, enslaved, and exterminated human colonies. Thus, when the Crusade launched, they weren't just conquering human governments to unify them with Imperial Earth, they were also liberating those worlds that were humans living under the boots (or alien equivalent footwear) of xeno overlords. The human-alien hybrid cultures we see in the Interex, for example, were an aberration.

[Melete]

Basically it's because the Emperor said so, and that's really important for the modern day Imperium.

[ProsperoStands]

Humanity was :cussed over by various Xenos during the Age of Strife. When we were at our weakest, they preyed upon us.

 

Well guess what, never again. One sure fire way to ensure a Xenos race will never trouble you again? Wipe them out.

 

And to be fair, in 40k its not like the alien races are fairly ok with humanity like say Star Trek or Star Wars. The galaxy is filled with horrors and monsters.

[Urriak Urruk]

To be fair, many of the biggest xenos powers are not very nice.

 

Necrons: Kill everything.

 

Tyranids: Eat everything.

 

Dark Eldar: Enslave everything.

 

Tau: Convert everything.

 

Eldar are probably the nicest but it depends on who you meet. Minor xenos are pretty bad too, like the Rak'gol or Q'Orl.

 

Looking at them, it's easier from the Imperium's perspective to just want to kill all xenos instead of taking a chance through negotiations. Pretty much every alien you meet wants to kill you, don't waste your time being friends.

[Melete]

All the Age of Strife stuff about xenos causing havoc is true, but I get the very strong impression in 40k lore that very little of humanity actually knows what happened during either the Age of Strife or the Great Crusade. They might not even know the Age of Strife existed. The Inquisition knows, the High Lords know, the upper reaches of the Administratum or the Mechanicus or the Ecclesiarchy knows, but the vast majority of the day-to-day Imperium has no idea. Certainly not your typical Imperial Governor or Astra Militarum officer. What they do hear a lot of is the Imperial Cult, and they're very clear about how humanity should treat xenos.

[Lord_Caerolion]

That's the thing though, Melete. As you've said, the Imperials get their xenophobia from the Imperial Cult, rather than an actual knowledge of history, but the Imperial Cult is based (at least in some parts) on the views of the Emperor, who did live through the Age of Strife, and knows the hell that went down, and decided that "Thou shalt not allow a Xenos to live".

[Brother Lunkhead]

Alien races and contact with them is just one of the many sci-fi/fantasy tropes that 40K turns on its head. There are no cute Steven Spielberg ET's in this universe or hope for understanding between species. Almost all human contact with aliens in the 40Kverse has been bad. The Orks want to fight everybody, the Tyranids want to eat everybody, and the Eldar see humanity as no more than afterbirth waste. No wonder the Empire embraces xenophobia. How could they not?

 

Remember in 'Legion' when the Cabal showed Alpharius and Omegon the Acuity? Of the two outcomes shown, their best case scenario was humanity is sacrificed so that chaos will no longer have a hold on the galaxy. Best case scenario for the xenos that is. Yeah..... I'd be a xeno-hater in that universe.... youbetcha 

[Melete]

That's the thing though, Melete. As you've said, the Imperials get their xenophobia from the Imperial Cult, rather than an actual knowledge of history, but the Imperial Cult is based (at least in some parts) on the views of the Emperor, who did live through the Age of Strife, and knows the hell that went down, and decided that "Thou shalt not allow a Xenos to live".

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Well, you do have the Tau, who agree humanity can coexist... so long as you accept the inherent superiority of the Tau, and don't try to get uppity. Then there's the Jokaero, who just want to make weird tech, and seem happy to do it for whoever is nearby, at least until they get bored and go elsewhere, which you only discover when they use their bed-frame, the electronic door mechanism, and a few bits of wire to make a cross-galactic teleporter and vanish on you.

 

By and large though, the relationship of a human to any potential New Alien Overlords ranges from "food/plaything" to "vaguely useful pawn", with occasional instances of "barely considered as sentient life". In fact, the only race that actually seems to like humans are the Orks, and that's only because we can occasionally put up a good fight, so they might keep us around purely to invade every so often, at least until they get bored and decide to enslave/eat/kill us.

[bluntblade]

To be fair, many of the biggest xenos powers are not very nice.

 

Necrons: Kill everything.

 

Tyranids: Eat everything.

 

Dark Eldar: Enslave everything.

 

Tau: Convert everything.

 

Eldar are probably the nicest but it depends on who you meet. Minor xenos are pretty bad too, like the Rak'gol or Q'Orl.

 

Looking at them, it's easier from the Imperium's perspective to just want to kill all xenos instead of taking a chance through negotiations. Pretty much every alien you meet wants to kill you, don't waste your time being friends.

There's a battle mentioned in Inferno against Eldar who'd gone insane from the Fall and were wrecking anything they came across. Seems this was at least a phase for a lot of Craftworlds.

[SpecialIssue]

The Imperium's culture ultimately has its fountainhead from what the Emperor said, did and was during His brief time as its leader.

 

He said to kill the alien to assure our dominance and make space for our expansion, and that is why we do it. No other reason is needed.

 

Alien races and contact with them is just one of the many sci-fi/fantasy tropes that 40K turns on its head. There are no cute Steven Spielberg ET's in this universe or hope for understanding between species. Almost all human contact with aliens in the 40Kverse has been bad. The Orks want to fight everybody, the Tyranids want to eat everybody, and the Eldar see humanity as no more than afterbirth waste. No wonder the Empire embraces xenophobia. How could they not?

 

 

Doubtless, there were/are countless races which are passive and friendly and accommodating for co-existence, who genuinely would like cooperation. The sheer size of a galaxy, and the chances for life to take myriad forms near-guarantees that. But these are the sorts of races which would have been annihilated without effort by us during the Great Crusade and after.

 

Only the most militant and powerful survive to be anything more than a footnote in our history of xenocide. Because in 40k, it is humanity who are one of the monsters of this galaxy; who think nothing of destroying civilizations, sentient species and entire biospheres, in order to reproduce ever more of ourselves and stripmine planets to exhaustion. Hmm, I wonder what our pantheon of gods would look like...?

[Lay]

It doesn't all date back to the Age of Strife or the Emperor. There were numerous xenos invasions during the Scouring that had a bigger impact on the Imperium:

 

"As if the traitors were not enough for the badly mauled Imperium to deal with, this time also marked the rise of the aliens. With so much of its strength siphoned off to fight the civil war, humanity found itself at the mercy of a new wave of aggressive xenos races. Sensing that the Imperium was weak, a plethora of alien races appeared or returned to plague the worlds of mankind. Orks were on the move as vast hordes of the greenskin menace established powerful empires close to the heartlands of the Imperium. It would take centuries of war to contain them. The Dark Confederation of Hykos. the cannibalistic Thrual, the mechanically enhanced warriors of Jorgall, the shape-shifting Lacrymoles, the savage hordes of the Kalardun, the enigmatic Eldar, the fearsome raiders of Grundbaj to name but a few; all now preyed upon a shattered mankind. Humanity become ever more strident in its xenophobia as tales of the horrors these aliens inflicted upon mankind percolated around the Imperium."

- HH: Collected Visions (2007), pg. 370

[klisof]

As with the posts above, there is a long history of wars with Aliens races which leads to an easy hatred of them, and for a lot of aliens this is the only sensible response. Negotiations with Orks or Tyranids don't go well

 

I think this is also compounded as a control mechanism by the emperor in 30K and continuing into 40K. If you define an outsider as the 'enemy' it can act to unite a group of people and make them more accepting to otherwise oppressive government in the name of victory.

Many governments today are not beyond essentially accusing 'others' (often immigrants) as the cause of many things that are wrong in society. Propaganda is most powerful when it can be targeted against an outside group.

 

This is pushed to the max in 40K, for the average citizen all aliens are described as evil and need to be exterminated to make life better for humanity.

It's really just for the elite like inquisitors that consorting with aliens like the jokero is tolerated. Defining one or two species of Alien as ok to the average person in the Imperium may lead to questions about why more types of Aliens can't be tolerated.

Negotiations or alliances with Tau, Eldar, Necrons etc only happen when there is no choice to avoid destruction by another force like Chaos and are only temporary before hostilities are resumed (as soon as the Imperium has the forces required to wipe out everyone else).

[bluntblade]

I think a large part of it comes down to Chaos. Bear with me here.

 

It seems that most species in the wake of the War in Heaven come into psyker powers gradually. The last time this happened en masse it was the Eldar, and in time it helped destroy the human pan-Galactic society (admittedly weakened, but still intact) and birthed a new Chaos God.

 

The Emperor seeks to control Mankind to defeat Chaos. This is His purpose; He is its Anathema. If psychic races are running around feeding the Chaos Gods, that undercuts everything He is working towards. Ingethel even says something similar to Argel Tal; she basically greatness that other races will earn the Pantheon's blessing and wipe out Mankind as a result.

 

Any currently non-psychic xenos species is, at very best, a future problem in the Emperor's eyes.

 

Different note: when Orks are likely the most numerous species in the Galaxy, you do have to wonder how many peaceful alien societies can survive for any real length of time.

[Panzer]

Well, why are people racist? Without going too much into real world stuff, lets just say it doesn't really need a specific reason. Sometimes it's just about doing what the rest of the people surrounding you every day do so you fit in.

 

Also it has to be said that it's the imperium who're actively against xenos, not every person in general. Many people who meet with T'au embassadors actually benefit from them and eventually join the T'au Empire unless they have the inquisition or a space marine chapter nearby already.

Rogue Traders are also known to work together with xenos at times.

Blood Angels, especially Dante, think that Xenos aren't necessarily bad (except for Tyranids) and he sometimes gets doubts whether its the right thing to purge them all just like that (of course he does so since he's still absolutely loyal tho).

[totgeboren]

Think of it long-term.

Even if humans and some aliens would be able to co-inhabit the galaxy in peace today, one day in the future either humanity or the aliens will need more resources to expand. When that day comes, one will have to give to the other. Do that many times and eventually one side will go extinct. It is in humanity's interest that they are not the ones to snuff it.

 

On top of that, it's not like on Earth where we inhabit the same ecosystem. What is good for them is bad for us and vise-versa, so there really is no argument against genocidal campaigns. They will want humans to not expand, and humans will want to expand.

 

There can be only one winner in the long run, and until then, there can be only war.

[Calyptra]

I'm honestly surprised nobody's said this yet.

 

Scapegoating in order to promote unity and retain control is one of the primary characteristics of fascist and totalitarian regimes, real and fictitious, from the Third Reich to the two minute hates in 1984. Pick an arbitrary group, blame them for everything, and commence with routine state attempts to exterminate them.

 

It doesn't hurt that there are some legitimately terrifying alien species out there in 40k. If you're running around the galaxy trying to exterminate every species you come across, pretty soon there won't be anything left but the really terrifying ones. And the setting is trying to talk about cosmic horror as well as totalitarianism, so it works out.

 

The Imperium believes it fundamentally needs to hate something, and the people aren't allowed to know about Chaos. If there were no aliens, they'd have to single out ethnic and cultural subgroups of humans to hate.

[Brother Casman]

Careful folks, we don't want to get too close to real world situations.

[Montford]

Its xenophobic most likely because WH40K is a war game, and xenophobia promotes conflict and helps drive the war game.

[Corswain]

Its xenophobic most likely because WH40K is a war game, and xenophobia promotes conflict and helps drive the war game.

Exactly. The Imperium is xenophobic because the game demands that it needs to be. So in the fluff the Imperium becomes xenophobic ‘cause reasons and “the Emperor said so”.

 

I really don’t feel like it needs to be any more than that and delving further into it would only lead to real-world issues.

[Bubble_Helmet]

I mean, have you seen the T’au? Squishy, blue aliens? Gross.

 

Burn ‘em all I says.

[ERJAK]

I gotta tell ya, the things being said in this thread alongside the words 'we' and 'our' are deeply concerning.