A Barely-Commented Upon Evil

[Denzark]

Sort of my point 'Splodge - a real world caste system is nasty because someone has to be on the bottom. I don't think that necessarily applies to the Tau - the Earth Caste would be the natural fit for the peons of Tau society but the fluff has them and the Fire caste as the main protagonists of the civil war. There is fluff of Sept worlds where the Earth caste are in ascendance.

Actually I think the problem is trying to apply real world psychology/sociology to a fictional setting - I don't think GW intended Tau to be evil and illustrated it with a caste system - because I expect whoever wrote it wasn't aware of the inherent real life ills of a caste system.

Also, the 'join us or die' aspect creeping in to the fluff is probably a side effect of 'make 'em more grimdark' rather than 'make 'em more evil'. No one wants to have an army of peace loving hippy flower arrangers after all. Destroying all opposition with mecha is just what tyranids do with big gribblies. And if the writers can claim the intent is for the greater good, so much the better.

As to fish people, I always thought that was the case - probably wrongly - never really gone for Tau.

[Psychosplodge]

I was thinking more the firewarrior that wants to run a shop, rather than societies views of relative castes, but yeah I take your point we're applying human values to fictional aliens.

IDK I've seen other people say fish people before, I just always took the impression they were bovine. *shrugs*

but I will certainly try...

Cheers

[Jewelfox]

I actually like the Tau for being less segregated than any other society in 40k. ^^; They've got "alien" auxiliaries and troops that aren't segregated by gender, even in terms of the modeling bits available.

The caste system is pretty obviously messed up, and so is their cultural supremacism and imperialism. Really, the Tau would be the villains in any other setting, and I like to play up the dystopian inequality in my own headcanon and fluff. Which helps make my characters more sympathetic, because they're basically park rangers and they have to deal with all kinds of shortages and uncaring leadership. Since everything's being sent to the front lines For The Greater Good.

[Hyperion]

The Farsight enclaves are good because they say screw it, battlesuits for everyone!

[Hyperion]

More seriously, though, the primary evil of the Tau empire is the 'greater good' concept. For all practical purposes this is also the philosophy of the Imperium and at it's core it is the essence of Fascism: a charismatic leadership which cannot be questioned as to do so is to side with the 'other'... a threat so huge as to be unthinkable. Any atrocity is acceptable under the principle of the greater good, no sacrifice is too great and dissent cannot be tolerated. Definitely Facisim.

Of course, the fact that Chaos and the 'Nids are competing to see who eats you first does lend a bit more credence than "The Bolshevik Jews are coming to get you!"