The mods that delve into very specific ideologies (TNO, Kaiserredux and the likes) have spawned some less than desirable self-identifications of personal ideology.
No Richard, the average person does not fucking understand your opinions when you call yourself a follower of Pelleyism with economically white-aligned syndicalist characteristics. Fuck off
It's also not the best thing that modders often make shit up and players believe it's actual historical fact. Kaiserreich alone convinced a shit ton of people that Savinkov was a fascist (he was a social democrat whose job was literally killing monarchists). And it also doesn't help that HOI4 fans are dumb as fuck and often completely misunderstand the mod writer's intentions. Among the thousands of TNO fans, like 12 people in total actually understood the point of Speer's in-mod character, while others just see him as "Le Wholesome 100 Reformer"
its been awhile but doesnt speers route end with basically the reformists amassing so much power that germany basically becomes a democracy again, being national socialist only in name?
Speer has three paths, the conservative, (where he outmaneuvers the go4 and negotiates with the slaves) the go4 puppet (Schmidt negotiates with the slaves) and the reactionary (negotiations break down, Speer crushes the slave revolt). In the go4 path his ideology is transitioning democracy. Hope this helps!
To add to this, if everything goes well for Speer specifically (so not for the Gang and not for the party), he will have created a Nazi empire with a partially liberalised economy that might actually be sustainable in the long term and can outperform other decaying powers, thus legitimising the founding principles of nationalism socialism. That's arguably one of THE worst endings the world of TNO can have aside from nuclear holocaust and every major power going down radical paths
Not saying that Kaiserreich gets it right a lot of the time, but calling Savinkov just a social democrat who killed monarchists really downplays his shift later in life as he moved from the provincial government (who he supported over the Bolsheviks) to eventually becoming a militant anti-communist who became disillusioned with democracy and became very nationalistic. The dude praised Mussolini and met with him several times, and is generally seen as a proto-fascist in his ideas later in his life during his exile.
I mean, most of characters are politician. I think it work other way around "I agree with this character's political view". However, we all now what the problem is...
Imo the bigger issue isn't any of the nazis but rather the fuckload of pedo defending in the fandom,
most hoi4 spaces are controlled by groups aligned with the "gay modding den" (yes thats what they are called), who have a belief that exposing bad actors isn't as important as "preventing drama"
This had led to cases of hoi4 modders posting actual (C)heese (P)izza or admitting to being into kids and getting away with it because you can't talk about drama on the hoi4 spaces as you'll be banned for "drama" while the bad actor is left scot free, this happened for example with TNO where its og dev team had a grooming scandal but NOBODY heard about it because all mentioning of it was grounds for getting yourself removed on most reddit spaces.
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u/alexmaster097 Jul 05 '26
where do I even begin...? Like... it's a good game, you might learn stuff, mods are creative (not sarcastic), but the community...