I'm Going To Contest That Fulgrim Point. He *had* Outlets To Express Himself Freely. The Thing Slaanesh

I'm going to contest that Fulgrim point. He *had* outlets to express himself freely. The thing Slaanesh exploited was his need for affirmation, his need to prove that he was the best (good enough). Slaanesh too that yearning and told him how he could, when he really just needed someone to tell him "You don't need to be the best. You *are* good enough". Also, no, he did not know the risks of falling to Slaanesh. The Emperor took quite a bit of care in making sure that nobody knew the risks.

I also want to add, it's not just the desperate who fall to chaos--its also the decadent. The billionaires (though they're probably more like trillionaires at this point) who have had things go their way their entire lives, who believe that they deserve whatever they want, and that they are above silly things such as the consequences of their own actions. (These ones tend to result in more dangerous chaos cults, too, since they have the resources to acquire things like forbidden artifacts and can force a lot more people to be sacrifices). This is, of course, still something central to the Imperium.

Chaos wins because the Imperium is fascist

It suppressed the basic human desires of the soul and gives people no time or opportunity to express making them yearn for creativity and freedom and self expression

It makes its people live miserable lives of eternal war, poverty, disease, horrible living conditions and servitude yearning for release, peace, painlessness and pleasure

It leaves its people no time to be human. To engage in art, sexuality, to express themselves, have peace, pleasure and happiness. So they yearn.

It’s oppression leaves them angry and vengeful. They yearn for revenge.

It suppresses and persecuted psychers for their natural abilities who yearn to be themselves

It bans, heavily regulates and persecuted exploration of knowledge, magic, technology and science. Anti intellectualism and thoughtless dogma are praised and revered. Anyone who thinks for themselves or learns is an enemy.

The chaos gods don’t represent these desires. These are healthy human desires that everyone should have a right to. The chaos gods feed on these desires and take advantage of the people desperate for them to trick them into servitude.

An oppressed angry man will seek out a blood god

A man in pain and suffering will seek out a god who will take the pain away and make life bearable in misery

A suppressed miserable man with a miserable dull life being told he has no other purpose then to feed the war machine and be a human meatcog will seek out a pleasure god who promises to enrich his life

A man stripped of creativity and innovation, in a world of eternal stagnation and anti intellectualism yearning for change and freedom will seek out a god of change

The lesson in warhammer isn’t that pleasure, anger, change and seeking relief are bad.

The lesson is that in a fascist system where these basic human desires are repressed and humans aren’t allowed to be human they will seek these things in anything they can, leaving room for exploiters to gain power.

The “imperium of man” is fully anti-human despite claiming to be humanity embodied. It’s citizens are living in abject misery, eternal war, stripped of their identity and self expression, suppressed, only exploited for their usefulness, bodies and labor - for the end of an ever expanding empire for its own sake. A vanity project. There is no actual benefit to humanity.

Chaos gods aren’t the representatives of “pleasure” and “anger” etc, they FEED off of the desire for these things. They feed off of angry, suffering, desperate people in pain.

If the people of the imperium were happy, chaos would be powerless, because people would be happy with their lives and their yearnings and desires wouldn’t feed them or give them a way in.

The more the imperium cracks down on its people and the more fascist it gets the more the people will yearn, feeding chaos while it grows stronger and stronger.

Warhammer is screaming in your face about how overpolicing and “peace and order thru suppression” doesn’t work and backfires, from Nostramo to the imperium itself.

If the imperium wanted to stop chaos it should stop being fascist and allow people to be human and engage in and embody their humanity and human desires in a healthy way, therefore the offers of chaos wouldn’t attract people.

The same goes for the primarchs. If Fulgrim felt like he had an outlet to be himself and express himself freely he wouldn’t have felt the need to submit to slaanesh. He knew the risks but his yearning for freedom was stroger. Same for angron.

It’s so funny seeing loyalists and imperium fans react to the rise of chaos with even more fascism and limiting human expression even more, decrying basic humanity such as sexuality and art as “slaaneshi” and therefore bad - as if this will do anything but drive people to slaanesh even more.

TL;DR: Fascism is bad and conservative ideology is a fundamentally anti human worldview and always fails. If you don’t allow people to be human in a healthy way they will find an unhealthy destructive way, but you can NEVER suppress basic human rights and desires for peace, freedom, pleasure, knowledge and justice.

A regime which fears the human soul, knowledge, freedom and individuality will never be free of chaos. An Emperor who doesn’t trust humanity and even his own children with themselves will never succeed.

If you fear that knowledge, freedom, self expression, rightful justice and prioritizing happiness and pleasure will turn people against you and ruin your “plans”, you might be the problem