Non fascist evil empires and such?

[CorvusMask]

So with recent talk of people preferring being reminded of real life bad stuff, one of things I've seen mentioned is references to fascism should be left out. I need bit help on this one though since like... First thing I was thinking of is "okay how about imperialist then? Wait. isn't fascism and imperialism kind of same thing..."

Like I think with evil governments, they have to be dystopian somehow and I find it hard to come up with ideas that don't somehow remind people of real life bad stuff. Or are weird "government is utopian but every people involved with it is evil jerk" which I think is troublesome in different way since how the heck would evil jerks run fair government well.

Another alternative I'm seeing is to just not have evil governments at all and that kinda leads down to route of evil in the world just being criminals, super villains and monsters ._.; Though I guess world without systematic evil might also be preferable as rpg setting? But I view rpg setting as needing to enable different genres of story so that feels oddly restrictive to me

[AceofMoxen]

So I'm not in fanfiction circles, but I have friends in them. And they have this debate over dealing with evil stuff in fanfiction that mirrors the debate I see here. They've mostly reached the conclusion that some people seek out fanfiction to hide from the evils of the real world, and some people seek out fanfiction to see those evils defeated, and some people may even be healing themselves by seeing those evils winning.

For me personally, I'm in the second camp. I'll all about seeing evils defeated. Reading or playing fiction where fascists are defeated is great for me. I understand other people want to escape to a place without those evils, but I also think of my Grandfather, who lost family in the holocaust and loved playing Wolfenstein. He thought killing Hitler in the 1993 version was the best thing ever.

This is a problem to be solved with a good session zero or ad for your game. I always tell people that I'm okay with portraying slavery and bigotries as long as they are evils to fight and win against.

Quote:

But I view rpg setting as needing to enable different genres of story so that feels oddly restrictive to me

Paizo's RPG setting needs to enable different stories. You aren't restricted. You could create a setting with only one story to tell. Just have a new setting for each story.

[Kasoh]

You can have an evil government and have it not be fascist. Its just that fascism is a pretty easy way to establish an evil government. Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism are root types of governments and fascism is a combination of their worst excesses, but I feel like that kind of nuance isn't helpful. You shouldn't need an in depth understanding of political theory to run a table. Though, maybe one might think this is a base level of political theory one should know to be knowledgeable member of society /shrug. Idunnoman.

It makes sense to a layperson that a Lawful Evil government is going have fascist elements. There's no reason to go further than that for most tables. In fact, keeping it at that level of abstraction lets a table expound upon it to their own preference.

On the other hand, the more that gets written about how Cheliax works, the more you can pin a specific political ideology to it, which in turn enables people to use real life history as inspiration for the nation's actions. It gives it great verisimilitude and lets one plunder copious amounts of real world writings on how such governments function, but its really only useful in a game that concerns itself with the Geopolitics. An oppressive baron/landowner/boss cruelly extracting value from their subjects/tenants/workers can happen under any form of government.

A lot of it comes down to individual tables and their own desires for what the game entails.

The scope of games that aren't enabled by obscuring or removing fascist governments is...the story about fighting back against the fascist government. I suppose there's also the story about surviving under a fascist government, but that tends to lead into fighting back once you accumulate sufficient character levels. Pathfinder is a power fantasy game after all, violence is almost always an option, and it almost always works.

[Claxon]

I feel like "fascism" is kind of the end result of having a strong government and evil leadership.

You can have evil governments, but they're likely to not be very strong is they aren't at a point where you would call them fascist. I can imagine a chaotic country with barely any real government, but wouldn't be fascist.

[The Raven Black]

Chaotic Evil head of state ?

Too close to recent RL I guess.

[Kobold Catgirl]

There really isn't ever going to be an easy line to draw, and no approach will be above critique, when you set out to create something that matters. Appropriation on its own is neutral, but there are many factors that can make it better or worse.

Consider the potato.

Actually, don't. I had an example, but I'm cutting it because down that road lies madness.

The point is, it's sticky. It's not just about, "this might offend someone, so you can't include it". If that was the case, we still wouldn't have any gay, trans or nonwhite iconics. But you have to be mindful of boundaries.

It's possible, in my opinion, to feature what is technically a genocide without coding it with the language of the real-world collective trauma of, say, the Holocaust. Avatar: The Last Airbender features the genocide of the airbenders, but the genocide happened off-camera, and doesn't feature, say, airbenders being rounded up in camps, or being subjected to forced labor, or being sent to boarding schools.

There's also the fact that it's perfectly possible to tell stories about deeply triggering topics, but that putting those topics in, say, an Organized Play event that will be predominantly interpreted, run and played by members of the group that originally perpetrated the atrocities being discussed, might not be a good idea. It's like going to your best friend's mom's funeral and telling a bunch of corpse jokes. The content itself isn't always the issue, but the context changes the content.

[Perpdepog]

Another suggestion is to change the scope. If you are concerned about institutionalized forms of oppression, like fascism, then have the governmental or noble antagonists be terrible people in their own right. As the GM you are in control of what the party encounters, at least to a degree, so you have the ability to determine the scope.

And if your party has no qualms about taking on a bad government you can string more such individually terrible people together to make the campaign arc. I think whether such people are evil because of the system they operate in is a fun question to explore, personally, but I also haven't got any reservations about beating up fantasy fascists, myself.

[Ian G]

I am resolutely against censorship of difficult topics, but I'm also in favor of content warnings and (for RPGs) Session 0s to discuss what people are OK with.

For example, I write Star Trek fanfic. One fic I wrote (best story I've ever written IMO, the emotions are super raw and re-reading it is a gut-punch in a good way) is a three-parter that was basically me venting my frustration at the rebooted Battlestar Galactica's poor handling of sexual violence. In the first part, the protagonist (a genetically enhanced supersoldier passing as human to avoid draconican anti-genetic-augmentation laws) is graphically sexually and physically abused and tortured by a woman working for the bad guys who created the protagonist. In the second part, Rachel (the protagonist) suffers intense post-traumatic stress and self-loathing as she attempts to recover with the help of friends, family, therapy, and a supportive partner, and at one-point she self-harms by punching a wall with superhuman strength until her fingers break. In part three, she finally makes a breakthrough in therapy, has a fight with the rapist, Shaw (who tbh is a walking content warning of a sociopath), and burns her face off in the process of beating the living daylights out of her before verbally demolishing Shaw while Shaw is in a cell and walking out, ignoring Shaw's screamed threats.

I tagged the HELL out of that when I put it on AO3. I put so many tags and content warnings on it that you have to scroll damn near a PAGE of tags and an author's note saying in bolded all-caps READ THE TAGS!!!.

Because that is my obligation as a creative putting that kind of story out for public consumption. It is my responsibility and obligation as a creator to put appropriate content warnings on my work, and I stand resolutely behind this position as well as expecting it of others.

That said, I also wholeheartedly believe that I have the right as a creative to put this out for public consumption, just as I have the right to try to sell a book about a woman who has potentially triggering levels of anxiety from undiagnosed OCD as well as the inherent content warning of mind-control superpowers.

With regard to RPGs, my stance is similar:

--Game companies should publish settings that include challenging and/or potentially disturbing topics.

--These settings should handle these topics in a manner that is not offensive and takes the topics seriously. No Noble Confederates Fighting For States' Rights, please. Be cautious with sexual violence (I think that because of most players' desire to prevent such things that you can be a LITTLE more free with it than in prose fiction, but I'd still be careful and thoughtful).

--Cultures and states within a setting made to deliberately ape real-world cultures and states should do so respectfully and honestly. If you have a Legally Distinct From Showa Japan, don't whitewash the war crimes associated with that. If you have America, don't whitewash its crimes (Golarion IMO avoids this by splitting the ideal of America from the reality of America and making them different countries, which is kinda questionable I guess but I'm not instinctively opposed). If you have legally distinct from Africa, don't just say "this is black-people land and Egypt". Have the decency to go and research what important historical African states looked like!

--Cultures should not be homogenous across the setting on any issue more nuanced than "murder is bad". That's just boring.

--Players and DMs should always, ALWAYS have a session 0. This is IMO CRITICAL to a healthy play environment. Discussed should be phobias, what themes people are OK with, and goals for the game, AT A MININMUM.

It is the responsibility of the play group to decide what themes they want to play. It is the responsibility of a profit-oriented publisher to provide a variety of themes to play with, and to ensure that they are handling those themes responsibly.

(this is why I'm never playing Hell's Vengeance except as a deliberate sabotage run. I think that "you play the Gestapo" is an inherently repugnant concept and have ZERO desire to play it, even if the themes involved are handled responsibly)

[Ian G]

Perpdepog wrote:

Another suggestion is to change the scope. If you are concerned about institutionalized forms of oppression, like fascism, then have the governmental or noble antagonists be terrible people in their own right. As the GM you are in control of what the party encounters, at least to a degree, so you have the ability to determine the scope.

And if your party has no qualms about taking on a bad government you can string more such individually terrible people together to make the campaign arc. I think whether such people are evil because of the system they operate in is a fun question to explore, personally, but I also haven't got any reservations about beating up fantasy fascists, myself.

Nobility with political power is kinda an institutionalized oppression in its own right, though.

At the end of the day my position is and will be that it's the DM and party's decision to decide what to keep and what to cut from a setting for their personal game.

Then again, my Sunday group had great fun humiliating and killing a fantasy Nazi who wanted to become a living continent, and my Saturday group is currently engaged in open war against a slave-owning empire. We pirated--I mean, PRIVATEERED--an enemy ship last week, it was a blast.

[thejeff]

Claxon wrote:

I feel like "fascism" is kind of the end result of having a strong government and evil leadership.

You can have evil governments, but they're likely to not be very strong is they aren't at a point where you would call them fascist. I can imagine a chaotic country with barely any real government, but wouldn't be fascist.

Given that fascism is a modern 20th century ideology, I'd think there would be plenty of historical examples of strong evil governments that aren't fascist.

[Perpdepog]

Ian G wrote:

Nobility with political power is kinda an institutionalized oppression in its own right, though.

It is, but not necessarily a fascist one, and the institution doesn't need to be the focus of the story if that group doesn't want it to be, which was my point.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Removed a few posts that went from Golarion politics to IRL politics.

[CorvusMask]

I will add that I haven't really read previously Cheliax or such evil golarion governments as "fascist", I've read them as like evil empires and kingdoms, but I've kinda realized that there is rather big overlap to that to some leading to my further confusion on subject.

I will also add though that one of most annoying things I can see is author taking a clear inspiration from real life fascist state and portraying them as LN :p Like I heard Legendary Planet 3rd party ap has basically LN space nazis, but I haven't read it or played it so can't really confirm that

[MindFl*yer98]

CorvusMask wrote:

So with recent talk of people preferring being reminded of real life bad stuff, one of things I've seen mentioned is references to fascism should be left out. I need bit help on this one though since like... First thing I was thinking of is "okay how about imperialist then? Wait. isn't fascism and imperialism kind of same thing..."

Like I think with evil governments, they have to be dystopian somehow and I find it hard to come up with ideas that don't somehow remind people of real life bad stuff. Or are weird "government is utopian but every people involved with it is evil jerk" which I think is troublesome in different way since how the heck would evil jerks run fair government well.

Another alternative I'm seeing is to just not have evil governments at all and that kinda leads down to route of evil in the world just being criminals, super villains and monsters ._.; Though I guess world without systematic evil might also be preferable as rpg setting? But I view rpg setting as needing to enable different genres of story so that feels oddly restrictive to me

There are many ways to create awful, terrible governments without making them fascist. Make them pacifistic for example. Fascism is a ideology that worships military strenght and the role of the army, so a nation that rejects that won't feel fascist. Or maybe create a very individualistic culture, where cooperation for the common good is seen as foolish and loyalty to a hierarchy is an alien concept.

Another way you can make the evil state not fascist is by making it ruled by a council of many small petty tyrants rather then one big tyrant. Fascism requires a dictator, a Strong Man to get behind, and many small leaders required to engage negotiations with each other will not be fascist or, more importantly, feel fascist.

[Temperans]

Hmm let's see there are a number of ways to handle systemic evil evil. The things that I will list are just ways to handle "evil government". I do not endorse, advocate, like, follow, or in any way shape or form think they are good. They are evil and can often be repulsive.

You can mix and match these with each other or some other traits to create diverse and complex governments. You can use deities as inspiration to what type of things would get used (for better or worse). Just to repeat, I am not saying these are good, but a good writer can use them to create nuance. Ex: Various distopian novels.

* Evil based on the way military is used. This one is easy as you just have to depict the military as being in control and abusive.

* Evil based on how the economy is used. This one can be a bit hard depending on how you go about it. The easiest being super late game capitalism, where the only people with money are oligarchs.

* Evil based on how the society behaves. This one is very difficult because insidious it is. It plays on people being horrible to each other in one way or another. It's also the one that is most likely to trigger someone, as it often plays with issues of autonomy.

* Evil based on how the environment is treated. This one is not hard as all it requires is a hyper industrialized country, in many ways it's a specialized for of the evil economy or military.

* Evil based on how the government control things. This one is also really high on the chances to trigger someone since it plays on systemic government enforced inequality.

* Finally, and maybe the worst, evil based on how they treat people from outside the country. This last one is almost at the very top of triggers because it is inherently racist and xenophobic. This is the one that almost definetly will get you called a racist if you handle it poorly.

[PossibleCabbage]

An evil society that is not fascist? Omelas.

[Errant Mercenary]

My group just found out that one of the antagonists they have finally gotten to is an ex-member of the Order of the Coil. Not because he stepped out, but because the Order got beaten. They enjoyed bringing him and his operation down.

A game without organised evil erm, organisations, would give us the only alternative of fighting faceless evils. If this game is about fighting, because if it isnt, then design it differently.
Often mangas/younger audience cartoons depict these blob / demon / energy evils that can be fought at no moral discussion. It is really dull and repetitive.

Any - ANY thing that makes someone take weapons carries with it the reality that it has potential to hurt people, physically and psychologically. So it is a bit daft in my opinion trying to sanitise everything. I believe that it should depend on the table. If you are playing Pathfinder say, with your kids, and they are happy whacking oozes, or goblins (and they run away scared rather than die) that's fine. When the players have the capacity to start asking increasingly complex questions then it is the moment the world becomes more complex.

Roleplaying games has a strong societal component, and a lot of that is founded in open discussion, inclusivity and understanding. Close off your topics and you'll have a lot less to discuss.

Also, evil governments and evil organisations in games - even when you play as them in video games - just allows the player to know they are explicitely evil. Our lifes are complex enough and being able to denote something in an obvious way helps us deal with it, and feel safe in knowing what it is. (and why it is wrong, but that's something you've got to learn from your fellow humans at some point in your life).

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

CorvusMask wrote:

Like I heard Legendary Planet 3rd party ap has basically LN space nazis, but I haven't read it or played it so can't really confirm that

I have read it, it was one of the options for a game I was hoping to run a few months ago that fell through. The villains in questions are totalitarians in a roughly steampunk/dieselpunk setting, with a supposed ideology of racial purity which is I think intended to read as dark irony given that the species they belong to are basically steampunk cyborgs. There are bits of back matter and details of their aesthetic that suggest Nazis, but others that suggest Stalin, so I think anyone running the campaign could go either way.

[Saedar]

Worth noting that political ideology is not a linear spectrum. Modern understandings of political theory go left<->right and libertarian*<->authoritarian. It is probably more accurate to say that despots tend to be further on the authoritarian spectrum. Further, the differences between "stated ideology" and "practical execution". Despots also tend to be pretty obvious hypocrites.

* This is not libertarian-as-represented-in-the-US. Libertarian in a political science context just means "you do you and I do me" versus the authoritarian "this is what is good and we should all adhere to it".

[Berhagen]

Yeah indeed. Probably calling them “political movement” or the “real life” implementation of ideologies (with real life crappiness and authoritarian thinking) applied is more correct.

Still both ideologies are now associated with genocide….. so not particularly nice for a RPG.

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

Berhagen wrote:

Still both ideologies are now associated with genocide….. so not particularly nice for a RPG.

Indeed, but I can quite sympathise with people finding those satisfying villains to thwart and defeat.

[Fumarole]

Berhagen wrote:

The empire in warhammer 40K also has aspects of both…..

I've always seen the Imperium of Man as Catholic Space Nazis.

[UnArcaneElection]

Surprised nobody has mentioned a feudal empire, or a Roman-style empire. Not technically fascist, but still very evil.

[Matthew Downie]

To create a fantasy evil that doesn't feel like real-world evil, you need to lean on the fantasy elements. Or go back into history for tropes that feel remote from our own problems.

A necromancer kingdom that is gradually replacing all living people with the undead.

An Emperor who demands to be worshipped as a god above all other gods.

A kingdom of monsters where humans live in forests and are hunted for food.

A city of assassins, where poisoning your way to the top is the normal way to advance yourself.

A kingdom of orcs who constantly raid their neighbours for food and resources.

An Empire with a heavy focus on gladiatorial combat, where everyone must participate in at least one fight to the death.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Removed a few posts/quotes that crossed into Earth politics and pulling the focus back to Golarion. Thanks!

[UnArcaneElection]

{For convenience I added numbers}

Matthew Downie wrote:

To create a fantasy evil that doesn't feel like real-world evil, you need to lean on the fantasy elements. Or go back into history for tropes that feel remote from our own problems.

{1} A necromancer kingdom that is gradually replacing all living people with the undead.

{2} An Emperor who demands to be worshipped as a god above all other gods.

{3} A kingdom of monsters where humans live in forests and are hunted for food.

{4} A city of assassins, where poisoning your way to the top is the normal way to advance yourself.

{5} A kingdom of orcs who constantly raid their neighbours for food and resources.

{6} An Empire with a heavy focus on gladiatorial combat, where everyone must participate in at least one fight to the death.

{1} Earth's technology isn't quite up to that yet, but Golarion has that in Geb.

{2} Not only does Golarion have that in Razmiran, but Earth has also had it, from Antiquity to the present (most obviously North Korea -- that isn't politics of the free world, and I don't live in North Korea, so I think I'm okay to say that).

{3} Earth's technology isn't quite up to that yet, and I don't know of one in Golarion.

{4} Ancient Rome had that, although they often used means other than poison.

{5} Earth's biotechnology hasn't yet gotten to the point of inventing Orcs, but Golarion had that until very recently, when the return of Tar Baphon forced Belkzen to turn its focus to fighting him.

{6} Ancient Rome had that in part, although Rome was content to leave many people's participation to being in the audience, and it just wasn't logistically possible for everyone to attend.

[Tender Tendrils]

Related to the poison thing - for a really fun read, look up Mithridates VI of Pontus, also known as The Poison King.

The short version of his story is that his father was killed by poison, then he spent 7 years in the wilderness becoming really tough and regularly microdosing on poisons to develop an immunity, then made his return, poisoned all of his rivals, became a natural philosopher and the world's leading expert on poisons, and a pretty big military threat to Rome itself. He also learned all 22 of the languages of the people he governed, because of course he did.

[Yakman]

Fascism is a perversion of democracy & capitalism.

Most of the evil regimes in Golarian are neither democratic nor capitalistic. Cheliax is an old fashioned feudal tyranny [with devils]. Geb is a rotting despotate. Molthune is a mercantilist junker state similar to old Prussia [or any of the enlightened absolutist european countries of the 18th century]. New Thassilon is a theocratic autocracy. Galt's just nuts. If you wanted to have evil Andoran, then yeah, you could do fascism. Beyond that? Not really...

[thejeff]

Of course, much of what makes us see fascism in fiction is aesthetic coding, not actual ideology.

If we see the mass rallies and salutes and goosestepping troops lifted out of Nazi propaganda films, that's the association we'll make, even if we know nothing of the economic system or the details of the government beyond militarized authoritarian.

Think Star Wars, especially just from the original trilogy. Clearly coded as fascist, but we knew almost nothing of the economy and what little we knew of government called back more to Rome than to any modern fascist regime.

[Claxon]

thejeff wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I feel like "fascism" is kind of the end result of having a strong government and evil leadership.

You can have evil governments, but they're likely to not be very strong is they aren't at a point where you would call them fascist. I can imagine a chaotic country with barely any real government, but wouldn't be fascist.

Given that fascism is a modern 20th century ideology, I'd think there would be plenty of historical examples of strong evil governments that aren't fascist.

You're adhering too strictly to the idea of technical Fascism vs general authoritarianism characterized by suppression of any opposition being headed by a single authority within whom resides almost all power.

Do you have examples of governments that most people would agree are overtly evil?

To be honest I think despite the preponderance of evil acts committed by governments most of them couldn't be categorized (as a whole) to have been evil.

thejeff wrote:

Of course, much of what makes us see fascism in fiction is aesthetic coding, not actual ideology.

If we see the mass rallies and salutes and goosestepping troops lifted out of Nazi propaganda films, that's the association we'll make, even if we know nothing of the economic system or the details of the government beyond militarized authoritarian.

Think Star Wars, especially just from the original trilogy. Clearly coded as fascist, but we knew almost nothing of the economy and what little we knew of government called back more to Rome than to any modern fascist regime.

Edit: You're second post here makes the point I was attempting to get at is a distinction between what Fascism technically is vs what lay people view as Fascism.

[Temperans]

Claxon wrote:

You're adhering too strictly to the idea of technical Fascism vs general authoritarianism characterized by suppression of any opposition being headed by a single authority within whom resides almost all power.

Do you have examples of governments that most people would agree are overtly evil?

To be honest I think despite the preponderance of evil acts committed by governments most of them couldn't be categorized (as a whole) to have been evil.

To be fair the amount of people that think any amount of evil would make a city/state evil is surprisingly high (as seen in other threads). Governments are a complicated mix of push and pulls, trying to put an alignment on them is like trying to determine if an animal is good or evil. 90% of the time they are just trying to sustain themselves and not get eaten up by enemies/parasites.

[YourNewShoe]

I think that issues with finding different sorts of non-fascist-coded evil states and whatnot largely emerge from it being the part 2 of "I will have my cake and eat it too". If one has a setting with Neutral or even Good-aligned feudal or otherwise aristocratic states, then it becomes necessary to either sanitize, ignore or endorse the measures these states would need to take to remain as they are; usually, sanitization is the route taken, because it lets you keep the castles, knights, nobility and so on without having to do the whole 'wait, those peasants are next to starving and these guys are having a banquet? Are...are they the bad guys? Can we hang out with them?' thing.

The problem, though, is that this means the setting has basically pushed a lot of the easiest routes for Evil state-based antagonists out of the way. If you're agreeing that the peasants get plenty to eat, and actually are totally cool with the nobility, and the nobles (at least mostly) live up to the whole noblesse oblige ideal...then, sure, you can run a 'this guy is an Evil Noble who taxes extra hard, resulting in starving peasants!'-type plot, but that's hardly an Evil Empire. And if you put an Evil Empire next to a Neutral or Good aristocratic state, you have to differentiate the two - without making the N/G one seem nonsensical (by, for instance, having the Evil Empire just do all of the historical evils an aristocratic elite would do to stay on top, with the exact same outcome as the N/G country in terms of status quo).

So you naturally develop towards a situation where the Evil Empire is defined by doing a great deal of oppressive, violent evil that is more based on modern perceptions of what Evil Tyranny looks like (which is for good reasons tied to popular perception of fascism specifically and authoritarianism more generally), thus giving birth to the fascist-coded Evil Empire, because they are one of the few things you can easily paint as Definitely The Bad Guy Here, standing right next to a place which has to be carefully scrubbed clean of its own institutional evils to not be evil as well.

In a nutshell: the problem is that most kingdoms, etc. of the past were what we would consider evil, what the rules would classify as Evil, and in order to avoid every game becoming either an eternal holy war against an endless line of evil kingdoms or trading in the entire fantasy aesthetic one must remove said evil from the setting, which naturally becomes an issue when one wishes to have an Evil Empire in the same setting - so you add different evil to that place, to make it distinctive and obviously bad.

[David knott 242]

An absolute monarchy is the easiest way to get an evil but non-fascist evil empire. If the population believes strongly in the "divine right of kings", then whatever the monarch says goes, and if the monarch is evil, he and his followers will create an evil empire for the duration of his reign, with no checks on his whims.

[UnArcaneElection]

^A feudal oligarchy also does this just fine, although getting the population to really believe in what's oppressing them is more complicated (but as Earth history shows, not impossible).

[Tender Tendrils]

The thing is that the closer you get to being an empire, the more you converge towards a single style of rulership. Nations generally don't submit to being ruled over by other nations because they asked politely, and the formula for how to build and maintain an empire is well... a formula.

Most of the differences between different empires are just tied to how well they followed that formula (and how successful they where), with the other differences being largely cosmetic.

The reason it all looks fascist to us now is that fascism was heavily inspired by the Roman Empire (the word literally comes from the latin word "Fasces" which describes a badge of office carried by roman lictors), and pretty much every empire (and many regular nations) that have existed since the roman empire have modeled themselves in some way (sometimes structurally, almost always cosmetically) on the roman empire.

Heck, it is really difficult to find a famous post-roman emperor who didn't openly compare themselves to Julius Caesar (a comparison that all of the fascist heads of state have also deliberately invited).

Empires are just... generally bad. People generally don't want to be subject to a dictator living halfway across the world from them, and they generally range from unwieldy to impossible to effectively manage. The only really important differences between different empires is how big they got and how long they managed to hold it all together for.