FFXIV and Ecofascism

Disclaimer before we start: I am not an expert. Please find actual experts to listen to about this topic. Also send me links to them cause I am interested in hearing about it. This is just my rambling thoughts I am having after replaying the first half of Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.4.

So like… the Scions are ecofascists right? Or at the very least are acting towards the benefit of ecofascism.

A brief primer on the situation in-universe as-of patch 3.4. Throughout the game so far, we have been a member of the “Scions of the Seventh Dawn”, a group of people dedicated to protecting the realm of Eorzea from all manner of threats. The two biggest threats by far are the Ascians and the Primals.

The Ascians are a mysterious group of seemingly immortal people who are dedicated to causing great calamity in order to awaken their god. The Primals are deities summoned into the physical realm to be used as weapons. Their presence in the physical world drains the world of its aether (aka energy), causing potentially immense harm. Primals also tend to “temper” individuals, removing their will and making them purely subservient to the Primals. They do not always do this, but some are more likely to do it than others.

The Primals tend to be summoned by the so-called “beast tribes” - animal-like sapient people who live on the continent of Aldenard but are considered separate from Eorzea, the realm which exists across Aldenard. The term “beast tribe” was coined around 20 years prior to the game’s start by the mercantile city state of Ul’dah in an effort to dehumanize them and make it easier to “justify” mining the lands of the Amalj’aa after the Amalj’aa told them “no, you can’t mine our lands, wtf?” Literally “well you told us no so we decided you aren’t people” I hate Ul’dah so much.

The “beast tribes” - I’m going to say societies of Aldenard or societies for short to distinguish them from the city-states - ended up being repeated victims of intense aggression from the Eorzeans who sought their land and resources. In response, they learned to summon their gods as Primals in order to protect them against the military might of the Eorzean city states.

The game repeatedly points out the hypocrisy happening here. The societies are very genuinely victims of the Eorzeans. They are acting purely in self-defense when they summon the Primals. Yes, the Primals do cause harm to the land with their presence, but to the societies this seems a reasonable trade-off in order to prevent being driven to extinction or fully oppressed. Not to mention that the Eorzeans do plenty of damage to the world themselves through the blatant exploitation and destruction of resources.

To be fair to the Eorzeans, some (but certainly far from all) of their actions are motivated by in turn being oppressed by the Garlean Empire, but a lot of the hostility with the societies predates the Empire’s existence.

But while it is made clear, especially any time we deal with the Kobolds, that the societies are acting in self-defense out of desperation, at every turn the Scions including ourself side implicitly and explicitly with the Eorzeans. We go in, kill their Primal, and leave without doing basically anything to help stabilize or aid in getting the Eorzeans to leave them alone or… anything. We achieve the Eorzean objective, acknowledge the societies being justified in their actions, and do nothing about it.

“The Primals are destroying the environment though! We have to stop them!” Sure, that may be true, but we are failing to address the actual issue driving them to summon their Primals in the first place. We come in, take away their only viable means of self-defense, and then leave. “My work here is done!”

Now one may rightly point out if they have played the game that the root of the problem is the Ascians and that we aren’t stopping the Eorzeans because our priority is the Ascians. The whole MO of the Ascians is that they stir up problems in order to cause a calamity in order to reawaken their god. With the societies, they stir up fear of the Eorzeans attacking and tell them “hey, I have a neat trick to protect you from those mean Eorzeans, and it’s called summoning your Primal. We’ve got a bunch of resources we can send over to help you do that!” Well if we go after the Ascians and stop them, then that solves the problem, right?

No. Of course not. The Ascians do play both sides off each other to cause tensions to escalate, but it’s not like they are needed to get the Eorzeans to subjugate and oppress the societies. A few whispers in the ear to encourage it yes, but the Ascians don’t actually do the oppressing themselves. If we stop the Ascians, what will happen is not the end of the conflict, but the dramatic weakening of one side as the people providing them support and resources to summon their Primals will be gone.

Through patch 3.4, the Scions… have done basically nothing to actually fix the conflict. Even if stopping the Ascians were to stop the conflict, we could also… address the conflict directly? It would be treating the symptom, yes, but we could with some effort help heal hurts, form strong bonds, and resist further Ascian harm. Make it harder for the Ascians to operate.

“We’re hurting the oppressed to protect the environment from the natural consequences of the actions of the oppressors.” Sure sounds like ecofascism to me!

I do want to give the game props for being willing to at least acknowledge this throughout the story. It’s just also an issue that is woefully underaddressed. Not to mention that “being willing to acknowledge it” is still is very low bar.

Anyways I think it’s very interesting. I recall the game attempting to address it more substantially post-Shadowbringers but it will be some time before I get there in my replay and I don’t recall it being sufficient. I would love to see any existing writing etc on this topic.