Neoracialization Under New Paradigms: How The Stigma Against Manticore Pilots Mirrors Old Earth Racism Around Suicide Tactics
By: Yukant Beze'ing & Dha'at Waytbeibi
It is commonplace in certain, more core-adjacent and financially and politically stable sections of the mech piloting community to treat the Manticore as a sort of eruptive whipping boy; an ideological victim they expect none to defend and thus all to bond over the hatred of. This ignores the fundamental realities of Manticore piloting as a sociocultural phenomenon: first, that a Manticore need not self-immolate to be an effective, valuable tool on the battlefield; second, that the fear of a Manticore makes it invaluable as a means of deterrence for less flush operations; and third (and most vitally), that it is most commonly used by the poor, the desperate, and those in ardent pursuit of a freedom beyond what is offered by the galactic superpowers of today. The racialization of Manticore pilots as being a collective of people who are in some way fundamentally broken, wrong, or incapable of making such a decision on grounds either rational or worthy of respect (indeed, the respect of pilots who wield cluster munitions haphazardly and prefer their artillery platforms to be chic enough that they can raise the price of their commissions based on their social media presence) directly reflects similar sentiments found in newly translated pre-Fall texts related to similar tactics. Here, we will interrogate how each of these facets of the stigmatization of Manticore pilots serve to maintain and preserve the interests of Core Worlders and megacorp strategists alike by reinforcing the distance between pilots serving hegemonic interests and those opposing them.
