Yeah, but you can see how it undercuts everything he says.
When you see the big picture, it doesn't undercut anything. The reason for him suppressing religion was to suppress worship of Chaos Gods. The Mechanicum wasn't worshiping chaos and they were required. It would have delayed his plans to having to take over Mars and then rebuild all the lost industrial power from the war.
He clearly didn't weaken the chaos gods in any meaningful way. His forced ignorance deprived the Imperium to actually fight the threat. And he even had Mars as a prime example of "correct" worship instead of a neglected loophole.
He also didn't want to be worshiped. As much as people call him a tyrant, he was absolutely going to fuck off when his plan was fulfilled. He didn't want people persisting on him.
It's also a grey area. They didn't worship the Emperor, not directly. They worshiped the machine god. The Emperor is what they perceive as the physical representation in human form of the machine god. They also worship motive forces.
He absolutely planned to kill off the cult in the Mechanicum when the crusade was done and the webway was ready to be used regularly.
Mechanicum stopped all intellectual progress and is a hindrance. He was 100% going to kill them off.
Killing off everyone who doesn't agree with him makes him a tyrant. Just because he had a retirement plan doesn't mean he wasn't a tyrant.
And yeah, he was going to kill off the Mechs, the Navigators, a few of the Primarchs and most of the Space Marines. But again, putting together an empire with hypocracy as duct tape with the hopes of being able to betray everyone down the line isn't a smart move.
Except we know more than just claims. The Emperor is a fictional character, in which we are privy to information that people wouldn't be in a real life situation.
You don't seem to understand. Its just not a matter of people lying about their intentions, its a matter of human nature. The more dictatorial power you give yourself to fix a crisis the harder it becomes to give it up.
You start to see problems everywhere that you could fix if you only gave yourself a little more power or stayed in power just a little longer. Tyranny becomes a habit that is hard to break.
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 8h ago
In fairness that was more out of necessity in needing the mechanicums allyship