the Manus Vindictae work, like, OKAY as initial antagonists? like, don't get me wrong, in retrospect with the Foundation being Basically Fascist, it does come off as a little weird that the main Resistance group are... also like that, but in the opposite direction. it's kind of a tired trope.
HOWEVER. while there are a lot of parallels, i'm not 100% certain that arcanists on the whole are intended to represent racial oppression SPECIFICALLY?
the Foundation specializes in essentially forcing arcanist children to "act human," with jessica's event SPECIFICALLY being designed around a program that determines how "dangerous" you are based on how acceptable your answers are to what amounts to a personality test
a large number of arcanist characters have flat affects, "strange behavior", and/or intense interests that society as a whole frowns upon
a large number of arcanist characters ALSO are shown to be socially awkward and have difficulty "fitting in" and/or understanding the emotions of others
it is TEXTUAL that arcanists have less logical thoughts and are more creatively oriented, whatever the hell that means
i think given all this, it might be a BIT less of a stretch to say that arcanists as a whole are both metaphorically representative of and quite literally all neurodivergent. the Foundation requires most of its employees to "act human" and discard any "unseemly" interests, after all.
taking them this way, i think the Manus Vindictae work a little better -- they're still neurodivergent, but are specifically the type of people who are radicalized or join cults because someone has preyed on that part of them. at the same time, given how harshly they treat mixed arcanists or even just those who don't agree with them, they're also kind of a cipher for people with "acceptable" neurodivergencies that then turn around and gleefully demonize/dehumanize people with "unacceptable" forms of neurodivergence (yknow -- low empathy, personality and/or cluster-b disorders, systems/plural people).
maybe it's just wanton theorizing on my part, but i do feel like this explains why the Manus Vindictae and the St. Pavlov Foundation have one key thing in common:
unless you are part of the in-group, whatever that may be, you are expected to mask both your face and your undesirable behaviors.
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