Spreading hate through computer games

2024-02-03 14:42:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Illustrative photo

In one of the propaganda games sold on the Steam platform, you can join an Islamic terrorist organization and kill as many Israeli soldiers as possible while shouting "Allahu akbar".

The game, created by a Brazilian-Palestinian developer, has been on the market since 2021, but gained momentum after the terrorist attack by Islamist militants Hamas on October 7, 2023. This game has since been removed from the German version of the Steam-shop. , but in other countries the game continues to download. This is not the only game on the most important computer gaming platform that has anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content. Extremist right-wing content is also widespread.

Right-wing extremists take advantage of the Internet

The gaming community is huge. More than three billion people worldwide play video games regularly. This is how many friendships are formed between people who would probably never have met each other without the Internet and the preference for them on the computer. The so-called "young rightists" benefit from this.

A small group this subculture of the gaming scene, but very right-wing and where like-minded people meet who incite hatred and spread misanthropic ideologies. This is part of a strategy that calls itself "Metapolitics". The goal is to conquer areas of society, which are not originally related to politics, and exert influence on them. They can be, for example, sports clubs, cultural institutions or online platforms for video games. It aims to make right-wing views mainstream.

Right media strategies

What the right makes known on game platforms is following a media strategy that is also used on social networks, which is precisely "dog whistling". They distribute content such as satirical memes that seem harmless at first glance. But the posts contain anti-Semitic and racist codes, which are constantly transformed and often only understood by supporters, explains Mick Prinz of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, which fights right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism.

If they spread once on the Internet and are constantly repeated, then the normalization of conspiratorial expressions or stories occurs, having as a consequence the shifting from the right of the boundaries of what is said and the unreflective use of right-wing concepts of war, by segments of different parts of society. The latest example of this is the concept of "remigration", which has become the worst word of 2024.

Antisemitism on gaming platforms

Until now, the right has glorified the National Socialist period on the biggest gaming platforms relatively unfettered, gathered together in Wehrmacht (German army) fan groups and spread their ideas. This has happened because they work with codes, but also because the forums work without a moderator, or because communication often ends up in private chat groups. It is true that there is an option to issue an alert for problematic content or problematic players, but this does not necessarily cause the content to be deleted immediately.

Propaganda games are also programmed by neo-Nazis for neo-Nazis. A right-wing group of game makers from Austria claim that they "broadcast patriotic values". In fact, they spread anti-Semitic conspiracy stories. In their first game, which has since been taken down by Steam after various players raised the alarm, players play as if they were Martin Sellner moving to different levels of the game Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner is one of the main strategists of the "New Right" in Europe. In Germany this game has been put on the list of prohibited games and it is not allowed to advertise it publicly or to sell it to children and young people.

But according to the creators of the game itself, it has been downloaded 50 thousand times. These figures cannot be confirmed. But apparently the target group of customers is large. Because the creators of the game are currently working on a follow-up game, which is currently being announced on Steam. They are part of the far-right identity movement and according to the Amadeu Antonio foundation they are helped with money and advertising by politicians from the right-wing populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

In addition, there are also much smaller games on the gaming platform, which may not be economically successful, but which are partly very problematic, says Mick Prinz. It points to games in which players experience World War II from the perspective of the German army and to the proliferation of games that positively evaluate the National Socialist period, so-called mods. These additional game levels can in principle be created by any player and attached to the game and played with other players. "Right-wing extremists try to use the opportunities created anywhere where content can be created by users themselves, User Generated Content. This is how racist mods and anti-Semitic mods are created," says Mick Prinz. The attack in the city of Halle, during which extremists right wanted to enter a synagogue with a gun, to kill as many as possible themselves, can be imitated by playing the game "Roblox". This mod has been retired in the meantime.

Alarm: Children's game that positively evaluates the National Socialist period

"Roblox" is an online game, which is much preferred by children and youth all over the world. It can be described as a digital version of the building blocks of hand-held games, Lego games. Players can create their own scene where they want to play and access scenes created by other players. But this also creates opportunities for right-wing extremists to create their own game scenes to glorify National Socialism. Hitler salutes, Nazi uniforms, Nazi cross flags, concentration camps, gas chambers were all part of the child's play that was alerted and removed from the Internet.

At the end of October 2023, teenagers organized a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Roblox. According to the British newspaper "Jewish News", the protest was not only peaceful. Among other things, screenshots of an Israeli flag burning and an avatar speaking anti-Israel news texts were published. Although Nazi propaganda, anti-Semitism and racism are officially banned in games, they appear from time to time, because every day more than 70 million players circulate on "Roblox" and enter new content.

Relationships in Online-Games: toxic as before

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an American organization that fights against discrimination against Jewish youth, writes in its latest report of 2022 that 77 percent of online gamers are harassed and insulted by other gamers, 34 percent of Jewish players admit to being harassed because of their identity. The survey was done with nearly 100 million Americans. The survey also shows that 20 percent of online gamers are for "White Supremacy," a racist ideology that recognizes that white people are better than others and therefore should rule.

"Right-wing extremists are a vocal, but feel-good minority in the gaming community when discriminatory, sexist and racist content is normalized. In some sectors of gaming culture, hate is commonplace. There is a poisoning of gaming that cannot be hidden ," says Mick Prinz. "It would be wrong to say that the gaming world has a problem with right-wing extremism. Because it is society that has a problem with right-wing extremism."

The culture of non-forgetfulness: games have an important function

The fight against right-wing populism in Germany, whose rise is reflected in the poll numbers of the AfD, the right-wing populist party, and the fight against tasteless and anti-Semitic games and mods has become the cause of game creator Yaar Harell. "I have the impression that an earthquake has hit the media and politics and that it is now being understood that we need new forms of interactive storytelling and the culture of non-forgetfulness," he says. Harrel is currently working on the game "When God Was fall asleep", a game in which players take on very different roles, the role of a ten-year-old Jewish girl who, together with her younger brother, fights in Krakow to escape Nazi crimes, and the role of a young Nazi officer.

It's a way of making games followed by another game creator, Luc Bernard, who last year created a virtual Holocaust Museum for the game's Fortnite attacker. Anti-Semitism in games can best be combated by resolutely eradicating it. of right-wing extremist content and glorifications of National Socialism from game platforms and with the addition of opposite content: with games and mods that touch emotionally, that raise awareness of anti-Semitism and keep the memory of the Holocaust alive./ DW