These organizations take ordinary behavior online, say its endemic examples of the far-right, and then advocate that they must gain control of video games to stop it.
The games industry is being pushed by Germany and Electronic Arts in a direction that, if successful, would mean the mass de-platforming of right-wingers and free speech in gaming. The Anti-Defamation League and the big names in Silicon Valley have already signed on to similar projects in the US. All of which, if successful, will mean the inevitable control of gaining by the woke.
It starts with Germany. Martin Lorber, Electronic Arts Public Relations Director for German-speaking countries, announced in April a dual project between itself, the German government, and two new organizations: Good Gaming – Well Played Democracy and Keinen Pixel den Faschisten (No Pixels for Fascists). Their stated goal is to make sure gamers do not become radicalized into neo-Nazis. However, even the smallest bit of digging reveals that this project is, in truth, nothing more than a full-throated attempt to force the games industry and social media platforms to bow down before social justice.
The two organizations joining this collaboration contain some of the most radical activists for social justice inside Germany. The organization behind Good Gaming are the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a left-wing activist group headed by former frequent Stasi informant Anette Kahane. Kahane's foundation got in trouble last year when a brochure sent to German schools suggested you could recognize a girl's family as far-right if a girl wears dresses and does chores.
Good Gaming writes its job is to analyze "how right-wing alternative actors are increasingly trying to foment a misanthropic atmosphere on gaming platforms." They have a problem with right-wingers enjoying space on Steam, for example. Social media posts show their plan is a propaganda war, that they want to educate young people to recognize "hate" online and push back against right-wing ideas.
#EAWarAgainstGamers Translations - Part 1 "Gaming Culture: Projects To Strengthen Digital Civil Society" is transparently announcing EA's support for projects intended to profile gamers for "right-wing sentiments" and turn them into ideologues/activists.https://t.co/TNVTLGMRZA pic.twitter.com/1XD3vAS8iY
— Lunar Archivist (@LunarArchivist)
As bad as that is, her big sister is far worse.
No Pixels for Fascists is a far-left grassroots Antifascist organization made up of websites, media figures, news organizations, research groups, and game studios. Their stated goals include educating organizations, and people about how gamers get radicalized into becoming far-right and how the right-wing use internet spaces. According to their documents, this includes teaching organizations and individuals how to identify right-wing mindsets alone by looking at online social media profiles.
No Pixels co-founders are Pascal Wagner, a left-wing German journalist, and Aurelia Brandenberg, a lefty historian/blogger. Their organization harbors a deep hatred for gamers and is a proponent of the games' right-wing radicalization myth.
According to Brandenburg, gamers are actively anti-diversity and right-wing. They are full of "toxic nerd masculinity in their treehouse" as they actively fight to make sure nobody except cis white males can play video games.
This progressive bias is relevant because it shows a hollowness to the scientific basis of this project & the naked ambitions of the organizations driving it. No Pixel's advocates that scientific research gets used exclusively to prove how evil and problematic gamers and game spaces are. Even so far, that objective scientific work must always take a back seat to fulfill their ideological and political needs.
That premise is entirely flawed. Gamers are not, in fact, toxic or overwhelmingly right-wing, as proven repeatedly by Psychology Today writer Chris Ferguson. Ferguson is a leading authority who has published several studies on these issues. His most recent work on games-radicalization theory proves there isn't any radicalization of any kind. Gamergate, the group, usually demonized as the pinnacle of evil, are not conservative but center-left.
And far from being an outlier, Ferguson's research is backed up and not much debated by scientists. So why is Silicon Valley & Germany doing this project?
No Pixels makes it very clear in several blog posts and articles that they consider not just the far right as problematic but all right-wing. That most traditional gamers are so hopelessly bigoted that even allowing gamers any space on any platform would mean the degradation and harm of women and people of color. With only a cursory amount of reading of their blog, you quickly realize this push has very little to do with actual bigotry & everything to do with pushing mass de-platforming and giving activists power and control.
Cited gate-way drugs to becoming alt-right are silly and innocuous. "Evidence" includes , enjoying , disliking the, and noticing that women often enjoy playing mobile games like .
Over and over, these organizations take ordinary behavior online, say its endemic examples of the far-right, and then advocate that they must gain control of video games, platforms like Steam and social media spaces to stop it.
This takeover of gaming doesn't stop in Germany but is global. Last week non-profit org Games for Change unveiled its advisory board for Raising Good Gamers. In an English mirroring of the No Pixels project, this effort supported by the Anti-Defamation League, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and other aims to create a "more diverse, inclusive, and positive online environment for youth."
This push is almost an English mirror to No Pixels. It harbors the same disdain of gamers and wishes to remake gaming in its own image. To quote their white paper, gaming culture is "exclusionary and discriminatory, reproducing and encoding systems of bias and inequity that pervade society as a whole." To them, gaming and gamers must become "important and potentially powerful tools for achieving broader goals of social justice."
If you care about free-speech or gaming, this push by the woke should worry you. But not surprise you. In 2020, when everything from sports to dating has become new battlegrounds for the intersectional left, did we think gaming would be immune?
Yet, there's hope. Gamers six years ago were able to fight off the takeover by the social justice left. Let us hope that they can do so again.
Thank you to internet sleuth Lunar Archivist who translated the articles & archived them from German into English after being alerted by very concerned German gamers who do not want their games taken away.
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