Nazis and computer games: Right-wing extremist computer games: Shooting Aryans in cyberspace

Computer games with racist, anti-Semitic and nationalist messages have allegedly become a new ideological vehicle for the extreme right in recent years. As part of a right-wing extremist everyday culture on the World Wide Web, they are increasingly being used to spread neo-Nazi ideology. However, anti-Semitic and anti-Turkish video games were already circulating in German schoolyards in the 1980s and were far more successful than their successors today.

On social media, extreme right-wingers are all too happy to portray themselves as brave heroes who go to war against an overpowering opponent, although in the boring “real life” it’s usually not even enough to win. These wild fantasies are inspired by a computer game released in February that is distributed by a right-wing extremist from Austria: “The Great Rebellion” is a run’n’gun roguelite, which means you run and shoot around in levels generated by programmed randomness. From the so-called flying discs to the Jewish global conspiracy, the game offers everything that concerns right-wing extremists in their reactionary world of thought.

The dystopia depicted in the game, according to which humanity is controlled by chips in the brain and the white population is systematically replaced, corresponds to a Manichaean worldview: the heterosexual Aryans from the kingdom of light must be taken away from the multicultural kingdom of darkness. “Non-white people, trans and genderqueer people are turned into apocalyptic threats here,” says the Amadeu Antonio Foundation on Platform X, summarizing the enemy image created in the game. Furthermore, Nancy Faeser, George Soros and Karl Lauterbach were chosen to serve as the so-called final opponents for the shooting comrades.

The majority of right-wing extremist games are, even by modest standards, of low quality, both in terms of gameplay and graphics. This is exactly what the Austrian programmer behind the “The Great Rebellion” project wanted to change. His aim was to get out of the niche. This project can be considered a failure. With 86 simultaneous players being the highest value on the Steam gaming platform, the response is extremely low. This means that the game reaches far fewer consumers than its intellectual predecessors.

The beginnings of right-wing extremist games date back to the 80s. In 1986 the “Anti-Turk Test” was published, which according to the company was “made in Buchenwald” and whose authors were identified as “Hitler and Hess”. “With this program, our German friends can determine whether they like Turks or would prefer to see them without heads,” the game explained. If you answered the test questions correctly, the following message appeared on the screen: “Bravo, Hitler Youth!” If you answered incorrectly: “Wrong – off to Auschwitz!”

The most infamous game at that time was “KZ Manager”. The first version, in which you take on the role of a concentration camp commander, was developed for the Commodore 64. A report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center from 1991 describes a version for the Amiga that, in contrast to the previous version, had very good graphics quality. From this, the authors of the report concluded that the game’s programmers had to have deep knowledge of computer game production – there were professionals at work. A survey of students in Austria at the time found that 39 percent of respondents knew the game and 22 percent had played it before.

The mass distribution of pirated copies enabled a dizzying reach at the time. This will not be the case for the game “The Great Rebellion”. Distribution via the online platform Steam guarantees worldwide marketing, but the game also has its price, namely 19.50 euros. As long as it isn’t offered for free, “The Great Rebellion” will definitely get lost in the mass of tens of thousands of games. By the way, its aesthetic is officially inspired by the science fiction genre of cyberpunk. The product description on Steam talks about “technocratic elites striving for digital immortality,” and you can win “spirits of European heroes who give you special powers” ​​as helpful allies. So reactionary kitsch nonsense.

Right-wing extremist games are the result of political instrumentalization. But they also express the contradictions of a generational conflict within the extreme right: Just as right-wing rock was once largely rejected by long-established comrades because the music’s African-American roots contradicted their racist ideology, but it nevertheless became one of the most important segments of right-wing extremist music , there could also be an establishment in the gaming sector. However, this works differently than the developers of the Nazi games imagine: Organized right-wing extremists have long been hanging out in the online groups of well-known games and are using the free space on the Internet to spread their anti-human ideas. Right-wing extremist memes and symbols are not uncommon on the gaming platform Roblox, which is populated by 60 million children and young people worldwide. “He came to a Star Wars game with his Nazi uniform and said that his country was proud of this uniform,” reported a user on Heise Online about one such encounter. Swastika symbols are banned on the Roblox platform, but there are many ways to get around such bans.

On the platform, journalists found game worlds in which you can re-enact right-wing extremist terrorist attacks, such as the 2019 attack on the synagogue in Halle and the subsequent rampage. According to the SWR investigative format “Vollbild”, numerous neo-Nazi slogans, swastikas and instructions for making bombs were also found on the popular service Discord, which is often used for communication in online games.

The distribution of right-wing extremist content via such mass-market channels requires far less investment of capital and work than programming a computer game. As long as the providers of such games and services do not enforce compliance with their own rules, right-wing extremists will successfully exploit this freedom.