cross-posted from: https://goblin.band/notes/a121dz47s3oi4dgd
[Documentary] The blood on our Controllers - The Complicity of the Game Industry in the Palestinian Genocide
Quoted from the video description:
“The blood on our Controllers” is an amateur documentary made to denounce the role of the video game industry in the normalization of the Palestinian genocide, through its close relation with the military industrial complex and the representation of Arab communities in games. It is a collaborative work between developers, artists, animators, and academicians to show how our games are doing wrong or right, what the game industry could be and what needs to be done for it to happen.
It’s time for those who have been the loudest for so long to try and learn to listen.
Speakers (in order of appearance): Hippolyte Caubet, Rami Ismail, Younès Rabii, Florent Maurin, Meghna Jayanth, Holly Nielsen, Rasheed Abueideh, Elodie Roblain, Florence Nichols Smith
Mass shooters are obviously despicable, but they wouldn’t generally be terrorists. The definition of terrorist requires a political motivation. But even if you did include school shooters in the count, they still would be greatly outnumbered by the amount of people in actual terrorist groups. Some like Hezbollah are effectively armies. Also, I can’t think of a game where you deal with isolated mass shooters.
Dictionary.com defines terrorism as:
And if you don’t think mass shooters have “political, social, or ideological objectives” then you apparently missed the point where we as a people decided that it is better to not read the crazy manifestos of mass shooters.
But also? What do you call groups that use sexual violence against a populace and actively target civilians? Because I call those Russians and Israelis and Hamas and… What do you call groups that actively kidnap people, brutally torture them, and sexually degrade them while taking pictures for the clout? Because I call that “America at Abu Ghraib and countless other black sites”. And so forth.
Because, at the end of the day? One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. It is all a matter of how they are reported on and how much plausible deniability any standing government has to the military force they are actively backing and supporting.
And that is where the video this thread is about comes into play. I have very strong feelings about equating Palestinian suffering to the depiction of Arabs in media in large part because of how the predominantly Arab nations have treated Palestinians over the decades (because this has been going on a lot longer than one year…). But, if people can get their thinly veiled racist heads out of their asses for a moment, they will realize that what we have seen in video games over the past few decades is no different than fucking Superman fighting “The Japoteur” back in the day.
It is all about dehumanizing and Other’ing an enemy. Because explaining the human rights and social issues that may or may not warrant intervention (see: Iraq both times the US invaded and Afghanistan the one time we fucked that country to death) is a lot harder than just saying “They are terrorists and they hate God and they are going to rape and kill your family”. And media is how you reinforce that.
Which is very evident when you look at the Call of Dutys of the world. Arab-coded villains are monsters who torture and blow up civillians. White Russians are genius strategists who have super elaborate plots. Arab-coded villains are terrorists who happen to be the government of whatever country you are trying to destroy. Russians are “ultra nationalists” and there is almost always something about how “Moscow is looking the other way on this one but if you are captured we will disavow any knowledge of you”. And so forth.
So decide if you want to think or if you want to just spew propaganda with thinly veiled racism associated with it.