Video Game Genocide

by Xiuhcoatl of Aztlan Rising

The recent debate over immigration has nothing to do with terrorism or border security. Immigration “reform” in America is driven by widespread xenophobia, the colonizer’s mentality and plain old racism.

Now, with Minutemen on the border and the President promising National Guard deployment there, anti-Mexican sentiment and reactionary xenophobia in this country has been turned into a video game. “Border Patrol,” developed by neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, puts the player in the role of a hunter/murderer who patrols the border. The objective: “Keep them out…at any cost!” “Them,” means the “wetbacks” trying to cross the border from Mexico.

As if the mere concept of a game that requires you to shoot indigenous migrants were not insulting enough, Metzger identified each character with a common stereotype of Mexican people.

The “Mexican nationalist” holds a Mexican flag and totes two guns as he runs across the river. The “drug smuggler” carries a bag of marijuana on his back. The most offensive target is the “breeder,” a pregnant Mexican woman who lugs two children behind her. In true neo-Nazi fashion, the author exhibits an obvious lack of respect for all women, identifying those who give us life with the label of an animal. In this scene the game credits you with four “kills” – one for the mother, one for each child, and one for the unborn baby.

This “kill them all” mentality isn’t mere fantasy – it’s Western history relived on a video screen. No game better illustrates the point than “Gun,” set in the American Old West. Colton White, a hunter turned gunslinger, must kill Apache Indians in order to “advance.” As White, you slaughter the Apache people, scalping as many as you can with your “scalping knife.” The message of these games is clear – genocide against indigenous people is still accepted and encouraged in the US.

Since the introduction of movies in the US, indigenous people have been portrayed as villains, savages, rivals of righteous white cowboys against whom anything goes. Today, we see the same relationship in the struggle between the “upright” white police officer and brown skinned gang members. Racism against Indians has always been commonplace, but these “games” take it to new proportions.

The purpose of the games is threefold: as a recruitment tool for hate groups, they portray people of color as sub-human; they serve to desensitize the public and potential recruits to very real crimes against humanity, like mass deportations, hate crimes and mass incarceration; if the people can be numbed to this brutality and convinced that the targets are sub-human, the next step will be one we have seen before – genocide.

Europeans colonists engaged in the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of Indians and of Africans with no remorse. 100 million Native Americans – our ancestors - and 100 million Africans were ultimately killed at the hands of white colonialists and slavers. European culture was desensitized to these atrocities by the dehumanization of non-whites. This condition is known as the colonizer’s mentality, and it is recreated, and meant to be recreated, in the mind of everyone playing these “games.”

The neo-Nazi “National Alliance,” creators of the video game Ethnic Cleansing, know this all too well. Ethnic Cleansing encourages you to play a skinhead or a noose-wielding Klan member. You patrol the streets of a city which has been devastated by gangs of “sub-humans.” From the words of the creators, you “run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics.”

Ethnic cleansing in the US is not an implausible course. The government is already building concentration camps for migrants. Soon, the law will allow them stop anybody on the streets with brown skin to ask for proof of citizenship. We have been stripped of our rights by the Patriot Act. The American Indian holocaust is very real; it has endured the test of time, and it continues, both in the real world and in the media. These “games” are nothing but video genocide.