 Hi, we are back. And we will have a talk by Manuel Mannhardt. It's called Nazis in Games. The talk will be in English, but there will be a Q&A afterwards. But as we are streaming on two channels right now, the Q&A will only be on the rest-reality channel. So watch it and then stay with us afterwards for the Q&A. Oh, and the questions you can of course, as always, ask in Twitter with the hashtags rc3-1 or rc3- rest-reality and on the IRC. Hey everybody, thank you very much for your interest in my talk about Nazis in Games. Nazis in Games, in the first place, that simply means how Nazis are presented in games. But after that, I will go on about how games are useful for Nazis or fascist ideas in general and what should be changed about that. Let's start with a depiction of Nazis in Games with a historical setting. World War II is a popular setting for games. Not for all genre of course, but in the first place, strategy and action games. Such games usually focus on players kill and challenging gameplay rather than ethical questions. They focus on combat situations against the dangerous opponent, killing or being killed. Not so much on the slaughter of civilians, not only because it would be cruel, but also because it wouldn't be a challenge, it wouldn't be gameplay. However, that easily makes Nazi soldiers look better than they were. Like, just one side of an armed conflict, maybe with different tanks and uniforms. But the gameplay is mostly the same when you compare Nazis and allies. The Holocaust or Shoah frequently has little to no place in World War II Great Games. Not only for moral reasons, but also because it does not easily translate into gameplay. And after all, most games want to let you overcome obstacles and feel good about your achievements. That's not easy with a topic like the Holocaust, no matter which side you are on. On top of that, developers might want to avoid controversies about such a difficult topic, so they simply stay away from it. But omitting the Holocaust is not a good idea either. You could interpret it like implicitly denying it. You might say, okay, but it's a game after all, like everybody knows a game is not a history book. And indeed, pretty much everybody is aware you should not just believe what games tell you. Thing is, that awareness is not enough to protect us from mixing up the history we see in games and the history we know from more trusted sources. Daniel Jere examined this issue in his dissertation. He did not work on World War II games, but showed, for example, that people who played Assassin's Creed III thought more often than others that the Boston Tea Party had been a violent event. It was not. Even history students, even though they explicitly said they'd be aware games can be trusted when it comes to history, that awareness just isn't always enough, obviously. Now, I don't want to pretend games could singlehandedly turn players into Holocaust deniers. Hopefully, most players know well enough that Nazis murdered about 6 million Jews, as well as other people they considered inferior. But I do believe games can easily tell a story that is compatible with such knowledge, and still dangerously wrong. The idea of the clean Wehrmacht, a widespread belief not only among gamers, that the Wehrmacht did not have much or anything to do with the Holocaust and other atrocities. That's exactly what many games show, even as the story occasionally mentions the Holocaust, that seems to happen somewhere else, like none of your business. Nazi soldiers actively, directly and knowingly supported systematic genocide, especially in the East. To be clear, I'm not talking about collateral damage, but intended extermination. But in Steel Division II, for example, you can lead the Nazis on the Eastern Front, fight your battles, soldiers against soldiers, tanks against tanks and see nothing about the thousands of murdered civilians there. Admitting this side of the Nazis' military campaigns is credible to an awful lot of people. It even reinforces common misconceptions and makes glorification of Nazi soldiers seem acceptable. Several historians critical commented those tendencies in games over the past years. If you want to read more on it, a good and brief article by Eugen Pfister is available online in English, including hints for further reading, just search for Showa and dig the digital games. It's really easy to find. Steel Division was just one example. Company Feroz, Hearts of Iron, Battlefield V, they might all be great games gameplay-wise, and I really don't think the developers had bad intentions. But they all have similar issues with how they depict Nazis. And at least the Wehrmacht. So that's the bad stuff. But you might know that some games are much worse in that respect, some even glorify the Nazis because of their atrocities, but those are generally shitty niche products. I'm not even talking about here. They exist, they are bad, but I assume that's abundantly clear and obvious. So let's ignore these games for now. On a more positive note, game developers too seem to be increasingly aware that you should not just turn a blind eye to the Holocaust in a World War II context. The recent installments of the well-known first-person shooter series Wolfenstein and Call of Duty are maybe the most surprising. They are clearly referencing the Holocaust and the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideology. In Wolfenstein, the new order, you're even at a fictional concentration camp. And other historical concentration camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau, are mentioned there. That's still not much. And it might not be done perfectly. But I'd consider them honest attempts to raise awareness. Maybe it's even a trend to be continued. Already more daring than the big companies in that respect are smaller indie game developers. Several indie games moved away from armed conflict, focusing the life of civilians instead. Atem Tat 1942 and through the darkest of times are two recently published games telling stories of civilian resistance against the Nazis. Of course, the gaming experience in these cases is wildly different from Wolfenstein or Call of Duty. Those games won't make you feel great and powerful and you won't be able to crush the Nazis. But they are doing a much better job at showing what Nazis are about rather than drowning problematic topics in a sea of soldier scams, tanks and power fantasies. I'd also like to point out the possibilities of fictional and more abstract approaches. Nazis don't have to be strictly historical Nazis. And again, Wolfenstein shows that in several ways. Important parts of Wolfenstein setting are fictional. They've got high tech gear or even occult powers. They are about to win World War Two or even did it and conquered the United States. The image above shows them during the parade in Roswell. Unlike and still the vision Nazis are not in the game in order to make it feel historical. The developers did not even consider shooting Nazis a political statement. For them, it goes without saying that Nazis are bad. So they are just used as stereotypical enemies. Instead of a miscital aliens, robots or demons Wolfenstein uses Nazis, shooting them just seems like a no brainer. And if you are using Nazis like that, deviations from historical Nazis don't even matter so much. The lowest screenshot shows Nazis from the German version of Wolfenstein two without the most prominent Nazi symbols. Because showing them in games used to be prohibited in Germany. Now this developer did much more than needed. They also removed Hitler's signature beard and renamed him to Hyler. That's all a bit weird and funny, but it also leads to the question. What do such games? What do such changes do to the game? If you remove the symbols of Nazism from stereotypical enemies without context, that would take away the whole point of fighting them. But the Nazis in the new Wolfenstein games still have enough context. Even without their symbols, they are still obviously cruel, anti-Semitic racist supremacists. You'd still have plenty of reasons to fight them. But also means games and stories in general can deal with Nazi ideology and fascism in general, without even being about history, or ever using the term Nazi. Here are two screenshots from the game's Caves of Cut and Shadowrun Dragonfall. Caves of Cut is inspired by old rogue games and ASCII graphics, so the graphics are very abstract. The fascists there don't look like Nazis and they are called Putus Templar. But their description is clear enough. They are an order of knights who loathe mutation in any form. They are among cut last true men and they have pledged their lives to eradicating the mutant swarm that creeps toward their homes from all sides. That's not as strictly, that's not strictly a racial ideology like the one of the Nazis, but one about difference between pure humans and human-like mutations. In any case, it still is a form of supremacism with genocidal goals and that it clearly resembles Nazi ideology. In Shadowrun, there is the Humanist Poli Club, which does not visually resemble Nazis either, but the propaganda against so called meta-humans sounds uncomfortably familiar. Yelf, Djorg, the troll, all are parasites leaching away at your prosperity and happiness. It's time to wake up and do something about it. So what are you going to do, human? There's more like that and the writing on the walls has perched the meta-humans and that's what these guys are about. The Nazi inspiration is quite obvious here. Ultimately, this kind of abstraction from historical Nazis might even help to focus on ideas and actions rather than the superficial characteristics of Nazis, like their outfits. After all, the term Nazi is not reserved for the members of the historical NSDAP and Nazis in real life are the ones who are not. And Nazis in real life today don't necessarily look like they did in Nazi Germany. Maybe now they run more about Muslims and less about gays, but they don't necessarily call themselves Nazis and they might not even worship Hitler. But nevertheless, share the same kind of harmful supremacist beliefs. What actually defines Nazism or fascism is not easy to answer. Most definitions of fascism revolve around ultra nationalism and so-called pan-genetic moment. That means they believe in the rebirth of their national power and they usually try to achieve that by forcefully perching society and drawing strength from extreme unity, discipline and obedience all for the sake of the nation's rebirth. If you're looking for them in gaming contexts, we can mostly find three aspects. First, supremacism and contempt against others, especially if they draw the line at genetics or traits that define identities. It's basically unprovoked intolerance. And even if it's only one step towards fascism, it's kind of a foundation for all the rest. Second, dehumanization and genocide, which makes things far worse, obviously, they tend to be based on supremacism and contempt, but further aim for that radical rebirth of the nation, which in their view justifies some kind of radical purge. And then there's a third point, a huge repertoire of fascist aesthetics, not exclusive characteristics of Nazis relatively harmless by themselves, but they are very common in popular media and games in particular. Let's say they are not enough to call someone fascist, but they still have an influence. I get back to that. So these three points just serve to clarify what I'm talking about on the following, even in cases where there are no historical Nazi symbols to be found. Now, let's have a look at gaming communities. The existence of Nazi-like Steam profiles has been pointed out before, but I decided to go and find my own. Not only to get some fresh examples, but also because some of the known ones are no longer to be found. Partially for violating Steam's terms of service, others might have just changed or gone private. Also, many groups are just deserted by now, without a new comment in years. Anyway, finding samples is still fairly easy. Start Steam, look for groups, search for the word Reich, pick one and look at its members. The comment sections and other groups then continue like that, jumping from one profile to the other. Let's start softly with Rommel. This is a beautiful shrine to Erwin Rommel. You can feel the love poured into this one. Rommel seems like a good fit for the idea of a clean Wehrmacht. He is not known for war crimes and anti-Semitism, but for strategic skill. He did not even obey all of Hitler's orders and probably turned against him in 1944. However, let me be clear that he disagreed with Hitler mostly on strategic questions, even admired Hitler at least until 1939. Even if he did not vocally support Nazi atrocities, he did not really oppose them either. And he definitely supported the military expansion of Nazi Germany. But I assume you get why he seems like a good pick for fans of the Wehrmacht, even those who don't consider themselves Nazis. There are more than 2000 Erwin Rommel profiles on Steam, 2400 something. And at least some of them actually indicate sympathy for fascism on top of that. The achievement presented next to his name here is for making all nations in hearts of iron fascist. This player is a member in some groups that are full of anti-Semitic comments and celebrating Hitler's birthday. He's also in the Steam group of the Identitarian Movement, you know, an actual far right group, but an actual political agenda. So enough about Rommel for now. Here's Sgt. Steiner, also a very popular name on Steam, not quite as popular as Rommel, but still. That's a reference to a character known from the film Cross of Iron. To make it short, he is fictional, a fictional representative of the clean Wehrmacht again. Both the book and the movie at least have a deliberately bleak anti-war tone. This profile, however, not so much. I mean, all the Waffen SS division insignia in the background, the flags, badges and achievements like propaganda machine and tigers are forever. And of course, the old national anthem. All of that is not even fitting for the character of Steiner, who originally is not about glorifying war and Nazism, but even partially opposing them. Anyway, somewhere in his profile, the user explains he just thinks this profile is cool. And although it might suggest sympathies with Nazism, he says that's most definitely not the case. Cool. Anyway, this is a good occasion to point out which tools are given to players on Steam, because the background, all those patches and the emojis are not user generated content, but all made by game developers so they can be earned and traded by players. Some game developers obviously thought it's a cool idea to give all those gadgets to players. And well, who could resist the urge to use the potential and look like an actual Nazi? Well, let's move on faster from here. Here is a small collection of portraits, all from one and the same Steam group called Das Sturmlokal. First of them is a proud crusader or Templar guy who happens to be part of several anti-Muslim groups. There is more to say about the second user. His name might be a bit strange, and it is changing frequently, but the picture is quite telling. That's Adolf Eichmann, one of the main responsibles for planning the Holocaust, who fled Germany at the end of World War two, and lived for another two decades, if I remember correctly, cooperated with dictators in Argentina and elsewhere until he was delivered and tried in Israel. His trial also provided the context of this quote. To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing. Now, that's just one of the most disgusting and harmful Nazis right there. The third profile is obviously just some corrupt Nazi propaganda from the NSD and Nazi student organization, where the partially cut off Hakenkreuz, you can see it still in the corner. And the last one is Gerhard Barcon, one of the most successful pilots of Nazi Germany, accompanied by the sweet line, grandpa was a soldier, not a criminal. So we're having an anti-Muslim crusader, an unrepentant genocide on Nazi, actual Nazi propaganda and believers in the clean bear, all in one group together. And the first two profiles I showed you are just two or three links away from that too. So they're not part of the group, but I came there from those two. Now, I don't want to give openly racist or anti-Semitic comments to stage here. But feel free to check them out yourself. If you don't believe they can be found in those profiles and groups, it's quite easy to find them. Also, as said, discussions in steam groups have mostly died down over the past years. So that part is not even the most relevant today. But you can still see that the far right did actually use steam to connect with like-minded people. For example, the Nordic Resistance Movement, which sent an invitation for the new Discord server, a new one at the time for people who want to talk about politics without fearing censorship. Now, the Nordic Resistance Movement is certainly far right. Using violence, streaming often preparing for the liberation war, they are connected to German, neo-Nazis, but also to UK and Russian right-wing terrorist organizations. And in some countries, that movement itself is officially considered terrorist. About one year ago, hardliners of that movement even split off to go for a more secretive and radical, less parliamentary, but more violent approach. So these guys are not just playing games. Link is now useless, by the way. Discord, meanwhile, deleted a bunch of far right Discord servers, including this one. While the Discord group no longer exists, several profiles openly associated with that movement are still active on Steam. To be clear, this is not only an issue on Steam, but Steam is big, allows a lot of customization, and it is mostly public. I'm not friends with any of these guys, so that information is available to everyone, really. You can find similar things on other platforms, and also in games themselves. For example, this car paint, which has briefly been one of the most popular player-made customizations in lead for speed. Briefly, because EA acted soon after this has been called out on Twitter. Good on that. Screenshot below happens to be from my favorite game, Tooth and Tail. I'm also making official patches for that game, and, well, this screenshot illustrates that it can be hard for developers to prevent all signs of Nazism. It's a strategy game, not at all sandboxy, but some players still managed to draw a Hakenkreuz with barbed wire before losing against me. Gladly, I also destroyed the Hakenkreuz before that. But anyway, that just shows it's so simple. Wherever you can put down something in a five-on-five target, you can leave your Nazi mark. There are not many symbols that are simply enough for that. It's easy to draw, easy to recognize, and I mean, the car is not exactly an artistic masterpiece either, and still got really popular. Sometimes Nazi stuff might just be an incredibly easy way to gain attention and be atchee as fuck. Often when such issues are pointed out, the discussion comes to a point when someone asks, is this even relevant? Are they serious about this? Do you really assume they are Nazis because of this shit? And isn't it just a minority getting too much attention? I cannot tell exact numbers, of course, but it's pretty safe to assume that in any public gaming community with more than a few hundred members, you'll end up finding Nazi content, even in the relatively good community of tooth and tail, even if I actively work against it. Some explicitly call it a kind of roleplay. For example, because they're playing in a war game clan, and in many cases one side is playing Axis and they're doing it with style. On top of that, German engineering and especially Wehrmacht gear generally have a good reputation among people fashionated with military stuff, so looking like a Nazi soldier might be considered attractive, especially if you think the Wehrmacht did nothing wrong, of course. I'd say they just want to trigger the lefties. They're doing it for a lull on the fame. They say it's all irony, satire, whatever. And in many cases, I am actually convinced that the Nazi profile by itself does not say much about the respective player's political stance. I also know of leftists and punks in Nazi attire, though they are more likely to go for communist references. Only in the select few cases, we have good reasons to believe they actually share fascist beliefs. For example, when they are connected to a live far-right organization, organizations like the ones I mentioned, and they and their members definitely deserve to be called Nazis. And it's awfully easy to navigate from Nazi looks to such indications of actual politics. That means looking like a Nazi for whatever reason helps Nazis in several ways. Makes it easier for Nazis to find and recruit like-minded people. They're obviously using structures like gaming communities, looking for players that are giving signals of interest in fascist politics. Not all of them are actually interested, but they will find some. At the same time, it makes it harder to identify those bad actors, because they are drowned in a sea of role-play novels and such. And potentially, it makes it easy for all of them to retreat behind the excuse of it's just fun and free speech and the general normalization of Nazi references. On top of that, Nazi references might be easy to shrug up for privileged white guys like me, but being confronted with stuff like that on every other gaming server makes it a really uncomfortable environment for players who actually are the immediate victims of Nazi ideology. So for whatever reason, public Nazi role-play is done. Stop it. It's harmful on many levels, even without any bad intentions. Now, even if you don't look or talk or act like a Nazi anywhere, there are still things you can change to make gaming better in that respect. Let's start with game development. Be more conscious about which mindsets the different aspects of the game are catering to. Obviously, Wolfenstein is a game about killing Nazis. But in other ways, it's not really far from being a damn good game for fascists, too. Stripped of the explicit ideology, it's about the struggle against the dangerous and monstrous enemy, but a brave, strong and somewhat stoic warrior will eventually defeat them anyway to purge and restore the nation. That warrior is a muscular blonde white man, of course, often wielding two weapons at a time, pretty typical power fantasy. Can be read as an ironic twist that the Nazis are being killed by a guy that happens to look like they want him on their side? But as far as I know, that interpretation is rather new, and when the protagonist's face was first revealed, the vast majority of action heroes just happened to look exactly like this. In the same way, it is likely a conscious twist that the game uses fascist aesthetics on the cover image. All black, white and red, with one man in the middle standing tall above the defeated print by blocky architecture. Here the Nazism obviously goes down, the protagonist is standing on cleansed ruins, and the dawn of a new better world can be anticipated. Might be conscious, but structurally, this is very close to what Susan Sontak described as typical fascist aesthetics based on linear Rivenstall films. Here are some quotes, you don't necessarily find all of that in a single game, but you will probably recognize many aspects in a variety of games. The Nazi films are epics of achieved community, in which everyday reality is transcendent through ecstatic self-control and submission. They are about the triumph of power. Just think of the totally obedient armies and smooth production lines like you generally have them in strategy or otherwise tactical games. Everyone is doing exactly what you want and the perfect execution of your great plans will make your faction victorious. Especially action games are never about normality, they're constantly fighting for a cause and an epic struggle. The next quote, the contrast between the clean and the impure, the incorruptible and the defiled, the physical and the mental, the joyful and the critical. The topics of corruption and purity are very common in games, especially if you look at one of the many games inspired by a lovecraftian horror who has been quite restless himself, but also others. For example, I used to play a lot of Blizzard games and seriously, corruption and cleansing is such an endlessly recurring topic there, yeah I got sick of it, actually, physical and joyful versus mental and critical. Well, that's also an anti-Semitic trope and it is somehow reproduced whenever you fight mad scientists and big conspiracies with complicated plans to take over the world. But you as a player, you are standing with both feet on the ground just doing what's right, what needs to be done to purge the land. Ideally, you enjoy the battle of course while your character makes some cool remarks on top of that. Yeah, piece of cake. Yeah, you know that. Only three years ago, a dissertation has been published on how fascist aesthetics live on in the popular culture of the present. The author, Jelena Yasso, she noticed that fascist aesthetics are very often stripped of their meaning and used in totally different contexts than actual Nazis would have used them. Only abstract connotations remain, something powerful, something wicked, somehow impressive and fascinating. Obviously, that makes fascist aesthetics useful for games too, not only for depicting the enemy, but also for a somewhat edgy player character. Fascist aesthetics are not necessarily linked to fascist ideas. In popular media, they are regularly completely superficial, but they still come with some issues. It makes it way harder to safely identify seriously fascist content at the first glance, remember the player profiles. And these aesthetics still faked particularly well with fascist ideas. The third issue is all of this makes games particularly attractive for people who embrace Nazism and rather awkward for people who might have had actual negative experiences with Nazis. Now, you can probably imagine that if someone does not quite identify as Nazi, for example, because they think Nazis were actually socialists and Hitler just fucked up and that's all that wouldn't wrong, then they might very well enjoy Wolfenstein too, saying I'm not a Nazi, I'm just critical of political, Islam, cultural, Marxism, Zionism, racism against white people and all that stuff. They're not quite like your Wolfenstein Nazis, because the game is not meant to be a commentary on today's forms of fascism. Developers made that clear. So even today's fascists probably don't even identify with those stereotypical enemies in Wolfenstein. It might be a good game. Its story and heroes are obviously against Nazis, but otherwise that game is not deeply anti-fascist, which leads me to the questions how can we go deeper? I just briefly talk about one good example that is through the darkest of times. One of the developers himself, Jörg Friedig, already talked and wrote about how thoroughly anti-fascist design can work, so I'll just reference a bit of that. Through the darkest of times went for an unusual art style, inspired by art Nazis prohibited and ridiculed as degenerate art. This art is inherently anti-fascist, not only because of its history, but also because it defies fascist aesthetics in many ways. It does not idealize beautiful and strong bodies, but emphasizes the bleaker sides of life, desperation, fear, weakness, sadness, destruction. Bodies and faces are often drawn with coarse gouges like in woodcut portray, not too elegant, not too well proportioned by classical standards. Accept and celebrate some kind of human ugliness, if you want to call it like that. It's just pretty clear at the first glance that this is no game for fascists. The gameplay is not about a powerful hero either, but about a group of civilian resistance fighters who just do what they can without getting caught. They won't overthrow the Nazis, ever. You won't cleanse Germany and cause the rebirth of utopia, you'll mostly just try and help others and barely get away with it. So there's a lot more than just a general setting that can be anti-fascist in a game. You don't even need to go all in on that. You don't need to completely scrap the idea of World War II shooters and strategy games, but at least think about how they can be less of a fascist fantasy beneath the surface. So there's a lot of ways for developers to improve and a lot of aspects players or game journalists should look out for. Also, maybe think twice about patches, wallpapers and achievements that can somehow glorify Nazi Germany and fascism, which leads us back to gaming communities. Remember I told you about Caves of Cat? The game with the Pewter's Templar, which are clearly fascists in a fictional setting. The people involved in this game did a lot to create a vibrant inclusive gaming community on this court, and they are taking a clearer stance on fascism than most communities in gaming. Here are some quotes from the Code of Conduct. To maintain a pleasant atmosphere where people can relax and feel safe, we want to keep out any edgy humor or ironic bigotry even for the sake of ridiculing it. That's just pretty much what I'm asking for in scene profiles too, but they did a better job at keeping it short. They also added a note on the Pewter's Templar. Support of the Templar's fascists and genocidal behavior is prohibited. The best it reads is callousness to the reality of these things. At worst, it reads as actual support. Be sensitive when your audience includes many of those who have suffered from the historical or present consequences of genocide or eugenics. Chokes have consequences. I really love them for these lines already. The game is also pretty cool. And indeed they have an exceptionally diverse community and also a moderation team that is well aware and represents people for which many places on the internet are just too toxic to breathe in. Unfortunately, they really had a reason to write those rules down because they recently got the attention of a big streamer that is well an edgy guy doing virtual blackface and such who actually liked the game and so that many of his followers, but some of them didn't like the existing policies in the discord community and they've been quite nasty about it. So they entered the community and did what they were used to. One of the favorite topics, which also became a part of review bombings on Steam, is that the Pewter's Templar are not a faction you can join in the game. So out of the 70 factions in that game you can join exactly one, but those people demanded to play the fascist Templars and they ranted about it on many channels and they weren't nice about it. So the developer and validators eventually shut down such discussions because, as they say or as the developer said on Steam, for every one nuanced discussion about the Templar that's lost 100 more flour in its place because the mods created a comfortable space for people who don't feel welcome elsewhere. And I guess that's true. Below you can see one of several screenshots of how things look on the unofficial servers. Unofficial Discord servers created by players who like the game, but not the policies. And it's a mess, full of Nazi references, surprise. So yes, you can and you should be intolerant against intolerance. That's the bottom line of Karl Popper's paradox on of intolerance. And it seems like some gaming communities urgently need to be reminded of that. The existing community on the official Caves of Cuts server overwhelmingly supported the developers and moderators in all of this by the way because the community has been built around such principles and they wanted to protect that. It is important to start caring for an inclusive atmosphere early to oppose hateful comments even when they're just a joke not when things are about to get really messy. A community that already got used to toxicity probably does not want to change anything about that because the people who care well they already left while toxic users made themselves comfortable. That's the usual climate established in many gaming communities and there is already way harder to draw a line against fascist content. I'm coming to the end so let's sum up some of the most important parts. The parts that ideally all of us should actively communicate in gaming contexts. First of all please remember that even ironic Nazi role play is not harmless. Normalizes indicators of fascism and thus provides a great place for people who actually believe in fascist ideologies. At the same time it directly harms diversity making gaming communities a bad place for people affected by hateful ideologies. And sticking to all of that edginess because you think it's about free speech actually just makes gaming communities look bad really bad and it's no surprise that many people are generally suspicious of that. Whoever you are there are plenty of reasons to speak up against signs of fascism in games. There's no need to condemn everyone who's doing tasteful shit. Many of them just really seem to be insensitive towards issues or shows associated with Nazi representations and all that. So we've got to explain why it is harmful even if they don't mean it. Immediate success is rare in that respect. Especially the criticized person is more likely to defend directions by all means. But sometimes others are watching and might be more willing to change their mind and often they just need time for self reflection too. Anyway there are signs of improvements all over gaming communities in recent years despite all the noise coming from the far right not only in gaming contexts. So there is a need for action and awareness but fortunately there are also some good reasons to be confident but gaming can indeed get better with less Nazism. Thank you. Hey, thank you so much. This was Nazis in Games and we will have a Q&A session with Manuel on the Rest Realität channel and here on channel one there will be a news show and then at seven there will be a talk about Neues aus der Gesundheit... Sorry. Sorry. Okay, thank you so much for listening and see you later. Okay. Hallo Manuel. Hallo. Kannst du mich gut hören? Ja, ja. Bin ich auch herbar? Ja, sehr gut. Super. Okay, vielen Dank. Ah, we will keep going in English. Sorry. Thank you so much for the nice talk and we have a few questions actually. So question one is I will have to translate them simultaneously one second. Is it possible that there's... Wait a second. Ah, that gaming platforms like Steam don't really... aren't really interested in checking their content because, you know, they would lose users that are actually looking for this for the Nazi games? Gaming functions? Yeah. That's not quite clear. I mean, the impression I've had so far is that especially Steam has been very careful not to touch community moderation at all for a long time. But... And they've also been very very intransparent about their own rules. So they don't really have a clear set of rules that says we will delete this and that content but they keep their freedom, I'd say. However, I think I've noticed that they have actually increased content moderation on this Steam platform because I think I briefly mentioned that during the talk that a few groups I've I've still known from earlier have been actually deleted because of violation of terms of services. And well, some things have disappeared and there's also been far right game that should have appeared on Steam and it was already announced and people wish listed it but they at least made it hard for it to appear and eventually it got shut down completely. So I think Steam is changing that policy a bit and they're trying to do more content moderation but they don't want to get have any responsibilities or any terms that you can force them to impose. And I think that's also because they noticed that the people that are so much into those fascist politics are only a few and most of them will stay anyway. So even if they're taking if they take away the possibility to have any image, they won't. I've also seen much less Hitler pictures and so on on Steam them last time I checked. So I think things are changing there a bit and probably also because they realize well, it's not that important for most players really. Okay, to stick with the topic imagining that publishers like Riot Blizzard and so on would start censoring their content or their games. How can we make sure that other content isn't censored as well? Like for example, there are Chinese publishers who censor content that is critical about topics regarding Hong Kong, for example. I think that's a good question and I think I don't have very good answers for that really. I mean, from our perspective, there's a pretty clear difference I'd say because when we are talking about the topic of Nazis and games, then it's about, well, that what I called intolerance of the first degree. That means intolerance that is not directed against someone who actively harms you or someone who is intolerant against you. So you can be intolerant against intolerance and that's what fighting Nazism is about in many cases to break it down. But I get that this is hard to communicate internationally sometimes. And I mean, you've probably also noticed that many of the profiles I showed you were not probably not German profiles but from all over the world. And there's really probably a bit of a gap in sensitivity for how far you can go with Nazi content. And so that's really a bit of a difficult topic. I am not even actually asking too much for to keep the companies who provide platforms accountable for censoring content. But I'd really rather prefer to see communities interact and be more critical about this. Like not accepting the people you play with if they do some really actually humor stuff. Because as far as I've seen in many communities, people who really feel a bit critical about Nazi content just keep their mouth shut even if some other guy runs around with some Hitler memes and so on. And that's the first place where we could really change a lot. So I'm really rather about mobilizing the communities to make a change there than to have big structures changed and ask them to moderate everything except in maybe really extreme cases. Okay, so you say that it's more about peer pressure or social pressure that could work? Yeah, I wouldn't even call it pressure actually. It's more about being a bit more reasonable and talking to each other and telling others that this is harmful shit why they should stop it. So the next question really fits here. What would you suggest to parents or siblings who know that their child or their sibling plays like Wolfenstein like semi-fascist games or even worse and get excited about that? So what would you recommend them to do about it? I'm sorry I didn't quite understand the question. So is there something that you can recommend for example if my sibling or my child plays likes to play these kind of games? The semi-fascist games they're not very obviously Nazi games and gets really excited about it and likes to play it and I want to well of course don't want them to play it so what would you what kind of approach would you suggest? I think initially you mentioned something like Wolfenstein in which case well probably Wolfenstein is not a really good game for kids but actually from the fascist side I wouldn't even mind. I mean it's still mostly anti-fascist but it's not doing really much and I really wanted to highlight in the first place that it still can very much appeal to nowadays fascists because it still has all the things they like in it and the Nazis are really more like caricatures of bad guy. So I'd be rather soft about those not really hard cases like Wolfenstein. I mean if they are playing some really bad games those I didn't even talk about stop it because they're really intentionally glorifying Nazis but in the other cases I think just maybe talking about it educating about the things that are missing that are misrepresented in those games make sense but I really think that's hard for parents or something because they'd really have to know the game well and have to know where it fails so I am afraid that's hard to do privately but it really should rather go into the games themselves and into game journalism also so it just has to be a topic people talk about. Okay yeah also regarding the same topic like teenagers teenagers tend to like forbidden or illegal things and be rebellious so do you think that it could be an issue to put more and stricter loss in place or that it could actually have the opposite effect on at least on young people? Yeah that's again such a case where I don't think laws and official restrictions are really the answer but rather having the communities care about that and yeah I mean at some point there's something like not really laws but just community guidelines that have to be imposed that's rather the point where I would make the changes and I think laws are just too slow to adapt because even on Steam if we go back to how Steam developed I think as I said Hitler portraits has become rare but now they're going for all that well those clean wehrmacht guys and I've seen profiles where they even mentioned in the profile that Steam shut it down repeatedly and now they're back again with just this and that removed so they're changing their looks constantly and I don't think any law could ever keep up with the speed they're changing and adapting to the laws so they're always just trying to keep a bit below the acceptable or below the threshold so they can keep going and that has to be done in a much more flexible way than laws could ever do it okay extremely just for the most extreme cases sorry so do you think that the right-wing propaganda comes from the community from the gaming community itself or do you rather think that organized groups of Nazis are like kind of infiltrating the gaming the gaming community to recruit new members for example there might be some who are infiltrating but for the most part I really think there are just far-right players in communities like as I said that there are many reasons why games can be attractive to those people because they somehow reflect their ideologies even and they are appealing in so many ways and even if they are not even Nazis want some fun sometimes so they much as play it and then they use the platform they have because they'll house it I mean there's there are few platforms that had so low rules or so flexible rules like gaming community platforms that's why they organized on discord the national the Nordic resistance movement for example because discord at the earlier times had very lex regulations and hardly acted ever but yeah they changed that in 2018 I think and do you think that the left at the left wing should get stronger in the gaming community for example to also like maybe save some of the players from the from the right wing approaches I actually think it is strong it's just not always very outspoken and yeah I mean we often have kind of a separation in gaming communities I think there are some that are just overwhelmingly overrun with well troll phases and paper and so on and of course also some Nazi memes and I had said people like us normally just keep out of those communities because we wouldn't have fun there but there are also some communities that have a lot of left wing influence like for example the case of cut really has a lot of left wing influence and in a positive way really and I think those communities just really go together and the more public broad field is dominated by those trill Nazi memes and so on and I mean the thing we would want to do there is not posted with our own with our own memes maybe some positivity memes rather but yeah it's rather about making those people stop stop the toxic stuff they are doing that that's that would already be a huge step forward okay last question imagine like I'm playing with with some people and they keep making fun of me or even berate me when I'm actively fighting against players with Nazi views or players who are using Nazi expressions what can I do with those friends of mine or with those people that I play with and that I like but that yeah I don't just want to drop them or lose them but I want to change them do you have any anything you can any idea what I can tell them to yeah I mean that's a wide field with many possibilities of course I'd say actually that's a pretty good starting point for achieving something because if you're playing with friends and parts of that group are just problematic that's one of the cases where you actually have some chance of reasoning with them and explaining to them how the things the other guys do are well problematic and why they should be dropped and why they should maybe say stop it here and this is bullshit and so I think that's really from my experience with gaming communities so far I've been a moderator for example in some of the Scott communities where every now and then people pop up and do nasty things and put down some Ableist or transmissionistic something bad simply I'd say in about 50% of the cases you can talk some reason some sense into them and yeah just approach them rather softly and sometimes they accept it and sometimes you just need to let them go for a while after you just informed them and maybe they will think about it and drop it eventually others are really hardcore into this and some really come only to spread their toxic shit and at some point you just have to realize that it doesn't make sense to stick with them so yeah that's just different cases you have to try it try it I usually try it softly and quite often it works I've been surprised how often it works actually but sometimes yeah you don't have a chance to do that online then deregulationization just works much better if you know people in real life and you sometimes just don't have a chance to do that online or community sense okay thank you so much thanks for the very interesting talk and also for answering all the questions thank you so much thank you for the opportunity and play it a second okay and thank you very much for all the again thank you so much for the for sending the questions for staying with us and bye