Tawfiq Chahboune

A Tale of Two Computer Games: One is denounced by the liberal intelligentsia; the other is either given zero attention by the illuminati, or praised by the sad computer fraternity. A computer game where one has to blow JFK away has been vilified by the media and cultural priesthood. Their great hero, after all, had his skull blown to bits all over Jackie’s ghastly pink frock (not quite the way one would choose to go out: red and grey on pink is so tasteless and unsophisticated; red and grey on black would have been so much more fashionable).

Liberal war criminals, like JFK and LBJ, always seem to have a rather large following among the glitterati, whose sadistic ecstasy in watching the empire’s present enemies tortured and murdered would not be out of place among the SS storm troopers whose own diabolical cruelty no doubt demanded a ready supply of Kleenex; Nixon never had many cheerleaders in the media and intellectual mafia. I put this down to his initials not having the rhythmic ring of his predecessors - RMN doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as JFK and LBJ.

The other entertaining computer game, whose barbarity is staggering, I refer to is the new and “cool” Vietcong: Purple Haze (rated 15). Confused? A thought experiment may be in order. Instead of this real “game”, if it can be described as such, let me make up a few games and see how you like them. You is a nigger and you have to munch your way through as much fried chicken and watermelon as possible. Fried chicken counts more than watermelon, so the more finger lickin’ KFC joints Malcolm and his hooded sambos do over, the more points they get. The game is called “Eggplants gotta eat!” Bo! Or perhaps you are a policeman – white, of course – who has to stop niggers from doing what they do naturally, raping virginal white girls with their huge... For every one you catch, you get a point. For every one you bash to death, you get ten points. That game is called “Catch a Nigger.” In the real world the game would be called “L.A. Police Officer”. Aiii!

Here’s another game. You’re a Nazi (the good guy) and for every Jew (what else but bad guy?) you throw into the gas chamber, a hundred points beckon. For every Jesus-killer you turn into soap, well, that’s a thousand points. We could call this game “Ouchwitz!” or, even better, “Ouch, Fritz!”  Get the idea? Are you disgusted, offended, sickened? One hopes so. At least you’re no longer confused. Dickens’s worst of times, age of foolishness, epoch of incredulity and season of darkness are all to be seen in what is known as computer entertainment.

How would you feel if you knew that such pernicious games were on sale? For all I know, there may well be neo-Nazi computer games, but I somehow doubt this sort of “White Pride” (have the fascists gone into the sliced bread business?) culture is allowed on general release for Johnny and Janey to get their mitts on. The Mein Kampf reading groups may wish to drop me a line and enlighten me. One always feels rather deflated when facing that hoary cliché, “fact is stranger than fiction”. Deflation, in this case, doesn’t quite cover it. I have learnt, in the course of this paragraph, that there are indeed fascist computer games: not every fascist is a shitkicking redneck, hillbilly with designs on his sister, or member of the Labour Party. Evidently, some are highly computer literate and choose to waste their talents on producing evil masquerading as fun.

Here are some games I came across in the course of this article, most with pretty unimaginative titles: Ethnic Cleansing, Shoot The Blacks, Concentration Camp Rat Hunt, and The Fuhrer Lives (the one balled psycho with the absurd moustache and tasteless brown suits did not have the ball, not balls, to test his master race theories against the rapidly approaching “subhuman” Red Army). One anti-Semitic compufilth game allows the player a choice of dress: KKK robes or skinhead. That skinhead is not attire has obviously passed the fasco-geeks by. The programmers have obviously “thought” hard about making the murder of Jews merry entertainment: “Oy Vey” are the departing words of the liquidated Jew. (Richard Littlejohn will be updating his joke files accordingly. Although more offensive than his Shite = Shiite “joke”, it would nevertheless be in the same class for the man who is pained by allegations of bigotry.)

The revolting 9-11: Survivor has been taken off cyberspace after pressure to do so. Unfortunately, the well of depravity is deep and another US disaster looks set to titillate the gaming fraternity in place of 9-11. Doom For Columbine is due for internet release. Those on general release include the homophobic Postal 2. Also on general release is Grand Theft Auto: Vile City, which spurs the gamer to “kill the Haitians” and “kill the Cubans” in a Miami-like city. One can only wonder how America would react to an Islamic country allowing anti-Semitic games, or games whereby one rams airliners into skyscrapers, or a game based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.     

Now think about the entertaining computer game Vietcong - available, unlike most of their vile fascistic cousins, on general release. Subtitled Purple Haze, this foul game is described by various computer games geeks - minds melted after listening to thrash metal and watching wrestling - as a “game to make you kiss the sky”, “serious fun”, “an absolute gem” and sickeningly “napalm has never smelt so good”.

Firstly, the very term Vietcong is abusive, and intentionally so. Secondly, and more importantly, the idea is that you simply murder as many Vietnamese as is possible, or, so claimeth the official website, “defend yourself from the onslaughts of…the cunning enemy” – an “enemy” GI Joe and his all-American gang of war criminals had to “save” from harvesting communist rice. The very fact that anyone would consider this a game worth playing boggles the mind and raises the bile from one’s stomach. The US Special Forces you are meant to be playing, lest we forget, are the same demented sociopaths awarded medals for raping children and wiping out whole villages – otherwise known as bravery. And, moreover, decimating a whole nation and murdering some four million people. Kissinger would later receive a Nobel Peace Prize for destroying much of Indochina – or bringing peace to Indochina, as the Nobel committee put it. The makers of Vietcong: Purple Haze would no doubt agree.

Perhaps the makers of Vietcong will soon put their spotty heads together to create culturally enriching new games called “Hitler: Antifascist Campaigner” or “Jack the Ripper: Radical Feminist”. An intellectual and media climate dominated by liberals (the guardians of acceptable rightwing thought) will always view the murder of JFK, one of the worst US presidents, to be more repellent than the slaughter of millions in Vietnam. The differences between the fascistic computer games on release and those which aren’t (whether banned or not produced by the major manufacturers) is essentially a matter of degree: is playing at killing JFK worse than doing likewise to Vietnamese? Is playing a game based on the destruction of the World Trade Centre worse than a game where the historical context is a devastated Vietnam?    

This game is a mere symptom of a more horrific societal disease: the suffering of others is now entertainment, especially when the history of nations such as the Native Americans, Aboriginals, Vietnamese, etc, is unknown, or should I say excised?

In a free society, or one that aims to get there, banning such games is anathema. It is far more pertinent to ask: How did such poisonous pollution become entertainment? Films, our favourite form of entertainment, have always had a hand in vilifying many groups: Native Americans were an early target (their mere existence was offensive to whitey), soon to be followed by blacks (again, whitey no like), communists (anyone who believes that a child should not have to work in a sweat shop), South American narcotraffickers (code for all Latinos), mad-eyed Arabs (is there any other kind?). Now we have a computer game that glorifies crimes against humanity.

Where does this inhumanity come from? To start with, look no further than the pure and wholesome US military. It has been noted that the US Air Force have named their weapons after exterminated Native American tribes: Apache and Blackhawk are but two. And, furthermore, how would we react if the Luftwaffe named their military aircraft Jew and Gypsy? Or the Turks named their gunships the Armenian? In any case, the makers of Vietcong are merely following in the distinguished footsteps of some of the Western world’s most revered men of peace (Sharon, Bush’s “man of peace”, unfortunately has to sit this one out). Their irrational outbursts of bloodlust were thankfully documented. Lloyd George “insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers”, while Winston Churchill could not “understand this squeamishness about the use of gas” against “recalcitrant Arabs as experiment” and other “uncivilised tribes” who were in desperate need of a good dose of  “lively terror”. Now there’s a name for a computer game: Lively Terror. 

July 2005