Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Are we having fun jetzt?
Historian Richard Westwood-Brooks is auctioning a collection of Nazi era children’s board games:
The games include Bombers Over England, a form of bagatelle or primitive pinball where players score points for “bombing” British cities, shipping or lighthouses.
Another, based on Snakes and Ladders, sees players take their U-boats from a German port to the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, sink British warships and try to make it back home.
Another is a game where players drop weighted paratroopers onto a representation of the English countryside.
You can view a short slide show of pictures of the games here.
Reading these stories, what tickles me is the implication that Nazis were somehow unique, indoctrinating their children so early. Yet there are no shortage of “shooters” out there (games in which the goal is to shoot as many of the enemy as possible), including games targeting, excuse the pun, “Middle East terrorists.” Oh, and don’t forget my #1 Abomination, Left Behind, the Game (in which you target the faithless), currently being enjoyed by our troops in Iraq.
Funny thing, though: Nazis are among the most common human villains in video games nowadays. Guess there’s no question of political incorrectness shootin’ up a bunch of brown shirts. But the Nazis are fighting back . . .
While anti-gaming critics are busy worrying about a mod that sees two fictional characters engaging in consensual sex, a neo-Nazi organisation has released a game designed to promote racial divisions and encourage violent acts against members of ethnic minorities.
The PC first-person shooter is titled Ethnic Cleansing and is published by Resistance Records, which also distributes racist ‘White Power’ music. Resistance Records is owned by the National Alliance, the biggest and most active neo-Nazi group in the US.
Players take on the role of either a skinhead or a Ku Klux Klan member – dressed in full KKK robes and carrying a noose – and explore a city that’s clearly based on New York. The object of the game is to kill black and Latino people, described as “predatory sub-humans”, and their “Jewish masters”.
Read the rest of that article to discover some truly special moments from the game.
This is worrisome: when I read this out loud to my son, his response was, “Yes, but is the game any good?” Oy vey.
D.
I knew a PhD candidate when I was an undergrad. The woman was Swedish, so she had different internationally priveleges than an American does. Her PhD topic of study? The history of North Korean totalitarianism as opposed to Stalinist totalitarianism. Nice. She told stories about her trips to NK, very scary shit, and how the kids in schools learned to count by counting pictures of machine guns. “One machine gun to kill the American devils, two machine guns…”
Yay!