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Far-right extremists using games platforms to radicalise teenagers, report warns
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Bruh as someone who used to play a lot of video games this article is 15 years too late. I remember neo nazis attempting to recruit me as a teenager in the early 2010s and they were not subtle. This shit is why we're losing the war against fascism, the so-called "experts" don't even know where the war is being waged and don't even show up to the fight.
I think i have seen articles like this also 15 years ago. I also remember tv "documentaries" about "killer games" in Germany from almost 20 years ago, where they tried to paint everyone playing FPS games as Nazis too. One argument was that there is call of duty mods that allow to show the original graphics, where WW2 Nazis have swastikas on their uniform, which have been censored in the German version.
Extremists trying to recruit teenagers has been an issue since forever. As the "space" where teenagers spend their time moved online, so did the recruiting efforts.
The problem is real, but it should not be tied to games, or to rock music or to sports or to any particular hobby. It is a problem encompassing all of society. Parents need to talk with their children and know what is going on in their lives.
I agree on one hand, but I also feel like video games and other online spaces are kind of unique because parents don't really think about their kids having one on one conversations with adults on them. If your kid is going outside they are mostly talking to other kids and not other adults. If an adult in your kid's life IRL starts telling them Hitler was right you will probably catch wind of that much more easily than if it's online. If a guy on an obscure medieval combat simulation game starts telling your kid Hitler was right (not a hypothetical - this happened to me as a teen and thankfully I saw through what was happening) you're probably not going to even know about it unless you're really engaged with your kid and what they're getting into. I agree that's on the parents but a lot of the kids these guys are resonating with are the ones whose parents aren't particularly engaged with them or what they're doing. I think there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that this does happen and is an intentional strategy from the far right, and I think trying to pretend that there isn't a problem that is specific to games and the broader gaming community is harmful.
Because it's a typical silly season article. Sure, the problem exists, but it's neither new nor is this the first time somebody mentions it. It is just one of these topics that will get warmed up when there's not too much else to write about. Actually, there are enough other problems to write about but these are difficult, need thought and research, eat resources and are political minefields. So it's cheaper to bring up a safe topic for the tenth time without telling anything new.
The whole "spoiling the youth" thing is as old as media and older - Sokrates might want to have word if he were allowed to.