strange headache
Banned
A couple of days ago, Extra Credits released a video in which they argued that forcing gamers to play the Nazi faction in PVP shooters is "normalizing" Nazism:
Look, I used to like Extra Credit's content in the past, but the past few years they really have gone the drain with their reductive hot-takes on gaming. Judging by the comment section and the like to dislike ratio, their video received a lot of backlash from the gaming community and for good reason. But instead of engaging themselves with members of the gaming community through open dialogue, their communications manager decided to throw out ad hominems and call them "bigots" instead:
I'd like to present two important arguments as a refutation to their rather idiotic video that hasn't been largely discussed yet:
On Normalizing Nazis
What Extra Credits doesn't seem to understand is that their whole argument is actually enabling radical ideology due to their lack of historical knowledge. One of the most landmark Nazi-trials of the post-war era that is usually part of a European/German educational curriculum is Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem.
Eichmann's trial received a lot of media attention throughout the world, partially due to Hannah Arendt's involvement. Arendt used Eichmann as an archetype to establish her famous notion of the "banality of evil". In her famous reports on the trial published in The New Yorker, she described Eichmann as a most ordinary person, a mere pencil pusher following order, displaying neither guilt nor hatred for the Jews. Austrian Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal supported Arendt's thesis, saying that "the world now understands the concept of 'desk murderer'. We know that one doesn't need to be fanatical, sadistic, or mentally ill to murder millions; that it is enough to be a loyal follower eager to do one's duty." The term "little Eichmanns" (or "Hanswurst" as Arendt used to describe Eichmann in German) became synonym with cowards following order blindly without principle or critical thought.
Arendt received a lot of backlash for her description of Eichmann, instead of portraying this Nazi as the outright monster that everybody was expecting, she saw nothing but a regular bureaucrat mindlessly fulfilling his task of planning the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to their extermination camps. In essence, friends, colleagues and public audience accused Arendt of "normalizing" Nazism, because they could not fathom ordinary people contributing to the mass extermination of 6 million lives in such a careless and mindless manner.
Point is, in their video Extra Credits is falling for the same kind of fallacy. Nazis are normal people and that is the frightening part.
The "banality of evil" is the argument that extraordinary evil does not happen because of a few select monsters, but due to a lack of critical thought and mindlessness. As such, Nazism or any other kind of radical dehumanizing ideology is a danger that affects each and every one of us, and not something that can be easily dismissed to the realm of extraordinary fanatics and sadists. No, the vast majority of Nazis were regular citizens, like you and me, such is the insidious nature of these radical ideologies. There is a famous German novel called "Die Welle" (The Wave) touching on many of the same issues.
Yes, Nazism is vile, but the hyperbolic vilification of fascism that is currently trending among social justice militants only relegates it to the realm of the impossible, because it fails to realize how ordinary people can easily fall prey to the pied piper. Arendt tried to warn us that Nazi ideology is a "normal" part of human nature and that is what makes it so dangerous.
The greatest danger of Nazism is believing that you cannot become a Nazi yourself.
On sympathetic villains
Modern story-telling has come a long way, but one of its major innovations is the realization that heroes are only as good as their villains. The hyperbolic depiction of evil only leads to cartoon villains that are hardly relatable. One of the most iconic villains in that regard if Flash Gordon's Ming the Merciless:
Ming is evil for the sake of being evil, but what's missing is an intrinsic motivation. Ming is just an evil dude, nothing else. Because Ming is so thoroughly evil, he loses his humanity and becomes something meaningless that exists purely for the hero to exercise his heroism. Nobody would ever identity himself with Ming because he has no redeemable attributes. As a consequence, Flash Gordon's heroic deeds become equally as meaningless.
More often than not, evil is the result of a deeply misguided sense of justice, of people justifying their vile deeds for the greater good. A good villain is a villain that we can sympathize with, because only then are we able to realize the potential evil that lies within us and our views.
As a popular mainstream example we could use Thanos. I know there are better examples from classical literature, but let's stick with something well-known:
Thanos seeks to eradicate half of the Galaxy's existence for the sake of a higher need, to restore balance to the cosmos. In essence he is a Nazi, a genocidal maniac who is justifying necessary evil in order to realize his view of Utopia. But Thanos is not like Ming, he is emotionally vulnerable and cares deeply about his daughters, willing to sacrifice what's dearest to him in order to create a better world according to his ideals.
By Extra Credit's twisted logic, Marvel is "normalizing" a Nazi. In their exaggerated and cartoon-like view on Nazism and the evil of radical ideology, Extra Credits are basically arguing for a return to old-school villains. If you cannot show the human side of a villain because you're too afraid it might make them sympathetic to the audience, Ming the Merciless is what you get and nobody wants that. No, good villains allow you to explore your own shortcomings, to reflect critically on your own assumptions and Ming doesn't do that.
Where was Extra Credit's outrage when Marvel basically made me sympathize with their cosmic Nazi ready for galactic genocide?
When it comes to video games, I'm sick and tired of cartoon-like villains. Give me antagonists with depth and complex motivations. Nobody is going to become a Nazi because he plays the Nazi faction in a WW2 PVP shooter game and nobody will be swayed from radical ideology through the depiction of over the top cartoon villains. Nobody will turn fascist because of a Nazi skin and an armband Swastika exactly because it doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, games can do better, but not in the way that Extra Credits demands... on the contrary!
Look, I used to like Extra Credit's content in the past, but the past few years they really have gone the drain with their reductive hot-takes on gaming. Judging by the comment section and the like to dislike ratio, their video received a lot of backlash from the gaming community and for good reason. But instead of engaging themselves with members of the gaming community through open dialogue, their communications manager decided to throw out ad hominems and call them "bigots" instead:
I'd like to present two important arguments as a refutation to their rather idiotic video that hasn't been largely discussed yet:
On Normalizing Nazis
What Extra Credits doesn't seem to understand is that their whole argument is actually enabling radical ideology due to their lack of historical knowledge. One of the most landmark Nazi-trials of the post-war era that is usually part of a European/German educational curriculum is Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem.
Eichmann's trial received a lot of media attention throughout the world, partially due to Hannah Arendt's involvement. Arendt used Eichmann as an archetype to establish her famous notion of the "banality of evil". In her famous reports on the trial published in The New Yorker, she described Eichmann as a most ordinary person, a mere pencil pusher following order, displaying neither guilt nor hatred for the Jews. Austrian Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal supported Arendt's thesis, saying that "the world now understands the concept of 'desk murderer'. We know that one doesn't need to be fanatical, sadistic, or mentally ill to murder millions; that it is enough to be a loyal follower eager to do one's duty." The term "little Eichmanns" (or "Hanswurst" as Arendt used to describe Eichmann in German) became synonym with cowards following order blindly without principle or critical thought.
Arendt received a lot of backlash for her description of Eichmann, instead of portraying this Nazi as the outright monster that everybody was expecting, she saw nothing but a regular bureaucrat mindlessly fulfilling his task of planning the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to their extermination camps. In essence, friends, colleagues and public audience accused Arendt of "normalizing" Nazism, because they could not fathom ordinary people contributing to the mass extermination of 6 million lives in such a careless and mindless manner.
Point is, in their video Extra Credits is falling for the same kind of fallacy. Nazis are normal people and that is the frightening part.
The "banality of evil" is the argument that extraordinary evil does not happen because of a few select monsters, but due to a lack of critical thought and mindlessness. As such, Nazism or any other kind of radical dehumanizing ideology is a danger that affects each and every one of us, and not something that can be easily dismissed to the realm of extraordinary fanatics and sadists. No, the vast majority of Nazis were regular citizens, like you and me, such is the insidious nature of these radical ideologies. There is a famous German novel called "Die Welle" (The Wave) touching on many of the same issues.
Yes, Nazism is vile, but the hyperbolic vilification of fascism that is currently trending among social justice militants only relegates it to the realm of the impossible, because it fails to realize how ordinary people can easily fall prey to the pied piper. Arendt tried to warn us that Nazi ideology is a "normal" part of human nature and that is what makes it so dangerous.
The greatest danger of Nazism is believing that you cannot become a Nazi yourself.
On sympathetic villains
Modern story-telling has come a long way, but one of its major innovations is the realization that heroes are only as good as their villains. The hyperbolic depiction of evil only leads to cartoon villains that are hardly relatable. One of the most iconic villains in that regard if Flash Gordon's Ming the Merciless:
Ming is evil for the sake of being evil, but what's missing is an intrinsic motivation. Ming is just an evil dude, nothing else. Because Ming is so thoroughly evil, he loses his humanity and becomes something meaningless that exists purely for the hero to exercise his heroism. Nobody would ever identity himself with Ming because he has no redeemable attributes. As a consequence, Flash Gordon's heroic deeds become equally as meaningless.
More often than not, evil is the result of a deeply misguided sense of justice, of people justifying their vile deeds for the greater good. A good villain is a villain that we can sympathize with, because only then are we able to realize the potential evil that lies within us and our views.
As a popular mainstream example we could use Thanos. I know there are better examples from classical literature, but let's stick with something well-known:
Thanos seeks to eradicate half of the Galaxy's existence for the sake of a higher need, to restore balance to the cosmos. In essence he is a Nazi, a genocidal maniac who is justifying necessary evil in order to realize his view of Utopia. But Thanos is not like Ming, he is emotionally vulnerable and cares deeply about his daughters, willing to sacrifice what's dearest to him in order to create a better world according to his ideals.
By Extra Credit's twisted logic, Marvel is "normalizing" a Nazi. In their exaggerated and cartoon-like view on Nazism and the evil of radical ideology, Extra Credits are basically arguing for a return to old-school villains. If you cannot show the human side of a villain because you're too afraid it might make them sympathetic to the audience, Ming the Merciless is what you get and nobody wants that. No, good villains allow you to explore your own shortcomings, to reflect critically on your own assumptions and Ming doesn't do that.
Where was Extra Credit's outrage when Marvel basically made me sympathize with their cosmic Nazi ready for galactic genocide?
When it comes to video games, I'm sick and tired of cartoon-like villains. Give me antagonists with depth and complex motivations. Nobody is going to become a Nazi because he plays the Nazi faction in a WW2 PVP shooter game and nobody will be swayed from radical ideology through the depiction of over the top cartoon villains. Nobody will turn fascist because of a Nazi skin and an armband Swastika exactly because it doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, games can do better, but not in the way that Extra Credits demands... on the contrary!
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now with extra credits y’all
