The newest hate video game, “Ethnic Cleansing,” has players killing blacks, Jews and Hispanics, according to the Dallas Morning News. The game’s final victim is Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister.
Produced by the West Virginia-based National Alliance, the game was released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Morning News reported. The game producer expects to sell between 7,000 and 8,000 copies by the end of March.
“The game is just a medium for the message,” said William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, a white supremacist group, in the Morning News article.
In a press release, Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said, “Once again, racists are finding new ways to exploit technology to spread their message of white supremacy, anti-Semitism and hate to a mass audience.”
Jon Dovey, professor of gaming studies at the University of the West of England, told the London Guardian that he recommend people visit such a racist Web site and “flame it, bombard it to bring it down. It’s online direct action.”
According to ADL, the distributor of “Ethnic Cleansing” is planning another video game called “Turner Diaries,” based upon a novel Pierce published in 1978.
The ADL described this book as “an apocalyptic racist novel” that “describes a white underground resistance army that destroys the U.S. government and takes control of the world.”
The novel is often cited for containing a terrorist attack similar to Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing.
The Southern Poverty Law Center identified the National Alliance as a “neo-Nazi organization” and called it “the most dangerous hate group operating in North America today.”
Pierce, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, first belonged to the John Birch Society, SPLC reported. Through the aggressive use of technology, the National Alliance has experienced rapid growth.
One of the National Alliance’s goals is “White Living Space.” Its Web site said multiculturalism was destroying American. “We must have White schools, White residential neighborhoods and recreation areas, White workplaces, White farms and countryside,” it said.
The site said, “We will do whatever is necessary to achieve this White living space and to keep it White.”
“Condemning such a hate video is too easy and accomplishes too little,” said Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. “Most thoughtful Christians will recognize the video as a vehicle for meanness and violence.”
Parham said, “Dismissing and criticizing such a product misses the need for us to go the second mile in creating constructive paths for understanding. We need to foster better relations with the Jewish community through interfaith dialogue. We also need to renew our commitment to substantively improving race relations.”
