Virtual Nazis. I Hate Virtual Nazis.

David Weigel | January 24, 2007

It actually happened a week ago, but I just now learned of the epic battle between the French Front Nationale and anti-fascists that broke out on Second Life. It started as a protest of little virtual people in front of the party's HQ. It escalated into a bloodbath.

And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, "rez cages" (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids' TV characters, and more.  By California time, the battles often culminated at 2am, 3am, and even later into the small hours of the American clock, when Residents in Europe are most active.  So amid the exchange of salvos, the chat log was choked over with pro and anti-Le Pen curses, most in French.  And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno.

One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they'd explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel.

The FN is beaten, but unbowed. And next time, they'll be ready for the... pig grenades.

(Via Kriston Capps. )

Comments

|1.24.07 @ 1:20PM|#

In other war news The Horde have been ganking Sentinel Hill for the past week.

lws|1.24.07 @ 1:32PM|#

Word of the day: ganking

I am old.

|1.24.07 @ 1:36PM|#

How can you defeat he-that-has-no-life?

|1.24.07 @ 1:41PM|#

You kids with your e-pods and your Ataris!

Lawn bowling! Now THAT'S a game!

|1.24.07 @ 1:56PM|#

joe,

I like lawn bowling. Sometimes I'll listen to The Tool on my e-pod. I wi-fi'd it to my care with blue-ray.

|1.24.07 @ 1:59PM|#

care=car.

|1.24.07 @ 2:00PM|#

You've got a hi-fi in your car?

Aren't you afraid the grammophone needle will scratch the records?

|1.24.07 @ 2:09PM|#

Yeah, that sucks. It's what the kids call a Scratch disk Error. I'm gonna try and sand out the scratches tonight. I think I need some kind of disk recovery or protection software in the future, though.

|1.24.07 @ 2:13PM|#

Yeah, well, I hear those kids who listen to the hippity-hop music like scratches in their records.

|1.24.07 @ 2:26PM|#

David, you made this post purely for the pleasure of writing that final sentence, didn't you?

|1.24.07 @ 2:35PM|#

In other Second Life news, Virtual world's supposed economy is 'a pyramid scheme'

What you're left with is lots of people putting USD in, and a small group taking those USD out, leaving the rest with no financial claims on anything - just an imaginatively sexy avatar.

|1.24.07 @ 2:44PM|#

Wouldn't it be better to call them "contra-facists" as opposed to "anti-facists". I mean, the so-called "anti-facists" are for banning the "Front Nationale" (under the fear that they may get members elected if allowed to participate in elections) and want to censor Le Pen and charge him under speech codes. It is really a battle between Nazi style facists, and Stalin style facists, than a battle against facism.

|1.24.07 @ 2:50PM|#

In other Second Life news, Virtual world's supposed economy is 'a pyramid scheme'

Well, from an economics standpoint, virtual economies are something wierd.

In normal command economies (say like Cuba), the state has total control of how resources are allocated - but have series problems with scarcity (shortages and what not).

In MMPOG command economy, the state (or rather, the game company), doesn't control the allocation of resources at all (there is a market to do that)... but they are actually controlling scarcity.

|1.24.07 @ 2:59PM|#

Will Second Life be instituting random stop-and-frisk Pig Grenade checks?

|1.24.07 @ 3:04PM|#

You know, Rex, "fascist" is not a synomymn for "bad guy."

"Stalin-style fascists?" That's lame.

Timothy|1.24.07 @ 3:08PM|#

Because there's such a functional difference between Stalin and Mussolini! Gotta make sure you don't lump Ol' Joe in with those fascists, people might get the wrong impression about him!

|1.24.07 @ 3:10PM|#

You know, Rex, "fascist" is not a synomymn for "bad guy."

Wow. Just frikkin wow.

ron|1.24.07 @ 3:14PM|#

oh man wagener james au is the most pretentious douchebag writing about anything. i recognized his ridiculous shit immediately.

|1.24.07 @ 3:23PM|#

Timothy,

Not practical difference, philosophical difference.

"Gotta make sure you don't lump Ol' Joe in with those fascists, people might get the wrong impression about him!"

Exactly. If people "get the impression" that totalitarianism can only be the product of extremism on one side of the political spectrum, they could get the impression that they don't have to be vigilant about extremism on the opposite side of the spectrum.

For example, by deciding that people who denounce Marx, labor unions, equality, and internationalism couldn't possibly be totalitarians, because they're against Communism.

Graphite|1.24.07 @ 3:46PM|#

Well, at least they weren't bombarded by flying penises.

|1.24.07 @ 5:00PM|#

That Second Life battle is truly one of the strangest riots in history...

|1.24.07 @ 5:15PM|#

Teh intarwebz r seriuz bizniz...

Scary thing is, the people who take Second Life way too seriously are probably the wave of the future, and the people who mock them will be subsumed by a wave of censorship a la the real world, enforced variously by laws and harassing lawsuits against ISPs.

|1.24.07 @ 6:14PM|#

...the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno. - TFA

IRL, that would have to be a war crime.

Kevin

|1.24.07 @ 7:28PM|#

How can you defeat he-that-has-no-life?

don't you mean:

"How do you kill that-which-has-no-life?"

or is this an add-on reference which I missed somewhere?

|1.24.07 @ 8:42PM|#

Yeah, I heard of this one online community where a gay rights group tried to set up a presence, and the local Christian evangelists totally kicked them out! They did, like, 24-hour prayer vigils around the gays and threw stuff at them until the gays went away hahaha it was totally hilarious!

Oh, wait, that's not quite so cool, is it? Although I'm all for direct action and I'm tickled pink by the idea of pig bombs, where do you draw the line between this and suppressing anything you don't like? How about if the NF wanted to publish a book, and protesters picketed the printers until the publication was halted? Frankly, everybody quoted in the article sounds profoundly illiberal. "Wherever fascists are we will ensure they get no peace to corrupt and lie to decent people." "With this persons we can't debate or ignored. We can't because it's not acceptable." IMO, if you think it's not acceptable to debate, that makes you the fascist. It explains a lot about the state of European politics, if you ask me.

|1.24.07 @ 9:56PM|#

"Will Second Life be instituting random stop-and-frisk Pig Grenade checks?"

The problem, Umbriel, is that it's so easy to hide your Pig Grenades *anywhere* in Second Life. You can stick your pig grenades in a totally innocuous place, in box in your watch, for instance.

Objects behave strangely in SL; they can be tucked inside other objects and buried deep within your inventory. There's no way to really frisk anyone there, nor is there any sort of recognized organization with the authority to do the frisking. Linden Labs has the power in theory to police object ownership, but rarely exercises the power they have. Beyond private ownership of property and creations, SL is complete anarchy.

|1.25.07 @ 3:30AM|#

You know, Rex, "fascist" is not a synomymn for "bad guy."

"Stalin-style fascists?" That's lame.

The only "true" facists where a party in Italy in the 1930s. However, nowadays, facist is a generic term to describe authoritarian ideology.

The so-called "anti-facists" are anti-free-speech, and anti-democracy. What would you call them?

|1.25.07 @ 10:01AM|#

"However, nowadays, facist is a generic term to describe authoritarian ideology."

I have to disagree. These days, there is an accurate definition of the term, and a slang usage.

The slang usage is "overly authoritarian," as in "My father won't let me wear fishnets to school because he's a fascist."

But as a description of a political ideology, fascist refers to a specific brand of authoritarianism, based on nationalism, racism, heirarchy (aka the Fuehrer Principle), militarism, corporatist economic policy, and the denial of the vailidity of economic- and class-based movements, such as unionism.

There are other authoritarian ideologies, such as Marxist-Lenninism. The two have some features in common - such as the denial of individualism - and often operate in similar manners, but their philosophical and social foundations are mutually contradictory.

Jesrad|1.25.07 @ 2:23PM|#

"Linden Labs has the power in theory to police object ownership, but rarely exercises the power they have. Beyond private ownership of property and creations, SL is complete anarchy."

Given that LL is only enforcing their ToS and nothing beyond, I'd say Second Life is full anarchy, especially considering that alternate servers are inevitably coming in the near future (now that the client has been open-sourced). Also: private property is anarchistic. "Property" is just the name you use to call all the stuff you do whatever you want with.

dhex|1.25.07 @ 4:31PM|#

"The so-called "anti-facists" are anti-free-speech, and anti-democracy. What would you call them?"

authoritarians?

assholes?

probably assholes.

|1.25.07 @ 5:17PM|#

One thing we should note here:

These protesters are European and leftist...ie complete idiots and generally wrong about everything......

Say when Joe makes a remark calling me anti-black or anti-gay or whatever...i am neither anti-black or anti-gay but Joe calls me that because any close examination of his ideology shows catastrophic errors in its foundation...so like Joe the French leftists distract away from their own flaws by calling the FN fascists when in fact their politics are closer to those of say a moderate democrat.

I say this with absolutely no knowledge of French politics...and my model is derived from just my observations on how the left operate in this county...and one thing you can be sure the politics and the actions of Stalin and Hitler are infinitely closer to one another then either are to the actions and the politics of the FN.

|1.25.07 @ 5:23PM|#

For Joe's benefit here are the politics of Hitler and Stalin:

Bunch of crap to justify state control over ppls lives = means to power.

Note they are exactly the same for both fascist Hitler and communist Stalin.

|1.25.07 @ 10:10PM|#

JD,

The space in the game isn't actual property. The pig grenades aren't actual attacks on the persons of National Front members.

It's speech, that's all it is, and I have no problem with verbal, symbolic, or semiotic denunciations of fascists and fascisms. Why should I?

dhex|1.25.07 @ 10:53PM|#

it's a line between speech and action, actually. (since it makes the environment difficult/impossible to use as it were)

so i'm not really sure. i'm not too upset, as it is second life (i.e. have you seen the 9/11 memorial?) but on the other hand, this sort of thing carries over into real life far too often. (the columbia u. shit with that jackass who was kicked out of the minutemen...the utter lack of any concept of "freedom of speech" is really depressing.)