To preface, I was – anonymously & inexplicably – sent this very bizarre short manifesto last night without any other context. I can’t really keep it to myself, and don’t really know what else to do with it, so I guess I’ll be putting it up here. New Zealand truly is a wonderful country to be a crank.
A specter is haunting Discord – the specter of gamer liberation. All the forces of the old internet have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Activision and 4chan, Gaben and Zuckerberg, Reddit moderators and foot fetishists.
The constant oppression of gamers through a broad variety of means – everything from neoliberal microtransactions to Twitter’s authoritarian community guidelines – has been sadly neglected by the New Zealand left. I am aghast at the ongoing, problematic silence towards the gamer struggle. It shows a complete lack of intersectional awareness when so-called “progressives” and “radicals” refuse to amplify our demands that Battlefied enable us to play as queer/trans Wehrmacht POC. I have sent this piece to multiple blogs for consideration, but sadly I believe the only one that sufficiently respects diversity of opinion to publish our manifesto will be Redline.
While we hope to bring our manifesto for gamer liberation to the general working public with this piece, we must first establish the primacy of our struggle to the socialist movement and dispel a few slanderous myths about our people.
Gamers – NEETs or Workers?
Leftist denigration of gamers as “neets” (“not in education, employment, or training”) highlights the inability of the left to fight for true working class issues, like the development and release of a new Witcher sequel. #Notallgamers are lumpenproletarians, cut off from the productive processes of capital and therefore unable to participate in its overthrow. Many of us work, but simply flat with our mums to save money for graphics cards and Nintendo Switches.
Neet is a slur targeted at working-class gamers. In the socialist future, personal and social life will be dedicated to the free development of each – a person will be able to cultivate whatever skills are important to them, be they nuclear physics or no-scoping.
Girl Gamers – an Intersectional Line
Sowing division among the working class is a tool of the bourgeoisie as old as class itself. The division of working class gamers and non gamers is one of the most glaring historical examples of this – second only, perhaps, to Jim Crow or the Friend Zone. The most glaring point of misinformation sown by the ruling class is our supposedly dismal treatment of women, particularly girl gamers.
I will be the first to admit that gamer men have had our attitudes towards gender corrupted by a toxic culture of masculinity, most vividly illustrated by the increasingly gendered personalities of Fallout characters over the years. However, it is a culture that can only be changed from within. As such, we have begun to encourage class-conscious gamers to change their Steam usernames to “MaleFeminist.” Our success is such that we have recently inducted “MaleFeminist69” into our Discord server, although, strangely, there are only four other comrades who have engaged in this display of solidarity. However, MaleFeminist69 has displayed a great capacity for presumably leftist Pepe memes, and he is a major asset for our propaganda efforts.
Alexandra Kollontai made the point that working women are not well served by bourgeois feminism, and the same logic applies to the position of girl gamers in modern capitalist society. YES they exist, and YES they play real games like Call of Duty, Read Dead Redemption, and Halo, not just the Sims and Animal Crossing. Unlike the reactionaries at GamerGate, or the patriarchal chauvinists who condemn the gamer cause, we believe that all girl gamers have a right to determine their own future – and that includes whether they want to be my waifu.
Our Programme
We demand:
-the withdrawal of all NZDF forces from foreign countries, and the redirection of the funds saved towards funding the development Half Life 3.
– that Organize Aotearoa, ISO, Canterbury Socialist Society, and all other socialist groups in this country immediately establish caucuses for gamers and subcaucuses for girl gamers.
– that all netcafes be immediately nationalized.
– that fibre internet be rolled out in Morrinsville as soon as possible.
– that Gaben be tried for crimes against the people over the unending delays in the anouncement of Half Life 3.
Thus, with the publication of this manifesto, I hereby declare the foundation of Gamer Liberation Aotearoa New Zealand (GLANZ). I am ready to fight for our cause. I have spent countless hundreds of hours training on CoD. As soon as my katana arrives from AliExpress, I am heading into the upland Manawatu to begin the armed struggle for gamer liberation. If you will join me, DM me and I’ll link you to our encrypted Discord channel. My mum got me a satellite WiFi receiver for my 35th birthday – it can maintain reasonable enough connection for each of us to be able to play PUBG for as much as 10 minutes a day, but these are the sacrifices a revolutionary has to make.
-Subcommandante Geralt
