Warning: This post contains offensive language
Whenever a new piece of gaming media releases featuring anyone other than white men, the online far right becomes enraged. Last week was no different, when the highly-panned trailer for the Minecraft movie, based on a video game of the same name, was released. While many online criticized the trailer based on animation quality and character design, bigots on fringe and mainstream platforms alike targeted the film for its inclusion of a Black woman, Oscar award-winning actor Danielle Brooks.
Gaming has long been co-opted by the far right to not only spread hateful rhetoric, but to facilitate acts of violence. In August, an 18-year-old in Turkey with neo-Nazi views stabbed five people at a mosque. His manifesto revealed several gaming indicators in his reasoning for committing the terrible act, but he also used gaming language to encourage further acts of violence by others. Gaming references are a long-standing trend by radicalized mass killers, such as the Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011 who told the court that he used World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for “training purposes” to carry out his attacks. Discord, a text, audio, and video messaging platform designed for gamers, was used by the “Unite the Right” participants to organize the Charlottesville riots in 2017, protests that ended in violence when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protestors, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others. The Christchurch, New Zealand shooter, who targeted Muslims, killing 51 people, in 2019, referenced the video games Spyro the Dragon and Fortnite in his manifesto. Severe harassment and incitement to violence have also been regularly associated with several forms of extremism introduced into video games, including white supremacism, neo-Nazism, and misogyny.
There’s a strong precedent for racism against Black women across the gaming and entertainment industries, especially within the Sci-Fi and fantasy genres. Most recently, lead actor of the Star Wars spin-off The Acolyte, Amandla Stenberg, was subject to “extreme and relentless racist attacks” online, including a targeted review-bombing campaign (i.e., a coordinated effort to lower the rating of a film or show) by racist online trolls. Despite being a critical hit, the show was canceled after one season.
The same phenomenon exists in gaming. This year, a surge of targeted hateful and violent posts ignited “Gamergate 2.0,” a follow-up to the hateful #GamerGate campaign in the 2010s which included virulent antisemitism, misogyny, racism, and calls for violence against those seeking to improve inclusive and positive representation, particularly of women, in gaming. This led to the creation of a group on Steam, a gaming platform, called “Woke Content Detector,” which maligns any game that, according to the group, includes content that is “pro-LGBTQ+,” “pro-DEI,” “pro-immigration,” “anti-western society,” and “anti-white,” amongst others. Gamergate ideology has infected the mainstream for years, and the latest Minecraft trailer proves its continued influence on online culture.
On Twitter, far-right influencer Elijah Schaffer, who was fired by conservative media outlet The Blaze for reportedly groping a female host and was removed as a speaker from CPAC Australia in 2023 for interviewing Australian neo-Nazi Joel Davis on his podcast, made multiple posts about the Minecraft trailer. He first posted a screenshot of Brooks in the trailer captioned “588,000 dislikes – when will Hollywood learn?,” referencing the high dislike count on the trailer’s YouTube page, and attributing it to the inclusion of a Black woman in the movie. He followed up by saying “consumers don’t like forced diversity” and that businesses need “to rethink their woke agenda.” White nationalist and Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, whose transnational “Groyper” movement seeks to normalize white supremacist ideas among the broader American right-wing, made a similar post with a screenshot of Brooks simply captioned “Are you fucking kidding me.” A Twitter account called “AF Post,” which claims to supply news “from an America First perspective,” in an attempt to disguise racism as “news,” shared the same screenshot as Fuentes, but captioned “Minecraft movie trailer debuts featuring fat Black woman.” A fan account dedicated to violent misogynist and far-right streamer Sneako shared a clip from his Rumble stream reacting to the trailer. Sneako describes actor Jason Momoa, who appears in the trailer wearing a pink jacket and long hair, as a “tranny,” and Brooks as a “fat Black,” before referencing others in the movie as “real people.”
Schaffer shares a post on Twitter blaming the Minecraft trailer’s poor reception on the inclusion of Black women (Source: Twitter)
YouTube videos and comment sections didn’t fare much better. In one video describing the trailer as “woke nonsense,” comments disparaged “woke” media, said that the actor Jason Momoa is “going trans,” and described Minecraft as “Just another stinking dumpster fire of woke garbage.” In another video, comments included “DEI is short for Destroy (the) Entertainment Industry” and “This dei contagion is infecting everything from games to shows and movies. Look what’s happening to everything it’s all going to shit.”
A collection of YouTube comments describing the Minecraft movie as “DEI” because it includes a Black woman (Source: YouTube)
Aside from the mainstream, 4chan, which is known to be a bastion of hate on the internet for its racism, misogyny, and antisemitism, is rife with hatred towards Brooks. Commenters blamed Jews, described as (((They))), an antisemitic dogwhistle, for “destroy[ing] the core story,” said the movie was “ruin[ed]” by a “BEASTLY N****R,” and called the movie “The Wokening.” Brooks received targeted messages on 4chan, being called a “fat and ugly… n****r,” “an oh lawdy Black woman,” and a “sassy black shaneequa.”
On Telegram, whose founder and CEO Pavel Duriv is currently under intense scrutiny (and charges) for his platform’s alleged involvement in aiding money laundering, drug trafficking, and child pornography, channels commented on Brooks’ involvement in the movie. A channel called “NazBol Party Club,” NazBol being short for “National Bolshevism,” posted “There is going to be a black woman in the Minecraft movie. Day ruined.” Commenters in the channel’s chat room agreed, insinuating that Hollywood is making people “watch the Minecraft movie with a n****r,” and lamenting the presence of Jack Black in the movie because he was raised Jewish.
On communities.win, a forum dedicated to Donald Trump, commenters described different characters in the Minecraft game: “Notice how Minecraft itself is a big warning to kids. The black netherman who steal your stuff is clearly a negro, the creeper is clearly a muslim suicide bomber, the zombines are braindead liberals, the villagers who rip you off are clearly jews,” before saying these stereotypes wouldn’t be perpetuated in “this garbage movie.” Others called the trailer “re*tarded,” “the final result of DEI,” and “just more woke agenda vomiting illogical nonsense.”
Throughout 2024, the gaming industry has continued, largely unchecked, to be a primary source for the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, open bigotry, and calls-to-violence by the far right. Video games like Fortnite have platformed violent political and antisemitic content, Roblox platformed a hate-infested “Election Simulator” for years, and even transnational independent gaming studios, like those belonging to the Identitarian movement in Europe, have been co-opting mainstream trends like “White Boy Summer” to sell games and organize meetups with like-minded extremists. So long as gaming platforms allow extremists to infiltrate their spaces and fail to moderate those who break content rules, we will continue to see the dehumanization of women, particularly women of color, and blatant hateful language, and risk the escalation of online rhetoric into real-world violence.
