We’ve all met someone, at some point in our lives, who is a racist. Some otherwise good people have the illusion ruined with a tasteless joke, or a side comment about ‘those dirty so-and-sos’.
Most of us recognize that it takes a certain lack of class and manners to express certain types of opinions in a public forum. It is a person’s right to say what they want, but thoughtless hatred based on birth rarely earns a person points for decorum or rational thinking.
Welcome to Stormfront
Stormfront is a ‘white pride’ message forum, and given even that much description it is probably easy enough to recognize how unpleasant much of the commentary and discussion on the site can get. They have a new target in the form of Bioshock Infinite.
PCGamer apparently found a thread on Stormfront that claims the game’s objective is literally “kill whitey”. Really.
The Bioshock games have always been rife with commentary and philosophical undertones, with people on both sides of whatever fence is being discussed having their arguments about it. Bioshock Infinite approaches the topic of nationalism and racism and their dangers not only to the externals that are hated but also to the nation itself that becomes too embroiled in its own superiority.
The Natural Response
On Stormfront, this is seen quite clearly as evidence that “an expression of Aryan genius, progressiveness, and creativity turned into a racially and idealogically pure utopia” is something that a small minority at the top of the corporate ladder want people to think is “fundamentally flawed”. The fact that it provably is a logically flawed idealogy doesn’t seem to bother them.
Conveniently, I happen to find it ironic that in trying to argue some of the most bigoted opinions I’ve heard in a very long time put forth with any amount of seriousness (not to mention some of the oldest racist and anti-semitic stereotypes) most of these posts on Stormfront actually do more to prove the point of Bioshock Infinite’s apparent argument than the game will likely be able to manage.
It also gives the game some free press. Ah, sensationalism.
