Gaming and DC Riot
.... what's the connection?
How much can really happen in 5 weeks?
A lot has happened since the last Valent newsletter during the holidays. To name a few; there was an insurrection in DC, a lone activist took on Putin with a series of brilliant videos, and Redditers humbled hedge funds.
That might sound like a random collection of events that is becoming increasingly what passes for normal these days; but there is a connection here that’s being missed in news coverage but sits squarely within the worlds of Disinformation, online influence/mobilisation etc that we cover as an organisation.
There are also a bunch of developments at Valent to report; you’ll hear more about that soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, let’s start with what’s been happening since I wished everyone a happier and calmer year to come 😬.
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Gaming and the New World Order:
Let’s start with Jake Angeli. Not heard of him? You’ve definitely seen his face around. In fact, that’s him in the photo above. There’s been a lot said about Trump’s actions, the seething anger of the base he’s tapped into and what this means for democracy and America’s standing in the world. I wanted to point something that’s not been discussed so much; the world of gaming, online gaming in particular, and how that (huge) online community interacts in the real world.
There was quite a bit of coverage about how Angeli eats only organic food. That seems less relevant than the“Valkism” tattoo on his the upper left part of his chest.
Valkism is the ideology of a fictitious political movement modelled on Nazism that exists only in an online gaming community dedicated to a strategy game called Hearts of Iron IV. Now, the original game developers didn’t come up with Valkism themselves. It is part of an entirely user-generated world along the lines of a Robert Harris-style alternate reality. But whereas Robert Harris put immense amounts of research into constructing an alternative history where Hitler wins WW2, Valkism is the product of crowdsourced effort. And where Robert Harris was exploring how easily people succumb to populist/nationalist authoritarianism, Valkism is more about revelling in the fantasy world that might have been.
Valkism’s departure from history is not WW2 itself but the events leading up to it. In the game, pre-war British fascist leader Oswald Moseley becomes prime minister and seeks accommodation with Hitler.
Unsurprisingly, European equivalents of America’s Proud Boys started to flock to Hearts of Iron IV to live out their race-war fantasies. Valent first came across that particular community when researching real-world threats posed by alt-right agitators on 4Chan and other anonymous forums.
The first time Valkism was noticed “in the wild” was in 2019 during a civil disturbance in the town of Amberg. German media reported asylum seekers attacking local residents. Local authorities received an anonymous email castigating them for not protecting “locals” and promising to send vigilantes. The email included the Valkism symbol above.
Angeli’s tattoo is the first time since 2019 I’m aware of that Valkism has been seen outside online communities, and the first time it has appeared outside of European circles.
The vocabulary of the HoIIV Valkist world featured heavily in online organising by Germany’s alt-right AfD party during 2017 elections. The party’s younger activists organised “swarm” like support in key areas through a specific threat on anonymous forum 4Chan.
Reading how users on the “WallStreetBets” subreddit gamed a hedge fund trying to short games’ retailer Gamestop’s stock reminded me of what AfD was doing three years ago. And that is the scary point here. When something like Gamestop gate makes the headlines, there is a tendency for mainstream coverage to react with a “wow… look at the clever thing the kids are doing” sort of attitude; and even a little sense in left-wing circles that “those kids will fix what we couldn’t. The world isn’t so bad”.
The reality is that whatever clever new internet-enabled technique we see used against the Trump campaign, big business or whatever, it has likely already been trialled by ISIS, fascists and other assorted worrying actors.
So what’s the “so what” here? What is clear from these German fascists and Indian Redditors is that mobilisation and impact are largely crowd-sourced affairs where ideologies, identities and even symbols are crowd sourced. This is a huge challenge for traditional top-down organisations and movements that started life more than a century ago.
With that thought, here’s a meme from /r/WallStreetBets; let me know if you get the film reference
Other things you should be checking out:
Russian opposition leader Alex Navalny’s YouTube video castigating Putin for corruption got 101 million views. Let that sink in. And, watch the video:
My name is Amil Khan. From 2000 to 2010, I was a Reuters foreign correspondent and then a BBC investigative reporter. Since then, I’ve worked as an adviser for political parties, the UK government and activists for justice and accountability. At Valent, I work with an amazing team to help political movements, governments, NGOs and development organisations adapt to the new digital reality