Ways that Final Fantasy 14’s secret white supremacist messages are indoctrinating young people into voting Trump.
As a female gamer it isn’t hard to have moments whilst playing video games that stop and make you think, from rape threats on CoD to uncomfortable situations within private Minecraft servers. Final Fantasy XIV is a relatively milktoast game that has been paraded as the successor to World of Warcraft as the king of MMORPGS. The game has in its merit very progressive ideals, gay marriage and more recently unlocking previously gendered equipment so as to make the trans community feel a lot more at home. But underneath the surface hides a very dark community that thinks nothing of racism, xenophobia and outright hatred of the LGBT community. For an MMORPG the community makes the game and whilst for the most part I’ve been able to cut out these toxic individuals using the blacklist feature and reporting them to GMs a conversation that I was witness to the other day really got me thinking about the secret messages that this game is delivering to our youth and compiled a list of ways it is strengthening a victory for the Fascist in Chief.
1, The Ascians Are Jews.
During a quick run of trials roulette I was witness to a conversation that two people (probably from the same guild) seemed to be quite happy about having out in the open. Despite the flagrant anti Semitism it got me thinking about the story as a whole and how this can actually be easily perceived of as a white supremacist trope. The idea of the sneaky jew is one that is long embedded in white European culture as a stereotypical villain looking to scheme and destroy from within. The character Emet Selch was introduced in Shadowbringers but looking back the metaphors regarding his people (the ascians) go back at least two expansions to Heavensward and King Thordan. In a scene that could be straight out of Medevil Europe, King Thordan ( Who is a stand in for both the Christian pope and a King) condemns the ascians to death for their attempted interference in his Kingdom turning their own plots against them. During the first crusade many Jews were murdered by religious mobs believing that they made deals with the devil to gain magical powers ( Zodiark is the god of the Ascians who gives them their powers and is understood to be a god of darkness. The in game equivalent of the devil). Beyond this there are many other comparisons such as the Ascians manipulation of the Beast Tribes against the native Eorzeans, goading them into starting conflicts (the beast tribes being a racist trope for minorities, a popular alt right talking point is the use of minorities by the Jews in their schemes because they’re perceived as simpler and easier to manipulate). This itself leads into another point:
The Game itself Contains Many Racist Tropes
The Beast Tribes and their reflections upon minority societies (ex: Vanu Vanu and the Maori of New Zealand). Rather than being a respectful nod to certain cultures the Beast Tribes within the game often come across as a headbutt, blunt and poorly thought out. As mentioned before the Beast Tribes often find themselves as the unwitting villain in the story who are being controlled by the ascians into causing chaos and disorder. On top of this the religions of the Beast Tribes are often invalidated or outright villainised in the forms of Primals in which you the warrior of light (more like white am I right?) take upon yourself the White Man’s burden and put down their lesser god. Now before many of you say that as the character is customisable our avatar could be anything, all of the in game cutscenes CLEARLY portray the main character as a white male so any critique regarding the game has to be approached from this position if we are to examine this game through a white supremacist lens. The Beast Tribes themselves are not playable but rather your character can purchase items that glamour them to appear as poorly disguised comical variants which is troublingly reminiscent of black face.
The Game’s Treatment of Refugees and of course, the Wall.
A large portion of the endgame of Heavensward Expansion and Stormblood focuses on the liberation of Ala Mhigo from the empire. Prior to the game’s story Ala Mhigo fell to the empire which generated a large number of refugees fleeing to Eorzea, following this a wall was constructed between the two known as Baelsar’s Wall. The comparisons are seemingly obvious here and not hard to draw, whilst the story has us liberate Ala Mhigo the treatment of refugees including putting them into poverty and disease-stricken camps outside of city walls is particularly concerning. What is however the biggest slap in the face, is that when Ala Mhigo is liberated the refugees are expected to return to their destroyed homeland in an effort to rebuild rather than continue and live in their new adopted homelands. The Sultana of Uldah’s plan in order to help the Ala Mhigan refugees is additional salt on the wound, not only does she not wish to give direct financial aid to the refugees rebuilding their homes but instead forces capitalism upon them as a means of benefiting from their plight. This story point is played across as her doing them a favour, but as I’m sure you can agree it was in very poor taste. A similar storyline is played out on the other side in Doma, again with the refugees returning home instead of staying and again capitalism versus charity as incentive to assist the Doman people.
It should be noted that there are various references to the Empire’s leadership being similar to our Fascist in Chief, but then it leads back to them secretly being founded and controlled by the ascians all along. So make of that what you will.
The Community Itself
Whilst parts of the community, particularly the LGBT and PoC parts are extremely welcoming there is a clear understanding that the “cool kids” are from the more toxic side. This can be seen on the reddit pages for the game with the more popular being the FFXIV shitpost subreddit which regularly shares racist memes attributed to the game and refers to the new expansion by a racial expletive (TRIGGER WARNING: SEE BELOW).
In conclusion, we as players of FFXIV must do more to call out and report the toxic elements in our community but also push for the developers to do better in sensitivity and exclusivity. In 2020 I am hoping for a more positive experience both in this game and in America, but if video games continue to be as ignorant as this, forwarding that ignorance onto a new generation will only lead to a divisive victory for Donald Trump and a dark future for marginalised individuals.
**Edited and added in some pictures from reddit because some bigots didn’t believe that their precious subreddit is just as toxic as 4chan**
