"Will WWII & Colonials Be Targeted Next?" Topic

Saw this interesting question raised elsewhere on social media:

When word gets out there are men and women playing with toy nazis and recreating Colonial Wars of whites against people of colour, what kind of political pressure is going to be put against the entire hobby?!

I don't think it will amount to much really. There might be some social media 'outings' of wargamers but it will all blow over.

Skarper- Yep. I don't know about the UK, but miniature wargaming has virtually no presence in the mind of the American public.

We are, essentially, invisible.

The only thing people know about miniatures is that D&D is mentioned on television occasionally (e.g., Stranger Things, X-Files). So, yeah, I don't have any concern about it.

I am unconcerned.

Don't underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Some people may be more vulnerable to this kind of hysteria. Teachers perhaps? Politicians? But the average gamer in a routine job? Not so much.

I think we are pretty much under the radar of the average person.

Just tell them the natives win as often as or more than the imperialists.

Once the next celebrity dies (depending upon who it is) or there is another mass shooting the media will move on. There just isn't enough to be gained via media exposure or profit to be made by going after gamers.

I fear that we will do this to ourselves.

Who cares? I refuse to be cancelled.

Is there any chance I can get the Outraged People to stop speaking to me if I play a few colonial games? It would be time well spent. I don't much like colonials, but I'd play for a week to get their editorials off my news feed.

I still don't think it will come to anything…

But there could be some trouble hiring halls and convention centres for clubs and large events. School clubs could be stopped. Shops could be picketed [I guess GW is the only shop that exists in most cities.]

Stuff could happen to inconvenience gamers. I remember pickets outside wargames conventions in the 1980-90s – but the protesters soon moved on to less futile ground.

All that said – I think it won't become a serious issue. Those with a mind to make a fuss have their hands full with things that might actually matter. So there may be a few 'nutters' but it won't take off.

Games Workshop could get some backlash – but I won't shed any tears for them.

Antifa types tend to be pretty tenacious. Number of heavy metal concerts were cancelled over the years because Anti-fa applied lots of pressure and neither venues nor promoters wanted carnage and the police didn't want to guarantee security.

And look at the whole video gaming "culture wars" as recently evidenced by release of Last of Us II.

I can see this happening in tabletop gaming. Remember that in the UK some kid was raided by anti-terror police because of his VBCW wargames.

I hope these types of protesters never get wind of wargaming because they will gladly trample on it and try to destroy it.

As a teacher of 30 years I could be offended by Skarper's comment about teachers and lumping us in with politicians, but sadly it is true of many of the people that I worked with. I recall talking to a fellow teacher from Gettysburg, PA a couple years ago who told me that his students were not allowed to do dioramas of the battle of Gettysburg using any figures with guns.

Games Workshop could get some backlash

Considering that they have not been involved with historicals for a decade, I do not think they would have much to be concerned in this context.

The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians…As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas…Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance…With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end…The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.

4th Cuirassier – The new aristocracy……. Is that a quote,
If so I would be interested to know the source. I find it all frightenly true

For now, at least, should have no real impact.

With most conventions having been cancelled, and realistically the chances of resuming at anything like normal delayed until at least summer of next year, no targets for their protests. They dont buy any of the items so can't boycott figure manufacturers. Also, unfortunately, most brick and mortar stores have disappeared so once again no target of opportunity.

And we are very small fish in a huge pond. Hard to see many of these protesters whipping up group support over this issue.

Opportunities will arise for new "correct rules" and accessories, such as Affirmative Action dice sets:

@ graham

It's from Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell described the make-up of today's liberal fascist tendency absolutely perfectly. The insistence on uniformity of opinion comes exactly from an elite comprising "bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians".

What's chilling is that it didn't exist then, but he could see it already forming.

The Legions will march forever!:)

Henry Martini-
Indeed. I've watched Rourke's Drift gamed about a half dozen times. The Zulus overwhelmed the Brits every time.

I don't see the link between Colonial gaming and George Floyd's death. I don't see the link between WWII gaming and a colleague's son who has been pulled over in his car 50 times by the police in the last 5 years because his skin is black.

Never underestimate the self-righteously outraged. Remember the GW PETA letter? Personally I suspect the average (UK) wargamer probably has far better grasp of colonial history and its murkier waters than those hitting the streets let alone the average member of public. However, at least based on my experience of gamers up and down the UK anyone charging in and metaphorically turning over tables in search of members of Combat 18 / EDL / etc is going to be sorely, sorely disappointed! Painfully white middle class (but not exclusively so by any means) may be – but on average University educated or equivalent, and tending towards the centre left politically and typically quite liberal-progressive. Obviously there is a population distribution and there are clearly people lurking at the edges with a creepy over fondness for the Waffen SS….

Fundamentally give a wargamer an army of any culture, extant or extinct, or ethnicity and generally they'll do their damndest to stomp all over their opposition in an entirely equal opportunity manner!

I am sure that only IngSoc Inner Party members would have the wherewithal (and the space!) to wargame – but of course they'd probably call them simulations.

I don't need those new dice. I ALWAYS roll a 1!

GdeP

When word gets out there are men and women playing with toy nazis and recreating Colonial Wars of whites against people of colour, what kind of political pressure is going to be put against the entire hobby?!

Whoever said that is an idiot for a number of reasons. I'm guessing by the spelling he/she is a Euro. Does not matter … just more PC, SJW, etc., .

And the bottom line is the bottom line. Too much $ is being made with this hobby to bow to such Bull …

Most of the public is unware and do/wouldn't care anyway …

It's like bees. As long as you can manage to go unnoticed, you're fine. Let's all raise a glass to "their" remaining otherwise occupied.

If you smell bananas, pump smoke and run.

If miniatures gamers were to be targeted, I expect it would be those in the U.S. that game ACW. I think it would be the flags of the Confederacy carried by the miniature that would draw the attention of those outraged…otherwise they probably would never give a gaming table a second look.

I wonder if ACW reenactors are concerned now about their hobby?

They will probably be next if some get their way …

There has been a movement to ban all "war toys"

I fear there are a great many people who sense momentum in their espoused agenda who are determined to keep pushing.

And I fear there are a great many people who are about done being pushed.

We can but hope that temperance ultimately prevails.

I think it's optimistic, or arrogent, to assume gamers are a large enough group to even be on Their Radar. It would be like protesting against the society for the Advancement of Martian Immigration Rights … ok I made that up but you get the point. Cheers!

I'm not overly concerned that any protesters are going to show up in my basement while my group has a game going on.

It might get to the point where wargaming will be driven underground…

Oh…

Frakk'm ! They can have my toy soldiers "when they pry them from my cold dead hands !"

However, as we see the very much vocal lunatic fringe minority is everywhere.

"So keep your power dry …"

X2 for Lee494. ROU makes an excellent point about wargamers in Europe being generally liberal/centre left. Although many of them would think of themselves as moderate 'small c' conservatives, by contemporary US standards they would be 'leftists with a capital L'. In the UK Joe Biden would be considered a traditional Conservative.

Sounds about right … But we like our Limey Bros regardless …

I don't see the link between Colonial gaming and George Floyd's death. I don't see the link between WWII gaming and a colleague's son who has been pulled over in his car 50 times by the police in the last 5 years because his skin is black.

I don't see the link between police brutality in USA and removing statues of Teddy Roosevelt or Christopher Colombus or Winston Churchill or renaming brands of rice and candies but still they are somehow linked in these people's heads or pulling Gone With The Wind off the screens.

To be honest, I get them. They wish not just to stop police brutality but to rewrite the social contract as well as the cultural framework.

Basically they want to inflict their own ideals on the majority.

Thus an idiot cop holding his knee on some guy's neck for 9 minutes in Minneapolis is connected to statues of Churchill in London or James Cook in Sydney and names of rice brands because it fits the narrative.

And under such a narrative, mainly white males playing a game with toy soldiers representing various colonial or fascist factions could be perceived as being "racist" or "warmongering" or condoning colonial enterprises.

The solution: always play the native side :- ).

They are already targeting chess as a racist game because the white side goes first.

I blame Facebook for all these troubles. It gave a voice to the fringe.

I often wonder what is actually social about social media. It seems mainly a medium for spreading hate and intolerance. I ignore it all. I see no value or useful purpose in any of it.

Arealdeadone wrote -
"mainly white males playing a game with toy soldiers representing various colonial or fascist factions could be perceived as being "racist" or "warmongering" or condoning colonial enterprises."

Logic is not important to the Left; they don't care about it at all. The only criterion will be how well they think it will "play" in the media as part of their propaganda campaign. Our hobby is a perfect target for them to exploit and misrepresent. Don't be shocked if thirty or so screaming Antifa or BLM "protesters" show up at some wargame convention and start overturning tables.

B

Something like that might have happened 40 years ago. TV crews came up to a shop I went to and did a few minutes. Even though they didn't mean to it seemed to show the hobby in a bad light. Now days when the fake news want's to drum up outrage it will be much worse. Don't allow the news in your shop or club and do not talk to the media.

Logic is not important to the Left; they don't care about it at all. The only criterion will be how well they think it will "play" in the media as part of their propaganda campaign.

Ooh, that's a very shinny mirror.

And I think some people are conflating progressivism and socialism.

By and large past UK media coverage has usually been the odd newspaper column or closing package of the local TV news programming, which was generally of a tone that pigeon holed us societally somewhere around train spotter – I have no idea whether that has any corollaries or equivalents more globally. With the growth of digital gaming and the success of GW, and more recently resurgence in board games, coverage has got a little more positive. But overall I'm still fairly certain if you said 'wargaming' to the average joe on the street they'd probably say 'is that like computer games?' or possible 'what the film?' Obviously a parent might mention the evil empire!

We largely enjoy the camouflage netting of anonymity.

Though with the almost universality of digital gaming I suspect there are probably very few people under 40 who could without a dirty great big piece of 2x4 in their eye pass comment on our 'warmongering'.

Lastly taking gaming as a big tent there is only one group that has seriously come for us in the past and they weren't progressives!

The religious right and the inter-sectional left are the same sort of moral busy bodies. They both have an ideology they want to force on other people and want things they see as unclean purged from society.

Left/Right doesn't matter, it's whether or not people are forming a mob that is willing to impose their vision on others.

Anyone who destroys property public or private short of being at war, for whatever reasons are criminals. And should be dealt by legal means.

There are legal methods to remove an offending statue, etc., … rioting and destruction are not those methods.

I expect we will be seeing less ACW and Colonial games at conventions for a while ( when they start again).
Many years ago Tabletop games was picketed by the CND, it made the papers and tv the out come then was an upsurge in trade. I also recall another show being picketed by some anti war group and they gave them a table inside.
Somehow I don't see that happening in today's climate.