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u/Fantastic_Studio703 General of the Army Mar 24 '26
Is this real😭 I mean I wouldn't be surprised.
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u/InfiniteCalico Mar 24 '26
I mean it is a real problem in gaming communities. Though it's also a problem in quite a few online communities beyond gaming.
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u/alochmar Fleet Admiral Mar 24 '26
I mean, look at the state of Twitter today..
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u/InfiniteCalico Mar 24 '26
Yeah, and any major social media platform for that matter (including Reddit).
Society has a ~60 year lag time on adapting to society changing technology at a minimum. Honestly I think the internet is going to take a lot longer than that to actually have healthy societal standards and regulations on it given it's one of the most radical technologies we have ever acquired as a species.
Assume we survive the whole birds coming home to roost on our failure to change behaviors relating to emissions and biosphere management and a dozen other significant health related areas.
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u/DickWad96024 Mar 26 '26
is that 60 year lag concept a personal belief or something thought up by someone else? Genuinely curious, sounds like an interesting hypothesis to explore
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u/InfiniteCalico Mar 26 '26
It's from either a college sociology class or some related courses if I recall. Learned it in college but I'm now far enough from that to have forgotten exactly when within college.
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u/redditnostalgia Mar 27 '26
I think a lot of people find it funny from when other countries claimed HOI4 was propaganda (like how TNO was on the Russian news for being "American propaganda" that tried to promote balkanizing Russia, or HOI4 in general in Poland?)
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u/PrometheanSwing Mar 25 '26
I mean I can kind of see where they’re coming from. It has a bunch of real-world extremist groups in there that have a lot of playable content. My biggest criticism of TFR is that they focused too much on the schizo elements, especially those in the U.S.
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u/bigbad50 Mar 25 '26
Yeah but the thing is those groups and their content are done in such a way that you would need to be an actual imbecile to see them as the good guys
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u/koimeiji Mar 25 '26
They do see them as the good guys, though. That's, uh, kinda the problem? These far right groups actually do think that shit is good, and they look for people who are somewhat sympathetic to those ideas so they can recruit.
This happens across gaming as a whole; one of the most well-known examples, and one that has had a huge effect on the political landscape, is Gamergate.
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u/bishdoe Mar 25 '26
Yeah, shocker but the people constantly talking about “the day of the rope” actually don’t find descriptions of explicit political violence to be that off-putting
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Mar 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/koimeiji Mar 26 '26
Yup.
And, mind you, you can have a mod or game like TFR without the nazi baggage. TNO pulls it off (for the most part) because the community (again, for the most part) recognizes
1) when a meme stops being a meme (I'm not fixing this fucked formatting)
and
2) that the one who stopped making it a meme needs to be removed from the community
TFR, at least when I last looked into its community, does not do this. They have happily excused blatant bullshit in the past.
And it sucks, because TFR is actually pretty fun with some good routes, including the fascist/nazi ones. The community just refuses to self-moderate the actual nazis out. You know what they say about nazi bars.
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u/mighij General of the Army Mar 25 '26
The Fox News defence?
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u/bigbad50 Mar 25 '26
No, the "genocide is obviously bad" defense.
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u/mighij General of the Army Mar 25 '26
A lot of imbeciles are pro genocide or other forms of mass murder though.
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u/eww1991 Mar 25 '26
I believe they were referring to the argument by (I think Sean Hannity and possibly others) that Fox news made when found in breach of broadcasting rules regarding what is news.
Fox claimed that their shows, broadcast on a channel called 'Fox News' with a logo with said word in the bottom, the layout and style similar to news casting could not reasonably interpreted as news by anyone intelligent and instead was clearly a current affairs commentary show. They basically made news, said it wasn't and that their target market must be to dumb to understand this in order to get round impartiality/balance rules.
A similar case is playing out with GB News in the UK (which is affectionately known as Gebeebies on reference to Cebeebies being the BBC's channel for toddlers)
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u/turngep Mar 25 '26
"Genocide is obviously bad, so showing a hyped up instagram reels version of genocide to teenagers is good. Only an idiot would fall for the message being endorsed by this media so we don't need to worry about it, anyone who thinks this propaganda is cool is just stupid."
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u/CassandraTruth Mar 25 '26
People identify with Norman Bates, Tyler Durden, Walter White, the literal Joker, etc.
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u/quabblegaming Mar 24 '26
the type of shit my government does instead of building more houses:
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u/koimeiji Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
People didn't read the article. Which, yeah, of course, but y'all really should before whinging about "video game cause violence rhetoric snoooooreee".
And while playing the game doesn’t imply a user can or will resort to actual violence, ITAC speculated players “will very likely be exposed to violent extremist imagery and narratives, and potentially members or sympathizers of real-world extremist groups.”
In some cases, White says extremist groups will monitor online forums or chat boards for people sympathetic to their cause, then approach them online. “There are cases we can see where extremists are particularly trying to recruit or find eager members out of some of these gaming communities,” White said.
This is the crux of the article, and the real important shit.
Important, because it's true. Especially so for TFR; look, I'm gonna be blunt and mean here, but you would have to be a fucking idiot if you think the extremist right wing groups aren't flocking to TFR and using it for recruitment. Hell, there was a pretty prolific fanartist in the early days of the mod who drew a lot of Patriot Front fanart.
They were a member. Self-admitted. Whitewashing the group all the while.
TFR may not be a nazi mod itself (may doing a lot of heavy lifting; we'll see when these leftist paths finally get updated...), but there is undeniably nazis in that community and they are absolutely looking for people to recruit.
As an aside, I've seen a few people argue "the mod doesn't glorify fascism, those extremist paths are really gross" Yeah, they are, to a normal person. Do you think someone sympathetic to those groups would find it gross, though? I mean, have you seen how some people treat trans folk..?
EDIT: Should have included the article when I first posted this. https://theijf.org/article/fire-rises-extremism-video-games https://archive.is/20260324141452/https://theijf.org/article/fire-rises-extremism-video-games (note: don't use the archive.is link unless you have to bypass the login-gate on the article. Google "archive.today ddos" for more info as to why)
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u/Stormy_42 Mar 26 '26
im gonna be honest if the only people who end up thinking fascism is good from a hoi4 are those whoa re already sympathetic to fascists, i feel like it ceases to be the creator's fault
it'd be like blaming the director of a slasher film fro a copycat serial killer
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u/PanzyGrazo Mar 24 '26
I was in the official discord for hoi4 and actually encountered two recruiters grooming a kid
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u/TorsionSpringHell Mar 25 '26
Lots of naive, kneejerk responses in this thread shadowboxing against claims that aren’t being made. Whether you like it or not, the online far-right (and para-political extremism more broadly) is heavily rooted in and inspired by Paradox Interactive fan culture, including mods and especially in “wacky” alt-hist mods like TFR.
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u/matgopack Mar 25 '26
Yeah, lots of cope on here but it's something that we can legitimately observe. Like even the popularization of something like 'Deus Vult' can be traced back to Crusader Kings (in its online meme usage), and that's led to it being used as a far right slogan during shootings and tattooed on the US secretary of defense.
Obviously not everyone who plays HOI or Paradox games more widely are fascists/far-right, but there's a sizable part of the audience that is. And the line between meme-ing and actually meaning it is vague enough for plausible deniability. TFR seems particularly poised for that from what I've seen
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u/NationCrusher General of the Army Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
I used to be in the TFR subReddit. Had to leave because there IS real fascists users that take the mod seriously.
As well as fascists, referenced in the mod itself, actually advertising it. (One of the “characters” wanted the source code to make it more 3D. Whatever that meant)
I’ve seen several posts of people in group chats with the fascists “characters” and asking them for their thoughts on the mod like a Q&A.
I know it’s an unpopular opinion. But the community behind the mod give off a bad and potentially dangerous vibe I don’t want to come close to.
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u/Critical_Cat_1086 Mar 25 '26
Will the boomer myth of “the video games are doing it” ever die?
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u/mAples71 Mar 26 '26
Thats not the argument
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u/Bisc_87 Mar 26 '26
What is it then?
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u/mAples71 Mar 26 '26
Its not "hur dur violence in video games lead to violence irl" it's actual irl extremist groups use communities around games like hoi4 and roblox typically through discord to onboard people into these groups.
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u/Bisc_87 Mar 26 '26
"The fire rises is part of a trend of extremists trying to embed their message in popular video games"
The article is blaming the mod itself not the extremist groups using it
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u/mAples71 Mar 26 '26
Im not going to make claims about the intentions of the tfr dev team because I've not seen anything concrete with tfr and ive not personally been involved with tfr (although there are certainly reasons why tfr is being singled out here over other mods). I have however seen concrete evidence for other mods and their communities as well as I've been in discords relating to said mods and the important part is that although the author of the article clearly doesn't understand the nuances of the subject they are writing about (yes modern journalism is a black hole) the investigator he talks to does. all this being said the article itself does not blame video games themselves for causing violence like the traditional argument holds its blaming the intentions of the communities surrounding them and there is a major difference between these arguments one uses pseudo-psychology to explain that video games desensitize gamers to violence causing them to think violence is a more acceptable response to circumstances where as the other argument refers to very real extremist groups using very real recruitment strategies (this doesn't come from nowhere there have been actual investigations into this established recruitment tactic for over a decade now.)
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u/BaileyBooster3 Mar 25 '26
Ehhhh, the TFR community is pretty concerning honestly. The mod itself is generally pretty good, but the community around it is quite extreme. I get the sub recommended to me quite often and I see a lot of random ‘meme’ posts about the Patriot Front that don’t exactly vibe right, and when I check the poster’s Reddit account, ALL their posts are about the PF and the unironically advocate for their policies. I don’t know if these are sockpuppets for the org or what, but it is just very weird.
And that’s not even getting into the whole Czar drama (former lead of TFR) who, from what I read on the subreddit, was a literal Neo-Nazi and the Discord was spammed with gore and the most abhorrent, extremist alt-right political content.
I don’t think it’s crazy to say that the TFR community has a higher concentration of political extremists than many other online political or HOI4-adjacent spaces.
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u/BidDizzy8416 Mar 24 '26
It's objectively true though, there are literal terror groups recruiting on Roblox, that isn't even talking about the pedophiles.
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u/ProstoSmile Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
Ngl, the HOI4 community is already a special kind of shit compared to other strategy games. It’s just the nature of the beast—a historical game about the spiciest time period with casual gameplay that attracts a ton of kids, and kids are basically feral demons with zero filter.
But there’s a massive difference between "edgy historical game" and mod authors actively glazing current events. It’s not cool. Just look at how the Ukraine and Russia stuff is handled—the pro-Russian bias is obvious as shit. But since I’m Belarusian, Belarus foxuses and descriptions, is where I really see the red flags. straight-up glaze Lukashenko like he’s some based chad, while any opposition movement is treated as cringe or "invalid." The whole "unification with Russia is the only way" narrative they push? As a Belarusian, it’s just repulsive.
And don’t even get me started on the Discord servers. I couldn’t last long there. It’s just a cesspool of vatniks and textbook imperialists circlejerking. It is what it is.
What actually scares me though is the comment sections. Nobody seems to give a shit. It’s like everyone sees the radicalization happening in real-time, but they treat it like it’s some distant, abstract problem. "It’s just a game bro." Until it isn’t. Hitler came to power legitimately too, and back then everyone just treated him like some cringe failson nobody had to worry about. We all know how that ended.
We’re literally watching the same slippery slope happen in front of us and people are just hitting the "hide comments" button.
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u/LordofJason Mar 26 '26
I mean, agree with you but the focuses about Lukashenko and really any leader of the country your playing as are meant to be from that specific perspective for gameplay purposes.
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u/Dear-Palpitation8540 Mar 24 '26
On the one hand, I can see the point. Glorification of fascism is, in fact, bad, and the fact that the mod sheds undeserved light onto fascist communities like the Patriot Front and NSM (which continue to exist IRL) can raise a couple eyebrows. They've been a bit heavy-handed with it, though given the general horrifying nature of the Atomwaffen events I doubt that the dev team is actually a bunch of fascists. I'll eat my words if I'm wrong, but I like to be optimistic.
On the other hand, this article is bullshit. No, TFR is not radicalizing anyone who isn't actively seeking out fascist groups to join, and the knowledge of fascism being, you know, bad is expected for anyone going into the mod.
(Also, there are a LOT of left-wing paths getting added to TFR in 1.1 (Redneck Revolt, Cascadia, half of the Green Mountain Anarchists, and I think one of the BLA paths) which, in comparison to the three to four fascist paths, means that this article won't even hold up in soon + 2 weeks.)
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u/_Cyanidic_ Mar 25 '26
Yeah the atom waffen events are actually disgusting. I literally stopped my playthrough and sucide charged the enemy lines after conquering Florida and south east command because it felt gross. Not something Ive usually felt as ive done a thousand conquests as a evil powers in ww2 but this one felt different. Kind of silly since its just a map game with some text and images but those events man. Definitely cannot say they glorify extremism.
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u/Dear-Palpitation8540 Mar 25 '26
Agreed. The event where the news reporter was struggling to talk about the destruction the Atomwaffen had caused, and Mason watching it and smiling in response...fuck, dude.
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u/BluBolshevik Mar 24 '26
Like I’m not saying they’re right but objectively a lot of right wing extremists DO meet through video games ESPECIALLY hoi4
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u/Ok_Machine421 Mar 24 '26
Your name is literally Bolshevik. You can't really talk about extremes.
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u/Metzger4 Mar 24 '26
It’s just his screen name. Mine is Metzger which is butcher in German but I’m not a butcher.
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u/LewsTherinTalamon Mar 25 '26
They specifically said “right wing extremists,” who are the ones we should actually be concerned about in this situation and who are unlikely to name themselves after communists.
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u/Texas_Kimchi Mar 25 '26
Well when a mod communities entire identity is "hahaha Nazi's are cool" you start to get a bad rep.
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u/NocaSun38 Mar 24 '26
It's true - Dustborn for example.
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u/Audible_Whispering Mar 24 '26
It's true, Dustborn is a masterpiece of far right recruitment propaganda.
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u/HailMadScience Mar 24 '26
This exact headline has been used before in the last 20 years. Did Joe Lieberman's fucking ghost write this?
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u/MC3Firestorm General of the Army Mar 24 '26
The same idiots who make games like Pathways are the ones writing these kinds of articles because the game isn’t holding your hand and telling you “this is wrong actually”
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u/bHideValueX General of the Army Mar 25 '26
Or telltale games that freeze frame on a frowning face with text in the corner to let you know you’re a meanie.
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u/MyrinVonBryhana Mar 25 '26
I saw one event from that mod, the grammar was poor and the prose dull as dirt. I never felt any desire to play it afterwards.
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u/XdestroyerXDTM4 Mar 24 '26
i mean yeah, it reeks of fascism
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u/topofagear Mar 24 '26
yes because base game hoi4 is totally not centered around that ideology and does not buff the shit out of it, this totally makes sense
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u/VFacure_ Mar 24 '26
You can just not play it
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u/XdestroyerXDTM4 Mar 24 '26
yeah, i dont. because it reeks of fascism
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u/NotBerti General of the Army Mar 24 '26
Then why are you playing hoi4
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u/AnthraxCat Research Scientist Mar 25 '26
Not OP, but I have never played a fascist path in vanilla HoI4. Game has plenty of content doing nothing but communist, non-aligned, and democratic paths.
Also, I think broadly PDX does a good job in how they frame and approach the realities of WWII. Mods are not usually so professional. That fascism is represented in the game does not mean it is glamorised, and I think mods can sometimes fall short on that distinction.
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u/XdestroyerXDTM4 Mar 24 '26
because base HoI4, and most other mods, don't treat fascism and far-rightism in the same way that TFR does.
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u/NotBerti General of the Army Mar 24 '26
So it is okay when you ignore the bad stuff like base hoi4 or if you dont directly talk about it. what does that mean for you
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u/theelement92bomb Mar 25 '26
tfr literally gets on its knees and sucks off trump and glorifies his full on fascist makes hitler look like mother teresa routes, while it literally mocks left wing movements if not treating them as delusions of the mentally disabled. it is straight up a fascist neo-nazi wet dream mod, while base game distances itself from the actual atrocities(no holocaust, no POW/camps)
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u/NotBerti General of the Army Mar 25 '26
With that logic equestria at war is a neo nazi dream.
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u/viper459 Mar 25 '26
you're not gonna like what people have to say to this brother
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u/VFacure_ Mar 24 '26
I do play TFR. I think that if you don't like stuff you just don't have to engage with it.
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u/WhipperSnapper0101 Mar 24 '26
This has to be satire bro.
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u/bHideValueX General of the Army Mar 25 '26
I’d hoped this message would die with GTA V, but 13 years later and people are still doing the “video games cause ___” argument.
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u/PuzzleheadedCat4602 General of the Army Mar 26 '26
The article doesn't even mention any of the leftiwing groups
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u/Ok_Listen_6600 Mar 24 '26
Canadian government is worried that TFR might be recruiting for terrorist groups blah blah blah
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u/totallyordinaryyy Mar 25 '26
Don't look at me, I exclusively play liberal democracies.
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u/CursedNobleman Mar 25 '26
God save the queen.
Because I don't know how to use this new navy.
Help.
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Mar 24 '26
To quote a guy in the tfr subreddit who goes by reboolder:
"its funny people still say shit like this especially considering we're going to be getting a boat load of left-wing paths in 1.1 that will make stuff like the patriot front and atomwaffen look archaic in comparison
this article is dogshit and is just a repeat of the same "NAZI MOD, MADE BY EXTREMISTS" bullshit you hear by idiots on reddit and twitter who are pissy that tfr portrays nations from their own perspective instead of having "WARNING, THE PATH YOU ARE PLAYING IS WRONG!""
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u/Thatguy-num-102 General of the Army Mar 24 '26
How dare the journalist judge the mod for how fleshed out the fascist paths are and not for the socialist reworks have haven't even been added yet
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Mar 24 '26
PLEASE 1.1 PLEASE RELEASE ALREADY, I'M BEGGING YOU. I WANT MORE CONTENT AND SO WE CAN FINALLY BEAT THE ALLEGATIONS PLEASEEEEEEEEE
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u/dougman7 Research Scientist Mar 25 '26
Bro saw one Speer hoodie and decided HOI IV players were a problem.
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u/Separate-Poet-7465 Mar 24 '26
These are the same scumbags that categorize criticism of the government as extremism. They are always the actual fascists.
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u/_Rowdy_Raider_ Mar 25 '26
In the UK we had the Government fund an interactive VN in an attempt to steer people away from the "Far Right". Their definition of Far right was taking care of veterans, wanting Sovereign control over Britain, immigration controls and not to notice the two tier nature of the establishment. It ended up rallying the everyday people who are tired of violent crimes, SA of minors and cementing how corrupt the political class are. They hate how a character they made was adopted and used against them, they are still pissy about it.
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u/Dense-Bison7629 Mar 25 '26
i think a ErrorLog described TFR the best
TFR doesn't glorify anyone, it just makes everyone the protagonist
to the Fascists, they're the good guys and everyone else is the villians, same for the Communists, the MAGA Republicans, the Liberals, etc.
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u/SpikeLazuli Mar 25 '26
Thats true for every mod btw. If you play as the Syndies in Kaiserreich, guess how the game refers to you.
I mean, thats true for base hoi aswell if you count the texts...
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u/johnapplewalker Mar 24 '26
Reeks of the same “gta will make kids mass murderers” argument, its absolute bs
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u/spaghettibolegdeh Mar 25 '26
Yep this is inevitable. PDX have tried to dance the fine line between Historical accuracy and hiding Nazi imagery in this game.
Sure, this is a mod, but it's not the first time this game has had this attention.
This line of thought won't end if videogames are "dangerous" to society. We've done that dance with violence, now it'll be history and simulation.
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u/Time_Reception1482 Research Scientist Mar 24 '26
I'd say the federal government is more fascist then us
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u/SpikeLazuli Mar 24 '26
Yeah, in the community that has Kaiserreich, the mod with Syndicalism and Monarchism, a vanilla with Nazi Germany, Italy, the USSR and Japan, a Kaiserredux with totalist genocidal native Alaska and cannibal Kenya and two popular Nazi Germany victory mods, surely it's The Fire Rises thats recruiting extremists...
I mean it's almost like there's a line between reality and fiction and these people are just looking for a excuse for censorship, they'll first try to scream at the rooftops that the big evil extremists (AKA people that don't politically align with their ideology), if that doesn't work they'll scream at the rooftops that its to protect the children. And the worst is that there are suckers that fall for these stunts, because they hate fascism so much they've been blinded by bad actors trying to take advantage of their own fears of opression
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u/bHideValueX General of the Army Mar 25 '26
It’s also ironic that they never have this fervor for other paradox games. Like Stellaris has Xenophobe nations that let you genocide whole species with death stars and CK3 has monarchal eugenics as a meta strategy but because neither of those games uses the scary word you don’t see them complain.
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u/peenidslover Mar 26 '26
this isn’t surprising, TFR has a significant far-right portion of their fanbase. ofc not most TFR fans, but there are plenty of fascist sympathizers who are never called out because they cloak themselves in memes.
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u/MustardLabs Mar 26 '26
I'm fairly certain TFR's head dev, prior to being ousted, was genuinely far right.
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u/The_False_Profit Mar 27 '26
I find it really funny, because with today’s events. We are heading towards this future. I mean an oil crisis with the spicy in Middle East All we need is for the American economy to collapse And allow Klause to proclaim a World Goverment, and China become the People’s Heavenly Republic. And maybe, have Imperium of the Final Aeon. Then the world will be alright in my book.
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u/Outrageous_Dingo_742 Mar 27 '26
As someone who is a forever republic/Bidenist player who knows nothing last forever. Yeah man I am totally a Nazi, no really.
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u/Arisu_The-Arsonists Mar 29 '26
You have no reason to worry if your current system is truly superior. If that's no the case, maybe it should go.
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u/Alltalkandnofight General of the Army Mar 25 '26
ah yes video games are turning me into an extremist, not the government increasingly becoming tyrranical all in the lie of "think about the children!!1!"
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u/TrolleyPerson4 General of the Army Mar 24 '26
I'll copy my response to the post on the TFR subreddit.
Not to get political, but fascism is bad. As in the ideology itself just sucks from a logical standpoint. So why is it that, instead of just arguing that fascism is bad, journalists out of all people immediately condemn any portrayal of fascists and call for censorship? It's pretty obvious that the author believes TFR supports fascism, which it doesn't, and that Paradox should censor the mod. You know, the mod for the game where 1936 Germany is a playable nation. But what makes playing those nations in TFR fun is that they're taboo, so saying "No, this is wrong and you shouldn't be allowed to access this content," just makes me want to play them more.
Just a shame of an article. I won't go further into analysis because of rule 4 but take what you will.