Blazkowicz: Nazi Killer

Really gets it out of your system.

“You probably heard we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business; we in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin'.”―Aldo Raine

There are no Nazis in America. There are no space aliens in America. But there are so many of them in American arts, entertainment and myth that, well we might as well say they are real. In fact, they’re social constructions. Eventually somebody had to invent them, because what do we know about Nazis and space aliens? Only what we psychologically project. Therefore it makes perfect sense for us all to go kill Nazis and space aliens. In videogames.

Games & Gamers
Ask anyone with the nerve to call themselves a gamer and you will find almost universal acclaim for the creations of the Wolfenstein series. Xai tells:

The Wolfenstein series is a long-running franchise of video games centered around World War II-themed action, primarily first-person shooters (FPS), where players battle Nazis and other Axis forces. It stars the iconic protagonist William "B.J." Blazkowicz, a tough-as-nails American spy of Polish-Jewish descent, who fights to thwart Nazi plans involving occult rituals, advanced technology, and alternate histories where the Axis wins the war. Known for its fast-paced gunplay, over-the-top Nazi-bashing, and increasingly narrative-driven stories, the series has influenced the FPS genre profoundly, especially with its 1992 entry. Developed by studios like id Software, MachineGames, and others, it's published mainly by Bethesda Softworks in recent years.

I started playing one of the most recent and well reviewed games of the series, Wolfenstein: The New Order, back when I was bored during COVID and quit after about one hour in. In fact, I never quite got past the introduction. I found it clunky and raw, and basically not up to the level of control and realism I prefer in my videogames, so it sat on my virtual shelf until a week ago. Mind you, this game was already 6 years old in 2020. Everything new isn’t better, even in tech.

So through a series of coincidences in my real life (needing fun), current events (political assassination & paranoia) and my reading memory (Robert Harris’ Fatherland) I found myself almost randomly deciding to pick up the game again. This time, levels that seemed impossibly frustrating and difficult, I managed to zip through. Then I realized I had stumbled onto something very interesting. So much so that I have to recommend it.

In that regard, I haven’t been doing as much cultural criticism as I should have been. So these days I’m going to be talking a bit more about my taste and indulgences in that — especially music and books, for whatever that’s worth. I quit gaming over a year ago when I finally got bored with Starfield, but recently started up again with some unfinished games like Call of Duty Black Ops 6 in preparation for the next installment. But what about punching Nazis?

The New Order
I’ve played a lot of WW2 games, but this particular one is both over the top and also a very good story. Little did I know that it’s a rather compelling alternative history. If you’ve ever played through one of the better Fallout games, then you have a good idea of what a thoroughly evil dystopia feels like. I often think that our political partisans have no good ideas about how absolutely inhuman people can be in that they haven’t read enough Kafka or played the right videogames. Then again, there’s only so much dystopia I can stand, even in first person fiction. For example, I couldn’t manage to play too much of GTA San Andreas, because all you do is inanely stupid crime and hang out with guttersnipe homies without any imagination whatsoever. Whereas Saints Row 4 is hilariously dark and perverse, but I digress.

There was nothing to prepare me for where Wolfenstein: The New Order would go. It surprised me to find my avatar, BJ Blazkowicz fighting his way through an alternate history in which the Nazis take over the world. In that one way, especially with the monumental architecture, the game replicates the spirit of Harris’ Fatherland. I noted that the game is devoid of regular German citizens but full of armed goons so as not to complicate your avatar’s lust for guns-blazing Nazi extermination with concern over collateral damage. The hellscapes of Berlin’s colossal concrete buildings with their sinister dungeons seems almost prophetic.

I’ve been recently influenced by a catchy phrase about ‘autocrats all the way down’ in that there is a certain kind of comfort in knowing that you are a made man in service to a kingpin. It is the comfort of living inside the box — freedom from ambiguity and the security of needing to only know and care about what the boss thinks. You apply it to your underlings as well and the dominance hierarchy coheres. Small dictators love big dictators. I think Freud had something to say about that.

But you don’t have to worry about all that as Blazkowicz. You’re a Rambo sized Bear Jew and the tip of the revolutionary spear. Did you ever want to shoot Nazi commanders with their own pistols? Ever want to slice their leg tendons and puncture their throats with their own swastika emblazoned knives? Did you ever want to live underground in the Nazi capital with a ragtag crew of rebel warriors dedicated to the cause of freedom against impossible odds? Here’s your chance to rescue the kind nurse who brought you out of your coma. Here’s your chance to destroy the literal and figurative robot dogs of the Reich, to slay legions of goons with guns, to liberate a concentration camp and meet a Yiddish speaking genius with keys to a secret underwater ark with supernatural weapons. All you have to do is hijack a U-Boat, blast a couple zeppelins, and steal nuclear codes from a military installation on the moon. Oh yeah, and kill all of the fascist Nazis.

The Zionist Fantasy
All of this extraordinary heroism is not at all what I expected, but the creators of the game put all this into the mix, not to mention unforgettably cruel bosses you meet face to face under the most disturbing conditions. This game pulls no punches. You will literally, under the crushing weight of commandos in mech suits indicate which of your comrades will have his eye plucked out by SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Wilhelm "Deathshead" (Totenkopf) Strasse. You will have flashbacks of watching your comrade’s brain extracted through the back of his skull by a crablike contraption inside of an incineration chamber. There’s nothing like crawling out of a minecar of dead bodies having been dumped unceremoniously into the boiler room of a Nazi work camp. On the other hand, there is nothing like finally slicing the identification tattoo out of your forearm so you can go undercover posing as an Aryan scientist at the human experimentation lab.

Make a choice. No pressure.

I used to characterize the Israeli military as an overreaction, a primal scream that simply won’t shutup, a gang of small dictators living under an Islamophobic big dictator. Then again, I’ve never had to play a game of Aryan Rorschach Russian Roulette under the gun of a fanatic Nazi bitch while serving her coffee posing as a waiter on a train bound for Berlin. I never wanted to consider the depths of human brutality up close and personal. Yeah, it’s just a game: a grotesque graphically violent simulation that I can turn off and walk away from at will. Then again, there is that realm of reality in which people say “I couldn’t make this shit up”. So it comes as no surprise to me that there are experiences, thoughts and scenarios that will break your brain, crush your spirit and leave your soul blind, crippled and crazy.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s what it means to kill Nazis.

To even want to kill Nazis is sick. To even suggest playing a game that allows you to destroy a virtual Fourth Reich full of Nazi baddies is dubious at best. Then again, it’s a free country experiment. We’re supposed to be America and that means free speech, right? We’re supposed to think thoroughly first and then act wisely later, so what is the point of thinking if you don’t occasionally think the unthinkable? How wise could we possibly be without doing so?

I could basically do this kind of immersion, even as an inveterate gamer, only about an hour or two at a time. Not because I was getting grossed out. I was, in fact, engrossed. Immersed. Deeply into it. Emotionally getting off. I was the hero. They were unpardonable. They made me participate in the murder of my friend, my fellow freedom fighter. I had to get revenge. Who could blame me? But, yeah I have other stuff to do in real life. Dishes. Laundry. Trash. Actual hygiene.

The Stoic Lesson
Well, I can clearly say that I’ve had my fun and chased my boredom away. I still haven’t put Deathshead down. The final boss battle against him in his mech suit is taking longer than I expected. The experience kinda sorta makes me want to play the next game in the series which is supposed to be even better. Yet the metaphor provided by this game has its own delicious resonance for me at this moment in American anti-semitic and politically murderous history. I’m not sure there’s a need to extend it a second time.

There is a dance with death we all play at some level. These days I’m thinking about whether or not we die tragically and if we are capable of understanding the depth of that tragedy. As a fictitious robot eloquently put it, individual humans only have about 80 years to figure it all out. I’ve added a line to the aphorism about liberal hearts at 20 and conservative brains at 40. If you’re not stoic when you’re 60 you’re a fool. Meh. I’ll monkey with it.

In the middle of our vigor and vitality, we embody the struggle for justice and revenge only periodically. We fight for something because we have to be sure and prove ourselves. That fight inspires us towards an uncommon madness: the achievement of the impossible. Something within us knows that when we stretch that far and don’t die trying, then the rules don’t apply to us any longer. So my conclusion is unfinished, but it starts a little something like this:

Title: The Black Nationalist Defense of Israel
Subtitle: I’ll tell you what I really feel.
Opening: I understand what it feels like to need a nation.

I could have called this ‘A’ Black Nationalist Defense of Israel, but fuck you. That’s how I was raised, for better or worse. I can say that dispassionately because at this stage of my GenX life, I have enjoyed all the things my young, gifted and black life imagined. I still haven’t raced Porsches and I still have no big house in Pasadena nor have I gotten to the head of Rolex’ ridiculous waitlist. But all those are desires (from my teenage years) and my needs have been fulfilled. I am the black man I always wanted to be and America didn’t stop me. I have come to understand myself, my faith and my family. Most importantly on this particular subject I understand what it’s like to feel the need for a new nation, not to get that new nation and to find a home in this old nation as crazy as it sounds, but I reiterate as Samuel L. Jackson, fuck you.

See? That has been in draft since the middle of August. It’s still unfinished, and it’s not stoic at all. I think it reflects the honesty of the emotions of someone ready to die on a particular hill. And when you have that vigor and vitality and you want to fight until the bitter end, that’s the hill you choose. And you dig in. And you fight Nazis. And it doesn’t matter what kind of Nazis because you’re dug in. Your costs are sunk. Your mind is made up. And you finally have something bigger than yourself and you are ready to sacrifice.

When you get to be 60 and you’re not a fool, you anticipate that young people all around you are going to get caught up in these struggles, that they will die, and that they must. You get good at crying and grief, and suddenly you see it most everywhere at the end of all the narratives. This is how ambition ends. You get to regret killing all of your Nazis. Worse still, you die on that hill without regrets, and the young and vigorous bring flowers to your grave and dedicate themselves to the honor of the box you lived in.

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So my advice? Play the damned videogame. Get it out of your system. We’re all not stooges and goons out here. There are no Nazis in America. There are no space aliens in America. There are no monsters under your bed. Shut up and get some sleep.

P.S. This is my entire Black-Jewish thing in a nutshell. You’re welcome.