Keep the Army Out of Gaming

on the fight. It's gonna be great. We're talking about talking about gaming, We're talking about the military, we're talking about why the two of them crossing is extremely bad. And uh with us to talk about this are two people who are somewhat less clownish than we are. Um. This is Katie and Chris from Gamers for Peace, which is an initiative of Vesterans for Peace. Well, welcome to the show. Hello, Hey, thank you. I take offensive dying called less clowns, and I'm just trying to live up

to your standard. I'll have you know. I am very, very clownish and clumsy and all of those good things. And he trusted me with weapons. Oh God. So I guess starting out I wanted to talk about I guess very generally the history of counter recruitment, because this is something that's been going on in the U. S. Military for I mean, it really is like from from what I could tell, like about as long as there's been

you know, recruitment for the military. But I was wondering if we could start I don't know, maybe maybe maybe around sort of the Vietnam era when you when there's you know, very very serious and intense sort of left wing kind of recruitment, and then we can go from there. Yeah. Yeah, So coming out of a Vietnam you have Vietnam Veterans against the war forming, uh, and there's a massive pushback

on uh, the draft. Uh. The anti war movement is pretty much at its strongest, and Vietnam Veterans against war

over time becomes a veteran for peace. Veterans for Peace has a long legacy of sitting at the front of the anti war movement peace movement, participating in nuclear abolition work, kind of recruitment work, the escalation work out of Save Our v A, helping veterans get assistance with disability benefits, and making sure that the traumas that veterans suffer and the communities of um impacted by the military suffer are getting treatment for the care UH deported veterans because Vietnam

that's served and then got deported, and that continues to this day. UH SO Veterans for Peace at a multi pronged approach, the anti war efforts and UH two thousands around UH two thousand seven, Ish Iraq Afghanistan Iraq Veterans against the War later known as Iraq Afghanistan Veterans Against the War comes along and that's a new generation of veterans carrying a long built on the legacy of Veterans

for Peace and being non veterans against the war. UM you know, there's a long history of coffee shops, g I Resistance, UM Outreach doing work with veterans, trying constances objective object or work um GI resisted work in in there, and there's just a long legacy of just veterans sharing their experiences and coming back and really ah wanting to make sure nobody else goes through that and making sure that they get the help they need and kind of slow that that beat of the war drum that seems

to media seems to always be picking up, and that's where we came in. That's definitely a good way to put it now, UM, especially born out of the pandemic, a lot of the recruiting had to move online. They didn't really have if they wanted to keep recruiting, they had to go online, and that's where a majority of the newest generation is they are watching Twitch. Twitch had a viewership like pretty much competing with Netflix streaming UM as of this summer, and I'm sure that hasn't really

changed much. I'm sure it is just as popular UM and the audience for Twitch skews very young. So that's really what started to worry members of Veterans for Peace, like, Okay, we might need to ramp up truth and recruitment UM initiatives,

which is what Games for Peace came out of. Because the thing is, if you're forming a paras social relationship with these younger kids by streaming and forming those laserships, getting them on discord and talking to them, you're getting a one sided view of what military services about, and you are definitely not getting the uh, imperialist informed viewpoint for sure. UM. So Venoms for Peace kind of came

out of that. That's like very insidious looking, uh, hidden and subtle way of recruiting using the video games that have already historically been used for recruiting purposes. So it's like a double it's like a double way they got on us there for those not inundated in the game or warfare like we are. Um, how let's I think we should briefly describe what twitches because I know a lot of people probably probably isn't actually aware of of Twitch.

That's whereas we are down in these trenches finding off the cyber net stuff bad sor yeah. Yeah, So I guess twitches like a live stream platform that is primarily used for live streaming people playing video games, and people kind of help their own like brands and like personalities and like paras social relationships with an audience via them playing these games and kind of adding their commentary, you know,

variety of games. You know, sometimes it's like mostly chatting with people like inside like a group chat while playing a game. Um or you know, it's of more focused on the game itself. It kind of varies, but yeah, it's a it's a it's it's arguably the biggest live streaming platform. I think it was brought by Amazon a few years ago. Um, and yes, there is a there is a US there's a there's a few US like

military channels on there that are actually relatively popular. UM. I guess the other thing to kind of get into for some background is, like you mentioned, you already kind of alluded to this, but like the history of the U. S Military using video games for propaganda because they've been they've been one of the earliest funders of games for

this reason. I think getting into that history is like interesting, um and something that some people are definitely aware of, but a lot of times can get overlooked, despite you know, Call of Duty being the one of the biggest video game franchises in the world. Yeah. Absolutely, the UM military and involvement in video game video game design using as recruitment, using it primary Initially, at first it was thought of as a training tool and they started looking at it

for training. UM. If you think back to like early nineties Doom, the original Doom had a mod released h called the Marine Mod. It was a modification designed for the Marine Corps to use to train marines and as early as the early nineties when Doom was at its height, and then then that grows from there. You have First to Fight, uh what is it? Uh? Game called First to Fight features Marine Corps marines and dress blues where you're tactically uh fighting a battle and um in which

you never want to do. If you know anything about the Marine Corps Blues, you do not want to be doing anything in those that isn't getting drunk exactly, just drunk and dancing and blues is all they're good for. UM. Yeah, so you have you have a first to fight and then it turns into Call of Duty America's Army, which thankfully just got pulled down all its platform from its platform.

That's a huge win. But the Army started design getting into the development of video games for training, UH and then got into it for as recruiting, and America's Army is a perfect highlight of that where they just flat out had recruitment posters and training things UH in there with links to how to get to recruiters or get more information about joining the military joining the army. UM

you have armor to uh. You could you could argue and draw the line from military training simulators to pub G Underground, which is one of the uh most biggest Battle Royale games, which is where you get Fortnite out of. So you can draw these lines straight from the military's involvement in designing training and recruitment materials to what our

kids are playing the most these days. And really one of the most kind of sick factors of this is like how much games have been designed and pushed towards basically training people for um like uh, I guess we're trying to think of the term, but like combat at a distance in terms of like drawing, like drone combat. There's just like they started just using Xbox controllers for

some like drone missions. Like like it's like they're specifically looking at the pipeline of specifically young males who get into this type of gaming and trying everything they can to push them into a career where they just kill people in overseas countries using the same technology, using you know, using video game controllers, using like you know, operating systems very similar to what we're being used in video games. And I mean, like in video games are a very

effective propaganda tool. If you're thinking, like, Okay, I mean I just enjoy playing war games. It's not like, what's what's the big deal? Like sure, like I also enjoy playing war games. Sometimes they can be a fun um

you know, I like this like tactics based games. But these have been shown to be very effective at recruitment, to the point that video game footage and video games were like one of isis favorite recruitment and propaganda tactics as well, like this is it's a it's a thing, like it's not it's not just like oh, it's fine, Like no, these these things are actually kind of a

profit of Yeah. Um, they are very effective in that manner as a recruiting a tool, and there is a real synergy between gaming developers and the d o D because of how effective, uh, you know that recruiting can be, or the recruiting tool can be. Um, similar to movies, you know, the military entertainment complex is a term thrown around a lot for good reason. You know, you have there is a black box of politics. Whenever you're watching a movie that picks u yeah, some sort of power

structure against whatever the villain is doing. There's there, there's always something there, and video games are not too different from that. Just have a little bit more say and where the story goes, but maybe not even it depends on the development. But um, there's article in The Atlantic that was it was actually like about a book. Um, from because Dexter Thomas warplay and it's all about video

gaming and the relationship with the military. And they said the Pentagon avoids pitiful, expensive efforts to create their own training simulators, and developers get fat government checks so they can help fund these new games, new virtual reality things under the guys of it being a useful training tool for training in like virtual virtual reality environments, which it scares me already. Um, And then game developers are like, great, I can get a government grant, so even if this flops,

we still got the money out of it. That's not an uncommon phenomena. Yeah, I mean in terms of like filmmaking, Yeah, like there's been there's rules for like Pentagon contracts with film studios still be like, if you want to use you know, U. S. Military equipment or personnel, you need to follow these specific rules to betray the military in this light, um, which often do get followed just because people want to use the cool equipment and stuff. You know.

I'm still angry that my that my beloved Transformers got cooked by the U. S. Military and all of their films um. And as a result of films are pretty pretty bad. Um. Yeah, I'll have you know they are film are you know? I'm sorry, I can't even keep

you straight. I hope I as a as someone with many many star scream action figures, I I dream of one day of having good Transformers movies, classic, the you know, the eighties classic, Um, You've Got You've Got the Touch, um and the Bumblebee film is okay, but it's even still that one got coocked, that one got cooked by the military pretty pretty severely. Yes, it's it's funny that you mentioned isis using video gaming. Uh, there's just a

recent report came out. It's linked to the u N. I believe it's linked to the u N. Council on Counter Terrorism or Office counter Terrorism. Uh, talking about violent extremism and gaming, the link between video games and violent extremism. And what's really interesting is it's not so much that the video games themselves are the issue. It's the gaming

adjacent space. It's it's the para social relationship development, it's the meme, and it's the what what we've what we've known in in the gaming world for a while as associated with like the behaviors and culture around gamer Gate and things things like that, where we see this, uh, this toxic culture that um is easy to cultivate inside these spaces and and be co opted for more to

various things. UM. And that doesn't that's that doesn't mean that the military isn't banking or utilizing these same principles to get its recruiting messages across. The military is another violent extreme position, right. You're whether it's you're the violent arm of capitalism and the state or or violent like domestic terrorists or something like that, you're still um opting into or your position is still getting mobilized towards potentially

doing violence. And these gaming adjacent spaces are make it really easy for recruiters of all sorts to be in there and uh push people to more of that side of things. Yeah. One of the things I remember when I was like a teenager on Twitch was like, so I watched just like a lot of harsh touch streams, right, and this was like these were, you know, like completely

main light, hard stone streams. And there was there was this artist who everyone called Kebab the German and uh, yeah, so it turns out that Cabab the German was a miss. It was like a shortening like abbreviation of his actual name.

Which was removed Kebab, and this guy's stuff was just being played on like every major like like Twitch, like all the major artonal streaments were just playing remove Kebab songs and it was like and this this was just like what like this is just what Twitch was in like and yeah, like there there's so much like the the extent to which just this sort of like i mean just overtly fascist like melieu would just seep into just like you know, here's a bunch of people playing

a card game and like it wasn't it wasn't even like like I mean, some of these streamers were like really reactionally like I've seen I've seen t streamers who like will like watch videos of like cops doing right like raids on people's houses on stream. Like you know, it's like you have those people who are like really far right, but some of these people were just like I don't know, they're just a lot of them are just regular reels extremists. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just sort

of culturally value. Yeah. Well even then, like some of them just like I think with like like with with with with like with the Germans, like they just didn't know, like they just they just like didn't know what was going on, and so they were just you know, spreading

all of this stuff and it was like it was horrifying. Yeah. Absolutely, And actually I'm glad you mentioned that because about a year ago, the the Army Sports Channel got in trouble because one of the streamers didn't catch on to to there were two user names that were explicitly white supremacist. One of them was um six million was not enough.

Yeah uh yeah, yeah, real, real gross. And I guess like just in the whole idea of multitasking between playing a game, trying to interact with chat, and trying to make sure you're you're on screen and all of those things, they didn't realize it, or they willfully didn't realize it. I don't know which one, and I'm not going to make a judgment either way, but they did. They had to shut down that stream, and I don't think they

streamed for a couple of weeks after that. They had to like reassess some some things because they're like, hey, actively, you know, white supre him is this people are on your stream? You should probably you should probably do something about that. And I feel like, if you're the U s military streaming on Twitch. That someone's job should just

be to prevent that from happening, like the resources. Yeah, but like they kind of have this problem with though, because Twitch has a there's a there's a huge just like like core, like a large enough base of Twitch users are just like fascist or like hard right wingers that do things like like there have been a persistent problem on Twitch for for years now of like these hate raids, like people doing mass raids on like anyone who's not white and anyone who's like not just white dude,

and just like hate rating their channels and like spamming

the chat with like slurs and stuff like that. And you know when when that's you know, and that that's too large, Like yeah, like those those are the people, like you know that that's a large enough part of Twitch that like even even even if you're like taking the most charitable thing, which that the US, like the Army is not overtly recruiting white supremacists, which like okay, but like even even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, right, like that that's a large enough

part of just what Twitch is. They haven't a cent of in front of blind eye and and radicalization, specifically right wing and white nationalist radicalization in the military is well studied and well established as an existing phenomena. I knew someone personally who uh got caught trying to smuggle weapons for a neo Nazi group, and that's all I'll say on that. Boy. Yeah, yeah, No, it is a thing,

and it hits really close. It is definitely a phenomena that happens in the military, and um, these paramilitary Nazi groups actively recruit from people coming out in the military because they have the training set they want. And I mean, I trying to figure out a way to tie this back to recruiting online. But it's like, with all of this in mind, it is very insidious that the target

is explicitly young kids. And I'm not saying that just to be like, oh, you know, because we've got a lot of We've gotten pushed back was saying, well, the military doesn't recruit kids, so you can only sign up for their seventeen About that a kid. That was completely bullshit. That is a kid. Second of all, it's like, the thing is it's it's it's just like grooming children. That's that's what it is. Like. It it's the same process

of grooming. That's that's what's going on. Yeah, one of one of my best friends growing up, like because it was my best friend for like a decade, Like I met him in first grade. He was my friend for the entirety of school and then he got like because his parents sent him away to like one of one of those like uh like summer like like military school camp, and he was just never the same afterwards, and he's like a fascist now, And yeah, that's it sucks. Yeah,

that does suck. That. There's not a better word for that. That that sucks because yeah, they can't sign up until they're seventeen, but that's not the point. Isn't convince seventeen year olds? The point the points to Ingraine this, I d in them when they're like sucking twelve years old on the internet. And that is just what grooming is, right, Starting it when you're when they're young, so when they're old enough they will be able to sign up for

the thing. Like that's that's what the process is, and that's what like, you know, military propaganda recruitment's been doing for a long time, but the specifically the way it's being done on the internet around gaming is extrasidious. It was literally it is explicitly said by one of UM A recruiting officer, Dr. E. Casey Wardinsky. And I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, but the you literally said

we have to confront this question. I willie wait until they're seventeen or really start talking to them at age twelve, thirteen, fourteen fifteen when they form the set of things they were thinking about doing with their life. Because we're literally saying we want to groom children. Is like, yeah, so I think now would be the time to kind of get into the countering side of things. It's like, yes, this is a this is a big problem, as we've laid out the past twenty minutes of what can we

do about it? Yeah, so what can we do about it? There's um a good deal that we can do about it? Right, UM we we Veterans for Peace, the Truth and Recruitment UH working Group came up with an idea for the Games for Peace Initiative concerned veterans and gamers and UH and allies because Veterans for piecesn't just comprised the veterans themselves, it's also allies and accomplices. UM came together and started forming an online community of our own UM where we

have kind of adopted some four channels. Have changed this concept of four channels to change. One do education talking about UH, sharing our experiences as veterans, talking about and unpacking recruitment tactics and techniques. UH. Start talking being extremely vocal and raise awareness around the recruitment techniques that we've we've already been talking about. Right. Uh. Second, we're doing some mentorship and leadership stuff, starting to develop programs in

local communities that offer alternatives to the economic draft. Right, like just throwing it back to where we started talking about coming out of Vietnam. It has already said that sergeant hard Times is the best recruiter and it posts posts the drafts we went when we went to an all volunteer force. You have to have a reason to join. And there's a thing called the economic draft. And it's the impoverished conditions that many kids in people face that

forced them to go into the military. Right, you don't have healthcare coming out of high school, you're in an abusive home, you're not talking to a guidance counselor, no college is coming to you don't know how to pay for college. You don't know where what you're going to do because you're eighteen and on your own. And that's what we keep telling kids. So you have the economic draft, which encourage gives an opportunity for recruiters to go, hey,

this this program will solve everything. And what what people don't realize is what's being asked is are you willing to kill for a camaro? Are you willing to kill just to have a roof over your head? Are you willing to kill for medicare? Right? So we're starting to focus on developing mentorship and leadership program UM include helping kids and young adults get into college or find mutual aid programs within their communities, start doing stuff locally because

this is the problem is pervasive. Right. Not everybody needs to escape abuse of home and it is fine staying in their community, but doesn't know how to survive within the community because they don't have the resources there. And we also look at the what's going on in the world today and and recognize that things must be done at a local level, UM, and you can be part of leading that change. Right In teresting some of the

our world concerns, we ourselves do direct actions. We go to gaming conventions, speak out, try to actually do counter recruitment right where the recruiters are. We just it's really pervasive. If you if you if you go to any kind of con or any kind of can any kind of like game fest or whatever, um, you know, co comic cons, there will always be multiple military recruitment booths there, like like Navy, Marines, Army National Guard, like all of them that they they will all all be there. It's not

not like favorite thing to see. No, No, it's frustrating. Yeah, board games aren't even safe, right. The Army E Sports team has a forty K team, So if you play Warhammer forty K, they have nationally or internationally ranked forty K team playing in the major circuits. You know, it's most insulting about that. Sorry, Chris, it's most insulting about that.

And I know this because one of the streams that we do, I hosted, is called ad Slam because we started out as like roasting military recruitment ads, but it kind of morphed into just like general veteran and military depictions and media, and one of them was on the or at least referenced the Army e Sports Warhammer forty K team. And you know how people will like take their figurines really seriously, they paint them. They look really cool. The Army like spray painted them gold and it's called

the Day. And I'm like, really, you have all of these resources, you are using the recruiting budget, which is ridiculous and astronomical, and you spray painted them gold. Are you kidding me? Come on? And it's is insulting that it was so low effort, but they still get the praise. Um. A lot of people report like having positive viewpoints of the military after interacting with members of you know, the

East or team or the booth or whatever. So I'm I'm genuinely annoyed that it's also low effort on that matter and they're still getting a positive response. Bothers me, that's a perfect highlight because being there on like hate using military terms nowadays, but being their boots on ground, you know, uh at at these conventions, uh doing providing

truth and recruitment right, talking about alternatives. Uh really just being there in front of recruiters and and talking to the people that they're targeting and family members, letting them know like, hey, we as veterans. Right, don't let this be what shapes your child's future or your future. Right,

there's other opportunities for you. Um and and you know whether that's if you're in the gaming start designing games, right, Like, there's there's so many opportunities within the gaming community that doesn't want to put you into the military pipeline also, right, So it's not the game's fault. It's not like it's it's that the state's using right now, right, um. And then we're trying to form some our Arny sports teams also, right, so we can compete directly against them, kick their as

in some of the tournaments at day host. Um. You know, my my dream is to see some gamers for Peace jerseys getting awarded like some trophy next to the Army sports team and just dunking on them so across all the But if we lose, if we're up there, we still get to dunk on them. See, we had so much more fun. We don't have to go clean up barracks room after this. Like the ultimate goal being us

being able to provide tangible alternatives. So a kid coming out of high school thinking like well, I either go into a lot of debt to go to college or I joined the military. If we can get um not a hold of them, that seems predatory, but if we can talk to them, or our organization can provide to that alternative and say, oh, well, you don't really have

to do that. We have a scholarship program that we can offer you, or we can provide a lae at the very least education about what they're really getting into so they can make a better informed decision. Because the main problem that I have with the way that recruiting works is that you are not getting a view of what life would actually be like. You are not getting

a view of what you're fighting for. That there's a whole lot of like these vague concepts that they tell you that you're fighting for and then you're supposed to feel great about doing but none of those are real in practice, liberty or protecting the homeland, none of that is what you're doing. You're helping Northrop Grumman create a profit. Right, Like, there's uh and so at least, at the very least, someone who thinks that they have no other options, and

in this country that might not be too far off. Right, we don't have a universal health care system. That was part of the reason why I joined the Marine Corps, that I knew I would get health care and I knew I would get money to go to college and not be in this loan debt that I was in. So I'm definitely not alone in that. And UM, if maybe we can even just provide a more holistic view of what decision that you're making, that would be considered

a win to us. So that was my soapbox. One of the important things is trying to push back on the most nefarious things that we're seeing, right, whether that's games that are becoming way to train training simulator. UH. There's another campaign that Games for Peace worked on and Veterans for Peace worked on at the platform, Six Days with Care the Council on American and Islamic Relations UH pushing back on again called six Days in Flucia, which

was delayed to quarter four two of this year. So we got it was pushed by a year, whether through our efforts or for whatever reason, but it was pushed by a year. UM. And this game is dubbed a murder simulator, UH, because it is. We look at other games like Escape from Tarkov as as teaching fundamental skills

through tried and true teaching methodologies for military skills. Um. You know, we were talking about counter recruitment and truth and recruitment to give people an opportunity to make informed have an informed decision about their participation in the war machine. But also we're trying to push back directly on the war machine and and say hey, there's better uses of our money for for as as a government to take care of our people. There's a lot of fundamental things.

There's the contributions to the climate crisis. Is the military's number one impact? Uh impact or of the on the climate war is never green You can't green wash the military. Um. The you know, we have just so much going on around own all the ways that people don't realize that

militaries involved. We have the future of German warfare, kill, cloud technology, gaming technology, and the military and militarism is so tightly wound right now that just pushing back and trying to parse those two things apart is one of the things that is most effective for counter recruitment and also for mobilizing people to be like, hey, we actually deserve better, like get out of my gaming space and like get me some food, sovereignty, get me, get me, Like,

let's let me be part of my community. Get out of the gaming space and stop using what is fun and has actual educational value mental health benefits, physical health benefits, communal impact, social impact like this, this gaming tool, this gaming technology we have can be used for so much good. Uh, but we need to disentangle the military's usage from it and and stop framing our our time, our time enjoy that we enjoy with our friends and family through the

lines at the military forces to view with her. Because there are so many great games out there, like like we are in one of like right now, we have the most amount of games ever released, most amount of good games, like always being announced and released all the time.

There's so many great stuff to play, and yeah, there's anything that can be done to push people away from stuff that kind of promotes this, you know, colonial imperial it's kind of mindset um is great, right, Like that's why I kind of appreciate the cartoony aspects of Fortnite, even though I hate playing Fortnite and we'll never really do so, I still appreciate it as opposed to like the heavily militaristic kind of aesthetics that other you know,

similar Battle Royals show, um, because I mean because with with with as many games out there as there is. Yeah, I think any kind of attempts to push people away from the more problematic aspects of you know, specifically shooting games is great. Yeah, And just noting that when you're playing these games, especially if they are relatively close to reality, UM, understand the impact that you can have uh by pointing out simply that your friend doesn't respawn in real life, right.

And also keep in mind if you are playing a game that that is close to a recent reality, that you could be playing through someone's actual trauma. So I'm not telling you not to play the games if they are We've gone over a couple like Squad uh and and others that are like very very realistic um in

their application. Just keep in mind when you're playing it that maybe look at it through that lens, like would how would you feel if you were playing through a game but it was the exact moment of your trauma. And I'm not even saying from the military side, I mean from from the people who are being bombed side, you know, So just just want to have more people

be more mindful with what they consume and how. And again I'm not telling you not to consume it, just telling you to think a little bit about it and what that type of media can do while having that baggage onto it. And there is a place for that's in the military experience in gaming. Right Like when I was in when I was deployed to Iraq, I took an Xbox Sege six year over there with me in an to bottom my sea bag and we had on Camp Filia, we had a local area network of Xboxes

in all the cans. When we sat there and played Halo and and Gears of War and when that dropped walls there, right, Like, that's how we stay in touch with each other. It's how we process like auditory things and and and our combat experiences. Right, That's that's valid sublimation and processing of our traumatic experiences a thing, and games have that. And that's not a military exclusive thing

or a veteran exclusive thing. That's for all communities. Um. But what we have to do is add context and nuance to when we're playing these games and go, oh, um, there's another side to this story. That's the local civilian that just had a bomb cave in ceiling. Right. Uh, there's there's these these instances where we've removed that because we're so focused on the competitive nature instead of the storytelling in the full scope of what that game is

allowing us to process. Um. And that's why I don't like, I'm not blaming recruiters or blaming like coming up to people in the military and going, you know, you're horrible.

It's not the right thing. Hey, I was there, right, I did six years in the Marine Corps and and um, you know, instead of going, hey, you're a horrible person or things like that, like, we're trying to offer them them the recruiters and other military members of the community that go, hey, you're allowed to speak out against the things that you know were bullshit while you're in there. Because I knew it was a bullshit while I was

in there, and I couldn't speak out. I didn't know I had a community to speak out to or with.

And we're trying to offer community to them. Um. And that's beyond beyond just video games, but that's drone operators and infantry guys and and people that are just fed up with what they see in a system that is supporting a crumbling infrastructure, right, Like, Um, you can only deploy so many times without developing either becoming completely dead on the inside or having developing some semblance of empathy that goes, Hey, deep down, I know something's wrong here,

and I just don't know how to uh, Like, I don't know what that feeling is. Well, that feeling is is just empathy for the human condition and not wanting to see people traumatized through war. Right, Um, that that idea of us going into like even post nine eleven, like immediate post nine eleven events early on they had they went there with the right, right idea. I want to defend my community. I want to be do do

service right, Like I don't have another option. Yeah, I'm an economic drafty, but all in all, I'm really here to help defend my people. Yeah, it was, it was. It was a genuine thought, Like, it was a genuine idea. Right, people, you could very much disagree with, like the intentionality the propaganda that like governments were doing to promote the war and the unjust reasons for that, but for the for

the regular people, right, Yeah, it was, it was. It was genuine feelings that caused that to happen, and overlooking that, I think MSS what makes the recruitment to work. You know, if if you just look at all the people who join the military as being like, oh, they're just like bad people who want to kill you know, brown people. You're like, that's you can think that, but that doesn't

actually do anything to understand how recruitment actually works. And then if you can't do that, then you don't know how to actually counter it. Right exactly, if you are a veteran and you feel like we do this whole thing was bullshit you, and that can be uh an incredibly alienating experience. I've been there, because it feels like with the amount of veterans we saw the January six events, um, all the veterans that you see that get through to the right wing side of the culture war, I just

want to say that we see you. You're not alone, you are you are not crazy. I promise you. We we are trying to build a community of people like that who understand it and promote healing through that community, political education through that so that you can create resiliency within your community and as well as at least put a little bit of pressure on the military entertainment complex and the military recruiting apparatus. Yeah, fuck the military, Fuck

war war. It's truth all right to you two of anything specifically you want to plug, Yes, join our discord. UH. You can find if you search the discord, you can look up Gamers for Peace and you will see us on Twitch. We are Veterans for Peace all one word, and we stream several times a week gaming content content about um, different alternatives to military service content, breaking down propaganda and recruiting efforts, as well as other political education things.

Sometimes it's just a random community game night as well. Um, actually no, that's not random. Those are on Thursdays. So there, Um, Chris, should I have did we add anything? I got something? Um? Uh? The if if one of the first things you can do besides going to discord and checking us out on Twitch. Uh. We actually have an online can digital direct action campaign going on UH that we're pushing to allow content creators on Twitch as a platform to be able to opt

out of military ads UH on their channels. So that is our campaign that we currently have ongoing. There's a petition. It is uh bit dot lee slash Twitch. Military ad opt Out is the u R l they'll take you

right to the Twitch petition that feedback through Twitch. Uh. We're looking to hit a thousand at least a sap on that petition, UH to get some get a response from Twitch, and then go from there, allowing content creators to take ownership of their of the the ads and stuff that are on their channels, at least when it comes to military recruitment. UH, and then going from there. UH. We also uh are doing actions and planning things constantly.

So beyond lookout, joined the discord all that good stuff. Oh, if you need help navigating that, I'm a mod in the discord at plantipa she slash today and you'll find me. We'll try to put that link for the petition in the show notes so people can find out with a with a with with an easy click. Awesome. Perfect, All right, Well, thank you to you you for joining us. We are it could happen here at happened here pod in the places, in the places, the places you know, all the places

they're all there. H Well, thank you everyone for listening, and yeah, go play I don't know Mario Kart eight or something, you know, something something fun, I don't know. I enjoyed you enjoyed the Mario Kart games as a as as someone of my age, very very very integral to my driving education. So yeah, go play Mario Kart date buck War War not another generation. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media or more

podcasts in cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.