Killing Zombies

Grand Theft Auto has long been a landmark for video-game fans. Players await GTA 6 to return to a virtual world of cities resembling Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, where missions bring money, weapons, gifts and, above all, cars.

The first game, released in 1997, caused a major controversy. Players could run over pedestrians, steal cars and receive rewards. Its degrading treatment of women also drew criticism. Critics accused the game of making players insensitive, much as role-playing games and films had done before.

But reality, however repulsive a game’s challenges may seem, can be far more cruel. The latest example, according to the column, is a group of games released by the U.S. government to attract younger audiences. They use the look of old arcade games, with pixels as large as dice, an aesthetic that may appeal more to older people. The author adds that perhaps little more can be expected from Trumpism.

One of the five games is harmless, asking players to create a healthy school menu. The others reflect the MAGA worldview, including hunting immigrants as though the player were an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and fortifying the border against “the horde that is coming.”

The author calls this dehumanization and racism, while stressing that the method predates Trumpism. The column traces it to the Nazis’ portrayal of Jews as rats, a way to erase the personhood of those detained, deported or killed. It also recalls Elon Musk posting an image from *World War Z* shortly after the assault on the Ceuta border. The image showed zombies climbing over a mountain of the dead toward the last wall protecting the only uninfected country. The column’s conclusion is stark: immigrants are presented as zombies who can be killed by the thousands because they are already dead.

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the horde that is coming