Back in November 2024, I did a keynote for Germany’s Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (BPB) or the Federal Agency for Civic Education’s Masterclass Game Development” conference. From that opportunity, I was invited by the conference organizer to contribute to an edited collection on video games and fascism. At the time, I did not have any work that explored that area, but after thinking about it, I came up with an idea to write about toxic gamer culture and the tendency for fans and fandoms to cling too tightly to the things they love. In other words, in their “fanaticism,” they risk orthodoxy, gatekeeping, exclusion, punching down, and flirt with fascist norms.
The essay was finished about a year later and translated into Germn: “Rassismus & weiße Fankulturen” (Racism & White Fan Cultures), translated by Jessica Hackenbroch, was published in Handbuch Gaming & Rechtsextremismus (Gaming & Right-Wing Extremism Handbook), edited by Aurelia Brandenburg, Linda Schlegel, and Felix Zimmerman.
I just got the hardcopy!
