Activision Blizzard has released a trailer for the 2020 Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War that appeals to the political right. The YouTuber Carl Benjamin calls the trailer a “pleasant surprise.”
This is the trailer: On August 19, Activision released a teaser trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Players had to solve a code to find and unlock the trailer.
The trailer states: At the height of the Cold War, Yuri Bezmenov defected from the KGB to the USA and issued a disturbing warning. The KGB defector explained how the Russians would infiltrate, destabilize, and weaken American society in a 15-year plan. This process is called “active measures”: Intelligence activities to influence global events.
The trailer depicts what terrible turn the USA will take if “the schmucks” are allowed to install a government in Washington that will promise a lot of things.
The message of the trailer is: It is based on true events. One must know history to prevent it.
Activision presents historical figure, but it is controversial
That is the problem: The person speaking in the trailer, Yuri Bezmenov, is actually a historical figure. Bezmenov (1939-1993) defected to the West in 1970.
Also, the interview shown in excerpts in the trailer actually took place. As the US site Kotaku explains, Bezmenov gave the interview to conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who denies that something like HIV really exists. The interview took place in 1984.
The interview suggests that the plan of the Russians is to change American society by promoting the “equality” of the population.
By giving women and people who are not white more rights, the USA would be softened and made ready for a Russian invasion.
Kotaku summarizes Bezmenov’s thesis: Every attempt to achieve social equality for women, black people, or LGBTQ+ in the USA is a Russian conspiracy to weaken American society from within. Bezmenov referred to leftists, feminists, and war opponents as “useful idiots” whose demands make it easier for the Soviet Union to destabilize the USA.
This is how the right reacts to the trailer: The well-known British anti-feminist Carl Benjamin has a YouTube channel. He is explicitly pleased about the new trailer. It would “introduce Yuri Bezmenov to the mainstream. This is a “joyful surprise” (via YouTube).
It is said that the USA has already been ideologically undermined, so it is now important for the message to reach the “normal people” as well.
- In the comments, viewers are pleased that Call of Duty is finally answering the “call of duty.”
- What Bezmenov warned about back then has indeed happened and is now reality. One only has to turn on the TV.
The YouTuber Carl Benjamin ran as a top candidate for the “UK Independence Party,” a right-wing populist party, in the European elections in 2018. He became known, among other things, for saying that feminism is responsible for the rise in mass murders by men (via theguardian). Before the “stupid social justice feminist bullshit,” there hadn’t been mass murders of this scale.
This is what’s behind it: The Call of Duty trailer takes only Bezmenov’s statements that fit the plot: Threat, the Russians are attacking, everything will be terrible.
The real “footage” serves to capture the period’s character and make the threat feel more real. This fits the hard narrative style that was already targeted with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: The developers wanted to shock the world.
Bezmenov seems to be someone among the right who is gladly cited to give more support to their worldview in the sense of: “He predicted 35 years ago what would happen to us if we started to get soft and move to the left.”
The context in which these statements were historically made is not elaborated or is omitted in the trailer. Surely Activision Blizzard wants to avoid the political baggage that comes with these statements.
Nonetheless, the use of the material is now causing a controversy. The politically left US medium Kotaku is outraged and accuses Activision Blizzard of “making a series of decisions that are questionable at best and dangerously irresponsible at worst.”
Call of Duty portrays war and aims to polarize, shake, and shock with its story. The authors rely on real-world events. Apparently, one needs enemies to tell stories about war.
In 2019, the portrayal of the Russians in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” drew some criticism. Our author and shooter expert Sven Galitzki is himself Russian and had mixed feelings about the game:
As a shooter fan, I love CoD Modern Warfare – As a Russian, my heart bleeds
