ZOG’s Nightmare (and the CT Analyst’s Dilemma)

By Madeleine Gruen

ZOG’s Nightmare

White nationalist and supremacist groups have been long known for their innovative inculcation tactics; such as their “White Power” music and their computer games that depict humiliation and death of minorities. One particularly aggressive example is the computer game “ZOG’s Nightmare,” a first-person shooter game in which the player must kill a certain number of Jews, homosexuals, African-Americans, and Hispanics in order to reach the next level of the game.

“ZOG” is an acronym for “Zionist Occupied Government;”white nationalist code to communicate their belief that Jews secretly control the government. "ZOG's Nightmare" suggests that Jews and other minorities will lose their power to whites after a bloody revolution. “ZOG’s Nightmare” is very similar in format and theme to other white supremacist computer games, such as “White Law” and “Ethnic Cleansing,” both of which depict the stabbing or shooting of minorities from a first-person perspective. What makes “ZOG’s Nightmare” stand out from the other games is the unvarnished language used by the game creator on the promotional video clips found on the main web site. Most white supremacists do not intend to conceal their hatred of minorities, but most do not express their desired method of how minority groups will be segregated from whites with the degree of blatancy expressed in “ZOG’s Nightmare." Most white nationalist and supremacist groups will only subtly infer violence because they are trying to develop a broader, more mainstream audience. Their violent aspirations are usually only clearly expressed through their computer games or through the lyrics of the “White Power” songs.

The “ZOG’s Nightmare” web site opens with an announcement that it is a “Whites-only Web site. No niggers, spics, faggots, Jews, or other mutts allowed”—the type of people, the game's creator says, “who follow Obama.” After entering the site, the visitor can find video clips of the entire game being played by its creator and full voice-over narration of the action taking place on the screen. As the player is stabbing an African-American police officer in the face, for example, the narrator says, “Die nigger pig.” After killing all the minority police officers, the player reaches the next level of the game in which minorities, who have invaded a Nazi office building, are shot. The player enters several storage rooms, one of which contains barrels of Zyklon B, which the narrator says is for “your favorite Jewie [sic].” Another room contains boxes of “nigger skin lampshades.” Another tier of the game features “The Good Jew Room,” in which, the viewer is told, Jews are used for medical research. “We have our ovens, electroshock devices, and we have our Jewish corpses.”

The “ZOG’s Nightmare” web site was previously registered as “NukeIsrael.com,” which purported itself to be the official site of “The National Genocide Movement.” “NukeIsrael.com” was re-registered as “Zogsnightmare.com” in October 2007 by a man from the Portland, Oregon area, who is a former member of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement (NSM). He is currently unaffiliated with any organization after having had a series of disputes with the NSM leadership.

The CT Analyst’s Dilemma

In the post 9/11 era, white supremacist groups no longer receive the same sort of news media attention they once did, and never received the same volume of attention currently given to Islamist extremist and terrorist groups. I too have been occupied with the more imminent threat, and would argue that the white nationalist and supremacist groups do an efficient job of sabotaging themselves with their internal power struggles and paranoid suspicions that fellow supremacist-group members are FBI informants. There is probably no need to devote so many professional counter-terrorism assets to white supremacist groups, which are usually as solid as a deck of cards to begin with.

Furthermore, it could be argued that devoting “ink” to the white supremacists’ activities will simply result in favoring them with the free publicity that they are looking for. This is a valid argument, but there are two (or more) sides to it:

1. Blog entries, such as this one, get reposted on other blogs, which sparks curiosity, which results in more cyber “hits” on the exact thing that is being defined as offensive. More "views" of the web site may give the offender the ability to boast that he or she is now offending a bigger audience (thus inciting friction between white supremacists and their opposition, which is part of their strategy to foment a revolution). Increased traffic to the site may enhance his or her ability to claim that more people support the racist perspective, or that they have been able to expose a larger audience to their message, which may eventually draw in more people to the racist movement.
2. The other result of calling public attention will be an increased awareness of a source of violent ideology that is intended to incite violent action. Increased public awareness may result in the mitigation of supremacist/terrorist/violent extremist group's ability to influence an audience--And, my belief in increased public awareness as an effective method of mitigating and interdicting extremist hate group activities outweighs my reluctance to draw attention to their foolishness. Public awareness leads to outrage, which leads to complaints, which leads to government response, as was the case in the UK after members of the public and non-governmental organizations raised their concerns about Omar Bakri Mohammed's hate-filled rhetoric to government agencies. For years, Bakri and the members of his group, al-Muhajiroun, held public rallies and distributed leaflets calling for British Muslims to wage Jihad. Ultimately, as a result of pressure on the government by the media, the public, and non-governmental organizations, Bakri was forced out of the UK and is banned from returning, and many of his closest followers are in prison.

White supremacist groups do not use their computer games to inculcate their own members exclusively, nor are they used exclusively to draw in more card-carrying members. Games such as “ZOG’s Nightmare” may be effective in inciting a lone wolf actor who is attracted to white nationalist/supremacist ideology. Timothy McVeigh, for example, was inspired by the book The Turner Diaries, which tells the story of an armed revolution by whites against the government. Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber, was influenced by the Christian Identity movement, which adheres to the belief that there will be a violent battle between Jewish people and white European descendants before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. "Zog's Nightmare" allows players to rehearse the Armageddon scenario over and over again.

As an analyst, I do my best to avoid imbuing reports with my personal opinions. My job, as defined by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, is to engage in a process “of studying the nature of something or of determining its essential features and their relations.” It can be almost clinical. In the case of “ZOG’s Nightmare,” there is no subtlety; no reason to crunch discrete facts to help decision makers visualize an ambiguous phenomenon. “ZOG’s Nightmare” carries a transparent message and purpose. Numerous studies have found that playing violent computer games increases aggressive behavior and also desensitizes children to suffering, and the white supremacist computer games are intended to do just that.

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