Leftists triggered by the presidency of Donald Trump continue to find new ways to dig themselves deeper into misery, and now a side-scrolling videogame with the unsubtle name of Antifa is taking a swing at the 45th president.
In Dumpland, Humpel Dumpty rules using thousands of televisions scattered across the land. Dumpty has tasked his henchmen with imprisoning parts of the population in darkness (clever metaphor for America, right?!) As “Antifa,” a gas-mask-wearing, Molotov-cocktail-throwing protagonist, you must free the people by smashing Dumpty’s TVs and crushing his troops by jumping on their heads.
Such is the ridiculous world of Antifa, in which players try to take their frustrations out on the keyboard by fighting a thinly veiled Donald Trump.
Players smash televisions on which a caricature of Trump “proselytizes,” discovering hit points and “spicy cocktails” that set henchmen ablaze, all on their way to releasing the imprisoned inhabitants of Dumpland and confronting Humpel Dumpty himself.
It is of course a silly satire, but the anti-fascists politic of its creator are no joke, reports Vice.
Antifa was created by a developer who goes by the pseudonym Wobby Dev. Released for free on itch.io, a popular platform for independent video games, the Super Mario World-style side-scroller is meant to be a friendly introduction to antifascism for gamers who might otherwise only know the movement from media coverage that is unavoidably bleak.
The real Antifa is known for violence, threats, intimidation, anonymous destruction and vandalism, and getting arrested.
The game’s politics are equally apparent. In the world designed by Wobbly Dev, the player must defeat an orange-faced tyrant who blathers on the television, beckoning his followers to do his dirty work. It’s not far off from what antifascists across the United States have been saying since the 2016 presidential election—namely that Trump is fueling a wave of fascism that must be confronted by everyday people if it’s to be defeated. But perhaps everyday people are too occupied with their new jobs, lower-taxed income and increasingly fruitful investments under the Trump administration
