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In 2017, Finn*, a then-15-year-old gamer from Melbourne, showed his mother a viral clip he'd come across while watching gaming videos on YouTube.
The video showed an alt-right protester punching a young anti-fascist woman in the face at a Patriot's Day rally in Berkeley, California. "She got king hit," says Finn's mother, Stephanie.
A narrator made fun of the act of violence. "It was passed off as funny by the commentary," Stephanie says.
But far from finding the video humorous, Stephanie was shocked at what she saw.
"I actually burst into tears when he showed it to me," she says.
When Finn told her, "there are good people on both sides", Stephanie's heart dropped.
"I knew that was what president [Donald] Trump had said. My mind was spinning. I thought, what has my son got into online? I've let this happen. I haven't been asking enough questions," she says.
Finn's school immediately stepped in to help, offering its online safety course to younger year groups and inviting counsellors to speak to students.
"That was fantastic for Finn," Stephanie says. "We got it really early. He was quite innocent [and] impressionable. He hadn't gone totally down the rabbit hole."
Gaming and violent extremism
The world of online gaming has a long association with violent extremism.
Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old man accused of killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket in May, signalled his intention to target Black people in a mass shooting on Discord, a chat app popular among gamers.
In the wake of the tragedy, New York Attorney-General Letitia James announced an investigation into online platforms that may have been used to stream, promote, or plan the event, including Discord, 4chan, 8chan and Twitch, a video game live-streaming service owned by Amazon.
Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, told the court during his trial that he played computer games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for "training purposes" in preparation for his shocking attack.
Brenton Tarrant, the Australian shooter who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques in 2019, referenced popular video games Spyro the Dragon and Fortnite in a manifesto he distributed minutes before launching his attack.
Helen Young, an expert on racism and popular culture from Deakin University, says that while some perpetrators of fatal attacks have been gamers, it's important to note that "so are literally millions of other people who don't become radicalised".
She says the link between online gaming, right-wing radicalisation and violent extremism is an under-researched area.
"Sometimes gaming and games are in the mix; sometimes they're not."
But Dr Young says what's certain is that far-right organisations are targeting gaming spaces, interacting with other users and producing content for online platforms associated with gaming, such as Twitch, Steam or YouTube, where Finn encountered the alt-right video he showed his mother.
Kaz Ross, an independent researcher into far-right extremism and conspiracy theories, says part of the problem is social media algorithms, which serve users increasingly extreme content to boost views and engagement.
The rise of gamer subculture
As Dr Young points out, millions of people across the globe from all walks of life play computer games every day, but she says one stereotypical type of gamer is "a young white guy".
With the development of internet culture, gamer identity became associated with "young white men who often saw themselves as outsiders, who perhaps weren't popular kids, perhaps might have thought of themselves as picked on by athletes or jocks", she says.
Young white men began to feel ownership of online gaming spaces. "There's a strong culture and community of white, usually straight masculinity that is very hostile to outsiders within gaming," Dr Young says.
The Gamergate controversy – an online harassment campaign targeting female gamers that began in 2014 – illustrated how toxic the culture had become.
"There are lots of other gaming communities as well – some are actively anti-racist, some are actively pro-queer, some are actively feminist, some are all of these and more – but there's a subculture within gaming that is racist, homophobic, misogynist, and people who are part of that often associate their identity, their sense of self with that culture," Dr Young says.
It's an environment where extremist views, including conspiracy theories, can flourish. "That kind of hatred [and] bigotry align very strongly with far-right beliefs," Dr Young says.
As a result, she says, "within gaming, there is a subculture of white masculinity that is open to radicalisation by the far-right".
'Weaponising the gaming community'
The proliferation of extremism in online gaming did not happen by accident.
One of the most influential figures driving online right-wing extremism in the United States is Steve Bannon, whose CV includes stints as White House chief strategist during the Trump administration and executive chairman of alt-right site Breitbart News.
Mr Bannon – who also served on the board of Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct data-analytics company that collected the data of Facebook users without their consent to use for political advertising – is one of the leading culture warriors in the US.
"He wants to break the culture and remake it in a sort of a traditionalist sense," says researcher Kaz Ross.
According to Dr Ross, Mr Bannon "weaponised the gamer community" through Gamergate, which was championed by then-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos.
Gamergate mobilised the gamer subculture of disaffected young white men into an active political force.
Dr Ross draws "a direct line" between Gamergate, anti-Muslim activism and the great replacement theory (a conspiracy theory that a global elite is behind a plot to replace white Europeans with non-white migrants from Africa and the Middle East) disseminated by members of the white nationalist far-right.
The expansion of the far-right in Australia
In Australia, the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014 triggered a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment that saw the formation of right-wing groups like Reclaim Australia, a grassroots movement associated with neo-Nazi ideology.
Dr Ross says that Nazi groups in Australia "are on a big recruitment drive, and they're succeeding".
In a recent ABC RN Earshot episode, Everyone wants to be Fuhrer, a former leader of the alt-right describes how young men are groomed by far-right groups such as Reclaim Australia.
Members reach out to targets via gaming and social media platforms, often using humour in the form of edgy memes and videos as a hook to reel people in.
For young men living in a world that can be difficult to navigate, far-right groups also offer a sense of community and belonging.
"They set themselves up as role models of masculinity – 'OK, you're weak and flabby, and you want to better yourself? Come and join us. We'll train with you. We'll work out with you. We'll be there to support you. We'll encourage you. We'll help you get employment.'"
Add to that a political vision that promises to make a difference in the world, and the result is a worldview that is "very attractive to young men", Dr Ross says.
"They know how to click into young men's mentality – 'You spend all the time in your bedroom gaming? Well, come out and train with us,'" she says. "It's peer-to-peer recruiting. You've got 18-year-olds recruiting 16-year-olds."
The challenge for parents
Stephanie says she believes videos like the one Finn showed her use humour to appeal to young men without appearing overtly political.
Finn, now 19, still plays computer games.
"For him, gaming is his connection online," Stephanie says. "I didn't want to stop him from socialising with his friends."
She says that while his online habits didn't change, Finn became more critical of content he found on the internet. "He knows not to click on everything."
Stephanie acknowledges that monitoring children's online activity is a challenge for parents.
"It's really hard to know where your kids are going online unless you're checking all the time," she says, which can be particularly difficult when a child is in their late teens. "Who wants their parent looking over their shoulder all the time?"
Today, she says Finn laughs about the incident. "He jokes about it with me now, which is nice."
*Surnames not used for privacy reasons
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