I am not interested in talking about the game play of this arcade zombie mode of CoD, but rather about ideology.

As we all now, the Call of Duty franchise is know for its pro militarist, pro US imperialist views, the banalisation and commercialisation of US atrocities and war crimes, and also of working as fuel for the industrial military complex propaganda machine. It can, therefore, be considered one of the ruling class’ gears in the capitalist superstructure.

In this series of maps, the characters are Edward Richtofen (soldier for Nazi Germany), “Tank” Dempsey (US marine), Nikolai Belinski (member of the Red Army) and Takeo Masaki (captain for the Imperial Japanese Army). So we have a soviet, who is a communist; an American, who is a social democrat; a German who is a fascist; and a Japanese, who is a monarchist.

The scenarios, relationships and characters are caricatures of real life, one dimensional representations of the type of human each of these would be on each side of the political spectrum. Of course I wasn’t looking for some deep narrative or profound exploration of characters from a CoD video game, but this concentrated essence of burlesque ridicule is in our favour to understand the ideological meaning it tries to purvey.

It is the bourgeoisie rationale of a possible co-existence among classes. The idea that the proletariat, the feudal lord and the fascist can all live along and find a cure for its differences. This idea populated among the social democrats and reformists, that the State is an entity in charge of facilitating the détente between oppressors and oppressed, and which vindicates the necessity of a group of people rightfully guiding the other.

This reflection is two folded. On one side, it is the diluted hallucination it tries to engrave in the working class’ skull, of this possible amicability amid exploiter and exploited, an unfathomable synthesis. On the other, it lifts the veil and turns on the light over the disfigured and true face of the bourgeoisie: they will collaborate with the fascist and the remaining and decaying feudal forces in order to entomb any advance coming from the revolutionary movement.

There is no such thing as absolute class conciliation, by definition, “the State is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode (the class opposite to it)”, there is an opportunity for temporary truces, but this only works with the objective in mind of either defeating and enemy or securing the existence of the proletariat movement in a determined time. This idea, this bourgeois make-believe of a infinite expanse of never ending historical conciliation is a farce and a trap.

Real emancipation and freedom can only be achieved when the flow of history untangles from this crossroad it is at right now. Alas, just when the destruction of the bourgeois State, the internationalisation of the proletariat cause occurs and class society is abolished will the human being be able to enjoy true comradeship among its kin. Till then, don’t fall for tales of cordial treatment with the enemy, and remember “fascism in capitalism in decay”.