Siryako Akda

I believe that culture can be transmitted through various mediums, and just as Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum expressed, “the medium is the message,” I believe that video games—at least in our present age—is one such medium. Whatever people may feel about the significance of video games influencing our culture, one thing is certain: it has become a medium for entertainment that is every bit as popular as books, music, and television.

Having said that, this article is about one of my favorite games of all time: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, a stealth-based video game developed by Ubisoft. And although it’s debatable just how much input Clancy has put into the series, one thing is certain: a lot of people love it.

The series centers on the story of Lt. Commander Samuel Leo Fisher, USN (Ret.), a veritable aging badass with a very dark sense of humor. With regards to gameplay, Splinter Cell is a thinking man’s game, and it focuses upon stealth as opposed to Rambo style manslaughter. Fisher’s Trifocal nightvision goggles, slick black suit, modified FN2000 (in earlier games), and old-guy dark humor makes for a good male fantasy.

Even as a guy living in a Third World country, I can say that I am a fan of Sam. He actually reminds me of my own father—efficient, intelligent, and scary. However, the Splinter Cell franchise can also be easily labeled as Neo-Con propaganda, in the sense that its basic narrative is based around clandestine black-ops conducted all over the world in the name of preserving Democracy, Liberty, and MTV.

Throughout the entire series (at least until the latest installment, ‘Conviction’), Fisher has worked for a fictional organization within the NSA called Third Echelon. Third Echelon’s agents are called Splinter Cells, and their mandate is based around the concept of The Fifth Freedom.

To make a long story short, the Fifth Freedom is the Freedom to exercise any means to safeguard the “Four Freedoms” which precedes it. In a lot of ways, it is the most succinct expression of Carl Schmitt’s State of Exception.

For reference, Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedom Speech’ highlighted the following “Freedoms:”

• Freedom of speech and expression
• Freedom of religion
• Freedom from want
• Freedom from fear

Splinter Cell however, takes FDR’s position one step further, and into Carl Schmitt’s backyard. According to the Splinter Cell Wiki, the Fifth Freedom is:

“ . . . considered to be the freedom that protects the other four. It is normally an unspoken freedom and is considered a form of diplomatic immunity. The Fifth Freedom permits members of Third Echelon (and other members of clandestine operations) to eliminate a person(s) without any Legal or Governmental consequence, as long as it is to protect the other Four Freedoms of United States citizens. During certain sensitive missions, the Fifth Freedom is not always a viable option to field operatives, who must then adapt to accomplish their goals. When the Fifth Freedom is made available, then an operative is permitted to remove any threats deemed necessary, without the fear of legal repercussions.”

So there you have it . . .

Despite the moral ambiguity implicit with an agency like Third Echelon, it is easily justified within the context of the game’s setting. The world of Splinter Cell, much like our own, is very politically unstable, and just like the real world, American society is in a state of crisis.

Fisher understands the dangers of the world that he is living in, and he knows what his actions imply about his country and the ideals that it’s supposed to represent. He also has no pretensions about his line of work . . . or its ethics. He even describes his job in the following manner:

My name is Sam Fisher. I'm a soldier. I'm not much of a philosopher, but if you want to know what I believe, I'll tell you. I believe the greatest threats to our freedom actually start small. They begin as random events that most people don't even notice. But they grow. They multiply. They start chain reactions that threaten the entire world. Some people call that "fate". I call it "Chaos Theory". But, believing in Chaos Theory doesn't mean you have to surrender to it. That's where I come in. I find those threats before they get out of hand, and I eliminate them. Quickly, quietly, relentlessly. I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell. (My bold)

Rhetorics aside however, perhaps the most compelling aspect of Splinter Cell is the trajectory of Sam Fisher’s journey. He goes from a morally ambiguous avatar of American Neoconservatism into an avatar of American existential confusion throughout the course of the franchise.

In the very first Splinter Cell game, Sam Fisher fought fictional Georgian President Kombayn Nikoladze, and his merry band of terrorists in order to stop World War 3. As far as the plot goes, the first Splinter Cell game was pretty straightforward. Fisher was the good guy. The Eastern Europeans, with the bad accents, were the bad guys. Therefore, Fisher teaches the bad guys about Carl Schmitt’s “State of Exception” with the barrel of his gun.

In subsequent games, however, the good vs. evil narrative will not be as strong as it was in the first game. In the second game, for example, ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ Fisher doesn’t just go against a group of Indonesian terrorists, the Darah Dan Doa, he also fights against a pissed-off ex-CIA agent turned terrorist by the name of Norman Soth.

The moral ambiguity comes from the fact that Soth was actually involved with the Darah Dan Doa prior to the events in ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ when the US government, through Soth, supported the terrorists as part of its covert operations in South East Asia.

Unfortunately for everybody, East Timor happened, and because the US decided they liked East Timor better than Indonesia, managed to piss off the Darah Dan Doa’s leader, Suhadi Sadono, who then decides to unleash terrorist attacks on US soil with the help of his BFF, Soth. The bottom line is that Fisher, in ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ fought to contain a geo-political mess precipitated by terrorists who were once supported and funded by the US. However, the moral ambiguity does not end there.

In ‘Chaos Theory,’ the third game of the series, Fisher would discover that the man responsible for almost starting World War 3 was his friend and PMC CEO Douglas Shetland. Shetland, an irate former Marine recon, was dishonorably discharged after the US government used him as a scapegoat for an incident which happened in Bagram, Afghanistan. Intead of going to anger management classes, Shetland instead decides to start World War 3 in Asia.

Naturally, it was Fisher’s job to stop him, and his Japanese partner, Admiral Otomo from starting a war. However, the chinks in Fisher’s mental armor are getting worse at this point. Fisher probably had a hard time getting used to the idea that an American PMC, with very close ties to the US government, almost started World War 3. And although it was explicitly stated in the game that the US government did not know about Shetland’s hidden agenda, Fisher is sure to have some doubts and questions floating around inside his head. And really, who among the readers of the Alternative Right would believe a story about the US government being duped by one of its own Private Military Contractors?

In the fourth installment of the game, Fisher jumps the shark. In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Fisher is no longer just an agent working for a secret and extrajudicial branch of the American government. He got promoted into being a double agent, after his daughter was “killed” in a car accident.

And his first duty in his newly acquired position? Why, it’s to spy on a domestic terrorist group known as the John Brown’s Army. This time, the bad guys were extremist militia types who wanted to blow up New York and LA. Moreover, it’s also strongly implied that the JBA may be a white nationalist organization because one of its main members, Carson Moss, was “a racist and was linked to several hate crime beatings.”

During his stint as an undercover agent, Fisher’s gray morals also turn into an even darker shade of gray, and his hair into a stronger shade of bald. In order to maintain his cover within the JBA, he was forced to do certain, let’s call it, morally reprehensible things. In canon, for example, Fisher kills his African American boss and best friend, Irving Lambert, a man who is every bit as ruthless and morally ambiguous as Fisher, so as to maintain his cover, and thus stop the bad guys from blowing up New York.

The ending of ‘Double Agent’ is not linear in the sense that the player’s actions will determine whether or not New York is given a thorough purging. Canonically, Fisher saves New York, but at the cost of killing Lambert. However, with his daughter dead, the living symbol of what he is fighting for, and the death of his boss and best friend by his own hands, Fisher has lost all faith in his country.

However, the true implications of this change will not appear until the latest installment of the Splinter Cell franchise, ‘Splinter Cell: Conviction.’ In ‘Conviction,’ Fisher is no longer bald, but he is still in an existential funk. After several years of being emo, Fisher now quietly lives in Southern Europe.

This all changed however, when he got a call from Anna Grimsdottir, an old colleague from Third Echelon, who tells him that someone is trying to kill the president of the United States, a short haired blonde woman, who may or may not be based on Hillary Clinton.

To make a long story short, Tom Reed, the new director of Third Echelon, wants to use Splinter Cells to kill President Patricia Caldwell (the Hillary Clinton look-alike), on behalf of Megiddo, a secret cabal of very naughty people who are out to control the American government and use it serve their own naughty agendas.

Naturally, Fisher comes out of retirement, struggles with his inner demons, finds out that his daughter’s death had been faked, reunites with his daughter, and of course, saves America’s first female President from being murdered by the new director of Third Echelon, Evil Guy (possibly womyn-hating) Tom Reed. The game has Fisher run around Washington DC beating up people and shooting up a massive body count. The end of ‘Conviction’ sees Fisher victorious, and Reed dead, who is either killed by Grimsdottir or Fisher, depending upon the player’s choice.

The underlying message of ‘Conviction’ is that America can only be saved if Fisher can find the bad guys who are trying to take control of the American government. However, there is a more important issue at hand here than fighting Megiddo, and that is the system created Third Echelon, and it is this system that has created most of the disasters and problems Fisher fought against throughout his long career.

In truth, Third Echelon and the Fifth Freedom have set the precedence for the terrorist attacks in Conviction. The agency and the motivation for its creation are—in a sense—an implicit recognition that the American system—as it was established by its original founders—cannot cope with the changes posed by a new and emerging geo-political system. The conspiracies and terrorist attacks throughout the Splinter Cell series are merely the symptoms of this problem.

Moreover, Fisher is more than just an anti-hero. He is also in a lot of ways a reflection of the evolution of American morality with regards to the War on Terror. He is a reflection of the confusion, ambiguity, and general cynicism of the American public with regards to the current geopolitical order. And although Fisher’s convctions of serving the “greater peace” may seem commendable, his actions as a Splinter Cell sets the precedence for many of his own problems later on.

This confusion is also expressed, among other things, in paranoia over an unknown evil that’s mysteriously corrupting the American government. In the game, it’s Megiddo, but this archetype exists in various other franchises and stories. The significance of the secret society archetype is that it is the personification of uncertainty and fear that people have towards the vulnerability of the system they’re living in. It is a tendency to project one’s fear of the unknown towards a group or a system. It is an attempt to contextualize and even humanize the problem that they’re facing.

The truth however, is that they’ve already taken over, and they’ve taken over a long time ago. How far back depends on your mileage and how you define “they.” And Splinter Cell, although it has dared to push Fisher to the very limits of acceptable metapolitics, has failed to push him through the threshold of something profoundly radical, and that is the idea that mass democracy and the American experiment have both failed. The world that is living in has failed.

It’s easy to make a game about a good guy fighting off some group that’s based on the illuminati, but in the real world, those forces that are causing the decline of the US, and arguably perhaps the world, are not some secretive organization that could be brought down with an FN2000. The military industrial complex, hyper-capitalism, multiculturalism, unlimited mass immigration, globalization, egalitarianism, totalitarian humanism, etc.—these are Fisher’s real enemies. And to attack them is not to attack some evil cult or NWO secret society, it is to attack the American System itself.

And Sam Fisher, as the avatar of American Patriotism, is still trapped within that system. He is trapped within a system based around the Fifth Freedom, and to break out of that system is something that Fisher, and most Americans, are not prepared for.

Splinter Cell is a fun game, but its story, Sam Fisher’s story, is also an interesting parable of the American story, and the paradox it has created over the course of Pax Americana.

As a resident of the Philippines, I would be lying if I did not entertain thoughts of immigration at some point in time. One of the deepest desires of Filipinos is to stop being Filipinos in the Philippines, and instead become Filipinos in [insert wealthy country of your choice]. I personally don’t like this mentality, but that is how things are. I seriously doubt most non-Whites who immigrate to Western Nations want Whites to become a minority. I doubt most of them fully understand what multiculturalism, anti-racism, or political correctness, not to mention their consequences. For the most part, what people want from immigration is the ability to earn cash and cease living in poverty.

However, the question of immigration is not just about immigration per se. It is also about identity. Immigrants to Western Countries—by implication—want to be American, European, Australian, etc... That is to say, there is an implied desire among Non-White immigrants to become “Westerners” (since, you know, they can’t be White).

I personally don’t hold this desire. I may be inclined to visit other nations, study in them, and meet people from other cultures, but looking at the bigger picture, I rather like being a Filipino, despite all the problems and issues that go along with it. There is a subtlety and depth to my particular identity that is essential to how I perceive the world, and how the world perceives me. And besides, I rather like being a darkie!

Of particular relevance to this topic is an old cinematic masterpiece called Ganito Kami Noon... Paano Kayo Ngayon (This is How We Were Then...How Are You Now?). The setting of the movie was around the end of the 19th century, when Spain’s grip over the Philippine islands was weakening, and the fury of nationalism was getting stronger with each passing day.

Among the most important elements of the movie was the theme of identity, and in this case, Filipino identity. “Filipino,” during the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines, was a term reserved exclusively for Spaniards born in the Philippines. In other words, “Filipino” was an identity which was reserved exclusively for people of a specific ethnicity.

The term Nationalism—as it is known outside of the West—is mostly synonymous with the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist sentiments of the 19^th and 20^th century, that is to say Nationalism from the perspective of an Asian, African, Middle Easterner or Latin American is not merely an affirmation of ethnic and cultural identity, but also the rejection of White colonial or imperial authority, and to a certain degree, white culture.

However, there is also a paradox involved in the sense that the development of modern economic, technological and, to a lesser extent, political institutions are also synonymous with the concept of Westernization. For if truth be told, the White/Western World invented most of what people would now call modernity. In other words, the White/Western World was the template for what the rest of the world wanted to be, despite negative attitudes to Western projections of power.

So when white people created modern society, the rest of the world wanted copies of those societies for themselves. When white people embrace “Democracy,” the rest of the World sort of embraced “Democracy.” When white people created the internet, cars, and the bourgeois lifestyle, the rest of the world also adopted the internet, cars, and the bourgeois lifestyle. And when white people embraced multiculturalism and mass immigration, the rest of the world em . . . eh . . . we’re still deliberating that one.

So Nationalism in the traditional sense of the word, as perceived by a person of a non-western background, like myself, is something which is intertwined with both the rejection of the West, and the paradoxical imitation of the intellectual and technological achievements of the West.

I call this the “Go Home Yankee, And Take Me With You” Syndrome.

Now, there are many accounts on how this particular phrase developed here in the Philippines, but the most common among them was that back in the nineties, one of the protesters of Uncle Sam’s foreign policy was holding up a sign that said, “Go Home Yankee and Take Me With You.” And though it was taken to be a joke, it’s implications are much more serious than what some people think.

Of course, the Philippines is not the only country to have this kind of mentality. This type of intellectual dissociation exists among different nations all over the world, particularly in relation to the Western World. What this means, in my estimations, is that the concept of nationalism, which most non-white nations still adhere to, is largely outdated and is incapable of meeting challenges that the intellectual and economic proponents of globalism and modern soft-marxist liberalism put forth.

So what I am saying is that what is happening in the West (e.g. Hate Crime Legislation, Political Correctness, Deindustrialization, Mass Immigration and Multiculturalism) is a prelude to what may happen to the rest of the world. Already there are small indications that the rest of the world may also end up following the same path as the Western World if present trends continue.

The value of the New Right in both the US as well as in Europe is that it offers a serious intellectual critique of the modern zeitgeist which goes beyond the post-nationalist paradigm. So even if the goal of these movements is the preservation of the white race, the restoration of national sovereignity in Western Nations and an intellectual revolt against the established intellectual dogma, it also offers the intellectual template for many non-white nations to resist the globalist agenda, and to offer new ideas in relation to government and society.

And there is a need for such a template. Most non-white opposition to the international establishment is framed in the context anti-globalization, cultural and linguistic preservation, environmental protection, opposition to economic exploitation or simply, opposition to neo-liberalism. However, this opposition is expressed in a much different context than the traditional left/right dichotomy found in Western nations. For one thing, the metapolitical and historical narrative of the rest of the world is radically different from that of the West.

Despite these differences however, most of non-white opposition to ideas of the internationalist/globalist left lack the sophistication and complexity of New Right thinkers as well as their predecessors. That is not to say that there are no non-white thinkers who have put a lot of time or effort in opposing the Internationalist aspirations of the world’s various political, economic and intellectual elites.

However, what the New Right can offer is a different set of perspectives and alternatives. For even though identifying problems are easy, the New Right in the West is on ground zero of the globalist/internationalist project, and therefore have had more time forming their metapolitical and ideological solutions.

At this time, it’s impossible to tell just how many non-whites throughout the rest of world are aware of the ideas and positions of people like, Alain De Benoist, Tomislav Sunic, Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, Alexander Dugin, etc . . . So even though a certain degree of commonality exists, the problem remains that people in the rest of the world are not aware of the existence of the New Right.

This problem – as I percieve it – is largely because the New Right in the West expresses itself in terms of pursuing and defending the rights of white and western nations. This is, of course, a good thing. However, unlike the Right, the Left (and this includes those the global capitalist Left) express themselves not in terms of any single group’s interests, but of humanity as a whole. And although the Left has had a terrible record in representing humanity’s interests, the fact remains that the Right is typically lacks an the percieved openess of their opponents. One need not look farther than the rhetoric of the Occupy Wallstreet Protests.

So now the question is how can the ideas of the New Right be shared with the rest of the world?

In my view, there are certain prerequisites which have to be in place before Non-White Nationalists can begin adopting New Right ideas into the context of their respective nations.

First, there needs to be organization. Historically speaking, anti-colonial revolution has been organized by an intellectual elite which expressed and translate Western Nationalist (and Enlightenment) Ideas into the context of their own respective nations and peoples. So in order for non-whites to adopt the metapolitical discourse of the New Right, a receptive intellectual community from non-white countries must first be found and organized.

Second, there needs to be an incentive for Non-whites to adopt New Right Ideas. A good example of this would be to present political economic systems which can act as an alternative to the old capitalist/socialist dichotomy. I am confident that economic systems commonly associated with the right, such as Distributism, Productionism, Social Credit and Localized Economics, will be quite welcome to the rest of the world, and not just in the US and Europe.

Distributism, for example, may have its limitations as a practical economic system in industrialized societies, but it can be reasonably adapted to the needs of third world nations, most of which are still agrarian or semi-agrarian. If packaged correctly, the political economic ideas of people like, Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterson, could be used as a way to introduce other New Right thinkers to the rest of the world.

Third,  there needs to be a paradigm shift wherein Non-whites will recognize that the existing zeitgeist is not about a powerful country oppressing smaller and poor countries, but about powerful elites in one country working with receptive powerful elites in another country to pursue policies which are designed to exploit their respective nations.

The same may also be said among those who advocate white preservation in Western nations. The average peasant in Guatemala, India or the Philippines does not desire the destruction or the extermination of Western Nations. I would even hazzard to guess that some of them will oppose it.

At the moment, there are still a lot of people throughout the world who believe that Western Governments are engaging in wars as well as unfair economic and diplomatic practices on behalf of White/Western peoples. For those who are familiar with the problems faced in the West, that is obviously untrue.

Fourth, in order for Non-whites who adopt these ideas to make an impact, they need to be a visible and recognizable group with the potential to influence public discourse. And it doesn’t matter how the media will spin this type of news. As long as people recognize that there are non-whites throughout the world who are willing to adopt New Right ideas, it can cause a lot of people to rethink certain positions.

So having said all that, the ideas of the new-right being dessiminated to the rest of the world offers many possible implications:

Leftist Identity Will Be Put Into Crisis—What we have to remember about the left is that it draws its identity partly upon designated victim groups (e.g. women, homosexuals, minorities, labor advocates, environmental issues, etc . . . ). So if a significant and visible group of non-whites throughout the world were to adopt ideas which are rooted from authors and thinkers from “extremist right wing” groups in the west, it will force the leftists to reevaluate their ideological clientele in a way which can have serious and far reaching changes in their ideology.

The Establishment Will Be Forced to Attack Non-Whites Who Adopt New Right Ideas—I’m sure that some people have heard the terms Twinkie and Oreo, both of which are perjoratives used specifically to demonize a person of Asian or African ethnicity (respectively) adopting perceived conservative, right-wing, pro-white or pro-western positions. If the ideas of the New Right were to become popular in non-white nations, the Western mainstream media will be forced to think up ways to demonize these kinds of non-whites.

Non-White Mass Immigration Will Be Put Into A New Context—This is where it gets a little tricky. Obviously, most of the people who immigrate into the West do so, because they want better jobs and a better life, consequences be damned. If they announce their love for the “old country,” it’s typically in a very superficial way. After all, they didn’t love their country enough to stay in it.

If cultural, ethnic and racial preservation becomes adopted in unbiased way, and if non-whites recognize certain facts about the goals and incentives which drive global capitalism and neo-liberalism, they will also need to recognize that mass immigration into Western Nations as something to be opposed in principle. Such a recognition can potentially cause friction among non-whites whose sensibilities are more favorable to Leftist internationalism and non-whites who are geniunely nationalistic.

The Adoption of New Right Ideas Will Give Legitimacy to the New Right Movement in the West—For quite a long time now, right wing movements in the west—in whatever form they take—are portrayed as hate-filled reactionaries. So it goes without saying that if non-whites were to adopt the ideas of the New Right, they will give their white counterparts a certain degree of legitimacy, not to mention devalue the misconception that Right wing movements in the West are inherently anti-non-white.

New Economic Systems—The ideas of Distributism, Social Credit, Productionism and other Third Postition Economic ideas can potentially offer solutions to the poverty of the Third World. Of course, getting tangible results will take a while, but what matters here is the perception that the New Right offers ideas which are potentially beneficial to the rest of the world.

There are other implications, but I will leave that for people to ponder, but as the old concept of nationalism (e.g. economic independence, anti-colonialism, nativism) is replaced by post-nationalist globalism, a new form of nationalism will become necessary, one which needs to be rooted in ideas which transcend the old left-right divide, and which offers actual independence of culture and of mind, as opposed to the negative identities used by old forms of nationalism, many of which were based on enlightenment ideals.

And this is what I like about the New Right. It is an attempt to change the cultural and moral landscape  as a means of reinvigorating national and ethnic identity. So in my opinion the intellectual revolt of the New Right in the US and in Europe can act as prelude for the rest of the world to rethink itself in relation to modernity and the post-post-colonial world.

So do the various Right-Wing movements in the West have something beneficial to offer to the rest of the World?

In my opinion, they have a lot to offer. And although there may be the lack of a common cause, every true nationalist throughout the world, regardless of his or her background, has common interests to promote a new and radical form of universal nationalism. After all, the Left had been spreading its ideas for centuries now. It’s about time the Right did the same.