Irony: Local Patriot Group Fear-Mongers 'Foreign Hordes' By Using Bioshock Graphic Satirizing Racist Assholes

from the right-on-the-nose dept

Mon, Dec 30th 2013 11:33pm — Timothy Geigner

I love American politics. Not because I think we're particularly good at it, or our so-called discourse produces anything that even approaches an interesting conversation. Rather, it's just so damned funny. You end up with both sides of a dichotomy so mouth-frothed and insane that the comedic possibilities are endless and the jokes almost tell themselves. Now that we're in the holiday season, my family loves to remind me that you can't talk religion or politics at the dinner table. If you love to laugh, how can you not talk about those things? For instance, I constantly recall the evangelist who yoinked a picture from ABC's Modern Family for his book on traditional Christian family values. I'm saying this as someone who takes great pride in making people laugh: I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

But if that example wasn't enough to sate your appetite for the absurdly ironic, let me present you with The National Liberty Federation out of Florida. The NLF is sort of a caricature of what all your really liberal friends think when you say the phrase Tea Party to them. Now, they're probably no less insane than the fringe groups on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but they are of note for posting this image on their Facebook page as a warning that all us good 'Mericans must be vigilant against the threat of the "Foreign Hordes."

Look familiar? If not, you should be able to tell by some of the Facebook comments that the NLF didn't produce this image themselves. It's from the game Bioshock Infinite and it is an image meant to satirize groups like...well...the NLF.

It is an anti-immigrant cartoon—it's just from the video game BioShock Infinite, where it's used as propaganda for the Founders, a jingoistic, xenophobic group that runs the floating city of Columbia. They're the video game equivalent of the Tea Party, and they're portrayed as a nasty group of racist white men.

Now, I'll stipulate that I don't believe that the so-called Tea Party is universally racist, anti-immigrant, evil, or even white, but you have to be a special kind of stupid to simply take an image that's meant to caricature you and then adopt it as a promotional tool for your political thought. It'd be like a group backing Barack Obama using the following image to respond to Obamacare detractors on their social media page:

It isn't that the image doesn't accurately reflect your political ideology, it's just not good practice. So, hey, Tea Party people: next time, know the story behind the images you're appropriating from other people. Or not. I need a couple of standby jokes for holiday family gatherings anyway.

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Filed Under: bioshock, foreign hordes, politics

24 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2013 @ 12:14am

One would think if they were really concerned with losing the country, it would seem they would be all over this NSA stuff. If not for smaller government and lowering expenses the NSA seems to eat whole. But then again, if you have squirelly ideas and nuts to take it in whole, you just as well be screaming that the country is being threatened by asteroids.
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Marak, 31 Dec 2013 @ 12:20am

Hahaha. . . . No really hahahhaha.
Thanks for the laugh to start the nye celebrations.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2013 @ 1:15am

They should have got some picture from the Crysis 3 where there are references to piracy("you can't compete with free") and foreigners(Aliens) as being the bad things in life or Killzone Shadow Fall where Vektans and Helghast have to live side by side after ISA destroyed the Helghast homeworld in Killzone 3 or the game The Last of Us that use zombies as a representation of a foreign threat and the hard choices you will have to make to keep it going.

Some here have asked in the past why TV shows today are all about "aliens" from space or zombies, well the reason is you can't use black people, asians or germans to be the bad guys anymore so aliens and zombies are the new ways people can continue to show social issues without controversy, who will defend aliens from space or zombie rights?
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- ShivaFang (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 9:34am
  
  Re:
  I just realised yesterday that if you "can't compete with free" why do grocery and convenience stores universally sell bottled water?
  
  Quality certainly beats free! However since most things covered by copyright have so much DRM that the free versions have better quality, and thus, the free versions are outright better *and* free.
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Forest_GS, 31 Dec 2013 @ 3:55am

America is practically all immigrants in the first place. All should be equal in a place like this.
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Ben (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 4:53am

Foreign(?) Hordes
And in front on the right is what appears to be an American Indian. Foreign indeed.
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Tom Gallagher, 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:05am

Yoinked
Yoinked? Is that a meme?
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- Starke (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 8:29am
  
  Re: Yoinked
  It's someplace between slang and dialect. It just means "to take."
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  - ShivaFang (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 9:30am
    
    Re: Re: Yoinked
    it is neither slang nor dialect - it's onomatopoeic (like 'boing' or 'crash')
    
    http://www.wordnik.com/words/yoink
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    - ShivaFang (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 9:37am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Yoinked
      Did some more digging - it is used because early cartoons used a certain sound effect when something is snatched or runs away quickly - anyone who grew up with those cartoons would use this word to describe that sound, so we tend to say "Yoink!" when we take something quickly - or 'steal' something when we're making it obvious we're taking it.
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Geno0wl (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:06am

Glad you attributed this in the headline properly and not like some other news sites that attempted to pin this on the Tea Party.
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mcinsand, 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:11am

great summation of 'Murican (dysfunctional) politics
Mr. Geigner,

Great job! Especially for the two major parties, we merely have two herds of lemmings shouting ever louder. The more the parties become alike, the more shrill the voices are.

We could use some...a lot of civil, critical discourse, especially within the parties. Rather than blindly accepting what a party hands down, there needs to be more internal discussion of what does not fit.

The NSA's surveillance programs are a perfect example. The republican party claims to care about defending us from government overreach, but here we are. The democrats claim to care about civil liberties, and here we are. Where were the voices...where ARE the voices of the party members that actually believe in principles that the parties claim to hold.

As for the NSA, those subgroups looking for weaknesses to exploit and ways to create them are missing key opportunities. Software backdoors don't care what agency is accessing them. Letting them stay and creating more only makes the world less secure, especially as tools to use them become public (Stuxnet, anyone?). If the NSA really does care about security, then it will work with industry to close the holes, rather than to maintain them.
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Zos (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:40am

i caught one of these too
http://imgur.com/PwCKtDI

screenie from facebook, local libertarian candidate posted a picture of a banner from infinite "A man creates, a parasite asks "where's my share"

no one in thread apparently had any idea why it was ironic to use bioshock to prove the libertarian cause.
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ShellMG (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:50am

Like so many hyperventilating rants i the media, Geithner's are easy to spot. Excessive uses of adjectives, adverbs and insults are pretty typical of these days.

At least I can spot the headline quickly and ignore it all the faster.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2013 @ 6:59am
  
  Re:
  You have failed at ignoring.
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jcvillar (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 8:08am

LOL. I like the Irish guy on the left with the flask in his hand.
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ShivaFang (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 9:28am

There's a saying, and I forget which way it goes, but both are true;
Any sufficiently extreme satire is indistinguishable from extremist viewpoint.
Any sufficiently extreme viewpoint is indistinguishable from satire.

The TV Show the Colbert Report is a good example. Liberals love him, because they think it's humorous satire. Conservatives love him because they agree with him.

A conservative group taking an image that was designed as satire because they feel it fits their ideology is par for the course for this 'law'.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2013 @ 12:02pm
  
  Re:
  Poe's law is what you are looking for. It's amazing how many examples show up in the world once you know it.
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Watchit (profile), 31 Dec 2013 @ 10:27am

I thought we already covered this once before? I don't remember if we did or not, it's kinda old news...
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2013 @ 5:08pm

The NLF responds:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=677167625669460&set=pb.330201017032791.-2207520 000.1388538436.&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Fscontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net%2Fhphotos-prn1%2F153041 8_677167625669460_1303430382_n.jpg&size=403%2C282
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- any moose cow word, 1 Jan 2014 @ 6:58am
  
  Re:
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahaha
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
  
  WOW!
  
  Hahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha
  
  *cough*
  
  HA! woow...
  
  Thanks, I needed that. The irony is strong with that one. LOL! I guess they've given in to the farce side.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2014 @ 5:55am
    
    Re: Re:
    You're not fooling anyone, you know.
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any moose cow word, 1 Jan 2014 @ 6:59am

Well NLF, if the shoe fits...
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davidbarcomb, 26 Nov 2014 @ 9:23pm

That comment made my day
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