Gaming giant Activision has censored a recent trailer for the latest addition to the popular video game series Call of Duty. The company removed footage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre based on outcry from Communist China. China accused Activision of “exporting ideology” and bringing “politics into videogames,” leading the company to censor the game trailer around the world.
PC Gamer reports that a recently released trailer for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, the latest addition tot eh popular Call of Duty series, was taken down and censored by game publisher Activision to remove footage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The company took the action to please the Communist government of China, but also removed other sections, including an interview with a Russian defector describing the country’s attacks on American culture.
The game trailer features footage from a number of true-life events including USSR defector Yuri Bezmenov discussing a four-stage Soviet strategy to end American dominance in the world, including demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization. Other clips include footage of the Vietnam war and the Tiananmen Square protests.
Earlier this week the first version fo the trailer was deleted from Activision’s YouTube channel and replaced with a new version that was about half as long as the original trailer. According to the South China Morning Post, the original video was deleted due to the footage from the Tiananmen Square protest featured in the trailer, initially, the video was replaced with a version that had those sections blacked out but ultimately the entire clip was replaced with sections cut entirely.
The original video is still available on multiple gaming-related channels such as IGN and Gamespot. When comparing the original trailer to the new version, it becomes noticeable that many sections have been cut including Bezmenov’s interview. The original trailer can be seen below:
The latest version which has been heavily edited can be seen below:
Hong Kong’s Apple Daily alleges that the footage was first called out by Chinese internet users who accused Activision of “exporting ideology” and bringing “politics into videogames.”
Breitbart News reported in June that Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates gathered online to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Breitbart News reporter Frances Martel reports:
The Victims of Communism Memorial Fund, a human rights organization dedicated to carrying the memory of those afflicted by left-wing totalitarianism, organized and broadcast the event. Given ongoing Chinese coronavirus social distancing measures, speakers “attended” the event from separate locations. The event occurred in the shadow of vandals, acting amid a nationwide wave of radical leftist violence, defacing Washington, DC’s, Victims of Communism memorial – a statue of the “Goddess of Liberty,” which Tiananmen protesters hoisted in the square before the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled its tanks in.
In addition to discussing the lasting legacy of the pro-democracy advocates killed on June 4, 1989, in Beijing, the speakers noted that the communist policies that led to the complete erasure of the Tiananmen Square massacre from the Chinese internet, Chinese history books, and the Chinese public memory in the country are behind the obfuscation that resulted in extended delays in alerting the world to the potential threat of the newly discovered coronavirus in Wuhan, China.
“Unfortunately, the evil regime of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is still raging on the land of China, and it is still using brutal and cruel methods to suppress and persecute the Chinese people,” Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese human rights attorney and former political prisoner, said at the vigil. “Not only we must not forget the CCP’s June 4th massacre, but we must also record each and every crime that the CCP has done to persecute the Chinese people over the past 30 years, and be prepared to hold them accountable.”
“The appeasement policy must come to an end,” he added.
Read the full article here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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