Halo - Scape Goat Evolved

Spotlight Germany, Emsdetten. A young man of 18 years walks into his former school during recess, equipped with several rifles, smoke grenades and explosives. He starts shooting at people. Police arrive very quickly. They find him hidden on the second floor of the school. He has killed himself. Fortunately, nobody else is killed. A teacher, a janitor and several students are shot and injured, several more suffer from smoke poisoning. Read the full story.
Now authorities and investigators try to answer the usual questions: Why? What made him do it? And how did he get hold of all these weapons? From fellow students they gather information. He was a loner, a weirdo, a weapons enthusiast. He passionately hated people, especially from his school. Made him feel like a loser, he says on his webpage. He swore revenge, that they would all die. He also announced that he would kill himself. Posted pictures and videos of himself with various weapons online. He was often seen wearing an ankle-length black leather coat. Spent his time playing "computer games that glorify violence". As soon as that comes out local (and soon federal) politicians act very quickly. Newly labelled "killer games" must be banned.
That was what made me perk up. Again they're blaming a new medium. And, of course, the medium must be banned. This reaction strikes me as almost as senseless as the bloody deed itself. Especially, because we have been there before. Let's go through this systematically.
There has always been a medium that was demonised and blamed for whatever bad things happened at the time. It all started out with writing. The German cencorship and youth protection body is still called Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften which roughly translates to Federal Authority for youth-endangering Writing (a bad translation but it's literal). So, in those days it was written material that was considered dangerous. Then Rock 'n' Roll came out. Many parents saw in it the utter corruption of their children. It promoted promiscuity, or so they claimed. In the 80s and 90s (that I know from my own experience now) it was the TV or videos. Videos and films were (and still are) banned, black-listed or cencored. Never had anything been as bad for young people as what was shown on TV or at the cinema. From the late 90s onwards, video games had become realistic enough to scare the older generation. It can only be the computer games the kids play that make them so readily violent. And I can already see the new target emerging: the Internet. What that shows us is that the media have always been an easy target and over time the scape goat has merely evolved. It is interesting to see that as soon as it takes a new form the older one is forgotten. To me that is another clear sign that politicians involved are merely riding a band wagon.
But, okay, let us for a moment assume that banning "killer games" was the way to go. Now define "killer games". Which games are "killer games"? First-person shooters fit the bill all right - all of them are centered around combat in some form. How about third-person adventures like Tomb Raider? In many of them fighting and killing also plays a big part, so off they go on the black list. Flight simulators with few exceptions are set in a war scenario - be it in space or on earth - and are about shooting down your enemies. In real-time strategy games the player assumes the role of the commander, sending his troops to fight, watching them die. Some are not for the faint-hearted. Roleplaying games, including the hugely popular online games like World of Warcraft, are about slaying monsters and other characters with big swords or axes or other medieval weaponry. There are similar games set in the far future, as well (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies, Guild Wars). Even some racing games are about destroying your opponents/competitors (Carmageddon, Destruction Derby). What I'm trying to say is that banning all games with violent content leaves us with very few remaining. With the exception of some educational material, certain cute Japanese games (where you bounce on a mushroom and the enemy turtle blinks out of existence) and popular football simulators the shelves will be pretty empty. From an economic point of view, I believe, that this would cripple a business in Germany that still makes a lot of money. From an ideological standpoint I also think it's a clumsy move. Culling away all these popular big named games like Counterstrike, Battlefield, Doom, etc. will effectively give them martyr status. The demand for them will grow even more because they are banned - we know how it works from the cases of films like Evil Dead (banned for some time but never gone entirely). Plus, everybody will be curious as to why they are banned and therefore want to try them.
The other new target for regulators is the Internet. It should be "policed", a politician demanded. The idea is not new. And, of course, it can only come from somebody who doesn't have to worry about how to do it. Now, I agree that there's a lot of smut and garbage out there on the Web. Most of it is not even hosted in Germany and therefore completely outside German jurisdiction. So, unless Germany adopts a solution similar to China's, say completely blocking categories of foreign content it'll be hard.
Lastly, we then have to ask ourselves: where does it end? Violence and conflict are a common theme in all media, fiction and non-fiction. We may not like it but it's part of us. Often it's the action, the peril and the conflict that make a story interesting or thrilling. So what, the madman of Emsdetten played violent computer games! Hundreds of thousands of gamers play such games around the world. Hell, I do. Enjoy it, too. Still, I've never tried to kill anybody and I don't intend to. And how many of these hundreds of thousands of gamers commit violent crimes (in the real world)? There are and will always be a few black sheep. Nonetheless, the proportion will be minimal. And what's next? Videos are already on the the list, anyway. Judging by the guy's description he probably also listened to heavy metal music. A lot of it can be very aggressive or violent, e.g. "Feuer Frei" by Rammstein, "Shoot me Again" by Metallica or pratically anything ever done by Manowar. Should therefore heavy metal be banned, too? Wouldn't be a big step since fans of this music genre are often regarded as weirdos or satanists, anyway. Then, however, they should please go on and ban hip-hop, as well. Surely, songs about raping and killing and "motherfuckers" can't be good for kids either. And written material? Don't get me started on that. Forget for a moment Tom Clancy-style military thrillers. Or Stephen King's twisted imagination. Let's go back a while. Let's go back a long while. Homer's famous account of the Trojan War. Does it not glorify violence? After Achilles defeated Hektor he cut off the Trojan champion's ears, tied him to his chariot and dragged him around the walls of Troy. And let's not even mention Norse or Germanic myth. We shouldn't assume that insane killers don't read. Interestingly enough, Germanic myth is quite popular among right-wing extremists and fascists. Is that a reason to ban our own mythology?
What is my point with all this? The point is that when politicians get involved they don't seem to look for the root cause but for a scape goat. I understand that there's a lot of pressure on public figures after an atrocity like this. Nobody wants to be caught with their hands in their pockets, everybody wants to make the impression that they already have a solution so that scared citizens can go home and feel safe. So, even while investigators are still unearthing more details about the possible background of the deed they take the easy way out. How about the statements made by the perpetrator that he hated school because it made him feel like a loser? Of course, that would point to a much more complicated problem. An issue with schooling perhaps? I don't know. Nobody does as yet. What gets to me is that politicians make rash decisions before they even know the facts just for the sake of publicity. The end result is that the consumer suffers. As an adult I should be able to decide myself what I want to watch or play. Not so. Of course, I wouldn't want anything like this to happen to my children (or anybody's for that matter). However, banning and cencoring films and videos didn't do the trick and I would swear that banning computer games won't either. Some people have it in them to do terrible things. Jack the Ripper or Fritz Haarmann did not need video games for inspiration.