Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad sparks backlash after comparisons to BLM movement

Ubisoft’s latest mobile game, Elite Squad, has recently sparked heavy criticism as it seems to feature an organization resembling the BLM movement. Comparisons between the Elite Squad villain organization, Umbra, and the real life BLM movement include similar charges of causing unrest, and using symbols iconic to Black organizations.

In this article, you can read about the background information related to the Elite Squad controversy. However, I will release a more in-depth analysis as well.

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How Elite Squad draws controversy

Elite Squad ended up attracting these comparisons to contemporary movements in part because of its inclusion of a raised black fist as a symbol of its evil organization. The raised fist has been a part of Black movements for decades, long enough that attempts to excuse its inclusion through ignorance would be unacceptable.

While the symbol of a Black person raising his/her fist has not always had widespread acceptance in popular societies, that opinion has largely changed in recent decades, following the increase in public awareness of Black issues in America.

Therefore, it is understandable that reassociating that symbol with a terrorist organization sparked an appropriate controversy, as Black people have been working to make their protests known quite literally for generations.

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Elite Squad misinterprets protests

Another issue has to do with how Elite Squad frames its villains. Keeping in mind the very strong parallels the game is drawing to contemporary protests, it claims the villains operate by "taking advantage of escalating civil unrest," and that "they claim to promote an egalitarian utopia to gain popular support, while… organiz[ing] deadly terrorist attacks to generate even more chaos."

While this would be a problematic interpretation under the best of circumstances, this too has parallels with the way that the President of the United States talks about the BLM and AntiFa movements. Labeling legitimate protests as criminal or terrorist organizations is a way for authoritarian governments to delegitimize popular opposition, an unfortunate reality of the world we live in.

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Ubisoft wants Elite Squad to be apolitical

The final unfortunate mark against Ubisoft has been that it claims to want this game to be apolitical. Many see this as an attempt to sidestep an issue, and to excuse themselves from any backlash related to the statements made by the game they released.

Unfortunately, there is far too much to go into detail about it here. If you want to read about politics in gaming and why it is impossible to create a truly apolitical game, follow the link to read more.