Description
Facing its worst recruitment crisis since the establishment of an all-volunteer force in 1973, the United States military has accelerated its move into online spaces in a bid to reach younger and future generations of new recruits. While efforts have centred on a number of online spaces and digital influence strategies, the US military has especially entered the world of online video gaming via streaming platforms like Twitch.tv, and through sponsorship of ‘e-sports’ video gaming tournaments. This paper considers the cultural, political, and legal contours of these online, youth-focused recruitment efforts, as well as popular efforts to resist military presence in these spaces. Notably, we detail the activities of the recently established anti-war activist group Gamers for Peace (GFP), an offshoot of the Veterans for Peace (VFP) movement established by Vietnam-era veterans in 1985. Combining critical theory and participant observation, we detail the activities of the Gamers for Peace, notably how they leverage their subject positions as veterans with combat experience to disrupt US military recruitment efforts in online and digital spaces. In developing our case study, we attend to the cultural politics of recruitment and counter-recruitment in digital spaces, notably how the US military has leveraged currents of the online (alt-)right to bolster recruitment. Further, we consider how counter-recruitment efforts have by contrast focused on a constellation of progressive political and anti-war themes, including but not limited to: alternative options to the ‘economic draft’; progressive masculinities; and interrogating the intersections of the U.S. military and climate emergency.
