Hugo Chávez, the fiercly anti-capitalist president of Venezuela, has turned his sights onto the ‘poison’ that is gaming.
Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela and enemy of capitalism, has lashed out at gaming today. Speaking on his talk show Aló Presidente, he said: “Those games they call ‘PlayStation’ are poison … Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, ‘you’ve got to find Chavez to kill him.'” While Chávez specifically names the PlayStation, it seems reasonable to assume that he meant it to encompass all games.
Chávez – and the Venezuelan government’s – opposition to videogames is long standing, with accusations that Pandemic Studio’s Mercenaries 2 was propaganda to prepare the way for an invasion of the country, and a ban on violent games recently coming into effect the country. According to Chávez, videogames have a significant negative influence, even beyond their nasty habit of apparently encouraging people to kill him: “[Games] promote the need for cigarettes, drugs and alcohol so they can sell them.” The ‘they’ in that sentence would refer to us capitalists by the way.
In the grand scheme of things, hating videogames is one the least bad things that Chávez has done, limiting free speech and constantly attacking the West being markedly worse, but it’s just another thing to add to the list of reasons to not like him all that much.
Source: Kotaku
