Late last year, the U.S. imperialist propaganda machine cranked out another “game” Call of Duty Modern Warfare III  to encourage young workers to enlist in their bloodsoaked military and die for oil profits. The U.S. imperialists know that they are facing ever increasing competition and in fact are already deeply engaged in the wars in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia. Just as Russia, Ukraine, and Israel are desperately attempting to recruit or coerce youth to join their militaries, so too does the U.S. military as it leverages video games to boost its dismal recruiting as it prepares for further, more expansive wars.

For 20 years, Activision Blizzard has launched new versions of Call of Duty (CoD) “ripped from the headlines” video games mimicking U.S. imperialists’ actions globally. One version of CoD replicated the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, while another duplicated U.S. bombing of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Call of Duty: propaganda in service of U.S. imeprialism
The veil all but disappears, as the Marine Corps Entertainment Media Liaison Office is credited as a consultant and Activision Blizzard consistently credits the Marines across the franchise. CoD is not just profitable war fan-fiction, (earning $27 billion from 2013 to 2020), it is tied insidiously to the U.S. military. Activision Blizzard is infested with U.S. State Department and Defense Department personnel, making CoD military propaganda. With over 90 percent of American children playing video games, the military is deepening its reach to Twitch and Discord gamers, to lure prospective soldiers. Such blatant activity has prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (still a misleader for workers) to sponsor a House amendment to ban the military from such activities. CoD is intended to manipulate the working class to fight for the bosses’ wars, accept U.S.imperialism, and join the military.

Who are the imperialist agents in Activision Blizzard?
Chief among these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard’s senior counsel and executive vice president until September 2022 when AB merged with Microsoft. She was Assistant Commandant for Intelligence for the United States Coast Guard, counter-terrorism deputy for  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and a member of the National Security Council under President George Bush. She serves as trustee of the Atlantic Council, which actively strategizes how NATO can manage foreign affairs and, she also serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the International Republican Institute. These are all bosses’ think tanks strategizing on how to promote U.S. imperialism.

Another Activision capitalist agent is Brian Joseph Bulatao who is their current chief administrative officer. He previously was appointed to be the CIA’s Chief Operating Officer by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Grant Dixton is Activision’s Chief Legal Counsel.  He previously was a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and the senior vice president of Boeing, a military aerospace company. As loyal servants of the U.S. empire, Bulatao and Dixton make CoD military propaganda and reflect the intimate connection between video game media and military production for war.

Promoting nationalism and war crimes with historical lies
To help increase support for U.S. imperialism, CoD revises history portraying the U.S. as the hero, promoting the notion that war crimes like torture are necessary, and desensitizes players to atrocities.
One such alteration of history includes the “Highway of Death” which was a real event following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait where the U.S. military bombed the retreating Iraqi army along with innocent civilians and refugees. However, in the Modern Warfare version, the attack is carried out by the Russians. The player’s assignment in Modern Warfare II is to kill a 'fictional' Iranian General “Ghorbrani.” He even has a white beard and similar attire as Qassem Soleimani who in 2020 was actually  assassinated by a drone strike ordered by former President Donald Trump.

In the 2019 edition of CoD, the player executes no-knock raids in the middle of the night, killing anyone whose reasonable response is to shoot back. For example, a fictional mother reaching for a firearm to protect her child is shot. While players can't engage in friendly fire in the game a baby can be killed, either in cold blood or for leverage against parents in the interrogation room.

Modern Warfare 2's “Borderline” mission takes place in the U.S./Mexico border. The player navigates an alley in a residential area until reaching one of the houses, barging in and "de-escalating" by aiming at the civilians. If the player fails to do this, the fictional civilians kill the player.

Also from Modern Warfare 2, in the mission "Hardpoint," participants pilot a helicopter providing air support to ground teams in the fictional region of Las Almas, Mexico. In the process of fighting off cartel members, the player destroys a school, church, restaurant, gas station and market!
In the first game of the Call of Duty: Black Ops series the player is tasked with killing Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs, a failed CIA-backed coup.

Overall, Call of Duty promotes imperialism and fascist myths that U.S. intervention saves lives, torture gets results, and "we get dirty, so the world stays clean." This encourages capitalist war, imperialism, racism and implicates Activision Blizzard as part of the sprawling military industrial complex.

COD recruiting youth to kill and die for U.S imperialism
The U.S. military has never shied away from exploring any relationship, charity or otherwise which promotes soldier recruitment.   The U.S. Armed Forces have recently started Twitch channels on which actual soldiers stream games online where viewers can donate and be convinced to join. Twitch viewers in the Army’s channel are repeatedly assaulted with chat prompts to “win a Xbox Elite Series 2 controller” The link simultaneously opens a recruiting form with no additional mention of the contest. These solicitations are aimed at kids as young as 12, who line up to be contacted by the U.S. military once they reach 16, the minimum age at which recruiters may legally contact someone in the United States. In 2022, the U.S. Army spent millions of dollars to host tournaments with high profile streamers, targeting Gen-z youth, especially Black, Latin, and young women close to recruitment age (Vice News, 12/1/22)

Our response to the imperialists’ murderous “Call of Duty” must be one of our own – Let’s embrace our “call of duty” to smash racism, sexism, and capitalism with communist revolution as part of an international process to destroy the roots of exploitation and imperialist war. This “call of duty” is not a game, it is reality.

World military situation mirrors 1930s
Foreign Affairs, 1/26–World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history…illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts…​​with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war.
The parallels between this earlier era and the present are striking. Today, as in the 1930s, the international system is facing three sharp regional challenges…Russia and China are drawing closer through their “no limits” strategic partnership, which features arms sales, deepening defense-technological cooperation, and displays of geopolitical solidarity such as military exercises in global hot spots…the Sino-Russian partnership has pacified what was once the world’s most militarized border and enabled both countries to focus on their contests with Washington and its friends.

Preparing soldiers to fight in nuclear war
Business Insider, 1/26–Russian scientists have created a new simulator to train Moscow's troops on how to operate in the event of a nuclear explosion…The simulator… is set to be used in military exercises to prepare Russian ground forces for post-explosion combat missions, the state-run Tass news agency reported on Tuesday. State media said the simulator would also instruct chemical, biological, and radiation reconnaissance teams on how to find the epicenter and determine the characteristics of a blast.

"The purpose of the model is to simulate what a nuclear strike looks like — the shock effect, flash of light and mushroom cloud of a ground-based nuclear explosion," the description of the simulator's patent says, according to Tass.

The US is working toward upgrading its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, building new bombers, and developing ballistic-missile submarines. In October, the Pentagon announced that it would pursue a new variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, an air-launched weapon to be designated the B61-13, pending approval from lawmakers.

Farmers aim to shut down Paris
France24, 1/28–Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Sunday tasked law enforcement officials with putting into place "extensive security measures" to prevent farmers from blocking Paris area airports or its Rungis market and “to prohibit any entry into Paris”. The leaders of two of France's largest farming unions said Saturday that members from the regions around Paris "will begin an indefinite siege of the capital" on Monday. "All the major roads leading to the capital will be occupied by farmers," they said, announcing their intention to blockade the massive Rungis wholesale food market south of the capital. French farmers are furious at what they say is a squeeze on purchase prices for produce by supermarket and industrial buyers, as well as complex environmental regulations. But the last straw for many was the phasing-out of a tax break on diesel fuel for farm equipment.

West African nations move further away from French control
Al Jazeera, 1/28–Three military-led West African nations have announced their immediate withdrawal from regional bloc ECOWAS, accusing the body of becoming a threat to its members. Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso “decide in complete sovereignty on the immediate withdrawal” from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), read a joint statement published on Sunday. ECOWAS “under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to its member states and its population”, read the statement…“There is bad faith within this organization,” lamented Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, Niger’s army-appointed prime minister…The three countries have cut military ties with France, the former colonial power. France once had a strong presence across the Sahel, but announced the withdrawal of its troops from the three countries after the coups.

Felt ‘urgency and emotional rawness’
I was impressed by the seriousness of the comrades at the recent cadre school. The school was proof the Party is developing young, working-class, Black and Latin, women leadership to lead the working class to power.

The discussions were advanced, focused, and honest. People shared their questions and disagreements, and we struggled for everyone to be heard. People came from different walks of life, but we were united in our commitment to study the world and fight for a communist future.

We contemplated some of the most complicated issues we face in the class struggle, like the need to confront nationalism and fight for internationalism, the need to fight directly for communism, the necessity of armed struggle and revolutionary violence to defeat the capitalist class once and for all.

You could feel the urgency and emotional rawness in the voices of the comrades in the room: the fate of the international working class is on our shoulders! I came away feeling fortified to apply myself more resolutely to struggling in my neighborhood to win my friends and neighbors to the Progressive Labor Party.

Mount Rainier, Maryland, January 9—A neighborhood group in this small town outside Washington, D.C. rallied in the pouring rain to protest Glenn Ivey, their congressional representative, for his outspoken support for Israel’s brutal genocidal attack on Palestinians. Not surprisingly, Ivey received massive campaign contributions ($7 million!) from the leading Zionist lobbying group in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). (Guardian, 1/10/24). A PLP member was part of this bold group who marched to his office to deliver an anti-genocide petition with 476 signatures from his constituents. Many refused to leave his office and were arrested. The grassroots movement in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters is growing everywhere, and with communist leadership from the PLP, can build a mass revolutionary movement to topple capitalism, the cause of genocide globally.