kukuruyo

Today I wanted to talk about this recent and very worrying trend of supporting Barret’s ideas in the new Final fantasy VII remake, at a part of the game when he’s portrayed as a radical fanatic, and the even more worrying idea that it’s justified to kill innocent employees of a Company that contaminates or whose CEOs do bad things, because they’re “complicit with evil” and so they deserve to die.

Barret is a character in the Final fantasy VII videogame and the new remake game. In the original game, and so far in the remake, he was a member of an eco-terrorist group who wanted to stop the Shin-ra company from extracting “Mako” energy, claiming that Mako extraction was killing the planet (a reference to contamination and extraction of resources in industrialization). Now, Avalanche happened to be “correct” in that Mako extraction was harming the planet, but they were only by mere coincidence, since they had no means to prove it, and most of the population thought Mako energy was just a wonderful source of energy that had made their lives a lot better.

To stop the extraction of Mako, they partake in terrorist bombings that kill tons of innocent people; both workers at the Mako reactors and simple bystanders who lived close by, and also kill a lot of Security guards and police along the game.

By the final parts of the game, Barret acknowledges that his methods were wrong since he hurt a lot of innocent people, and also admits that “saving the planet” was an excuse, and he just wanted to hurt Shin-ra because he had lost his job at a coal mine due to Mako energy being more efficient, and had been betrayed by Shin-ra, who tried to kill him. He also goes on to become an Oil baron in Advent children.

Essentially, the game made clear that, though he was correct on Mako being bad, he was completely wrong on both methods and reasoning.

In the new remake, the developers have dedicated more effort to show the nuance in the Mako energy situation and how both parties are right and wrong. Barret is right that Mako was draining the planet, but his methods and reasons are wrong. And Shin-ra is draining the planet but at the same time they improved the lives of everyone and thousands upon thousands of innocent people work for them at completely normal jobs. At one point, the president of the company challenges Barret, because Barret is more worried about cleaning Avalanches name than about shutting the reactors down, and he is ignoring the hardships of all the people who depend on Mako or who depend on a job at Shin-ra.

Barret, in this new game, is shown as practically a religious fanatic. He continuously gives speeches akin to a religious cult preacher. Anyone can see he’s just rationalizing his actions and what the intention of the developers is. He’s also shown as having little to no remorse for the innocent lives he’s taking, and making excuses to justify killing every Shin-ra employee or even non employees “for the greater good”.

Cloud acts as a counterbalance, adding counter points to his extremist opinions, and contributing to their dynamic. And Cloud hates Shin-ra, but he hates the higher ups, and understands that workers are just workers, and people needs Mako to live.

Now, to the relevant part; at one point of the game, Barret is excited at the prospect of killing Shin-ra employees (not soldiers, normal employees at completely normal jobs). Tifa responds to him pointing out that most of them are just innocent people, regular workers who simply need a job to feed their families, waiting for them at home.

Then Barret gives one of his messianic speeches, in which he argues that as they work for a company that’s draining the planet (contamination), they’re “complicit with evil”; being the implied take here that he’s justified on killing them.

Now, this is obviously a fucked up rationalization to justify killing innocent people, and considering the background I’ve laid out about the game, at this point you already know Barret is a radical extremist who’s simply obsessed with fucking up Shin-ra any way he can and tries to rationalize it to keep killing people and not feel bad.

Right?

Well, there’s a section of people, and a surprisingly very big section, who completely agrees with Barret’s ideas here. At the beginning I kinda laughed because I thought it was a few radicals, but these past days I’ve seen literally tens of thousands of people supporting that idea.

I’ve had a lot of discussions, and seen other people argue about it, and the level of nuts this people are is insane, because they not only agree with Barret’s justification, but they also extend it to real life. They really think if you work for an “evil” company, which in this case would be a company that contaminates or whose CEOs do “evil” things, it’s justified to kill you because you’re “complicit with evil”. Some even argue that the collateral deaths of innocent people are ok, because it’s “for the greater good”.

This is several levels of fucked up and I don’t even know what level of fucked up I should go about first. I shouldn’t NEED to even go about how this is fucked up. It should be obvious to anyone. But it isn’t.

How the fuck is an innocent normal employee at a company, doing a normal job, who’s working there simply because he needs a job, or he’s passionate about the job itself, be complicit with stuff that CEO’s do? How the fuck is justified to kill someone because the company they work for contaminates? How it is ok to kill people who don’t even work at said company for “the greater good”? The end justifies the means?

Do these people think it’s justified to bomb an Amazon storehouse, with the workers inside, because Bezos is shit? It’s ok to bomb a Coca cola factory, with the people inside, because Coca cola killed union leaders? Doesn’t that even defeats the purpose of doing something for the little people in the first place? If you try to attack a company by attacking the employees you’re doing it wrong.

People working at a company are not to blame for what the CEO’s do. The vast majority of people simply need a job to bring food to the table. Of all the possible reasons a person works at a company; “I like how evil the company is” is probably pretty down the list. Most companies have probably done some fucked up shit, that doesn’t mean is justified to kill the 10$ wage worker at Mcdonalds.

And the funniest thing is some of these people seem to work themselves at these kind of places, which makes everything a lot more hypocrite. The most viral case has been a Kotaku writer who tweeted extensively on support of the idea that working at a company that does bad things makes you complicit with evil, which hence by Barret’s logic justifies your killing. Kotaku isn’t exactly known for being the good guys, and it was also part of Gawker, a company hated by everyone because of the fucked up shit they did. So by her own ideas, she’s “complicit with evil” and deserves whatever happens to her. Looking at the comments in this thread is like gazing at the abyss; the amount of people trying to rationalize that Barret has never been wrong no matter how much the devs said he is.

This is just a fucked up rationalization to indulge in doing fucked up shit yourself and not feel bad about it. This is an extension of this recent prevalent trend of going apeshit trying to destroy people’s lives over minor dumb shit and justifying it by claiming the other person is some “X” made up thing that means they’re evil and they deserve it.

I think it’s absolutely no coincidence that most of the people defending this have “antifa” or “communist” on their bios. There’s an interest there in extending the idea that they’re justified to whatever fucked up shit they do because they are “the good guys” doing it “for the greater good”, and people working at capitalist companies deserve whatever happen to them cause they’re “complicit with evil”.

They’re the fanatic that the developers were talking about.