It is well-documented that approximately half of the German population regularly engages in digital gaming across platforms such as computers, consoles, and mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets (bitkom 2021). The widespread appeal of video games, both nationally and internationally, inevitably attracts attention from various groups, including those with extremist ideologies seeking to exploit the medium for their own agendas (Möbus 2023; Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022). A particularly striking instance of this phenomenon is the video game "Heimat Defender: Rebellion" (2020), developed and released by "Ein Prozent" and "Kvltgames," both entities identified by The German domestic intelligence services as part of the far-right spectrum and closely linked to the Identitarian Movement, a group firmly placed within the far-right domain by the same federal authority (BMI 2021). According to the game's developers, Heimat Defender: Rebellion was purposefully designed to serve the propaganda efforts of the Identitarian Movement (Moritz 2020).

The trend of instrumentalizing video games as vehicles for explicit propagandistic messages within the context of German far-right extremism isn't particularly new. Earlier instances, such as the simplistic games "KZ-Manager" and "Antitürkentest" from the 1980s, gained traction within extremist circles. However, Heimat Defender: Rebellion marks a notable departure in this lineage. While it communicates a far-right ideology, it does not present itself as overtly extremist on the surface, particularly when contrasted with games like "KZ-Manager" (Möbus 2023). Furthermore, Heimat Defender: Rebellion was produced by a semi-professional developer and marketed within Germany (and Austria) until its prohibition, thus endowing it with a unique potential to propagate the Identitarian Movement's narratives and ideology. The game's contemporary relevance in terms of narrative, gameplay, and aesthetics suggests a capacity to engage players beyond mere provocation, possibly mainstreaming far-right ideologies through intrinsic player motivation (Möbus 2023).

Plenty of interdisciplinary publications exist which clearly state that "Heimat Defender: Rebellion" propagates dehumanizing, racist, antisemitic, and anti-democratic world views (Möbus 2023; BpjM 2020). Nonetheless, the game remains freely downloadable, thus maintaining easy accessibility for children, adolescents and young adults (BpjM 2020, 33). This is particularly alarming given the game's explicit targeting of younger demographics. Yet, comprehensive academic engagement with Heimat Defender: Rebellion, especially within the framework of digital propaganda and disinformation strategies of the Identitarian Movement, has been limited (Möbus 2023; Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022).

A well-known strategy within the digital propaganda and disinformation arsenal of the German far-right is establishing and repeating antagonizing images of individuals and groups, which are considered as the enemy.  These depictions play a significant role in spreading far-right ideologies and fostering individual radicalization processes (Jesse 2011; Auer 2002). Recent academic efforts have focused on dissecting these depictions, considering the unique propagandistic potentials of various media forms, such as right-wing music, memes, and social media posts (Hajok and Leonhardt 2020; Zeyer 2017). However, explorations into depictions of the enemy within video games, particularly from the perspective of the Identitarian Movement, remain sparse (Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022).

The aim of this contribution is to deconstruct the depiction of the enemy conveyed by the Identitarian Movement within the video game Heimat Defender: Rebellion, specifically to identify the characters represented as antagonists, thereby enabling further insights into the Identitarian Movement's ideology. The contribution will therefore address the following research questions:

• How are the enemies depicted in the video game Heimat Defender: Rebellion?
• What insights can the deconstruction of the enemy provide regarding the ideology of the Identitarian Movement?

Methodologically, in alignment with the presentation's objectives and considering the peculiarities of Heimat Defender: Rebellion, a pragmatic approach to analyze and deconstruct the depiction of the enemy through ‘video game analysis’ (Eichner 2017, 526f) is proposed. This approach blends literary analysis—understood as texts that "require physical effort to engage with" (Eichner 2017, 525)—with film and television analysis techniques, and organizes video game analysis into various heuristic steps: 1) Description, i.e., making specific phenomena visible through descriptive explication; 2) Analysis, i.e., systematically extracting relevant insights; 3) Interpretation, i.e., contextualizing analytical findings within the theoretical framework (Eichner 2017, 526; Mikos 2017). To specify the focus of the analysis, namely the deconstruction of the depiction of the enemy, an analytical approach inspired by the generic model of ‘general game analysis’ (Fernández-Vara 2019) and in line with Preisinger (2022, 48), who emphasizes the importance of "interaction rules and forms within the game world and between player characters and non-player characters," is suggested. This approach focuses on the analysis of intradiegetic boss enemies, understood in reference to Genette's (1994) narrative theory as the narrative level within the digital game world, specifically characters and their actions occurring within the Heimat Defender: Rebellion game world. Boss enemies, known by various synonyms and associated concepts such as end bosses, level bosses, etc., and programmed by the game's AI, play a significant role in video games, often posing existential threats: "[they] are usually significantly stronger than other enemies, often having some significance to the plot of the game’s story" (Wood and Summerville 2019, 1). Boss enemies typically emerge at the end of certain game sections, associated with key narrative progressions (Segschneider 2022, 13f; Rato and Prada 2021, 41): "[they] provide a moral compass – they show behaviours that are threatening to society, because they cause others physical harm, deny the rights and freedom of others, create chaos, would betray others, or perform actions that are disgusting" (Pradantyo, Birk, and Bateman 2021, 2). Therefore, to answer the research questions, the depiction of the enemy in Heimat Defender: Rebellion is analyzed with blending ‘video game analysis’ and ‘general game analysis’ to approach the depiction of boss enemies.

Regarding the central findings of the contribution, it can be summarized on one hand that Heimat Defender: Rebellion sardonically distorts the characteristic of the perceived enemies of the Identitarian Movement/New Right, namely politicians such as Heiko Maas and Angela Merkel, who are perceived from the Identitarian perspective as disregarding the (allegedly) homogeneous interests of the German pipulation, as well as artists/activists engaging critically with the phenomenon of right-wing extremism, such as Jan Böhmermann and Philipp Ruch, and the Jewish investor George Soros, who is depicted as a personalized projection surface for numerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and is staged in Heimat Defender: Rebellion as an influential background actor. On the other hand, the analysis of depiction of the enemy offers intriguing insights into the Identitarian ideology by conveying the narrative in Heimat Defender: Rebellion that the elites represented by the aforementioned real-world figures are deliberately acting against the citizens in a concerted effort to enforce population homogenization. Particularly, the narrative of cooperative elites consciously and strategically working together against the population for their own interests, such as power retention and economic enrichment, along with the portrayal of political actors like ‘George Soros’, who wield particularly extensive political influence from behind the scenes, is deeply anti-democratic. It is evident that these narratives are intended to discredit not only the current elites but also the intermediary institutions they represent, thereby undermining their significance within the framework of a liberal democratic society and its foundational order.

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