The Four Color Media Monitor

IGN reports, in what's a very troublingly distorted item, that video game producer Hideo Kojima, quite an advocate of leftist causes, shunned an Italian cartoonist because he published GNs that are opposed to Islamic terrorism:

Death Stranding and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has issued a statement distancing himself from an Italian cartoonist after deleting a photo of the pair meeting at the Lucca Comics And Games 2025 convention earlier in November.

In the now-deleted image, below, Kojima posed alongside Michele "Zerocalcare" Rech, author of the graphic novels Kobane Calling (2015) and No Sleep Till Shengal (2022), while the legendary developer held up a copy of the former. Both novels document the struggles of war, but sympathize with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, accused by some humanitarian groups of using child soldiers.

The U.S. does not classify the YPG as a terrorist organization. Instead, the U.S. has partnered with the YPG and the broader Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as an ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

However, the U.S. position is in contrast to that of Turkey, a NATO ally, which views the YPG as a terrorist group due to its close ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S., the European Union, and Turkey.

As the image was picked up by Turkish media and fans wondered if it suggested Kojima endorsed Rech's views — views that run contrary to many of the themes explored in the Metal Gear series — Kojima deleted it from his social media.

Notice how, troublingly enough, IGN's writer is siding with Turkey, one of the biggest supporters of jihadism under the despotism of premier Recep Erdogan, and the part about the PKK appears to be distorted, perhaps reflecting the positions of the previous USA government led by Joe Biden, because the PKK has its defenders stateside, and if Kojima's okay with Islamic sharia, that's just one more problem with his MO that's chilling. Also notice the hypocrisy claiming the YPG uses child soldiers, yet no such condemnation is made about the Hamas doing the same. The ignorance of the J. Jonah Jameson of video games of a serious issue involving Islamic jihadism is repellent.

As spotted by Kotaku, Rech released his own video, and told Fatto Quotidiano that it wasn't his idea to share the novel with Kojima, but his publisher's.

"I opened the internet and saw two hundred Turkish sites saying that Kojima had published a post in favor of terrorism," Rech said (machine translated). "Of course, for the Turks, they’re all terrorists, and now they’re harassing poor Kojima."

Kojima had suffered a backlash online from some Turkish nationalists after posting the photo, which ended up with a community note on X / Twitter. Fans were quick to point out that despite deleting his social media post and issuing a statement, Kojima created the iconic Kurdish character Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid.

It makes little difference, that he would rely so heavily upon a Turkish Muslim audience as customers and a fanbase, no matter the cost, is very troubling. That he erased the photo he did with Rech is also a form of weakness, and that's where Kojima certainly did something wrong and cowardly. He should decidedly apologize for throwing Rech under the bus, but I guess no mea culpa is forthcoming, because the adherents to the Religion of Peace are just too valuable an audience to him to risk losing, huh?

I think this says quite a bit more about what's wrong with Kojima's MO, and if those are the kind of politics he's going to stick with and inject in his games, what's the use of playing the Metal Gear series? This case also makes clear what's wrong with IGN's writers, whose politics are hurtful to civilized society.

Labels: censorship issues, Europe and Asia, history, islam and jihad, manga and anime, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, technology, terrorism, violence