On May 16, the gaming and entertainment news site Dexerto tweeted an image from the forthcoming game Assassin’s Creed Shadows featuring one of its protagonists, the Black samurai Yasuke, in a fighting pose. Across scores of replies, some voiced optimism, others fatigue with Assassin’s Creed ’s now 14-game-long run, and a very vocal few expressed frustration and anger that a Black person was at the center of the narrative. “Gonna pass on the DEI games,” wrote one blue-check X user, referencing the acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Why Wokeism?” asked another. Comments full of racist and sexist language filled the thread. A more articulate undercurrent of these reactionaries, across many online forums, had a more specific set of complaints.
Some alleged the race of the real Yasuke was never known, others that he wasn’t a samurai but a retainer, and another claimed he was never in combat. These were all fairly elaborate conclusions to draw about a guy from 1581 who’s been depicted as a samurai in Japanese media many times, including in the 2017 video game Nioh and Samurai Warriors 5 in 2021, as well as his own animated series on Netflix . They also may have been the last bit of armchair history we got on Yasuke if the conversation hadn’t been sustained by a set of accounts looking to build yet another front in the online culture war, fueling what some have been calling Gamergate 2.
0. Whereas the Gamergate of 2014 focused on trying to drown out fe.