LPAC calls on VA Tech. Review Panel to Conduct Thorough Assessment on the Role of Violent Video Games in the Virginia Tech Tragedy
May 22 (LPAC)-On Monday, May 21, 2007, members of the LaRouche Youth Movement, representing the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) attended the second official hearing of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's Review Panel, which was set up to investigate the shootings at Virginia Tech University, where 33 students were killed in the most fatal attack of school violence in history. The hearing took place in Blacksburg, Va., where Virginia Tech is located. LYM member Paul Mourino submitted written testimony, and added further remarks. Both sections of Mourino's testimony appear below.
Written Testimony
In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacres several years ago, Lyndon LaRouche joined such law enforcement experts as Col. David Grossman in demanding action against the manufacturers and distributors of violent point-and-shoot video games that, in Col. Grossman's words, "give kids the will and the skill to kill." Studies by law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service, have found a very high correlation between the 20 major school shooters of the past decade, and addiction to violent point-and-shoot video games.
Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, is no exception, despite the near total media blackout of his involvement with violent video games, including Counterstrike. News organizations like the Washington Post interviewed friends of Cho from high school and college, and confirmed his strong attraction to these games. Yet that story never appeared in print, and only accidentally showed up on a blog site associated with the newspaper.
There is good reason to believe that the video game industry, which was rocked by the Columbine revelations that school killers Harris and Klebold were addicted to violent video games, and honed their shooting skills through these computerized killing simulators, have poured millions of dollars into a public relations and damage control campaign, aimed at preventing a repeat of that bad media coverage. The video game industry is now a $20 billion a year industry, surpassing the motion picture industry in revenue.
We of the LaRouche Youth Movement call on this Commission to include in its deliberations and investigations a thorough look at the role that violent video games may have played in the Virginia Tech tragedy. Such a serious probe by such a prestigious body can do much to assure that the root causes of the recent tragic killings here are understood and addressed. The nation faces a potential epidemic eruption of a "new violence," driven, in part, by the mass distribution of killing simulators to youth.
These point-and-shoot video games were originally developed by the U.S. military for the U.S. military and law enforcement professionals. When the same technologies that were developed specifically to break down human beings' resistance to killing are packaged as video games, and are targeted at an audience of children in their teens and younger, there is something profoundly wrong.
There are clearly a number of pressing issues that this Commission will be taking up. It is essential that one of these issues is the role of the violent video games in the horrible events that have recently taken place here in Blacksburg. We look forward to working with the Commission in any way we can, to provide you with the material that we have gathered on the "new violence" and on the nature of the video game industry.
Further remarks to the Panel
On concluding the written testimony which he read, Paul Mourino added the following remarks:
There is a fight waging in the current U.S. Congress, between the legacy of F.D.R.'s tradition, whose promise is being shown in the potential to construct great projects -- for example the Russian offer to construct the Bering Strait tunnel project. On the other hand we have the current administrations policy of fighting the war on terrorism. Currently, the administrations war policy is changing the character and philosophy of our military's orientation. In February of this year, as I participated in this debate, working to revive F.D.R.'s policies, I stumbled upon a pedagogical display, in the Rayburn Congressional Office Building, which was set up by the U.S. military and/or private contractors who work for the government. Their work reveals the future for the American military, and the next war. There were various types of video game displays, which all show how the military is training its soldiers. Some featured the first person combat scenarios, others enabled people to simulate driving tanks or other types of combat vehicle, and others still were virtual interrogation sessions. The guns used to operate these simulators were weighed to give a sense of the real thing, and all of them had features, which simulated the kick back one receives when discharging a real weapon. Of course, soda and pizza was available to all the young Congressional staffers who participated, and remember most of the work done in Congress, is done by college-age staff.
To the average person, who has not seen this before, this might appear novel, but most young people, including myself, know this phenomena and have had this experience before.
To make sense of this thing, I would like to reference the work of Col. David Grossman. A shift occurred in the U.S. Military after World War II. With the death of F.D.R. some of the military leaders in combination with some from the private sector discovered that only 15% of America's riflemen could shoot to kill at the moment of truth, on the combat field. For whatever reason, a decision was made to correct this problem and enhance the numbers to increase the ability of the riflemen enabling them to shoot to kill, without thinking.
Col. Grossman, now a retired Army ranger, used these technologies during the Vietnam War and afterwards trained American riflemen. Later he noticed that the same techniques and technologies he used on the proving ground were embedded in his kids' video games. He raised the alarm, and has written various books, and tried his best to bring this horror to the public's attention. His book On Killing , is now required reading at many U.S. Military training institutions, including West Point.
I ran into this phenomenon when I was in middle school. The game "Wolfenstein 3D" was free and was the first killing simulation game on the market. The next versions were "Doom," "Doom II," and "Golden Eye." Incidentally, Bill Gates of Microsoft used "Doom" as a clever business-marketing scheme to introduce his, then, new product Windows 95. The technology of this operating system enabled much better game play and graphics. A clever business strategy to sell and market a new product to young people has a much different meaning when we see the effects that these technologies have had over a longer period of time. These video games are creating menticide among the young generation. LaRouche PAC recommends that this panel create the legislation, which will orient our military's policy away from the current model and return to the idea of the citizen solider, which was the model back during the days of F.D.R. We also recommend that you shame, fine, or regulate all those private corporations who have participated in these projects. Proper legislation, designed to protect my generation from these games, is needed. Time -- the younger generation need time to think about what kind of future we want for our Republic, and further if we decide to go with great projects we need to develop the capacity to take leadership in the future.
