A high school teacher and aspiring politician for the People's Party of Canada is under fire for a video game he created in college in which players attack characters depicted by cultural stereotypes,
Queerty reports.
Mario Greco, who is currently seeking a seat in the Canadian House of Commons in the Vaughan—Woodbridge district of Ontario, created the video game "Happy Culture Shootout," which even allows players to carry out a mass shooting at a Pride parade.
"They're not dying in the game, no one's dying in the game, there isn't a single person that dies in the game," Greco told the Canadian news outlet
PressProgress. "They're beams of light, no one's dying, they're being sent to Happy Land because the goal was to end war and discrimination."
Writing for Queerty, David Reddish points out that it's interesting how the game "doesn't involve "] 'shooting' haters, but rather the innocent. For that matter, interesting that the game involves removing the victims of discrimination to end social tensions."
PressProgress also uncovered a video from Greco's college days where he defends the game against a classmate who called it the "most racist" game he's ever seen.
"My friends and I love people of all cultures and we also love humor of all types," Greco said in the video. "That includes harmless racist jokes. This game was intended to make a joke about how ridiculous cultural stereotypes are so we can all laugh about it together and move on with our lives."
As Queerty points out, PressProgress also found tweets from Greco where he referred to Critical Race Theory as "cancer," and drew a picture of Pepe the Frog, an image associated with the alt-right on online forum 4chan. Greco said he refuses to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and has published photos of himself wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.