title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Early in the controversy, posters on 4chan focused on donating to a group called The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC), which had been embroiled in a dispute with Quinn over a women-only game development contest that Quinn had organized. TFYC sponsored a video game design contest for women in 2014. They were created by a partnership between Colombian media developer Autobótika and Canadian organization Empowered Up. It was founded with the goal of helping women and other underrepresented groups get involved in video game design. Its founder is Matthew Rappard, who is the only member who is publicly identified.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Advocating donations to help TFYC create the game, posters on 4chan's politics board argued that such donations would make them "look really good" and would make them "PR-untouchable". For their donations, TFYC allowed 4chan to create a character to be included in the game. The result was "Vivian James", a character designed to appear like an ordinary female gamer; her name is meant to sound like "video games". The colors of her striped purple and green hooded sweatshirt represent a viral 4chan meme known as "daily dose", which depicted a character from the anime Dragon Ball Z sexually assaulting another character. Allegra Ringo of "Vice" called her "a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: To respond to widespread criticism of Gamergate as misogynistic, posters on 4chan created a second Twitter hashtag, #NotYourShield, intended to show that Gamergate was not about opposition to feminism or wanting to push women out of gaming. Many of the accounts used to tweet the tag were sockpuppets that had copied their avatars from elsewhere on the Internet; the methods used to create it have been compared to #EndFathersDay, a hoax manufactured on 4chan using similar methods. Quinn said that in light of Gamergate's exclusive targeting of women or those who stood up for women, "#notyourshield was, ironically, solely designed to be a shield for this campaign once people started calling it misogynistic". Arthur Chu wrote that the hashtag was an attempt to discourage allies from supporting the people being attacked by Gamergate.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The winner of the contest was "Afterlife Empire", designed and written by Danielle Maiorino; Autobótika developed the game, which was released on Steam on August 21, 2015.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Other projects by The Fine Young Capitalists included videos about female video game designers, which were sponsored by 4chan users during the development of "Afterlife Empire". In 2015, The Fine Young Capitalists worked with pornographic actress Mercedes Carrera to create a scholarship for students studying in STEM fields. Fundraising included a live webcam show featuring Carrera; $11,280 was raised.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate supporters were critical of the wave of articles calling for diversity that followed the initial outbreak of the controversy, interpreting them as an attack on games and gamer culture. Gamergaters responded with a coordinated email campaign that demanded advertisers drop several involved publications; in a five-step 'war plan' against organizations that offended them, a Gamergate posting described how they would choose from a list of target organizations, pick a grievance from a list others had compiled, and send a form letter containing it to an advertiser. Intel reacted to this by withdrawing an ad campaign from Gamasutra in October 2014. After a number of game developers criticized Intel for this, arguing that it could have a chilling effect on free speech and that it amounted to supporting harassment, Intel apologized, ultimately resuming advertising on Gamasutra in mid-November.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate became associated with the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies" during 2015 Hugo Awards for science fiction writing. These groups organized voting blocs to promote overlapping slates that dominated the 2015 Hugo Award nominations, though they failed to win the awards. The campaign was described as a backlash against the increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science fiction. Members of the blocs said that they sought to counteract what they asserted was a focus on giving awards based on the race, ethnicity, or gender of the author or characters rather than quality, and bemoaning the increasing prominence of what they described as 'message' fiction with fewer traditional "zap gun" science-fictional trappings. By 2018, the Sad Puppies had diminished visibility, and Quinn's 2017 memoir "Crash Override" was nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Related Work (for non-fiction works related to science fiction or fantasy).


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The most active Gamergate supporters or "Gamergaters" said that Gamergate was a movement for ethics in games journalism, for protecting the "gamer" identity, and for opposing "political correctness" in video games and that any harassment of women was done by others not affiliated with Gamergate. They argued that the close relationships between journalists and developers demonstrated a conspiracy among reviewers to focus on progressive social issues. Some supporters pointed to what they considered disproportionate praise for games such as "Depression Quest" and "Gone Home", which feature unconventional gameplay and stories with social implications, while they viewed traditional AAA games as downplayed. False claims of the "ethics in game journalism" had started as early as 2012, when Geoff Keighley was accused of such unethical behavior when he was presenting information about "Halo 4" among advertisements for Mountain Dew and Doritos, an event called "Doritosgate" in the gamer culture.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Observers in the media have largely rejected these claims as baseless and malicious. Chris Ip of the "Columbia Journalism Review" wrote that "many criticisms of press coverage by people who identify with Gamergate [...] have been debunked" and concluded that "at core, the movement is a classic culture war". Writing in "Vox", Emily VanDerWerff said that "[e]very single question of journalistic ethics Gamergate has brought up has either been debunked or dealt with". According to Leigh Alexander, then editor-at-large of "Gamasutra", the ethics concerns were a conspiracy theory, albeit a sincere one; Alexander writes that there is nothing unethical about journalists being acquainted with those they cover and that meaningful reporting requires journalists to develop professional relationships with sources. "Ars Technica", "Vox", and "Wired", among others, stated that discussions of gender equality, sexism and other social issues in game reviews present no ethical conflict.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Several writers who attempted to understand Gamergate's motivations concluded that, rather than relating to purported issues with gaming journalism ethics, Gamergate represented an effort to suppress opposing views. Salter writes that "mass media had a decisive role in evaluating the competing claims of Gamergate and its critics, and ultimately dismissing Gamergate as a misogynist abuse campaign". Screenshots of 4chan boards, collected and published by Quinn, suggested that complaints about ethics in games journalism were invented "post hoc" by Gamergaters to distract critics from their ongoing abuse of Quinn. Jay Hathaway wrote at "Gawker" that this strategy emerged once Gamergaters found that harassing Quinn about their sexual history was unlikely to win the campaign support; according to Hathaway, IRC chat logs showed that "the [Gamergate] movement was focused on destroying Zoë Quinn first, reforming games reporting second".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Other commentators argued that Gamergate had the potential to raise significant issues in gaming journalism, but that the wave of misogynistic harassment and abuse associated with the hashtag had poisoned the well, making it impossible to separate honest criticism from sexist trolling. Visible support for Gamergate in the form of tweets, online videos, and blogs seldom involved discussion of ethics, but often featured misogynistic and/or racist commentary. The targets were mainly female game developers, academics, and writers.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University described Gamergate as a "vitriolic campaign against Quinn that quickly morph[ed] into a broader crusade against alleged corruption in games journalism" which involved considerable abuse and harassment of female developers and game critics. Concerns have also been raised when juxtaposing the behavior of Gamergate supporters with their claimed message. Dr. Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a professor and media ethics expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wrote that while Gamergate supporters claimed to be interested in journalism ethics, their "misogynistic and threatening" behavior belied this claim. "Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: After analyzing a sample of tweets related to Gamergate, "Newsweek" concluded that it was primarily about harassment rather than ethics, stating that the sample "suggests that [...] contrary to its stated goal, Gamergate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists". Casey Johnston wrote for "Ars Technica" that, based on logs from the 4chan users who initially pushed Gamergate into the spotlight, the goal behind the hashtag campaign was to "perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics". An academic analysis of a week's worth of public posts tagged with #Gamergate found that the issue publics involved were not "only or even primarily" concerned with ethics in gaming journalism.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In an interview with Anita Sarkeesian in "The Guardian", Jessica Valenti said that "the movement's much-mocked mantra, 'It's about ethics in journalism was seen by others as "a natural extension of sexist harassment and the fear of female encroachment on a traditionally male space". Sarkeesian asked, "if this 'movement' was about journalism, why wasn't it journalists who had to deal with a barrage of rape and death threats?". Wu told "The Boston Globe" that the ethics claims were "a pretext" and described Gamergate as "an actual hate group [...] they're upset and threatened by women who are being very outspoken about feminism".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate has been criticized for focusing on women, especially female developers, while ignoring many large-scale journalistic ethics issues. Alex Goldman of NPR's "On the Media" criticized Gamergate for targeting female independent ("indie") developers rather than AAA games publishers, and said claims of unethical behavior by Quinn and Sarkeesian were unfounded. In "Wired", Laura Hudson found it telling that Gamergate supporters concentrated on impoverished independent creators and critics, and nearly exclusively women, rather than the large game companies whose work they enjoyed. "Vox" writer Emily VanDerWerff highlighted an essay written by game developer David Hill, who said that corruption, nepotism, and excessive commercialism existed in the gaming industry, but that Gamergate was not addressing those issues. Adi Robertson, of "The Verge", commented on the long-standing ethical issues gaming journalism has dealt with, but that most Gamergate supporters did not seem interested in "addressing problems that don't directly relate to feminist criticism or the tiny indie games scene".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: "Feminist Media Studies" described Gamergate as "a convenient way for a loose coalition of frustrated geeks, misogynists, alt-righters, and trolls to coalesce around a common idea—that popular culture was 'overly concerned' with a particular kind of identity politics—even if their tactics and actual motivations for participating were varied."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Kyle Wagner of "Deadspin" argued that "By design, Gamergate is nearly impossible to define. It refers, variously, to a set of incomprehensible Benghazi-type conspiracy theories about game developers and journalists; to a fairly broad group of gamers concerned with corruption in gaming journalism; to a somewhat narrower group of gamers who believe women should be punished for having sex; and, finally, to a small group of gamers conducting organized campaigns of stalking and harassment against women." and that "This ambiguity is useful, because it turns any discussion of this subject into a debate over semantics." Wagner also argued that Gamergate is "The Future Of The Culture Wars".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Observers have generally described Gamergate as part of a long-running culture war against efforts to diversify the traditionally male video gaming community, particularly targeting outspoken women. They cite Gamergate supporters' frequent harassment of female figures in the gaming industry and its overt hostility toward people involved in social criticism and analysis of video games. "The Washington Post"s digital culture writer Caitlin Dewey said that "Whatever Gamergate may have started as, it is now an Internet culture war" between predominantly female game developers and critics advocating for greater inclusion, and "a motley alliance of vitriolic naysayers" opposed to such changes. "Vox" said that Gamergate supporters were less interested in criticizing ethical issues than in opposition to social criticism and analysis of video games and in harassment of prominent women. "Ars Technica" quoted early members as saying that they had no interest in video games and were primarily interested in attacking Quinn.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate has been described as being driven by antifeminist ideologies. Some supporters have denied this, but acknowledge that there are misogynistic voices within Gamergate. Antonsen, Ask, and Karlstrom wrote in "Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies" "in the case of #gamergate, it is the explicit goal of many of the participants to exclude groups of people, particularly women, from the debate and from the game industry and limit women's rights as citizens." Jon Stone, in "The Guardian", called it a "swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment" and compared it to the men's rights movement. Commentators such as Stone, Liana Kerzner, and Ryan Cooper have said that the controversy is being exploited by right-wing voices and by conservative pundits who had little interest in gaming. Chrisella Herzog states that in addition to violent sexism, Gamergate has virulent strains and violent sentiments of homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and neo-Nazism. Gamergate supporters also promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Quinn said the campaign had "roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a pre-existing hate mob", and urged industry publishers and developers to condemn the hashtag. They further asked those Gamergate supporters who had any earnest discussion about ethics to move away from the "Gamergate" tag.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: "TheGamer" noted that Gamergate was "a polarizing debate which you were either for or against, with no in-between."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate is often considered to be a reaction to the changing cultural identity of the "gamer". As video games grew in mainstream popularity during the 1990s, a "gamer" identity emerged among predominantly young, male, heterosexual players, and the types of games designed to appeal to them. Over the years, the growing popularity of games expanded that audience to include many who did not fit the traditional gamer demographic, particularly women. Games with artistic and cultural themes grew in popularity, and independent video game development made these games more common, while mobile and casual games expanded the scope of the industry beyond the traditional gamer identity. The games most popular with typical "gamers", often featuring explicit violence along with exaggerated gender stereotypes, were joined by a more diverse set of games that included gay, lesbian, and transgender themes. "Indie" gaming blogs and websites were created to comment on these developments, in contrast to the more established gaming press, which was traditionally dependent on the games industry itself.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The media-studies scholar Adrienne Massanari writes that Gamergate is a direct response to such changes in video-game content as well as changes in the demographics of players. Surveys by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014 and 2015 showed that video-game players were between 44% and 48% female, with an average age of thirty-five. This broader audience began to question some assumptions and tropes that had been common in games. Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw write that concern over these changes is integral to Gamergate, especially a fear that sexualized games aimed primarily at young men might eventually be replaced by less sexualized games marketed to broader audiences. Gamergaters often dismiss such games and their more diverse, casual group of players as being not "real" games or gamers. Alyssa Rosenberg of "The Washington Post" said that some of Gamergaters' concerns were rooted in a view of video games as "appliances" rather than art, that should be reviewed based on feature checklists rather than traditional artistic criteria. Chris Suellentrop of "The New York Times" criticized resistance to innovative uses of the gaming medium, and the belief that increased coverage and praise of artistic games like "Gone Home" would negatively affect blockbuster games such as "Grand Theft Auto V".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate is particularly associated with opposition to the influence of so-called "social justice warriors" in the gaming industry and media, who are perceived as a threat to traditional gaming culture. As the video-game market grew more diverse, cultural critics became interested in issues of gender representation and identity in games. One prominent feminist critic of the representation of women in gaming is Anita Sarkeesian, whose "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" project is devoted to female stereotypes in games. Her fund-raising campaign and videos were met with hostility and harassment by some gamers. Further incidents raised concerns about sexism in video gaming. Prior to August 2014, escalating harassment prompted the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) to provide support groups for harassed developers and to begin discussions with the FBI to help investigate online harassment of game developers. In an interview on Comedy Central's program "The Colbert Report", Sarkeesian said she believes women are targeted because they are "challenging the status quo of gaming as a male-dominated space".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In late August 2014, shortly after the initial accusations against Grayson and harassment of Quinn, several gaming sites published opinion essays on the controversy that focused on the growing diversity of gaming and the mainstreaming of the medium, some of which included criticism of sexism within gamer culture. These so-called "gamers are dead" articles were seen as part of a conspiracy to undercut traditional gamer identity and were used by participants to rally support for Gamergate. One of these articles, published on "Gamasutra" and written by Leigh Alexander, was titled "Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over". "Slate's" David Auerbach and "The Sentinel's" David Elks criticized these articles for alienating their publications' audience by attacking the gamer identity. Writing for "Paste", L. Rhodes said the antagonism in the Gamergate controversy was a result of the industry seeking to widen its customer demographic instead of focusing on core gamers, which Rhodes says "is precisely what videogames needed". Brendan Keogh of "Overland" stated that Gamergate "does not represent a marginalised, discriminated identity under attack so much as a hegemonic and normative mainstream being forced to redistribute some of its power".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate has been described as an expression of sexism and misogyny within gaming culture; its main themes are opposition to feminism and so-called "social justice warriors", who are perceived as a threat to traditional video games. Women's greater visibility in the gaming industry has seen a corresponding rise in gendered harassment and intimidation directed at them. Among mainstream journalists, the harassment campaign that became known as Gamergate is considered emblematic of this surge of online misogyny. According to Sarah Kaplan of "The Washington Post", "sexism in gaming is a long-documented, much-debated but seemingly intractable problem", and became the crux of the Gamergate controversy. Jaime Weinman, writing in "Maclean's", said, "[w]hether it was supposed to be or not, GamerGate is largely about women". Discussing Gamergate on her ESPN blog, Jane McManus compared the misogyny that women in the gaming industry experience to that faced by the first women entering sporting communities. In October 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described issues like Gamergate and misogyny in video games as "something that we need to stand clearly against".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Sexism and misogyny had been identified as problems in the video game industry and online community prior to the events of Gamergate. Sarkeesian considered that the Internet has a "boys'-locker-room feel" to it, with male users trying to show off to each other which causes escalating cases of harassment in situations like Gamergate. In March 2014, game designer Cliff Bleszinski wrote a blog post commenting on the "latent racism, homophobia and misogyny" that existed within the online gaming community. In a November 2014 interview with "Develop", Wu said the game industry "has been a boys' club for 30 years", and that the common portrayal of women as "sex symbols and damsels in distress" in video games has led to the players taking the same attitudes. Brendan Sinclair, writing for "GamesIndustry.biz", stated that the events of the Gamergate controversy were "reprehensible and saddening" and "this industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Many commentators have said that the harassment associated with Gamergate springs from this existing well of deep-seated misogyny, and that it was merely brought to the fore by the anonymity of the Internet. Lisa Nakamura, a professor of digital studies at the University of Michigan, wrote that Gamergate "showed the world the extent of gaming's misogyny". In an interview with the BBC, Quinn stated that "[b]efore [Gamergate] had a name, it was nothing but trying to get me to kill myself, trying to get people to hurt me, going after my family. [...] There is no mention of ethics in journalism at all outside of making the same accusation everybody makes towards any successful woman; that clearly she got to where she is because she had sex with someone." Danielle Citron of the University of Maryland wrote that the intent of this type of harassment is to demean the victim, make them doubt their own integrity, and to redefine the victim's identity in order to "fundamentally distort who she is".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Targets of Gamergate supporters have overwhelmingly been women, even when men were responsible for the supposed wrongdoings. Writing in "The New Yorker", Simon Parkin observed that Quinn was attacked while the male journalist who was falsely accused of reviewing their work favorably largely escaped, revealing the campaign as "a pretense to make further harassment of women in the industry permissible". In "The New York Times", Chris Suellentrop said that a petition sought to have a female colleague fired for criticizing the portrayal of women in "Grand Theft Auto V", while he and many other male critics raised similar concerns but did not face similar reprisals. Most commentators have described Gamergate as consisting largely of white males, though some supporters have said that it includes a notable percentage of women, minorities and LGBT members.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Critics of the movement have described it as a kind of misogynistic terrorism. Writing in "The Week", Ryan Cooper called the harassment campaign "an online form of terrorism" intended to reverse a trend in gaming culture toward increasing acceptance of women, and stated that social media platforms need to tighten their policies and protections against threats and abuse. Speaking on Iowa Public Radio, academic Cindy Tekobbe said the harassment campaign was intended to drive women from public spaces and intimidate them into silence. Prof. Joanne St. Lewis of the University of Ottawa stated that Gamergate's harassment and threats should be considered acts of terrorism as the perpetrators seek to harm women and to prevent them from speaking back or defending others.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Though "Newsweek" reported that the FBI had a file regarding Gamergate, no arrests have been made nor charges filed, and parts of the FBI investigation into the threats had been closed in September 2015 due to a lack of leads. Former FBI supervisory special agent for cybercrimes, Tim Ryan, stated that cyberharassment cases are a low priority for authorities because it is difficult to track down the perpetrator and they have lower penalties compared to other crimes they are tasked to enforce. In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in "Elonis v. United States" that harassing messages sent online are not necessarily true threats that would be prosecutable under criminal law and, according to "Pacific Standard", this poses a further challenge in policing Gamergate-related harassment. However, the Court's decision also suggested that if threats made over social media were found to be true threats, they should be treated the same as threats made in other forms of communication.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Wu has expressed her frustration over how law enforcement agencies have responded to the threats that she and other women in the game industry have received. On public release of the FBI's case files on Gamergate, Wu said she was "livid", and that "Only a fraction of information we gave the FBI was looked into. They failed on all levels." The lack of legal enforcement contributes towards the harassers' ability to maintain these activities without any risk of punishment, according to Chrisella Herzog of "The Diplomatic Courier"; at worst, harassers would see their social media accounts suspended but are able to turn around to register new accounts to continue to engage.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: U.S. Representative Katherine Clark, one of whose constituents was Brianna Wu, called for a stronger response from law enforcement to online abuse, partly as a result of advocacy by the women targeted by Gamergate. On March 10, 2015, Clark wrote a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking it to call on the Justice Department to crack down on the harassment of women on the internet, saying the campaign of intimidation associated with Gamergate had highlighted the problem. She asked the U.S. Department of Justice to "prioritize" online threats against women, saying, "We do not think this a harmless hoax. We think this has real-life implications for women". Clark also hosted a Congressional briefing on March 15, along with the Congressional Victims' Rights Caucus to review issues of cyberstalking and online threats; during the briefing, Quinn spoke of her experiences with Gamergate, which an executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence described during the hearing as "an online hate group [...] which was started by an ex-boyfriend to ruin [Quinn's] life". On May 27, the United States House of Representatives formally supported Clark's request for increased measures to combat online abuse against women, explicitly pressing for more investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice. On June 2, Rep. Clark introduced the "Prioritizing Online Threat Enforcement Act of 2015" to Congress. The bill would have allocated more funding for the FBI to employ additional agents to enforce laws against cyberstalking, online criminal harassment, and threats. Two years later, in June 2017, Rep. Clark introduced the "Online Safety Modernization Act of 2017" with co-sponsors Reps. Susan Brooks (Indiana) and Pat Meehan (Pennsylvania), which combined several of Clark's previous bills. The bill focused on penalizing "cybercrimes against individuals", including doxing, swatting, and sextortion, as well as granting $20 million for law enforcement training to help tackle such crimes, and $4 million to establish the National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals in order to study and collect statistics and information related to these crimes.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The harassment of Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu, and others led prominent industry professionals to condemn the Gamergate attacks for damaging the video gaming community and the public perception of the industry. "Vanity Fair"s Laura Parker stated that the Gamergate situation led those outside of the video game industry to be "flooded with evidence of the video-game community as a poisonous and unwelcoming place", furthering any negative views they may have had of video games. Independent game developer Andreas Zecher wrote an open letter calling upon the community to take a stand against the attacks, attracting the signatures of more than two thousand professionals within the gaming industry. Many in the industry saw the signatures "as proof that the people sending vicious attacks at Quinn and Sarkeesian weren't representative of the video game industry overall". Writing for "The Guardian", Jenn Frank described the tactics used in the harassment campaign and the climate of fear it generated through its attacks on women and their allies, concluding that this alienating and abusive environment would harm not only women but also the industry as a whole. Frank herself received significant harassment for writing this article, and announced an intention to quit games journalism as a result. Games designer Damion Schubert wrote that Gamergate was "an unprecedented ", and that silencing critiques of games harms games developers by depriving them of feedback. Several video game developers, journalists, and gamers from across various gender, racial, and social backgrounds adopted new Twitter hashtags, such as #INeedDiverseGames, #StopGamergate2014 and #GamersAgainstGamergate, to show solidarity with the people targeted by the harassment and their opposition to the reactionary messages from Gamergate supporters.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The Electronic Frontier Foundation characterized Gamergate as a "magnet for harassment", and notes the possible financial risk for companies dealing with it on social media platforms. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) issued a statement condemning the harassment, stating that "[t]here is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats". ESA president Mike Gallagher, speaking at the June 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo, clarified that the ESA did not become more involved as they felt it was an argument that was outside their industry and their involvement would have been disruptive, but praised the efforts to counter harassment that will benefit the industry in the future. At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced recent harassment; blaming a "small group of people [who] have been doing really awful things" and "tarnishing our reputation" as gamers. He called on attendees to treat each other with kindness and demonstrate to the world that the community rejects harassment. His statements were widely interpreted as referring to Gamergate. CEOs of both the American and European branches of Sony Computer Entertainment, Shawn Layden and Jim Ryan respectively, said the harassment and bullying were absolutely horrific and that such inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated at Sony. The Swedish Games Industry issued a statement denouncing the harassment and sexism from Gamergate supporters. In 2016, Nintendo of America denounced Gamergate, calling it "an online hate campaign" and that "Nintendo firmly rejects the harassment of individuals in any way".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Responses to Gamergate have encouraged the video game industry to review its treatment of women and minorities, and to make changes to support them. Intel, following its accidental involvement in Gamergate, pledged more than $300 million to help support a "Diversity in Technology" program with partners including Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency organization and the IGDA, aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities in the industry. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated in announcing the program that "it's not good enough to say we value diversity, and then have our industry not fully represent". Electronic Arts (EA) COO Peter Moore said the controversy made EA pay more attention to diversity and inclusion, telling "Fortune" "[i]f there's been any benefit to Gamergate, [...] I think it just makes us think twice at times". Speaking about Gamergate harassment to the "Seattle Times", IGDA executive director Kate Edwards said, "Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, "We need to stop this. This has got to change."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 included markedly more female protagonists in these new games, as well as more visible presence by women at the event. Some commentators characterized this as a response to Gamergate and a rejection of the misogynistic Gamergate harassment.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The game "", released in 2015, references Gamergate with the hashtag #CrusaderGate, which the Riddler uses to unsuccessfully try to rally the Internet against Batman; bemoaning its failure, the Riddler describes those who use the hashtag as "idiotic and easily roused rabble".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: "Intimidation Game", an episode of the crime television series "", portrays a fictionalized version of Gamergate, including a character whom some observers said resembled Sarkeesian and whose story seemed based on those of women subject to the harassment campaign. The 2015 documentary film "GTFO" analyzed issues of sexism and harassment in video gaming. The film's director, Shannon Sun-Higginson, stated Gamergate was "a terrible, terrible thing, but it's actually symptomatic of a wider, cultural, systemic problem". The Gamergate situation was covered as part of a larger topic of online harassment of women in the June 21, 2015, episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver". The impact of the Gamergate controversy on Brianna Wu was the subject of the March 16, 2016, episode of "The Internet Ruined My Life".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In October 2021, Mind Riot Entertainment announced that a fictional series based on Gamergate co-created and co-written by Wu and J. Brad Wilke was in production. The series will focus on the origins of the controversy through the lens of multiple, fictional people in the game industry such as executives, journalists, and indie developers and their subsequent reactions. On March 8, 2022, it was announced that Norman Lear and Brent Miller will be executive producers.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In January 2015, Quinn and Alex Lifschitz created the Crash Override Network, a private group of experts who provide free support and counsel to those that have been harassed online, including as a result of Gamergate, and to work with law authorities and social media sites in response to such threats. Software developer Randi Harper founded a similar group, the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative, a non-profit organization that also seeks to provide aid to those harassed online.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Anita Sarkeesian was named as one of "Time" magazine's list of the 30 most influential people on the Internet in March 2015, and later in the magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People of 2015, in recognition of her role in highlighting sexism in the video game community in the wake of the Gamergate controversy. She was also highlighted as one of "Cosmopolitan"s fifty "Internet's Most Fascinating" in a 2015 list due to her efforts to curb online harassment.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: An online abuse panel (itself the subject of controversy) at the 2016 SXSW festival said that there was no technological solution to the problem of harassment given human nature; although policy changes have been made, the larger issue is more societal than platform-specific. Referring to the discussion at SXSW in a speech for Women's History Month, then-U.S. President Barack Obama said that "We know that women gamers face harassment and stalking and threats of violence from other players. When they speak out about their experiences, they're attacked on Twitter and other social media outlets, even threatened in their homes." Obama urged targets of harassment to speak out, praising the courage of those who had resisted online harassment. "And what's brought these issues to light is that there are a lot of women out there, especially young women, who are speaking out bravely about their experiences, even when they know they'll be attacked for it".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The people targeted by Gamergate have continued to be attacked in right-wing media and on men's rights websites, and have been forced to limit their public appearances and social media activity. Some figures and tactics associated with Gamergate went on to become components of the alt-right, which featured in the 2016 United States presidential election and in other more targeted harassment campaigns, such as Learn to Code in early 2019.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: It has been argued that Gamergate helped elect Donald Trump as US president in 2016 and assisted other right-wing movements; Alyssa Rosenberg called Trump "the Gamergate of Republican politics" in an opinion article for "The Washington Post" in 2015. Trump's strategist Steve Bannon remarked that through Milo Yiannopoulos, who rose to fame during Gamergate as the technology journalist for "Breitbart News" (a news website Bannon co-founded), he had created a generation and an "army" that came in "through Gamergate ... and then get turned onto politics and Trump". According to "Axios", in the 2022 book "Meme Wars", Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, argued that Gamergate served as "The key template that the far right and former President Trump's MAGA movement have used to organize online", noting that during Gamergate, "online mobs deployed techniques and tactics that were later taken up by the Trumpist right, including the use of memes, false allegations and coordinated harassment." Donovan also argued that "similar techniques are being used to intimidate and harass entire groups of people, most prominently transgender youth and adults."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: The alt-right's emergence was marked by Gamergate. According to the journalist David Neiwert, Gamergate "heralded the rise of the alt-right and provided an early sketch of its primary features: an Internet presence beset by digital trolls, unbridled conspiracism, angry-white-male-identity victimization culture, and, ultimately, open racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred, misogyny, and sexual and gender paranoia". Gamergate politicized many young people, especially males, in opposition to the perceived culture war being waged by leftists. Through their shared opposition to political correctness, feminism, and multiculturalism, chan culture built a link to the alt-right. By 2015, the alt-right had gained significant momentum as an online movement. According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", Gamergate is "a manifestation of the so-called 'men's rights movement' that had its origins on the Web site 4chan."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: Gamergate has been compared to the far-right political conspiracy theory QAnon. "Business Insider" compared QAnon and the GameStop short squeeze to Gamergate by referring to all three as "populist uprisings". Claire Goforth of "The Daily Dot" argued that Gamergate helped give birth to QAnon: "Each movement, in its inception, tapped into the collective force of the army of trolls who frequent anonymous message boards. Their tactics are an outgrowth of an online subculture where no prejudice is too shocking, no attack too vicious, no accusation too egregious." and "Like Gamergate, QAnon is toxic and alluring because it clothes trolls and conspiracy theorists in the armor of righteousness. Their chosen enemies' faults are an absolute evil that needs to be excised. Nothing else matters when that's the ultimate goal." Goforth also noted that "While Gamergate was confined to the web, QAnon has crawled out of the screen." Kate Knibbs of "Wired" called Gamergate "proto-QAnon", saying that both are "ideologically incoherent and loosely organized, seeping across chan boards, forums, and social platforms" and that "it was impossible to tell exactly how many people actually believed what they were saying and how many were trolling."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In 2015, Yasmin Kafai, the Chair of the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE), said that "What Gamergate has changed is not the situation for women and minorities in gaming, but it has changed the public perception". In 2016, Sarah Jeong of "The Washington Post" compared the Pizzagate conspiracy theory to Gamergate, calling both a "time the darker parts of the Internet have delivered up sustained, orchestrated harassment on the back of a convoluted nest of lies." and claimed that "If we took 'Gamergate' harassment seriously, 'Pizzagate' might never have happened". In May 2017, Sean Murray of "TheGamer" argued that "The most important thing that Gamergate did was bring the online harassment of women into the public consciousness. That alone is something to be thankful for, but many people went above and beyond." In July 2017, Katherine Cross of "The Daily Beast" compared the CNN Blackmail controversy with Gamergate, claiming that "Many of the same tactics and major players that made names for themselves in GamerGate—from Mike Cernovich to Weev—are being used to push a wide-scale harassment campaign against CNN."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In July 2018, Kishonna Gray, a communication and gender studies researcher, argued that "Gaming culture and games companies have been complicit in the abuse. There's no way that GamerGate could have had the power that it did have without that historical practice of diminishing women. The game industry weaponized GamerGate." Also in July 2018, "Vox" said that Gamergate's "success" "gave many on the extreme right a template for how to attack their perceived enemies." and that "The methods deployed in this ground-zero Gamergate event have since become standard practice for internet mobs wishing to attack seemingly anyone they believe to be a foe." As of 2018, "Not only are Gamergate supporters still active, but its most visible advocates seem to be thriving in the age of President Trump."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In January 2019, Talia Lavin of "The New Republic" said that Gamergate was "a public test of weapons online trolls would use to inflict hell on anyone who they perceived as enemies" and that "Its tactics have only grown in sophistication in the intervening years."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In a retrospective for "Slate" in August 2019, Evan Urquhart wrote that Gamergate was still active on Reddit and that its members continue to harass journalists. However, Urquhart also commented that Gamergate had not stopped socially-conscious games journalism, efforts to increase diversity in games, or individuals like Quinn and Sarkeesian. In a retrospective for "The New York Times", Charlie Warzel said that "Gamergate is occasionally framed as a battle for the soul of the internet between a diverse, progressive set and an angry collection of white males who feel displaced. And it is that, too. But its most powerful legacy is as proof of concept of how to wage a post-truth information war." In a retrospective for TechCrunch, Jon Evans stated that the mainstream media had not learned how to combat Gamergate-like strategies and criticized coverage from "The New York Times" in particular. In a retrospective for NPR, Audie Cornish said that Gamergate "was a warning and a demonstration of how bad actors could abuse the power of social networks to achieve malicious ends."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In a retrospective for "Polygon" in December 2019, Sarkeesian said that "GamerGate's real goals were expressed in the explicit racism, sexism, and transphobia of the memes the movement generated, and the posts its supporters wrote on the message boards where they organized and strategized. Later, the flimsiness of the 'ethics in games journalism' pretense would became a mocking meme signifying a bad faith argument. It would almost be funny, if GamerGate hadn't done so much harm, and caused so much lasting trauma." Sarkeesian also criticized the video game industry's response to Gamergate, saying that "The game industry's silence was shameful".


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In a retrospective for "Vox" in January 2020, Aja Romano stated that police, businesses, and social media platforms are still susceptible to Gamergate-like tactics and that they would have to change in order to keep victims safe. Romano also stated that "[Gamergate's] insistence that it was about one thing (ethics in journalism) when it was about something else (harassing women) provided a case study for how extremists would proceed to drive ideological fissures through the foundations of democracy: by building a toxic campaign of hate beneath a veneer of denial."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In September 2020, Kate Knibbs of "Wired" compared the backlash to the 2020 film "Cuties" with Gamergate, claiming that people were "using tactics favored by Gamergate like review bombing, online harassment, and calls for boycotts."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Brianna Wu said that "everything I tried to get the FBI to act on in the aftermath of GamerGate has now come true...We told people that if social media companies like Facebook and Reddit did not tighten their policies about these communities of organized hate, that we were going to see violent insurrection in the United States … We told people that these communities were organizing online for violence and extremism. That, unfortunately, has proven to be true." Donovan said that key figures in Gamergate worked to raise online fury ahead of the attack.


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In August 2021, Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist and professor at the University of Maryland, said that "The important lasting, lingering impact of [Gamergate] was it was one of the first grass-roots campaigns of harassment that had no real consequences for the people who did it". In October 2021, Andrew Paul of "Input" magazine said that Gamergate "is largely considered one of the biggest influences for today's spread of misinformation, unhinged online conspiracy movements, and right-wing reactionary trends." and that "Some of the most effective methods of weaponizing memes got their start within the Gamergate movement, along with doxxing tactics and harassment strategies."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In April 2022, David Emery of Snopes.com said that Gamergate is "considered by many a watershed event in the ascendancy of extremist personalities and tactics to online prominence" and that "Gamergate is regarded as emblematic of the deeply rooted sexist and reactionary attitudes observed not only in the male-dominated gaming industry of that time, but across the internet at large." Also in April, Caroline Sinders, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that "Gamergate, for a lot of people, for mainstream culture, was the introduction to what doxxing is". In May 2022, Elle Reeve of CNN said that Gamergate resulted in a "massive wave of young people enter[ing] what had been an old man's world of White nationalism." Also in May, Katherine Denkinson of "The Independent" compared the backlash against Amber Heard and her supporters in her then-ongoing trial against Johnny Depp with Gamergate, claiming that "the anti-Amber train has been expertly commandeered by the alt-right.", while noting that Gamergate "was quickly co-opted by the alt-right to promote anti-feminist rhetoric."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: In September 2022, Adam Jerret of "The Conversation" argued that while "GamerGate was a low point for the gaming world", in the eight years since Gamergate, video games and the gaming industry have "embrace[d] more diverse and caring values", resulting in "a new era of 'values-conscious games' which explore a variety of topics, such as empathy, diversity and wellbeing." that "are proving increasingly popular with existing and newfound audiences." Jerret also argued that Gamergaters "expressed a desire to isolate the world of gaming from broader social mores."


title: Gamergate (harassment campaign)

text: David DePape, the man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi (Nancy Pelosi's husband), is alleged to have said in a blog post that Gamergate introduced him to right-wing politics.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Sambo (, ) is a Russian martial art with Soviet origins, an internationally practiced combat sport, and a recognized style of amateur wrestling included by UWW in the World Wrestling Championships along with Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: It originated in the Russian SFSR in the Soviet Union. The word "sambo" is an acronym of (), which literally translates to 'self-defence without weapons'.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Sambo is relatively modern since its development began in the early 1920s by the Soviet NKVD and Red Army to improve hand-to-hand combat abilities of the servicemen. It was intended to be a merger of the most effective techniques of other martial arts.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: The pioneers of sambo were Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oshchepkov. Oshchepkov spent several years living in Japan and training in Judo under its founder Kano Jigoro. Oshchepkov died in prison as a result of the Great Purge after being accused of being a Japanese spy.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Spiridonov and Oshchepkov independently developed two different styles, which eventually cross-pollinated and became what is known as sambo. Compared to Oshchepkov's system, called "free wrestling" in Russia (known in the West as catch-as-catch-can wrestling or simply catch wrestling), Spiridonov's style was softer and less brutal. It was also less strength-dependent, which in large part was due to injuries Spiridonov sustained during World War I.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Anatoly Kharlampiev, a student of Vasili Oshchepkov, is also considered a founder of sambo. In 1938, it was recognized as an official sport by the USSR All-Union Sports Committee.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: There are multiple competitive sport variations of sambo (though sambo techniques and principles can be applied to many other combat sports). Below are the main formats that are recognized by FIAS.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: This type of Sambo was introduced by the American Sambo Association in 2004. Its purpose was to encourage non-Sambo practitioners such as Judo and Jiu-Jitsu to participate in Sambo. Freestyle Sambo allows the use of chokeholds and other submission techniques that are not used in Sport Sambo.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: This kind of Sambo is about defending yourself. In it, practitioners are taught to guard against weapons. Most of the moves that are taught include using the attacker's aggression against them, which is similar to what is done in both Jiu-Jitsu and Aikido. Spiridonov's influence is strong in this style of Sambo.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: This type of Sambo was made for Army Special Forces and other rapid response forces. It is only designed for the particular group that uses it. In that sense, it's similar to sambo combat, which is also designed for a specific purpose.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Women participated in Combat Sambo for the first time in an official tournament in the Paris Grand Prix 2015. The first recognized instance of women competing in an international combat Sambo tournament was in the 2022 Asian and Oceania Sambo Championships. In 2022 First time Australia and New Zealand compete in Asian sambo championship. Specialized for professionals in Army, Police and Security Service.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Systema (or System) is also known as “Combat Sambo Spetsnaz”. This Russian martial art is the evolutionary form of Spiridonov's Samoz. Systema falls into the category of military Sambo. The evolution of Spiridonov's Samoz and Ochtchepkov's Sambo was maintained in parallel by the NKVD which itself became the KGB. It is out of the official path of the evolution of Military and Sports Sambo that Systema was created, even if the latter is based on similar bases to Sambo. The Systema design has been designed to be highly adaptable and practical. It uses breathing exercises, "drills" and "sparring" exercises to replace traditional kata. Because it is open and scalable in nature, Systema is very effective in many situations and against many fighting styles. This is also why the special units, the spetsnaz, are trained in Systema. There are two major streams of Systema; one more "flexible", the other more "hard"


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Sambo's early development stemmed from the independent efforts of Vasili Oshchepkov and Viktor Spiridonov to integrate the techniques of Catch wrestling, Judo, Jujutsu, and other foreign martial arts into native Turkic wrestling styles, Armenian kokh, Romanian trîntǎ, Mongolian khapsagay and Georgian chidaoba (, ). Oschepkov taught judo to elite Red Army forces at the Central Red Army House.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Vasili Oschepkov was one of the first foreigners to learn Judo in Japan and had earned his Nidan (second-degree black belt, out of then five) from judo's founder, Kano Jigoro. Spiridonov's background involved indigenous martial arts from various Soviet regions as well as an interest in Japanese jujutsu (though he never formally trained it). His reliance on movement over strength was in part because during World War I, he received a bayonet wound which would leave his left arm lame. Both Oschepkov and Spiridonov independently hoped that Soviet military hand-to-hand combat techniques could be improved with an infusion of the techniques distilled from other foreign martial arts. Contrary to common lore, Oschepkov and Spiridonov did not cooperate on the development of their hand-to-hand systems. Rather, their independent notions of hand-to-hand combat merged through cross-training between students and formulating efforts by their students and military staff. While Oschepkov and Spiridonov did have occasion to collaborate, their efforts were not completely united.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Each technique was carefully dissected and considered for its merits, and if found acceptable in unarmed combat, refined to reach sambo's ultimate goal: to stop an armed or unarmed adversary in the least time possible. Thus, many techniques from jujutsu, judo, and other martial systems joined with the indigenous fighting styles to form the sambo repertoire. When the techniques were perfected, they were woven into sambo applications for personal self-defense, police, crowd control, border guards, secret police, dignitary protection, psychiatric hospital staff, military, and commandos.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: In 1918, Lenin created Vsevobuch (General Military Training) under the leadership of N. I. Podvoyskiy to train the Red Army. The task of developing and organizing Red Army military hand-to-hand combat training fell to K. Voroshilov, who in turn, created the NKVD physical training center, Dynamo Sports Society.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Spiridonov was a combat veteran of World War I and one of the first wrestling and self-defense instructors hired for Dynamo. His background included Free wrestling (i.e. Catch wrestling), Greco-Roman wrestling, many Turkic folk wrestling styles, and Japanese jujutsu. As a combative investigator for Dynamo, he traveled to Mongolia and China to observe their native fighting styles.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: In 1923, Oschepkov and Spiridinov collaborated (independently) with a team of other experts on a grant from the Soviet government to improve the Red Army's hand-to-hand combat system. Spiridonov had envisioned integrating the most practical aspects of the world's fighting systems into one comprehensive style that could adapt to any threat. Oschepkov had observed Kano Jigoro's distillation of Tenjin Shinyo Ryu, Kito Ryu and Fusen-ryū jujutsu into judo, and he had developed the insight required to evaluate and integrate combative techniques into a new system. Their developments were supplemented by Anatoly Kharlampiyev and I. V. Vasiliev who also traveled the globe to study the native fighting arts of the world. Ten years in the making, their catalog of techniques was instrumental in formulating the early framework of the art to be eventually referred to as sambo.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Kharlampiyev is often called the "father of sambo". This may be largely semantics since only he had the longevity and political connections to remain with the art while the new system was named "sambo". However, Kharlampiyev's political maneuvering is single-handedly responsible for the USSR Committee of Sport's accepting sambo as the official combat sport of the Soviet Union in 1938 – decidedly the "birth" of sambo. So, more accurately, Kharlampiyev could be considered the father of "sport" sambo.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Spiridonov was the first to begin referring to the new system with a name similar to 'sambo'. He eventually developed a softer style called Samoz that could be used by smaller, weaker practitioners or even wounded soldiers and secret agents. Spiridonov's inspiration to develop 'Samoz' stemmed from his World War I bayonet injury, which greatly restricted his left arm and thus his ability to practice wrestling. Refined versions of sambo are still used today or fused with specific sambo applications to meet the needs of Russian commandos.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: After being recognized by FILA (known since September 2014 as United World Wrestling) in 1968, by the U.S. National Amateur Athletic Union in 1972, and after being included to the program of the 1973 World Wrestling Championships along with Greco-Roman and Freestyle wrestling (which are indeed Olympic sports,) Sambo was rapidly making its way to become an Olympic sport.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: The first World Cup was contested in 1969. Don Curtis, a member of the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Committee, had predicted in 1975, that the Russians will introduce the Sambo wrestling in the 1980 Olympics program in Moscow. In 1975 the first United States National Sambo Championships were held in Mesa, Arizona, in 1977 it was contested along with G.R. and Freestyle at the first Pan American Wrestling Championships in Mexico City, and included in the schedule of the upcoming 1983 U.S. Olympic Festival and the 1983 Pan American Games (the 1983 Pan American event in Caracas became the first and subsequently the last edition of Sambo at the Pan Am Games.) In 1979 the National AAU Sambo Committee established several annual awards to honor outstanding persons in the sport of Sambo wrestling. By the 1980s it has been included to Pan American Games, National Sports Festival and AAU Junior Olympics program.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: But as a result of political complications of the 1980 Olympic boycott which arouse after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Sambo was at first reduced to a demonstration sport at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, USSR. But later, because of the sport's strong association with the Soviet Union, it was relinquished of the demonstration sport status. It is true that youth sambo was demonstrated in the Games' opening ceremonies; however, sambo was never formally recognized as a demonstration sport. This common error in history books is noted in several sources including "From SAMOZ to SAMBO" by Anatoly Makovetskii and Lukashev's "History of Hand-to-Hand Combat in the First Half of the 20th Century: Founders and Authors". Furthermore, the official documents of the 1980 Olympic Organizing Committee do not mention sambo as a participating sport in the Games. Nevertheless, Jerry Matsumoto, Head of the U.S. Sambo Association, saw in 1990 Sambo becoming an Olympic sport, at least at the demonstration level, within the next eight years.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: In 1968, FILA accepted sambo as the third style of international wrestling. In 1985, the sambo community formed its own organization, Federation International Amateur Sambo (FIAS). In 1993, FIAS split into two organizations, both of which used the same name and logo, and the two groups were often referred to as FIAS "East" (under Russian control) and FIAS "West" (under US and Western European control). This split mirrored the last days of Cold War politics of the time as well as the recent break-up of the Soviet Union. In the U.S., disagreements between the sport's organizers and the rise of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the 1990s slowed down the growth of sambo before the success of several sambo fighters increased its popularity a decade later. In 2005, FILA reached an agreement with FIAS "West" and re-assumed sanctioning over sport sambo. However, in 2008, FILA again discontinued sanctioning sambo and sambo is now notably missing from the UWW website. At present, only FIAS sanctions international competition in sport sambo. In 2014 FIAS and FILA signed a cooperative agreement. While this does not place sambo back on UWW's recognized list, it does move towards unity and prevents future 'turf wars' regarding the sport's promotion. A similar agreement was signed by FIAS and the International Judo Federation in 2014 as well. Both FIAS and the World Combat Sambo Federation host international combat sambo competition. The American Sambo Association has continued to host freestyle sambo tournaments in the US and Canada since 2004. These events are unrecognized by UWW.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Rumors rising in 2012 stating that sambo will be included as a demonstration sport in the 2016 Olympics are therefore not supported by any facts, and thus sambo is still a very long way from maturing into an Olympic sport, notwithstanding the effort that is being put into the matter. Indeed, given the intention of the Olympic Committee to remove classic wrestling from the Olympic roster, there are rumors that sambo is highly unlikely to ever make it to the Olympics. However, sambo has been included in the 27th Annual Summer Universiade for the first time in history. FIAS submitted an application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to consider sambo for the 2020 Games and has devoted 2010–2013 to creating a sambo commission in the International Sports Press Association (AIPS). As of 30 November 2018, sambo has indeed received temporary recognition by the IOC. This close relationship is reestablishing the global popularity and media emphasis on sambo.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Similar to wrestling, a sambo practitioner normally wears either a red or a blue competition outfit. The kurtka (куртка), also called a sambovka (самбовка), looks similar to a Judogi top and belt but has belt loops, shoulder straps, wrestling style shorts, and shoes which match the uniform's color. The sambo uniform does not reflect rank or competitive rating. Sport rules require an athlete to have both red and blue sets to visually distinguish competitors on the mat.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Also similar to the wrestling ranking system used in Russia, a competitive rating system is used (rather than the belt color ranking system used in judo and gendai jujutsu). Various sport organizations distribute these ranks for high levels of competition achievement or in some cases coaching merits. People who have earned these ranks are known as 'Masters of Sport.' Institutions that grant a sambo 'Master of Sport' in Russia include FIAS, FKE, and the International Combat Sambo Federation. Other nations have governing bodies that award 'Masters of Sport' as well, including the American Sambo Association in the United States


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Sambo World Cup and Supercup have been contested since 1969, initially held by FILA, and since 1985 by FIAS.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: United States National Sambo Championships known initially as the National AAU Sambo Wrestling Championships are the annual championships held in the United States. American enthusiasts of martial arts took up Sambo shortly before it was contested at the 1973 World Wrestling Championships and was rapidly making its way to become an Olympic sport in 1980.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: The national Sambo competition also was held along with Greco-Roman and Freestyle events at the 1987 and 1988 AAU/USA Grand National Wrestling Championships on July 1, 1987, and July 6, 1988, respectively, both held at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana. Next year it was contested at the 1989 AAU/Carrier Grand National Wrestling Championships on July 5 at Metra in Billings, Montana. 1990 AAU Grand National Wrestling Championships also hosted a national Sambo competition at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 10. 1992 AAU Grand National edition hosted a national Sambo competition in July in Amarillo, Texas. 1994 AAU Grand National Wrestling Championships also hosted a national Sambo competition at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan on July 13. 1995 AAU Grand National edition hosted a national Sambo competition in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 1999 AAU Grand National Wrestling Championships also offered Sambo to competitors on June 30 at Metra in Billings, Montana. The 2002 AAU Grand National Wrestling Championships saw Sambo competition on June 19 at Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: USA Wrestling has added Sambo as a style since the 2007 U.S. National Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: Although sambo is a Russian acronym, exponents of the sport in the English-speaking world have faced problems concerning the linguistically unrelated racist term. Sambo representatives have opted to use the alternative spelling "Sombo" to avoid offence. In Swedish, "sambo" is the term for an unmarried couple living together on permanent basis. FIAS references the sport with its acronym spelling: SAMBO.


title: Sambo (martial art)

text: The name "Sambo" itself is already well-known because of the controversy in Indonesia caused by the shootout between the police that killed Brigadier Yoshua at 2022.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Red is a 2010 American action comedy film loosely inspired by the Homage Comics limited series of the same name. Produced by Di Bonaventura Pictures and distributed by Summit Entertainment, it is the first film in the "Red" series. Directed by Robert Schwentke and written by Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, it stars Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban and Mary-Louise Parker, alongside Rebecca Pidgeon, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, and James Remar. "Red" follows Frank Moses (Willis), a former black-ops agent who reunites with his old team to capture an assassin who has vowed to kill him.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: The film was released on October 15, 2010. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $199 million worldwide, and also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. A sequel, "Red 2", was released on July 19, 2013. A third film was announced as in-development in 2013 but did not come to fruition.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Former CIA black ops agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) lives a quiet life in the suburbs and creates opportunities to talk to pension call center employee Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker). An assassination squad attempts to kill Frank, but he single-handedly kills the entire squad and drives to Sarah's house to protect her. Sarah refuses to leave with Frank so he kidnaps her. CIA agent William Cooper (Karl Urban) is tasked by his corrupt boss Cynthia (Rebecca Pidgeon) to kill Frank.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Frank ties up Sarah in a Louisiana motel room while he visits his former mentor Joe (Morgan Freeman) at a retirement home for help identifying the squad. He learns the same squad murdered a newspaper reporter in New York. Sarah gets loose and calls 9-1-1, accidentally alerting Cooper to her location. Frank saves her. Cooper chases them in a car but they escape to New York City to investigate the reporter who was killed. They find a list of names the reporter was investigating, almost all of whom have recently died. Frank calls Joe but is told Joe has been killed.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Frank and Sarah find retired agent Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) in Florida, whose name is on the list. Marvin finds all the names on the list are connected to a secret 1981 mission in Guatemala. The three track down pilot Gabriel Singer (James Remar) who flew the mission. He helps Frank and Marvin remember the mission but is killed by a sniper in a helicopter. Frank, Marvin, and Sarah escape. Frank secures the help of retired FSB agent Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox) in exchange for a favor, and with Sarah infiltrates the Secure Records Vault at the CIA to obtain the Guatemala file. The records keeper (Ernest Borgnine) tells Frank that Cooper pulled his file, so Frank pays Cooper a surprise visit in his office. Frank dislocates Cooper's shoulder and Cooper shoots and wounds Frank. Frank and Sarah find Marvin being held at gunpoint by Joe, who survived the attack at the retirement home. The group seeks help from retired British assassin Victoria Winslow (Helen Mirren), who stitches Frank's wound and joins the group as they decide to meet with Alexander Dunning (Richard Dreyfuss), an arms dealer who is the only name left on the list still alive besides Frank and Marvin.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Joe meets with Dunning posing as an African warlord wanting to purchase weapons. Dunning reveals the killings were ordered by the Vice President of the US to cover up the VP's mass killing of innocent villagers in Guatemala. Meanwhile, Cooper receives a tip leading him to Dunning's mansion where he confronts Frank. Joe sacrifices his life to help Frank and Marvin escape but Sarah is captured by Cooper. Frank breaks into Cooper's house while his family is there and calls Cooper, saying he intends to kill the VP and if Sarah is harmed he will kill Cooper's family.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Finding the Guatemala file Frank left for him, Cooper realizes that he's being used in the coverup and has himself assigned to the VP's security detail. The group kidnap the VP from a fundraising dinner but Victoria is shot and is rescued by Ivan. Frank calls Cooper and arranges to trade the VP for Sarah. Cooper, Cynthia, and Dunning bring Sarah and meet with Frank. Dunning shoots the VP and offers to make Cooper CIA Director if Cooper kills Frank and Sarah. Cooper instead kills Cynthia while Frank charges Dunning and kills him. Frank and Sarah reunite and Cooper tells them all to leave and that he will clean up the situation.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: The group leaves in Ivan's car and Ivan cashes in his favor from Frank. Sarah insists she go along with Frank and Marvin to deal with an issue in Moldova. Frank and Marvin are then shown fleeing Moldovan troops with a stolen nuclear device.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Gregory Noveck, a representative of DC Comics working in Hollywood to get their titles made into films, wanted the comic developed, but Warner Bros. was not interested. The creators of the comic exercised their right to go elsewhere, but this required approval from all divisions of Warner Bros., including television, before it could be approved. After several years, in 2008, Noveck was allowed to take the project to Mark Vahradian at Di Bonaventura Productions. Unusually, this made it the first film from DC not produced by Warner Bros., after the purchase.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: In June 2008, Summit Entertainment announced plans to adapt Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner's "Red". "Red" was adapted for the big screen by brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber, who also wrote the adaptations of "Whiteout" and "Alice". The project was produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura ("", "Transformers").


title: Red (2010 film)

text: By April 2009, Bruce Willis was reportedly in discussions with Summit to take the starring role of Frank Moses. It was reported in July 2009 that Morgan Freeman was in talks to co-star alongside Willis in the film. Also in July 2009, Robert Schwentke, the director of "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "Flightplan", was in negotiations to direct "Red". In August 2009, Schwentke confirmed to "MTV News" that he was on board. He stated that he loved the script, but differences existed between the comic and the movie, stating; "It's very funny, which the comic book isn't ... It's not as violent as the comic book," and "The script that I've read is obviously different from the comic, because I don't think the comic gives you enough for a two-hour movie."


title: Red (2010 film)

text: In November 2009, Helen Mirren was reported to be engaged to work alongside Freeman and Willis in the film. Also in November 2009, John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker were in negotiations to join the cast. Reilly would play a retired CIA agent who is paranoid that everyone is out to kill him. Parker would play the romantic interest, a federal pension worker who becomes embroiled in the Willis character's struggle to stay alive. In the same month, Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dreyfuss, and Brian Cox entered negotiations to join the cast.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: In December 2009, creator Warren Ellis stated on his mailing list: "Read the "RED" script. Not bad. Not the book, but not bad. Funny. Especially when you know the casting. Very tight piece of work. Talked to the producers last week. They're all kind of giddy over the casting coups. Who wouldn't want to see Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle?" Also in December 2009 Summit Entertainment announced a release date of October 22, 2010. The same month, James Remar was cast in an unspecified role, in addition to Karl Urban as "Cooper". In January 2010, reportedly John Malkovich had signed to star opposite Bruce Willis, replacing John C. Reilly, who exited the role in late December.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Principal photography began on January 18, 2010, in Toronto, Canada. "Red" was shot in and around the Toronto metropolitan area for nine weeks before moving on to the road and ending in New Orleans in late March for the final two weeks of principal photography. Filming in the French Quarter of New Orleans commenced in March 2010. Additional photography was shot for a post-credits scene in Louisiana in August 2010.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: The film premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on October 11, 2010. "Red" was released on Blu-ray and DVD on January 25, 2011. The film was released by Summit Entertainment in the US and Entertainment One in the UK. Lionsgate Home Entertainment later released it on Ultra HD Blu-ray on September 5, 2017.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: On its opening weekend, "Red" earned an estimated $22.5 million on around 4,100 screens at 3,255 locations, coming in second behind "Jackass 3-D". The film closed in theaters on February 3, 2011, grossing $90 million in the United States, and $108.6 million in foreign markets, for a worldwide gross of $199 million.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 213 reviews, with an average rating of 6.40/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "It may not be the killer thrill ride you'd expect from an action movie with a cast of this caliber, but "Red" still thoroughly outshines most of its big-budget counterparts with its wit and style." Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 60 out of 100 based 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Justin Chang of "Variety" stated "Red" is "An amusing, light-footed caper about a team of aging CIA veterans rudely forced out of retirement". John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" stated "Although tailor-made for genre fans, it benefits from flavors of humor and romance that keep its appeal from being fanboy-only".


title: Red (2010 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, stating that it is "neither a good movie nor a bad one. It features actors that we like doing things we wish were more interesting." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" said, "It is possible to have a good time at" Red", but it is not a very good movie. It doesn't really try to be, and given the present state of the Hollywood economy, this may be a wise choice". Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" said, "It's not that it doesn't have effective moments, it's that it doesn't have as many as it thinks it does. The film's inescapable air of glib self-satisfaction is not only largely unearned, it's downright irritating".


title: Red (2010 film)

text: The film's financial success surpassed producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura's expectations. In October 2011, Summit Entertainment officially announced that "Red 2" would be released on August 2, 2013, with Jon and Erich Hoeber rehired to write the screenplay. In March 2013, the film's release date was moved from August 2, 2013 to July 19, 2013. The sequel fared worse than its predecessor both critically and financially. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $148.1 million worldwide.


title: TV Tokyo

text: JOTX-DTV (channel 7), branded as and known colloquially as , is a television station headquartered in the Sumitomo Fudosan Roppongi Grand Tower in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, owned and operated by the subsidiary of listed certified broadcasting holding company itself a subsidiary of Nikkei, Inc., serving as the flagship station of the TX Network. It is one of the major Tokyo television stations, particularly specialising in anime.


title: TV Tokyo

text: TV Tokyo was established by the Japan Science Foundation in 1951 and started broadcasting, as on April 12, 1964. It took its name from its VHF frequency channel 12. It almost went bankrupt in 1968; on 1 July that year, a limited liability company, Tokyo Channel 12 Production was established with the help of the "Nikkei" and Mainichi Broadcasting System.


title: TV Tokyo

text: In 1969 the "Nikkei" and MBS signed a memorandum of understanding which stipulates that Tokyo Channel 12 should share programs with Nihon Educational Television (NET, now TV Asahi). This forms a de facto alliance which lasts until 1975.


title: TV Tokyo

text: In October 1977 Tokyo Channel 12 Production was renamed ; and shortened the channel's name to , dropping "Science TV" from its name. At the same time, the station moved to Shiba Park. A month later, it became a general purpose TV station along with NET. On April 1, 1978, Tokyo launched a new production company, Softx.


title: TV Tokyo

text: In 1981, it was again renamed, this time to Television Tokyo Channel 12, Ltd. d/b/a TV Tokyo; the current Japanese name of the company was also assumed in the same year.


title: TV Tokyo

text: In 1983, TV Tokyo formed the Mega TON Network (now TX Network) with TV Osaka, and Aichi Television Broadcasting. The company shifted its head offices from Shiba Park to Toranomon in December 1985. On October 4, 1999, Tokyo's production company Softx was renamed to TV Tokyo MediaNet. In 2004, TV Tokyo MediaNet was shortened to MediaNet. On June 25, 2004, the company assumed its current English name of TV Tokyo Corporation. After the digital transition, the channel began broadcasting on digital channel 7. On November 7, 2016, TV Tokyo moved its headquarters to new building at Sumitomo Fudosan Roppongi Grand Tower from its old studios in Toranomon. For its broadcast of animated programs, the network originally used a Circle 7-style logo. The current logo is a cartoon banana with eyes, a nose and a mouth which is bent into a 7, named Nanana ().


title: Golan Heights

text: The Golan Heights ( or ; ), or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about . The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between disciplines: as a geological and biogeographical region, the term refers to a basaltic plateau bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. As a geopolitical region, it refers to the border region captured from Syria by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967; the territory has been occupied by the latter since then and was subject to a de facto Israeli annexation in 1981. This region includes the western two-thirds of the geological Golan Heights and the Israeli-occupied part of Mount Hermon.


title: Golan Heights

text: The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Golan dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. According to the Bible, an Amorite kingdom in Bashan was conquered by the Israelites during the reign of King Og. Throughout the Biblical period, the Golan was "the focus of a power struggle between the kings of Israel and the Aramaeans who were based near modern-day Damascus." After Assyrian and Babylonian rule, the region came under the domination of Persia, following which Jews were freed from Babylonian captivity and allowed to return and resettle in the land. The Itureans, an Arab or Aramaic people, settled in the area in the 2nd century BCE. In the 16th century, the Golan was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Within Ottoman Syria, the Golan was part of the Syria Vilayet. The area later became part of the French Mandate in Syria and the State of Damascus. When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic. By the late-19th century, the Golan Heights was inhabited mostly by colonized peasants ("fellaḥîn"), Bedouin Arabs, Druze, Turkmen, and Circassians.


title: Golan Heights

text: Since the Six-Day War of 1967, the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel, whereas the eastern third remains under the control of Syria. Following the war, Syria dismissed any negotiations with Israel as part of the Khartoum Resolution at the 1967 Arab League summit. Construction of Israeli settlements began in the remainder of the territory held by Israel, which was under a military administration until the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law in 1981, which applied Israeli law to the territory; the move has been described as an annexation. The Golan Heights Law was condemned by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 497, which stated that "the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect", and Resolution 242, which emphasizes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war". Israel maintains it has a right to retain the Golan, also citing the text of Resolution 242, which calls for "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force".


title: Golan Heights

text: After the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, control of the Syrian-administered part of the Golan Heights was split between the state government and Syrian opposition forces, with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) maintaining a buffer zone in between to help implement the Israeli–Syrian ceasefire across the Purple Line. From 2012 to 2018, the eastern half of the Golan Heights became a scene of repeated battles between the Syrian Army, rebel factions of the Syrian opposition (including the United States-backed Southern Front) as well as various jihadist organizations such as al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-affiliated Khalid ibn al-Walid Army. In July 2018, the Syrian government regained full control over the eastern Golan Heights. On 25 March 2019, then-President of the United States Donald Trump proclaimed US recognition of the Golan Heights as a part of the State of Israel, making it the first country to do so. The 28 member states of the European Union declared in turn that they do not recognize Israeli sovereignty, and several experts on international law reiterated that the principle remains that land gained by either defensive or offensive wars cannot be legally annexed under international law.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the Bible, "Golan" is mentioned as a city of refuge located in Bashan: , , . 19th-century authors interpreted the word () as meaning "something "surrounded", hence a "district"".


title: Golan Heights

text: The Greek name for the region is (). In the Mishna the name is similar to Aramaic language names for the region: , and .


title: Golan Heights

text: The Arabic names are and () and are Arabized versions of the Canaanite and Hebrew name "Golan". Arab cartographers of the Byzantine period referred to the area as (, 'mountain'), though the region is a plateau.


title: Golan Heights

text: The Venus of Berekhat Ram, a pebble from the Lower Paleolithic era found in the Golan Heights, may have been carved by "Homo erectus" between 700,000 and 230,000 BCE.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the third millennium BC, the Amorites inhabited the Golan, being part of the territories that Labaya, the Canaanite king of Shechem, annexed in the 14th century BCE, as stated in the Amarna Letters sent to Ancient Egypt.


title: Golan Heights

text: After the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Golan was part of the newly formed kingdom of Geshur, until it was conquered by the Arameans in the 9th century BC. The Aramean state of Aram-Damascus extended over most of the Golan to the Sea of Galilee.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the 8th century BCE, the Assyrians gained control of the area, followed by the Babylonian and the Achaemenid Empire. In the 5th century BCE, the Achaemenid Empire allowed the region to be resettled by returning Jewish exiles from the Babylonian Captivity, a fact that has been noted in the Mosaic of Rehob.


title: Golan Heights

text: The Golan Heights, along with the rest of the region, came under the control of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, following the Battle of Issus. Following Alexander's death, the Golan came under the domination of the Macedonian general Seleucus and remained part of the Seleucid Empire for most of the next two centuries.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the middle of the 2nd century BCE, Itureans moved into the Golan, occupying over one hundred locations in the region.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the 1st century BCE, the region as far as Trachonitis, Batanea and Auranitis was put under the administrative control of Herod the Great by Augustus Caesar. In the Roman and Byzantine periods, the area was administered as part of Phoenicia Prima and Syria Palaestina, and finally Golan/Gaulanitis was included together with Peraea in Palaestina Secunda, after 218 AD. Ancient kingdom Bashan was incorporated into the province of Batanea.


title: Golan Heights

text: Following the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE, Augustus Caesar adjudicated that the Golan fell within the Tetrarchy of Herod's son, Herod Philip I. After Philip's death in 34 CE, the Romans absorbed the Golan into the province of Syria, but Caligula restored the territory to Herod's grandson Agrippa in 37. Following Agrippa's death in 44, the Romans again annexed the Golan to Syria, promptly to return it again when Claudius traded the Golan to Agrippa II, the son of Agrippa I, in 51 as part of a land swap.


title: Golan Heights

text: Gamla, the capital of Jewish Galaunitis, would play a major role in the Jewish-Roman wars, and came to house the earliest known urban synagogue from the Hasmonean/Herodian realm.


title: Golan Heights

text: Although nominally under Agrippa's control and not part of the province of Judaea, the Jewish communities of the Golan participated in the First Jewish-Roman War, only to fall to the Roman armies in its early stages. Gamla, a major Jewish stronghold in the Golan, was captured in 67 CE, with, according to Josephus, its inhabitants committing mass suicide, preferring it to crucifixion and slavery. Agrippa II contributed soldiers to the Roman war effort and attempted to negotiate an end to the revolt. In return for his loyalty, Rome allowed him to retain his kingdom but finally absorbed the Golan for good after his death in 100.


title: Golan Heights

text: In about 250 CE, the Ghassanids, an Arab Christian tribe from Yemen, established a kingdom that encompassed southern Syria and the Transjordan, building their capital at Jabiyah.


title: Golan Heights

text: According to current research, the political and economic recovery of the Land of Israel during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, towards the close of the 3rd and the early 4th century CE, is what led to the return of Jewish village life in the Golan. The ceramics and coins found during the excavations at various synagogue sites provide evidence of the re-settlement of Jewish settlements in the central Golan.


title: Golan Heights

text: Like the Herodians before them, the Ghassanids ruled as clients of Rome – this time, the Christianized Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium; the Ghassanids were able to hold on to the Golan until the Sassanid invasion of 614. Following a brief restoration under the Emperor Heraclius, the Golan again fell, this time to the invading Arabs after the Battle of Yarmouk in 636.


title: Golan Heights

text: During the same period, several synagogues were built in the Golan Heights. Currently, there are 25 locations where ancient synagogues or their remnants have been discovered. These are all located in the Golan's center. They were built from basalt stones, which are abundant in the Golan Heights, and were influenced by the synagogues of the Galilee but had its own distinctive characteristics. The extravagant synagogues were possibly the result of years of producing and selling olive oil.


title: Golan Heights

text: Data from surveys and excavations combined show that the bulk of sites in the Golan were abandoned between the late sixth and early seventh century as a result of military incursions, the breakdown of law and order, and the economy brought on by the weakening of the Byzantine rule. Some settlements lasted till the end of the Umayyad era.


title: Golan Heights

text: After the Battle of Yarmouk, Muawiyah I, a member of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraish, was appointed governor of Syria, including the Golan. Following the assassination of his cousin, the Caliph Uthman, Muawiya claimed the Caliphate for himself, initiating the Umayyad dynasty. Over the next few centuries, while remaining in Muslim hands, the Golan passed through many dynastic changes, falling first to the Abbasids, then to the Shi'ite Fatimids, then to the Seljuk Turks.


title: Golan Heights

text: An earthquake devastated the Jewish village of Katzrin in 746 CE. Following it, there was a brief period of greatly diminished occupation during the Abbasid period (approximately 750-878). Jewish communities persisted at least into the Middle Ages in the towns of Fiq in the southern Golan and Nawa in Batanaea.


title: Golan Heights

text: For many centuries nomadic tribes lived together with the sedentary population in the region. At times, the central government attempted to settle the nomads which would result in the establishment of permanent communities. When the power of the governing regime declined, as happened during the early Muslim period, nomadic trends increased and many of the rural agricultural villages were abandoned due to harassment from the Bedouins. They were not resettled until the second half of the 19th century.


title: Golan Heights

text: During the Crusades, the Heights represented an obstacle to the Crusader armies, who nevertheless held the strategically important town of Banias twice, in 1128–32 and 1140–64. After victories by Sultan Nur ad-Din Zangi, it was the Kurdish dynasty of the Ayyubids under Sultan Saladin who ruled the area. The Mongols swept through in 1259, but were driven off by the Mamluk commander and future sultan Qutuz at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the 16th century, the Ottoman Turks conquered Syria. During this time, the Golan formed part of the southern district of their empire. Some Druze communities were established in the Golan during the 17th and 18th centuries. The villages abandoned during previous periods due to raids by Bedouin tribes were not resettled until the second half of the 19th century.In 1868, the region was described as "almost entirely desolate." According to a travel handbook of the time, only 11 of 127 ancient towns and villages in the Golan were inhabited. As a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, there was a huge influx of refugees from the Caucasus into the empire. The Ottomans encouraged them to settle in southern Syria, particularly the Golan Heights, by granting them land with a 12-year tax exemption. In 1885, civil engineer and architect, Gottlieb Schumacher, conducted a survey of the entire Golan Heights on behalf of the German Society for the Exploration of the Holy Land, publishing his findings in a map and book entitled "The Jaulân".


title: Golan Heights

text: In 1884, there were still open stretches of uncultivated land between villages in the lower Golan, but by the mid-1890s most was owned and cultivated. Some land had been purchased in the Golan and Hawran by Zionist associations based in Romania, Bulgaria, the United States and England, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In 1880, Laurence Oliphant published "Eretz ha-Gilad" (The Land of Gilead), which described a plan for large-scale Jewish settlement in the Golan.


title: Golan Heights

text: In the winter of 1885, members of the Old Yishuv in Safed formed the Beit Yehuda Society and purchased 15,000 dunams of land from the village of Ramthaniye in the central Golan. Due to financial hardships and the long wait for a "kushan" (Ottoman land deed) the village, Golan be-Bashan, was abandoned after a year.


title: Golan Heights

text: Soon afterwards, the society regrouped and purchased 2,000 dunams of land from the village of Bir e-Shagum on the western slopes of the Golan. The village they established, Bnei Yehuda, existed until 1920. The last families left in the wake of the Passover riots of 1920. In 1944 the JNF bought the Bnei Yehuda lands from their Jewish owners, but a later attempt to establish Jewish ownership of the property in Bir e-Shagum through the courts was not successful.


title: Golan Heights

text: Between 1891 and 1894, Baron Edmond James de Rothschild purchased around 150,000 Dunams of land in the Golan and the Hawran for Jewish settlement. Legal and political permits were secured and ownership of the land was registered in late 1894. The Jews also built a road stretching from Lake Hula to Muzayrib.


title: Golan Heights

text: The Agudat Ahim society, whose headquarters were in Yekaterinoslav, Russia, acquired 100,000 dunams of land in several locations in the districts of Fiq and Daraa. A plant nursery was established and work began on farm buildings in Djillin.


title: Golan Heights

text: A village called Tiferet Binyamin was established on lands purchased from Saham al-Jawlan by the Shavei Zion Association based in New York, but the project was abandoned after a year when the Turks issued an edict in 1896 evicting the 17 non-Turkish families. A later attempt to resettle the site with Syrian Jews who were Ottoman citizens also failed.


title: Golan Heights

text: Between 1904 and 1908, a group of Crimean Jews settled near the Arab village of Al-Butayha in the Bethsaida Valley, initially as tenants of a Kurdish proprietor with the prospects of purchasing the land, but the arrangement faltered.


title: Golan Heights

text: Jewish settlement in the region dwindled over time, due to Arab hostility, Turkish bureaucracy, disease and economic difficulties. In 1921–1930, during the French Mandate, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) obtained the deeds to the Rothschild estate and continued to manage it, collecting rents from the Arab peasants living there.