\"...while America slept, the battle against extremism raged on thus in Europe.\"

Wagner James Au, New World Notes

With its Linden dollar economy and the ability for users to create and populate the world with player-made content, Second Life has proven itself a potent ground for playing out real-world conflict. On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a peaceful protest in the streets of Second Life turned violent, and an indestructible building disappeared from the universe one ghostly section at a time.

In an article published on New World Notes, Wagner James Au paints the picture of a peaceful-turned-violent protest against a perceived extremist group brings areas of Second Life to a standstill, ending as an in-game tribute to Martin Luther King - the sun with a picture of his face on it - rose in the distance. I encourage you to jump over and read his full and detailed account.

Au\'s article doesn\'t provide an exact time line, but somewhere before January 15th, 2007, the Front National French political party opened their virtual world headquarters in Second Life. According to Wikipedia.org, Front National is a French political party that\'s been accused of expressing fascist tendencies, publicly questioning whether Germany was really \"inhumane\" in its treatment of people in France during WWII. Second Life citizens quickly began protesting outside the building, culminating in a violent exchange of weapon fire between members of the Front and protesters. Normally, these weapons do no damage in the area where the headquarters were located, but server slowdowns from so many people attacking simultaneously nearly brought the area to a standstill, and by 2 or 3 in the morning the building had begun to disappear. Either by technical glitch or by deliberate action, the building that housed the Front National headquarters disappeared.

Now, the original building is gone.

A day after the virtual world headquarters of the Front National was destroyed, another Front National headquarters has shown up. It\'s in a different location, but its operators are defiant, referring to the original protesters as \"losers\" and talking about how they\'re going to \"tighten security and come back.\"

For while great battles may rally troops and harden resolve, they rarely change minds or resolve differences. I can\'t help but feel that Martin Luther King Jr. himself would have been disappointed in the battle. Regardless, it remains one of the most interesting examples of a gaming world expressing real-world concerns and politics.