Today is Epiphany. It is also the third anniversary of the terrorist attack against American democracy, in which pro-Trump terrorists used violence to pressure Congress to not certify that then-President-elect Joe Biden had won the Electoral College fair and square (and also the popular vote, if anyone cares about that).
Apropos of nothing, I recently played the board game Secret Hitler. It’s a game that I am not at all embarrassed to admit that I have played, though I was initially hesitant to play. Unlike Cards Against Humanity, which is just irredeemably bad, even though it did contribute to the development of Secret Hitler.
Secret Hitler came out in 2016 — that’s got to be a coincidence, right? I suppose that tidbit would have helped convince me to play.
Secret Hitler is a game for five to ten players in which they have to figure out which of them is the titular secret Hitler. Each player gets a card in an envelope, or maybe it’s two cards. One of the players, the one who gets the Hitler card, is the secret Hitler.
With five or six players, one of the players will be an ordinary fascist. With seven or eight players, two will be ordinary fascists. With nine or ten players, three will be fascists. And the rest are liberals.
For the next part I’m not sure my friends and I played the game correctly. Looking at the game rules on the game’s official website, I’m understanding that the ordinary fascists are expected to know who the Hitler is, but the Hitler is not supposed to know who the ordinary fascists are.
We played it the other way around: the Hitler knew who the ordinary fascist was, the ordinary fascist did not know who the Hitler was. Also, when some more friends came to play, we neglected to adjust the number of ordinary fascists.
Or maybe it’s that we were using the original version of the game but the game has since been revised? Also, there are supposed to be secret party membership cards, which we neglected to use, or which were not present in the first version of the game.
Once the players have seen their cards, they are asked to close their eyes. Then, the way we played it, the Hitler opens his eyes and the fascist raises his hand. With that taken care of, each player gets two voting cards.
There is one placard for a president and one placard for a chancellor. It’s not quite clear how the first president is chosen, we did it randomly the first round. The president nominates a chancellor. The other players vote “ja” or “nein” on the nominee. If the nominee gets a majority of “ja” votes, that player becomes chancellor.
Then the president picks up three policy cards from a stack of policy cards, which should have been shuffled beforehand, looks them over and discards one, then hands the other two to the chancellor. The chancellor chooses one of the two policy cards and puts one of them on the liberal board or on the fascist board.
The policies are either liberal or fascist, but we don’t get any more detail than that. The game would perhaps be too complicated otherwise. Selected liberal policies are placed on the liberal board and are thus enacted, likewise selected fascist policies are placed on the fascist board and are thus enacted.
There are plenty of wrinkles even with the policies not being fleshed out beyond being either liberal or fascist.
Suppose the president draws two fascist policies and one liberal policy, but decides to discard the liberal policy. Or maybe he gets two liberal policies and one fascist policy, but decides to discard the fascist policy. The discarded policies are placed face down on the discard pile, with the most recently discarded policy on top.
Of course the president could also draw all three liberal policies or all three fascist policies. So the president either has a choice of cards to give to the chancellor or he doesn’t. Likewise, the chancellor may or may not have a choice of which policy to enact, but the other players can’t know that at this point.
Then a new president and chancellor are chosen. My friends and I were kind of confused as to how that’s supposed to go, so we just went around the table counterclockwise for the president, who then nominated a chancellor while blissfully unaware of the game’s rules regarding term limits and such.
The liberal board and the fascist board are different not just in being for opposite sides. It’s a much greater asymmetry than between White and Black in chess. Liberals need to enact five liberal policies to win, or correctly identify the Hitler and execute him, but fascists can win with just three fascist policies under certain circumstances.
The fascist board grants the president certain special powers as enough fascist policies are enacted:
- Investigate loyalty — The president appoints an investigator to check some of the other players’ party membership. I don’t remember this one.
- Call a special election — I don’t remember this one either.
- Policy peek — The president looks at the three most recently discarded policies, without showing them to the other players, and returns them to the stack. The president may make any statement, true or false, about the discarded policies.
- Execution — The president can summarily execute any of the other players. If the executed player is the Hitler, the liberals win. But if the player is a liberal or an ordinary fascist, the game continues, in which case the executed player is out of the game and ought to leave the table without disclosing his or her affiliation. However, when I got executed, I didn’t know this rule and I revealed I was a fascist. That made it easier for the remaining players to figure out who the Hitler was.
Of course there are players who will try to play against the affiliation they’ve been assigned. In the round that I was an executed fascist, I was trying to help the liberal cause. But then that caused the liberals to distrust what I was saying.
Also there is the strong temptation for liberals to use fascist tactics to win the game. It’s one thing to do that in a game that simply concludes, it’s quite another to do that in real life, in which we often have to live with the consequences of our decisions long past the situation in which we made those decisions.
The game’s rules give some guidance as to strategy:
- Everyone should claim to be a Liberal. ...
- If this is your first time playing Hitler, just remember: be as Liberal as possible. ...
- Liberals frequently benefit from slowing play down and discussing the available information. ...
- Fascists most often win by electing Hitler, not by enacting six Policies! Electing Hitler isn’t an optional or secondary win condition, it’s the core of a successful Fascist strategy. Hitler should always play as a Liberal, and should generally avoid lying or getting into fights and disagreements with other players. When the time comes, Hitler needs the Liberals’ trust to get elected. Even if Hitler isn’t ultimately elected, the distrust sown among Liberals is key to getting Fascists elected late in the game.
- Ask other players to explain why they took an action. ...
- If a Fascist Policy comes up, there are only three possible culprits: The President, the Chancellor, or the Policy Deck. ...
No matter how cursorily or how thoroughly you examine this game, there are plenty of questions to ask. For example, from the FAQ:
I don't think there's anything funny or cool about fascism. Who can I complain to?
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)
B40A Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-4124
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)
716 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5274
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS)
312 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2715
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)
416 Russell Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-4623
That’s just four, the FAQ lists several more. A lot of these named lawmakers are Republicans. I wonder if there’s any correlation? Rhetorical question.
Secret Hitler is a fun game, I recommend it for your next game night.
But in real life, there are no secret Hitlers. They all tell you what they plan to do, even if they do make a few obligatory disavowals. It’s how they get so many followers, people who either think they will never be negatively impacted by the Hitler or do know it but don’t care as long as the targets of their hatred are punished for being who they are.
Also, unfortunately, enacting six liberal policies is insufficient to stop fascism in real life. A lot more are needed, plus constant vigilance.
Secret Hitler costs $40.00 from Goat, Wolf and Cabbage. Or, if you have a printer and some paper, you can print the board, cards and rules, as the game is licensed under Creative Commons.