Throw milkshakes at fascists with Now’s Political Shakedown game for Stop Hate UK

Never has a foodstuff defined a political moment like the milkshake and 2019. Both Tommy Robinson and Ukip’s Carl Benjamin have ended up wearing dairy recently and in the lead up to last week’s EU elections, police even banned the sale of milkshakes and ice creams at Edinburgh branches of McDonald’s near where Brexiteer Nigel Farage attended a rally. But alas, nothing could save poor Nige in Newcastle as he got doused in a Five Guys banana and salted caramel number.

In a cheeky response to this spate of anti-fascist milkshakings, London-based studio Now has developed a new game, called Political Shakedown, where you can have a go lobbing dairy goods at the spouters of hate speech without risking arrest. It was developed to draw attention to the important work done by organisation Stop Hate UK, which was founded in 1995 to fight hate crime and discrimination in the wake of the death of Stephen Lawrence.

Styled on a 8-bit game, players have the opportunity to lob strawberry milkshakes at people espousing classic racist utterances like “We’re being over-run”, “They come over here…” and “I’m not a fascist but…”. At the end of the run, you’re congratulated on the number of ‘hatemongers’ you’ve hit and a box pops up reading, “Milkshaking is funny. But it won’t stop hate. Donate the cost of a fancy-ass shake to Stop Hate UK instead.”

The project was developed by Now in collaboration with production company Jelly London and with music by Eric Skiff.