Disco Elysium | The Ideological Dissection 

My last full playthrough was also as a Communist Superstar cop. Paired with the Inexplicable Feminist Agenda and heavy psychedelic use you're basically RPing as John Lennon (but instead of getting shot, Yoko left him)

Brilliant video, thank you.

Good video and analysis overall however I was a bit disappointed that you didn't expand on where the communist vision quest takes Infra-Materialism as it ended up being one of the more powerful moments in the game for me. Although the theory sounds ridiculous from a real world perspective it is proven to at least be somewhat correct because you can successfully build the block structure that the two other communists fail to to as long as your Harry is sufficiently dedicated to communism. Even Kim isn’t able to rationalise the event despite often being critical of anything supernatural. Although I don’t remember how much it is hinted at in game this also ties into the theory that the hole in the world was possibly partly responsible for the downfall of communism in Revachol by it consuming the etheric power of the Communist movement. I was also surprised that you didn’t mention the part of the moralist quest where you can basically volunteer to be disappeared although that doesn’t really touch on the Ideology as much beyond the Moralintern’s desire to be remove elements that threaten the status quo.

Brilliant analysis of a brilliant game. I feel lucky to be contemporaneous with this game. This was probably the best political breakdown of the various paths in it. DE is truly a masterful, artsy, political compass test.

This was incredibly educational, Thank You!

Excellent job!

Great job.

Great video, and a service for all of us that didn't play the directors cut edition

Fucking amazing analysis!

Are there spoilers in here if I haven't finished the game yet? 😯

I like how you do talked about moralism in this context. While the game does take the side of communism, the way you described moralism as really a degradation of liberal principles to one of control. I feel people who then are self describe liberal can then re contextualize what they believe in to one where it is actually productive. (And also not act as a smug asshole because they feel they are above it all)

Also, the talk about communism being able to create different architecture reminds me a lot of surrealism and its relation to communism through Ernst Bloch and other authors, which is something that is still very relevant tho not that popular outside academia. Because of the supposed "end of history" that liberals proclaimed in the late 80s, communism also returned being associated with imagination, poetics, magical realism, and the overall ability to imagine different futures (although classic marxist-leninist weren't in agreement). I comment a long time ago in another video that I thought the developers were Deleuzian because of this, rather than "real" communists.

Actually you CAN do a sober fascist run through a duologue choice with race theory on measurehead or with a crabman to get wasteland reality to remove all alcohol buffs and be sober

So, the basic premise by some RU-vidrs and other reviewers is that Disco Elysium is biased towards Communism. Although it takes jabs at all its political ideologies, with Communism it uses the fantasy setting to argue that we should ignore all the real world evidence that Communism always epically fails, and put forward the premise that it could work, maybe. Fair enough, although it does not take the "wipe the slate clean" approach with other political ideologies. This video argues that the game is fair and unbiased towards any ideology; however, I want to counter that argument with the actual conclusion of the video as displayed as text on screen: "Each political quest has been written to exemplify a new thesis towards the ideology being discussed: Fascism: Being an ideology fueled by a frustrated middle class, feeling outgunned in sexual competition. Ultraliberalism: A belief system to justify narcissism. Moralism: A reason for the state to grow and evolve to control the unruly mob Communism: A humanist outlook of the future." As you will notice, only communism is represented in a wholly positive way. Fascism and Ultraliberalism are straight up representations of people's own inadequacies. Moralism is also given a very negative representation. If you consider all the things that people could say about each ideology, and rank those views from most positive to most negative, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Fascism, Ultraliberalism and Moralism are all drawing from the bottom of the list, while communism is drawing close to the top of it's ranking. I'm not saying Disco Elysium is a bad game, or even a biased political game. I'm just pointing out that the conclusion of the video does not match the premise.

Ok, I have watched the whole video and have some thoughts. I hope I am not too late. I am kind of disappointed with the video. The title states that this is a ideological dissection of the game, but I don't see one. Statements by the game are often accepted without reflection. Ideology is reduced solely to Harrier Du Bois. I hoped there was more back and forth between the game and you. Anyway, I want to write a response comment because I have issues with your video and hope to discuss them with you. Let's start with Fascism, as it is the first section and the most disagreeable position. One of the largest issues I see with the portrayal of Fascism in Disco Elysium is that there is no such thing as RL Fascism in Disco Elysium. The term "Fascism" is invoked in the game like it exists within the same context and history of RL, however this is simply not true. There is no Hitler or Mussolini in the history of DE Fascism. There isn't even an explanation for the term given to your by your inner voices unlike every other ideology. Your Endurance even dismisses all attempts to lable yourself to something more accurate like a Traditionalist or Nationalist. This screams being written by leftwing author and there being no justification for said label. This simply doesn't work because the world was never ravaged by Fascism but by Communism. The "Fascist" Suzerainty wasn't even an absolute monarchy, considering that it is stated by Joyce that there was a constitution and a parliament, placing the monarchy firmly into Moralist territory. Furthermore the "Fascism" of the Suzerainty lacked an ethno-nationalist aspect as René and and learning through a check with Gary there being a Suzerainty faction of ethnic Seolite Admirals shows. Additionally, there were no mass politics or grand ideological goals. But let's move on. We can talk about that in other comments. Something I found strange is your ignorance towards Humanism and Christianity in the context of Moralism. Moralism is a very straightforward fusion of Christian philosophy and Liberalism, aka Humanism. It's not without reason that some say that Humanism is Christianity without the God. Moralism has even been secularised to the point that it isn't even considered a religion by many of its adherants, which mirrors IRL adherants to an extent. I can speak more about Moralism and Ultraliberalism but I don't think they are too important in the grand debate. Let's tackle Communism. Communism is treated relatively uncritically in the video. Communism, for all its thoughts, is still treated as the best future for humanity. In the end, I find the conclusion to be unsatisfying and how your improve. I personally hope for a discussion in the future.

moralism is progressivism.