The Lies of Disco Elysium
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Disco elysium is exceptionally well written, with a cast full of characters with stark differing ideologies who are never parodied or made into caricature. The characters however, tend to believe or follow certain lies that undermine their ideology. Today I'm looking at the sorts of critiques these characters flaws say about their real world ideologies, from Joyce to Evarart to the Deserter.
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4:43 a small correction: it's Evrart that has the lazy eye, not Edgar. Joyce says about him, "Yes. Edgar looks *exactly* like his brother, except for that lazy eye." She specifically says Edgar has no amblyopia. Harry doesn't make the connection that Evrart is Edgar because that connection doesn't exist.
Nooooooooooooooooo. This is heartbreaking I thought I was so smart
@@HidinginPrivate We all make mistakes. 9th circle of hell for 10 million years.
@@HidinginPrivate I also thought that Evrart was actually Edgar. Actually, my fan theory was that Evrart would leave and just come back, posing as Edgar, to get around the term limits rules of the union. But then other characters said that they knew both brothers when they were young. smh
there is no twin brother, evrart has convinced everyone that is such so he can keep power to himself
Yeah, I was kinda shocked when he said that because I remember reading that one of them had a lazy eye, but I didn't remember the name
You misunderstood Joyce's quote. It refers to criticism of capitalism that becomes massively popular specifically. Just look at the Boys, a story which is staunchly anti-capitalist being picked up by amazon's prime and now you can buy funko pops and other slop based on the characters from it while completely missing the point. The main reason people like that quote so much is because it applies to Disco Elysium itself, the whole IP got stolen from the devs by a rich fuck through a legal loophole and now they're planning sequels, tv shows and other garbage that will completely taint the original message in favor of money.
Yo you want to vist Marxes grave? 5 bucks.
@@okamiv5 I'd spit on it for free.
Wait, I heard some of the original devs (iirc the primary ones) were cancelled from their own collective by the rest of them and the whole thing folded in on itself after the release of the game. Does that mean that richie rich picked up the IP from the abandoned studio?
@@Low_commotion They weren't "cancelled". They got fired by the millionaire who stole the IP from them.
Yes, exactly. No matter how genuine your intent is, the reigns of success will be ripped from your hands by the cunning players of said system. The wolves will eat and leave you with bones.
It feels weird to connect that line from Joyce Messier to "you critique society, and participate in it? Curious." I saw it as much more associated with the more poignant idea of "capitalist realism" from the work of Mark Fisher. Of course, that idea can be deconstructed and criticized as well, so maybe you'll come back to it. But given her experience travelling through the Pale and how it seems to have impacted her, her self-justification isn't so much "you trying to take down capitalism is hypocrisy" as "there is no alternative, capital either smashes or appropriates ideas of all critiques." Which is a funny way of putting it as "there is no alternative" was a Maggie Thatcher thing, and she looks a little like her. It does fit with your idea of contradiction and Evrart though: she's in a position of immense power, but has resigned herself to powerlessness, and fulfills her role in executing the power of Wild Pines. In the ruined Martinaise, her point about the lack of alternative may seem salient, but it's really defeatism dressed up to keep on the path she has already made for herself. Anyway, thanks for the video.
I also just realized when you said "Thatchian" you probably meant "Thatcher-ian" (I'm not familiar with the term, apologies), so perhaps you made the same connection about appearance.
Spoiler regarding Joyce and la responsibilitè:
If you pass a particular passive check in the conversation just before she leaves, you actually find out she owns Wild Pines and has falsely represented herself as a negotiator. And while her statements about her place in the hierarchy are a lie, they also have a certain amount of truth. After all, can you lead a multinational company by taking actions against your own business interests? In a certain sense, she is also a cog in the machine, the rich business women who is tasked by the system with ensuring that capital gets what it needs. If she didn't, another company would rise to the top and take her place. Her power is predicated on conforming to her companies interests, and she needs to fulfil her obligation regardless of personal sympathies for the Revacholians. In a way, her characters detachment from the crucial story making could be seen as a statement that there can't be ethical decision making by business owners under capitalism.
Oh, and a minor point of correction: Wild pines didn't start out with a lot of money, they started with a royal monopoly. As in the legal privilege of being the only ones allowed ownership in a specific economic sector, granted by a king. This wasn't uncommon under mercantilism, though Joyce does argue Wild Pines got there meritocratically by not going bankrupt like other indotribes. A stronger starting economic starting advantage than just being rich, inherited from feudalism.
This game is so deep and has so many well hidden details. Didn't catch this one but for the reasons you mentioned it's very interesting how it makes the person hypothetically at the top into a cog as well. Cool comment!
@@HidinginPrivate Yeah, it's interesting how much of a passive character she actually is. The game is set in an exploited city dominated by foreign mega-companies, with a major strike occurring and Joyce just stands on a boat in the corner, trying to influence our cop. The only meaningful decision she makes is to flee, and wash her hands of the coming mercenary tribunal.
Cool video by the way! It was a genuinely interesting analysis of the political figures, an angle that has been somewhat ignored in the analysis of the game.
IIRC, Joyce doesn't own Wild Pines, she's a member of the board. So strictly speaking, she's not a _sole_ owner, but probably a shareholder. She doesn't have unanimous control. It's also why she has to report back to Wild Pines when she learns that Evrart is really digging in for a siege. Passing the check really didn't raise much of an eyebrow from me because it doesn't really change the dynamic much. Technically, she lied by omission. It's just, I didn't care? We kind of already knew that she isn't here to do anything but represent capital.
@@ved2360 Correct. And even if she did have a 50%+1 of shares, it's simply unrealistic to believe that someone in her position can do anything in complete favour of the strikers and keep that position.
Hostile takeovers are a thing, and so are votes to change board politics and whatever else.
The point of Joyce character is that beyond the fair and amicable middle age woman lies a cold capitalist past who has been mellowed by time and the Pale, but was also made cold.
She probably cares more than she would admit, but at the same time not enough to even think about changing her politics or her life.
Why would she anyway? She has become old, she knows whatever change she might try would be overthrown by the rest of the Board or the Moralintern.
She is the stand-in for the idea that even if you understand and care about something, there is no winning against a cold system, and so might as well play into it and ensure your own life
@@Hyperversum3 wait, you can actually convince her to give up the port to the Union. She won't (and probably can't) do much about the tribunal but she can be convinced to not further endanger the city.
Genius commentary of politics aside, I’ll earnestly say that most of it was lost on me when I played disco elysium. I was more interested in the personal side of the story, the “what kind of cop are you?” Question. Beyond politics, Disco Elysium does a genius job of portraying states of mind as RPG stats, and especially thoughts like Inland Empire and Conceptualization captivated my imagination when I played. I’d love to see an analysis on how these stats are characterized and how disco Elysium uses them to tell the larger story of the amnesiac protagonist, his relationship with Kim, and potentially the ludonarrative between the player and the stats they prioritize and how it affects the larger story told, because if you ask me that’s the most interesting part of disco Elysium
Having said that I don’t want to imply that this video wasn’t interesting to me, honestly it did a lot to flesh out my impressions of these characters, especially concerning the nuances I missed in my own playthrough, and the politics in DE are actually handled really well through them. Stellar stuff private, stellar stuff.
i had the same experience playing the game for the first time, but after playing it again, paying attention to historic events, political discourse and science behind the world around me, the narrative made so much more sense! it sounds a little silly on paper, but the two revolutions that happened years before the strike play a huge role in just about every aspect of the narrative
I agree 100% disco Elysium could possibly even be one of the most branching types of narratives in gaming sense the stats you chose and choices you make a long the way dramatically change the diologue and the way you play.@@dry90125
I appreciate your comment, because imo it's the main part of the game you're meant to enjoy.
The politics are a backdrop: a convenient and realistic motivator for the story's twists.
@@MrJohnthegamerHD Precisely. While the politicsl discourse in DE is interesting in its own way and has its nuances and attention to the people involved (the fascism quest is probably the best example: the reason why the people you talk with are fascists are entirely different: the old sick veteran, a young shitty guy, a minority guy with family issues in his past), they can also be summed up in 4 ways.
Centrists are a joke about how moderate political positions, even if honestly believed in and practiced, ultimately favour the status quo.
Communists are mostly remnants of another Age that never even truly took of and their discourse is mostly between themselves, never directed at the rest of society.
Ultraliberals are those that either got the benefit of the current system or the suckers that think they can be thar first group.
Fascists are also excessively attached to the past and more often than not it comes from ignorance and limited personal experiences.
The actual meat of the game isn't about the politics, it's how politics affect people.
It's about why we have fun talking with Measurehead even if it only makes us want to punch him morr
I had a friend who basically dismissed all conservatives as sub-human monsters lacking any empathy. As a fairly left leaning person myself who generally despises most right-wing movements and ideology even I found this to be a step too far. I think this speaks to your point towards the end, the left's moral grandstanding and unwillingness to consider other positions as anything other than morally reprehensible is part of the problem. Not to mention, the left loves to argue, but not actually *do* anything, we get hung up on semantics and proving we are in fact the most morally correct, instead of expending that same energy doing something constructive. Great video btw, Disco Elysium is a masterpiece so it's great to see any sort of breakdown of it.
One of the many incartions of a pharase of the years: The biggest enemies of the left is the left.
But my favorite one is: You make 4 leftists debate between them and you will get 6 different opinions
And the funniest to me are the leftists who say morality does'nt exist.. yet cry about how evil the right is, how equating nazism to evil instantly without seeing why it Ever got popular and why it became powerful (how can something all bad and all disfunctional be powerful? It cant, nazism and fascism both had positive traits)
Im a conservative myself but I don't consider leftists subhuman, just very flawed as they appeal to imperical data without daring to ever critique it. "Chemicals in the water is a rightoid loony conspiracy theory"
And now we have "theres plastic in the water" coming from those same people who wrote the last articles. Same with radium products and cigars as cough medicine
It's incredible to look back to the early Marxists, and they are having the same 'intellectual' slap fights we see online today, with large amounts of it being about interpersonal nonsense and personality driven.
It's always been the bane of the Left wing.
On the topic of Joyce, ever listen to the Sea Power song "Praise For Whatever"? There's a reason it's the one that was respun into Joyce's theme, with the opening lyric's being:
"It's such a convoluted hour
To play amongst the flowers
When we're counting all the missiles down from three to one to none
And in a world of extremities
We all are accessories
So let the dancers inherit the party
Now here comes the big prize
And here comes my reward
Yeah here comes the big prize
And here comes my reward
Today we will just lay here for a little while"
Joice, despite being prepared to see the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher, managed to crack my defenses and made me work for her volunteerly. Politicians are scary
>+20 minutes video of pure affected champgne socialist bravato disguised as personal comentary lol
My brother in christ, this is a video essay on the communist game. What did you expect?
@@mynamesnotshanekid813lol I wouldn’t say it’s a communist game, sounds like you went into deep on the political vision quest and lost the point along the way hehe.
@@tinygrove7623 nah bro. 90% of the writing in this game is literally a comminist inside joke. It constantly quotes communist theorists (including that Joyce quote - it's paraphrased from Mark Phisher's "Capitalist realism"). Tha authors thanked Marx and Engels for giving them their political education when receiving an award. And it's just written from a fundamentally, obviously socialist view on the world. May I remind you that the main political "bad guy" here is the game's parody of the EU/NATO? Evrart is your local bad guy, and even his main villanous trait is that he acts like a capitalist boss. Meanwhile, the actual capitalist bosses are universally portrayed as looking nicer, but being 10x more evil in practice.
Trust me, this game is pretty much distilled communist propaganda - and I mean it as a good thing. It's just being a bit cheeky and smart-ass about it. And also disillusioned about the whole political situation in the world. Still, it's disillusionment from a comminist's perspective.
@@grechka-chan brother there’s little I can do for your copium addiction.
@@tinygrove7623 an expectedly brainless and empty response. Go do some reading for a change
Evrart IS corrupt but its made very clear that the role/system CORRUPTED him, not the other way around. Its established in multiple dialogues throughout the game that him and his brother are and were both genuine believers and political actors. Especially in their youth. As you point out, he's also authentically good at his job.
Id also add that the whole situation, minus the suprise murder, is him and his brother continuing the fight for the comunist. They have learned from the past and have coldly concluded that orchestrating the current conflict is the best means to achieve a comunist society without getting utterly destroyed.
I think another wrinkle here is our role in this. We're the cops, that's the side of evrart that the cops get. The game seems to always keep that dynamic in mind with most characters.
@@ComicalConqueror very much this too.
Didn't he directly orchestrate the murder of his opponent even before the "system corrupted him?"
He reminds me of many bureaucrats in post communist/communist countries in real life, like USSR. Once a young idealist who just happens to be good at playing political game which gets him to the top, and as he gets to the top he continues going deeper and deeper into the rules of the game to stay at the top. There might be a distant dream on his mind still, but what he's doing right now and what will he do for the rest of his life is to act out background cloak and dagger with others politicians like him. in an alternative universe Evret could have been even more like Stalin if he was to run a country with a lot of competition for monopoly on power and ideology. He even alludes to having secret police watch over every nook and cranny of his territory.
WHY DID YOU SHAVE HARRY DU BOIS'S ICONIC BEARD
I didn't know what horror awaited
He looks better without it
@@Kaledrone False.
finished my second playthrough of disco elysium a couple of days ago, this video couldn't have come out at a better time! loved your analysis and would love to see more - about hardie boys, measurehead, hell maybe even tackle the innocents themselves. world of DE is so authentic and alive, its impossible not to think about long after the game is finished
The thing about Evrart, is that he IS the worker first guy - the empathy skill check is supposed to clue you in on this, he is definitely, most certainly cares about the city and the people who inhabit it first and foremost. He just doesnt give two shits about his personal image, and in fact uses his sleazy image to a considerable advantage. It wasnt drugs that killed the city and kept it a slum, it was deliberate bombardment of the entire Martinaise and deliberate effort to keep it as a reminder. People being on drugs isnt the reason why Martinaise is the way it is. People turn to drugs BECAUSE city is a shithole, and they cant do anything about it. The drug trade will be there either way, the choice Claires face is a)let the drug trade run rampant; b)spend Unions resources to keep it in check while being strangled by Wild Pines; or c)take control of the drug trade, and invest the money into the strike to get more resources for the people.
What Evrart does, is he keeps the port hostage, and uses drug money to keep the strike going. People would have starved otherwise, striking for months is not free you know. Plan is to ask ever greater concessions from corpos untill it is no longer viable for Wild Pines to maintain operation in the city, and Martinaise can get free from the capitalist boot (or rather replace it with socdem capitalist boot) - the port location would still be valuable, the city will not die without corpos. In fact, it is dying because of moralintern. The absolute "pornographic poverty" of the fishing village and wartorn ruin was there before Claires and their shady ways of going about fundraising.
The joke here is that Evrart is a puffer fish, he is outwardly greedy and corrupt, but its all a facade. He deeply cares, but the means of capitalism he lives under force him to engage with the corruption and filth of the whole system, and he doesnt wash his hands away of the filth he has his arms elbows deep in. Compare and contrast with Joyce, a wolf in sheeps clothing, who shows concern at every opportunity, but business first and only. And when push comes to shove? It wasnt her call, it was just the company. Massacre by the mercs is not on her hands, when the reason why they are here is blatantly obvious to all who isnt wilfully ignorant. When her job is over, she doesnt give two shits about hundreds of workers that will die to automatic gunfire of supposedly invincible mercs. Reserve army of labor will pick up the slack, it is obvious that there are plenty of people in the ruins who are starving for a job. Or at least thats my reading of it.
P.S. Evrart is the guy with lazy eye. Claires dont run the drug trade in person (too fat to do so).
P.P.S. People dont find Joyces line to be profound, just ringing way too true way too often.
P.P.P.S. Calling mercs militia is confusing, since militia is the cops. Yeah, Revachol doesnt have a proper policing system (by moralinterns decree IIRC) and uses militia for this.
I think this is meant to be left to the interpretation of the player. On the one hand there is all this dialogue about how the player character should get sober (not just from Measurehead either) that Harry would be a better person and cope if he were sober. So it would stand to reason that the canonical interpretation of evrart’s drug dealing is either a necessary evil at best or just evidence of his primarily self interested ways. The communard at the end after all does not believe evrart is a true believer.
I agree with your comment, very well said. Thank you
@@anthonydevellis6708tbf, the communard doesn't think *anyone* is a true socialist. Not even Harry, who *obviously* is (this is a joke... probably)
100% correct
Except the drug trade in Revochal is rampant thanks to Evrart, to the point that children like Cuno can easily gain enough to sell some on the side.
Hearing your perspective on the Hardie Boys would be interesting. Enjoyed this.
I'll consider throwing something together
its not "you have money therefore bad socialist" its that being rich necessarily means you gained that wealth by exploiting the labor of others, that you're a capitalist. i dont know enough about hasan's case but i suspect he is actually a socialist in his mind but just isn't practicing it.
The thing is you can't be socialist within a capitalist system. Any means 9f exchange or purchasing of goods requires consumption of the exploitation of labor. Starving yourself to death and dieing in a field is all you can really do if you don't engage with it. If you find a systemic issue, you have to interact with the system to change it, especially when it is far more powerful than any small group of people could overpower through force
It's also that despite claiming to try and "reform" the system from within, he refuses to do so. While espousing the benefits of unions, Hassan doesn't use unions to manufacture his own merchandise. Instead, he uses the same third world manufacturing as his opposition. And when questioned on this his only response was to talk down to his audience with a "you don't understand". Hassan is of the same ilk as Hbomber; a grifter who doesn't truly believe in what he espouses beyond the belief that people richer than him are bad. It reeks of envy, and everyone can smell it.
What did Hmbomber do to make you think that of him?
@@FoxiteClipChannelYeah I am often confused at the hate he gets, never found out where it stemmed from either.
He only mentioned Hasan? Or is my UA-cam scuffed? Anyways Hbomber has alot of skeletoni in his own closet. He bullied a trans person to suicide and never apologized, he made a video on copyright but didnt mention Hasan who allways does it, he was also a part of a horrible community on tumblr
Another clever deconstruction beyond the physical appearance is that the way Evrart looks out for the workers for selfish reasons _parallels_ what free-market ideologues say about the businessman in a competitive market serving the consumer out of greed. Evrart has elements of the virtuous capitalist despite being in a decidedly unvirtuous industry.
It also parallels how some drug cartels (but not others) will often provide for the citizens of towns they're taken up residence in. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather to purchase their loyalty.
You can buy nice things for yourself but there is a measure of gross excess and I think Hasan has crossed that just like billionaires do in a far worse way.
I viewed Joyce's quote, "Capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself" differently from, "Oh but you make a living under the system!" I don't know where I read it, but the example I was given was Hollywood. Where movies will gesture at concepts like "diversity" or anticapitalism, but in a very cynical and pandering way to make money, subtly defanging the power of those critiques. It's very much, "Hey we have women drone pilots now, see how progressive our liberalism is now?" Capital will tear up jeans and sell them to you at a mark-up, commodifying the aesthetic of the "working class" or fashionably poor.
Joyce also later comments on Cindy's "infraculture," or the game's version of counterculture. If you talk to Cindy, you can tell she's just just a bratty teenager who larps as a rebel. She's pretty easy to deflate. You're a cop after all, and she hates cops. But as Harry, you can just encourage her to continue vandalizing the apartment and it takes the fun out of it for her. She can't actually offend Harry. Harry is just some underpaid and overworked alcoholic detective. She's not really speaking any truth to power despite Harry nominally being an enforcer of capital. I don't even think Cindy is a communard, a social democrat, a unionist or a socialist. She's just a rebel without a cause. Cindy only senses she should hate Joyce for being in the ruling class.
Joyce basically states that her rebellion against the norm or "supraculture" is pretty much meaningless. Cindy is wearing the clothing of old women as fashion statement and Joyce is unoffended and unconcerned by some teenager who has no power to affect her. The "supraculture" is everywhere. It's the music on the radio and the restaurants you eat at. Capital subsumes critique and is unoffended by you screaming at it in rebellion. Joyce is on a yacht, Cindy is not. They might as well live in different galaxies.
That's the trouble. Joyce is genuinely likable. She's self-aware, educated and witty. She's an ultraliberal. She _does_ feel guilty about it. Genuinely, she does. We should improve society somewhat. And yes, she too participates in society. But so long as she does, it's good that's she's already on top. At no point does she actually disagree with your critique. She just knows it doesn't matter.
Also the Starbucks boycott example is bad. Because boycotts don't work. You paying them for pre-made coffee means they still got your money. Strikes actually hurt them. Your gesture does nothing but make you feel good in the moment. Again, sort of Joyce's point. The critique itself is meaningless. You look impotent doing it because it doesn't work and the symbolism is completely lost because it never mattered. It swallowed the critique and ignored it. All anybody in the media has to do is just say they respect your free speech, even if they think you look silly doing it. How progressive of us and of you. Heck, you could wheel out a clone of Joyce as a spokesperson for Starbucks who'll speak kindly and respectfully about your boycott.
Ironically, Cindy is perhaps the 'realest' communist you will meet in the entire game other than Mañana the not-a-communist. Her thing is to inspire her fellow person through art and she is one of the few people who genuinely tries to help Harry without any kind of bargaining or misleading if asked. All the other communists are either navel-gazing and pretending to be what they think 'real' communists should be like (the students), or are embittered and have actually given up on communist beliefs a long time ago. Remember, Joyce is the capitalist, and capitalists' first line of mental defence against communism is offhand dismissal. Cindy is the ONLY person Joyce dismisses, note, in a break from her usual highly controlled personality, because Cindy is the only person who fundamentally rejects what Joyce stands for. She doesn't participate in consumerism, she lives on her own terms, and she actively does her best to encourage others to reject capitalism on their own terms, including Harry. She can't do much because she is a child, but she actually walks the walk. ZA/UM artwork literally calls her 'the withering away of the state', or in other words, the late stage of communism.
Joyce is in fact, a giant trap. She is nice and personable, true! She admits all her wrongdoings and so forth. She also sicced a bunch of r3p*ist war-criminals on the Union. She is the epitome of 'we know the system is broken and needs fixing and our doing our best to do so' whilst doing nothing and actively making the situation worse behind the scenes when you aren't looking. You know, like a real politician. She does not actually feel guilty about any of her actions, she mimes doing so because it suits her to pretend, and because she enjoys being in control.
What do you mean 'boycotts don't work', Starbucks has lost $11 BILLION from the current wave of boycotts. Consumer boycotts are incredibly effective, and like everything effective against the capitalist, capitalists dismiss their effects out-of-hand to make it seem as if they are not. Perhaps you need to kill the Joyce who lives in your head, as it seems she has you convinced that the truth is lies.
@@therat1117Vaush already mentioned this but Boycotts especially now don't work.
Boycotts are just "feel good" things liberals do to feel good about themselves only to start buying products when said company makes a statement about it. Or you get a situation like the Harry Potter Video Game boycott where the opposition buys the game in order to spite the boycotters.
What's the point of boycotting when the customer next to you is a materialistic zealot who will easily drop over 100k dollars on products sold by a company you're boycotting?
@@pank3245 >Vaush said
Opinion discarded. Set on fire, even.
@@pank3245 Vaush's ""opinion"" is liberal garbage. You don't need everyone to be in on a boycott. And I don't care if it makes you feel good. That's nonsense individualist drivel. The point is to *bleed* the company. If 10% of their consumer base stops buying, then they don't meet growth targets. Their stocks drop. They *bleed* until they do what you want. And they have been bleeding, badly.
Vaush wants to pretend to support Palest*ne as the 'great leftism understander who reads no books' but he's nothing but an armchair liberal vomiting whatever sorry opinion makes his dck tingle.
@@therat1117 This isn't how you conduct a good faith argument now is it?
Please make that part 2. I want to hear your opininions on the Hardie boys, the underground communist youths, the Moralintern and the RCM's polirical role and about the centrist dialogue options too. They are really funny.
Hell yeah love Disco Elysium!
It's good!
The Joyce quote about critiquing capitalism was a 4th wall break about the game itself. That`s Why everyone loved it.
And also perfectly encapsulates the recent happenings at ZA/UM
Joyce's line is profound because its not an assertion of hypocrisy, its a threat.
Its also kind of a prophecy. Joyce gives the impression of having been a leftist early in life, but her hope has been completely crushed (and subsumed) by the suffocating weight of capitalism and it has turned her into a willing servant of capital. She projects this fate onto the entire world.
I don't want to come off as aggressive with this comment because I feel a lot of people are going to take issue with how you characterize Hasan and his current position as "the largest political streamer". So here goes:
While I agree with the overall point you made that criticizing Hassan simply he's wealthy is a very simplistic way of viewing him, I think what people actually take issue with is the way he comports himself, as well as the general position he's put himself in that undermines any sort of political agenda he's trying to convey. He obviously has no trouble criticizing people and institutions that have way more power than him, but when it reaches people within his wealth bracket then all of a sudden he changes his tone. The Pokimane drama is a good example since it was about the affordability of the cookies she was selling. Because he and Pokimane run in very similar social circles and are similarly wealthy, he ended up towing the line and defending her practice of this. Now he could have simply not said anything on the matter and that would be that, but the fact that he went to bat for it kind of undermines any other positions he'd hold on similar matters. I'd be curious if he would have done what he did had he been of lower economic class.
I think as Hassan attempts to grow his audience and his brand, his social and economic position also changes and he'll eventually find himself in a position where his political commentary becomes less and less effective as he continues to surround with the people and systems he would criticize. Maybe you disagree with this assessment and see it in the same vane of "socialism is when no house" criticism, but I do think the position is currently in does and has undermined any sort of commentary he could make.
This comment was going to be a lot longer but the other stuff I was going to bring up was outside the scope of the argument you were making so I kept it to this. I think there's a lot more wrong with him then what I outlined but it would simply come off as irrelevant.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that other than that Hasan bit I think your analysis was really on point, especially the Evrart part since there was a ton of stuff I hadn't picked up on across both my playthroughs. Didn't want you to think that that was my only takeaway from your video.
Socialists are just guilty capitalists. Hasan is a champagne socialist. I have no idea why anyone watches his stuff, Vaush included.
Definitely do more Disco Elysium
Glad you liked it
The critique of Hasan isn’t that he can’t be wealthy at all, it’s the absolute scale of that wealth, contrasted to his fairly meager amount of actual help. A 3 million dollar house isn’t just “some nice things for yourself.” right?
Seems pretty believable for a house in LA. A normal one-family home in the German countryside I live in can cost more than half a million, and looking at LA houses in catalogues three million for a comfortable two/three level house with garden seem pretty reasonable (I've even seen a glorified shack for a million), especially since his his dad and mum also live there.
For 3 mil he could move to a different country and buy a reasonable 200k big ass house, not in fuckin cali or New York or wherever he is. His majority income is his family and twitch so he could live elsewhere
He Also owns Multiple diamond rings, multiple hand watches, multiple Gucci bags and multiple Prada shirts. Hes as wasteful as they come, only caring about the name not the means just like how he treats his own ideology. Its all about the name, the asthetic, the status
@@DarkMark-cf1ec agree
@@angela_merkeI if you really think a million dollar home is a shack, i shudder to think of what kind of standards youve grown used to. sure, housing prices are insane, but they are not that insane.
@@solidpython4964 The house in question was literally one large not very high room with a lawn. Stop imagining stuff. And the point stands: Buying a house for yourself, your aging parents and your brother (I presume he also lives there) in one of the most expensive cities in one of the most expensive states in the richest country on earth will be expensive.
If you're looking for a recommendation, I'm not sure if you've played it but the talos principle and its sequel (which just released) are really worth looking into. I think the way they talk about philosophy really resonated with me. It's not as Political as disco elysium but I do think Politics is inherently Philosophical, so alot of the characters can fit into archetypes of our political system and what the game has to say about these things really made me think. Its also a puzzle game with neat lasers on the side if you enjoy that kind of thing.
I still need to play it! It's seemed interesting for years but I never got it
The hipocrisy of those advocating for change but embracing capital is that they benefit from all the riches coming from capital, but they preach about how capital is evil, but this "evil" is making these people very wealthy. It's counter intuitive, because the other option they are presenting would not get them that wealthy, the whole system that gets them extremely rich is what they say they fight against. This makes them extremely hypocritical.
Hassan doesn't sell merch to fight the system, he uses that money to keep his mansion, expensive car and trips to the brothel. He's not creating a political party, he's just accumulating capital, something thwt should be an issue for him.
Just by talking about socialism, people like Hasan are already doing a lot more for the working class than anyone else in their wealth class. And a lot more than a lot of working folks, if we're being honest.
If you want every wealthy socialist to act like a saint, or to act like a martyr to the cause, you're shooting your own movement in the foot. Throwing ALL of their money into a fucking political party is not a reasonable thing to expect of any person, regardless of wealth, and by setting that standard you immediately alienate from the cause pretty much everyone who actually has the resources to help.
Setting this type of standard is absolutely suicidal if you're a Leftist. Really, the only "Hypocrisy" going on here is that Hasan should, according to Marx, advocate more for his OWN class self-interest, and not for others. Now that he's a millionaire, he really should be buddying up with neoliberal and conservative politicians so he can get bigger tax cuts.
20:23 Hmm, that is a bit of a strawman argument. Criticizing the way Hasan uses his wealth is more to point out his own personal flaws than to debunk socialism.
That's fine if it's just personal criticism. But I have very much seen many people use it to somehow undermine the political policies they see him as representing
One of the most common fallacies in the modern age is the Tu quoque fallacy. For some reason, people just can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong. More broadly, you could say that no moral failure of a person's character could make their argument wrong. Yet so often, especially in political spheres, arguments that should focus on the issues at hand devolve into moral grandstands and purity tests. I feel like this twisted form of logic is responsible for the lack of political progress in many parts of the world.
100% agree.
Attacking the "hypocrisy" of the opponent is probably the most common (and least perceived) kind of logical fallacy in political arguments. It drives me mad.
Amazing video, it’s interesting how Joyce and Evrart are not typical physical depictions of union and company representatives, like the archetypes were swapped.
Love the commentary on leftist infighting with the Deserter, keep it up!
Never thought of that. Yeah! The capitalist is caring and nice to you. The union representative is cold, fat, threatens you. Their morals are the same as they should be, but their portrayed personalities are swapped.
Many people actually didn't like the Deserter reveal, but I think it fit very well with the game's theme of failure, regret and inability to let go of the past... I've been having some naughty bourgeoise thoughts lately, a lot of doubts about what we're trying to accomplish here and viability of those ideas, the game poses those same questions, but it also provides reminders of why it's worth to let go of the past and try to do better in the present...
Your logic is flawed when it comes to explaining the vegan eating meat. If the vegan decides to eat meat because it would get lost if he did otherwise in principle it’s hypocritical of him and defeats the purpose of its veganism as a message. The whole point of not eating meat is to convince others to do the same and make a meaningful impact. How can wasting a mere pounds of meat more immoral than the sistematic killing of animals? The argument of “Hassan is rich therefore He is invalidated” is valid because in the same logic than the vegan friend, He is an hypocrite because he indulges in the same excesses he fight against.
On the hassan comments, none of your examples match reality, if he got gifted a mansion then your examples would be correct, but he didnt, he himself bought that and all the other fancy stuff he owns
Even that tho isnt the biggest problem tho, you said in the video you need to get power in the system to change the system, and if we would agree that he has power (either capital or large amount of ppl following him) he should use that power to change the system, but he isnt doing that and thats where most ppls problems lie with him
I don't like Hasan, but he doesn't have capital and he doesn't have power. He's a streamer.
@@jonnyvelocity ??????? he has how many people tuning in LIVE to see him??? Thousands if not tens of thousands at times?? And thats just live content, how many people follow him outside of that? A MILLION AND A HALF on twitter. Even if only half of that is people who actualy like him, that 750k
What car does he own? Isnt it a porche worth couple hundred grand?? Isnt his house worth a couple MILLION??
You have to be delusional to say he has no power or influence. He isnt on the average politician level of either, but it is far beyond the average person, and well into the "can make some difference" category
He's already making a difference through advocacy, though... That's his thing. Making people more aware of politics by making it entertaining. It's how he GOT rich.
Why does every wealthy Socialist have to act like a saint? Even Marx and Engels didn't give every penny to the cause. They lived pretty fucking well, actually.
If you expect so much out of, let's be honest, *moderately* wealthy individuals (In comparison to REAL capitalists), then what hope do you have of convincing others in his class to help out?
Or do you expect the revolution to be funded on car loans and student debt?
@@isaiahfisher2337 1. Exactly, has he done anything to further the cause that hasnt gotten him rich? He doesnt even have to give money, I never said that, all Im saying is some of that money can be used to further the cause
2. Advocacy only works as so far as people you advocate to do something to change the system, and from what I can tell most of his fans dont do anything IRL
3. I said that, there is peope a lot richer than him, but hes rich enough to make some difference, even if small. Imagine a socialist McDonalds that got bought by bigger socialist figures, or california being run by a bernie-like politician that got endorsed by bigger socialist figures, the biggest being hassan.
He can show the world how a company can work with worker ownership and he can still get paid by the store, it would also get a ton of work just bcuz its him who bought it, or hecan actually get into politics by supporting candidates to his large fanbase and actually push for a change in the system, even if it would come immediately
4. With what the average socialist/communist is today in the western world, I definitely dont expect a revolution. Matter of fact, a fascist revolution is a lot more likely than any leftist one
I added this video to my watch later based on the topic and didnt realize you were the one who made the rebuttal to those SU "critiques" and it was whiplash for a moment, but welcome whiplash. You don't miss with your takes, and your channel is definitely going to be a must-watch for me regardless of the topic
I disagree on what Joyce meant by that quote, I don't think it's supposed to be an accusation of hypocricy on the behalf of those who critique capitalism, I think it's more cynical than that. Joyce is talking about the ways in which capitalism finds ways to profit from those things regardless.
Squid Game, for example, holds a firmly anti-capitalist message at its core; but it has been made, advertised, distributed, and consumed in a society that views everything through a capitalist lens. As a result it has propped up and reinforced the existing power structures; large parts of it have been carved off, stripped of meaining and context, and turned into things like the Squid Game Reality Show. The people who made Squid Game aren't hypocrites, they are paying the price that comes with making a product for mass consumption, if they didn't then nobody would have seen Squid Game and the message they wanted to convey.
I don't think Joyce is passing judgement, I think she sees it as an inevitability. The vibe I got from her throughout is that she believes that this is just the way things are, that fighting it is wasted effort, and that people should just face reality. She's not the Sunday Friend, she's not a cultist of capital, she just doesn't believe in any alternative. It may well be motivated reasoning, she obviously benefits from the system, but that's just the impression that I got.
Or not, it's art after all, and we all take different things away from it.
I went into this video expecting it to focus on the gameplay experience of being lied to in Disco Elysium. Where you have to examine the information presented to you, determine what someone stands to gain from lying to you, or how you can lie to attempt to gain a leg up in the conversation.
On top of that, despite their initial perception as the final word on a given subject, you eventually learn that your different stats each have character flaws and beliefs of their own. A successful roll does not guarantee that Drama will correctly assess someone's honesty. Although Drama's "he's lying, sire" seems at first to end the mental game one must play to come to that conclusion themselves, it simply introduces a separate parallel problem of whether or not your own judgement is to be trusted.
You focused a lot more on the political side than I expected, and your analysis of how character flaws inform political beliefs and vice versa was very insightful. Amazing video!
I haven't watched many DE playthoughs but one stuck with me, from Woolie Vs. As one of the OGs on internet influencers you can piece out what person he is, he came from an over religious family and like many people raised like that and don't become religious he has an "over reliance" on "reason and facts". So when he got to play most of his skills points focused on rhetoric and encyclopedia, he hated Conceptualization and island empire and he would get confused everytine rhetoric would say something absurd because why would rhetoric not make sense? He thought the pale was too etheral to be real. it is interesting seeing someone who you have some knowledge of how they are playing this game.
That tangent about Hasan was baffling to say the least.
The criticism isn't his wealth, it's his indulgence of wealth. You don't need a multimillion dollar mansion and luxury designer clothes to "amplify your voice to critique capital", especially when your job only requires a webcam, laptop, and microphone. There is an ocean of difference between someone who gives to charity while living comfortably, and someone like Hasan who lives luxuriously while in no way living according to his supposed values.
If you value a specific system you cannot abide by the principals of said system while existing in another. The most you can do is build power and make the changes available to you. Since he donates very heavily to charity and spends a lot of time with his platform discussing issues he finds relevant I think it very much makes sense. Also I have personally seen many many people do the "you're a socialist but you have a nice house? Hypocrite!" Bit
@@HidinginPrivate In what way are designer clothes and luxury cars necessary to "build power" under capitalism.
Also, a multimillion dollar California mansion goes well beyond "nice house" territory. He says the words he knows will make him money, and cares precious little about how his actions align with his rhetoric.
Sure, but whether someone indulges in wealth or not has nothing to do with capitalism. Socialism isn’t “everyone lives with only what they need” it’s “workers control the means of production and therefore get paid the full value of their labor”. Athletes who get paid millions of dollars to play and live exorbitant lifestyles are still workers who at the end of the day are having the value of their labor stolen from them by the owners of whatever team they work for. The fact that their job generates more value than your average factory worker isn’t a socialist critique.
Hasan makes all his money through his and his editors’ labor. As long as he and his editors run their business democratically and share the wealth generated by it that way, it doesn’t really matter what they do to a socialist. They can flaunt their wealth all they want. If you want to critique them from a Christian lens or a charitable lens then sure, they’re not doing enough, but as socialists Hasan is doing exactly what he believes in.
@@Aa-dn1oq "In what way are designer clothes and luxury cars necessary to "build power" under capitalism." - to approach this from a different angle then everyone else is replying: you ever see the first hunger games movie? That goes into the realpoltik aspects of using celebrity culture and spectacle to further left leaning goals pretty well.
None of those things are bad on their own and none of those things would cease to exist under Socialism. Socialism isn't "no luxury cars and designer clothes". Sorry for being curt, but for you to demonstrate that he "lives luxuriously while in no way living according to his supposed values", you'd need to actually know what his supposed values are. I can guarantee that they don't contain "you can't own nice things" anywhere, unless your definition of "nice things" is the means of production.
The critique of Hasan being rich a socialist isnt shallow at all. Rather its highlighting the paradox within socialist and over all most of leftist thought in general of how despite advocating for helping the lower classes it is inherently a system of thought created by and usually advocated for by the wealthy. Specifically by those who are born into wealth and as such are disconnected from the life of the working class or even the middle class.
As such their views of how the world works is slanted and their advocacy rings hollow because they usually dont understand the very people they claim to be advocating for.
And as soon as the working class does ask for something that the socialist doesnt agree with they will belittle them and say they dont understand what it is they want or need. Voting against their interest is a term I heard alot; as if the socialist knows better what is in a persons interest.
This is a probelm going back to Marx and Engles both of whom were essentially trust fund kids. Hell it goes back to the French Revolution; which contrary to what pop history says was largly pushed for by the new upper middle class.
In that sense socialism is the most bougisie thing possible. It is the upperclass looking down and helping the working class not on its terms, but on the upperclasses.
It is no different that the old aristocrats looking down at the peasents and saying "Well they are too stupid to know any better so we need to tell them what to do and control most of the land because they would all just mess it up."
Hasan is the perfect example to highlight this contradiction. Because as soon as he sees an actual working class person disagreeing with him and socialist ideas he breaks down into insults and incoherence.
The working class can only be helped through leftist socialist ideals. IE Bougiouse ideals. IE his ideals. IE aristocratic ones in which he sees himself at the top.
Most people who have a large platform, that lets them comment on politics, are upper class. According to your argument most unions wouldn't exist.
@pepesfinalform4634 unions are ran by the upper class though. Just because they represent working class workers doesn't mean they are working class in the same sense a lawyer who may represent a blue collar worker in court isn't blue collar. The ones in charge of the union are rarely cut from the same stock as the ones they represent, which causes alot of disconnect. I've spoken with many union workers who hate the union precicsly because the leaders of the union don't advocate for what they want and talk down to them.
A union fall exactly under the issue I highlighted earlier; the bougoisie helping on their own terms and not on the terms of the people they claim to represent.
@@nickchavez720 I have made different experiences, but I won't deny that what you have described does happen. Funnily enough this is a criticism that I have mainly heard from other leftists, who complain about the leadership of larger unions. This still doesn't change anything about the fact, that many (and nowadays most) unions were organised by leftist workers, even if the leadership ended up lacking.
Where is your commentary on the fascist faction in the game
He said he wouldn't be doing a critique of it due to the face that fascism is stupid in game. I agree with him on that. The representation of fascism in DE is so shallow and stereotypical it doesn't represent something strong enough to even be called a strawman. Fascism as an ideology is very tested, powerful, and effective and if a real representation of something like roman fascism or clerical fascism were given a spot in the game they would effectively undermine both the monarchist position and the capitalist/communist one because fascism in reality likes to pull from the best bits of all of these things. Best books on this are Paul Gottfried's works.
@@chazm100 ooh i see your point it makes sense
well my bad
@@chazm100fascism in a game is a strawman of modern internet self proclaimed fascists. Its funny because I've seen people like that, but yea it has nothing to do with the ideas it tries to represent, just like the people it satirizes.
@@chazm100 well also to add a day later - ultraliberal and fascist routes are undercooked. Moralist and Communist routes are far more nuanced with their takes and satire. Ultraliberal and fascist jokes are kinda one note in the game. The main pol;itical conflict in this game is status quo vs communism, the rest is just an afterthought imo.
@@tastethecock5203 That tends to be a problem with a medium of gaming is that it only tends to be able to provide a dualistic experience effectively. Most of the time in games any aspect of a third rail or way becomes derivative and almost comical caricature of itself. A good example is measure head (an obvious critique of phrenology). It would be really difficult to argue with him if he were a full on Spencerist/Darwinist materialist and was into eugenics because its really hard to argue theory with someone who presents hard evidence for his claims through stereotypes and would require a philosophical solution or an appeal to ideology. But in the game he is presented as "This race eats potatoes thus inferior". which isn't event the positions of the 20th century eugenicists like Arthur de gobineu.
Incredible how bad you misunderstood the game and how compelled you felt to specify what the intent of the authors of the game was, obscuring the finesse of the original work and substituting it for clumsiness.
please do tell!
please do explain?
Excusing left wing hypocrisy as "participating in capital" just seems pretty insincere in my opinion. If you can't even follow your own political principles why should I let you lecture me about why you know better?
"But bro, I need to have the new iphone (produced by slave labour in China) to tweet about how bad capitalism is from my muli-million dollar mansion" is just piss-poor and defeats your own argument.
Here's a hypothetical: Your only method of eating food is being given it from somebody evil. You believe people shouldn't have to rely on a single evil entity for all their food. Do you
A. Refuse food you think is immoral and starve to death
B. Accept food and use your time alive to try and change things
The answer is obviously B but for some reason you think B is hypocritical. People in a system who disagree with a system are not being hypocritical. They were born into that system. Raised in it. There are interpersonal criticisms that can be made, sure, but this isn't indicative of a great hypocricy
@HidinginPrivate leave it to leftists to make the ultimate CONSOOMER argument; "you don't understand, I have to buy this new phone, it's literally like food to me"
You don't need to be buying a new iphone and participating in consumerism, while decrying every aspect of how it works. There's millions of people in the West who already refuse to participate, living minimalist lifestyles, hell even just look at all the old-school commune living that was popular 30-40 years ago.
But instead of actually trying to be ideologically consistent or police the hypocrites on your side, you'd rather make half-hearted excuses about how buying multi-million dollar mansions and luxury sports cars are literlaly the same as food. Why should anyone take your ideology seriously when you can't even stay consistent?
@@Rotatebillythey have their mantra to wave any thought of real world ethics from their mind: "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism". Job done, no personal standards required.
@HidinginPrivate there is eating the bread and then their is profiting off of the preaching that eating the bread is immoral and advocating for everyone to not eat the bread while being paid by the company supplying the bread.
"We should improve soceity somewhat"
"Yet you participate in soceity, curious! I am very intelligent."
was dope
Thanks
to clear up any confusion, ultra liberalism in the world of disco is more like libertarianism
Great video! Also, nice Vaush portrait
Great video, but I think you're a little off base with Joyce. Comparing her point about critique of capital reinforcing capital to Society Comic Guy is a pretty surface-level interpretation of what she's actually saying. She's not pointing the finger at champagne socialists, or at people who use iPhones - she isn't really gesturing to any kind of imagined hypocrisy at all. No, I'm pretty sure with this line she is talking about Capitalism's ability to respond to critique and dissent with more sophisticated techniques than "repress them until they go away".
For example, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle with the explicit intention of turning America socialist. Instead, we got the FDA. Unions and strikes are not alien to Capitalism, they are merely mechanisms by which disputes between labor and capital are resolved. Leftist culture and aesthetics are constantly appropriated and commercialized - see Leninade. This gives Capitalism a level of adaptability that previous dominant ideologies lacked, and I think that plays a large role in why it's still around and why so many, including Joyce, see it as an inevitable fact of life. In turn, this also undermines leftist causes. Whether this tendency should be exploited or outright rejected, the appeal of accelerationism as something that could counteract this, reform vs. revolution, all of these questions spring up in response to concessions made, prompting more infighting and the lack of a cohesive alternate vision. And I think this is what Joyce is referring to because, as the Wild Pines' negotiator, she's seen this process firsthand. She participates in it. And she, perhaps more than anyone, believes this is why the Ultraliberals ultimately won and the Communards lost.
Because capitalism isn't an ideology, its just a description of "how things are currently" . Precisely because it isn't an ideology it can be applied to anything with unmatched flexibility. Theres no ideology in exchanging resource for another resource. Socialists can rant all they want about subversive nature of capitalism, but it is also socialists who buy Che Guevara and Eat the rich T-shirts. Even if you personally dont participate in it, someone will, creating a demand.
I too, love to sarcastically type "socialism equals no house ", during a housing crisis.
Capitalist bootlickers on their way to call themselves Capitalists, owning no industries, having no generational wealth, and having no systemic power 🤯
Pro-Capitalists on their way to also actually do the smallest 🤏 amount of research on the broader global Leftist movement than our “leftist” Democrat party in the United States, and discovering that time and time again Marxist leaning countries actually succeeded under the tenants of Socialism until the historically oppressive and globally powerful Capitalist Imperialist nations came in and bombared, overthrew and Facistized those nations.
Fascinating how the Neoliberal mind is so quick to criticize Cuba’s bloody revolution for Communism, when nobody ever mentions how the United States funded a revolution in the Dominican Republic and initiated a Facist genocide there. Undoubtly because the Dominican Facists made money for the United States, while Cuba refused to make money for our Capitalist overlords.
And before all the reactionaries once again point and scowl at Cuba, it is unironically a degenerated worker’s state, of course their country failed when the United States blockaded and starved them out, and prevented trade to their people. But let’s not mention how it’s only after it’s Capitalist reforms, much the same with China, that we’ve seen a resurgence in exploitative measures, that even though Capitalist in nature, are chalked up as “Communist Oppression” by the Neoliberal West.
God, I sound like Dros.
Fucking hate American education, what a brainwashed country.
Well the state and its members own the housing by 75%. Thank god we have socialist Blackrock to help us out! Who owns the 75% but lets ignore that
I love this game but according to my achievements I was an ultraliberal communist centrist who also was a artsy, good and sorry cop. True centrist grindset lmao?
I was a big sorry cop lol. Kim literally chewed me out for apologizing all the time and I was like "whoops sorry"
@@HidinginPrivate I mean, Harry does have a lot of things to be sorry for ;) Propably the character trait alot of people chose
shoulda covered measurehead
This completely ignores what happens when you gossip between Evrart and Joyce, causing Evrart to reveal his ideological beliefs and Joyce to give up the harbor
33:49 Looks like a person who likes horses.
I largely agree with everything you've said, but there's one small factual thing I'd like to correct. Depending on how long someone's gone without eating meat, they would actually be harmed in a mild way by eating it, just based on how their gut would react to something they're not used to digesting. More of a fun fact than a criticsm of the point
was with you until the Hasan thing
Yep, the problem with Hasan isn't that he's a wealthy socialist.
It's that he has the means to seriously contribute to politics, but spends his time hyping up revolutionary children and collecting checks, rather than putting his newfound wealth behind serious movements.
Hasan is like Evrart, if Evrart never actually did anything for the labor union at all, and instead just said things that union people liked.
Ah, infighting. The Left's original sin
Rovics' "I'm A Better Anarchist Than You" also gives me a chuckle, especially since I can partially see myself in it
Great video!
You might be wrong with the incandescent lighbulb planned obsolescence thing, was the lifespan of the bulb not just a function of its brightness? There were longer lasting bulbs, but they were dimmer, so nobody really wanted them
You're correct. Technology Connections has a good video on it.
It's a shame that one of the most commonly touted examples of planned obsolescence isn't a valid example.
@@robertmouse3782Out of curiosity what would be a better example to pull up?
@@gavinferguson2938 One of the safest examples is always online singleplayer games. The developer/publisher gets to decide when to shut down the authentication servers so that no one can ever play the game again without serious (probably illegal) reverse engineering, forcing players to move on and hopefully buy the sequel or other games. A functional, playable game that could be enjoyed by current and future generations is unable to simply because the developer/publisher decided it shouldn't be anymore. A particularly heinous similar example is the Nintendo eShop. It's one of the few ways to legally play older Nintendo games, but they shut it down at the end of every console so they can sell you the same old game again on the next console. They could honor that you bought the game on a previous console, but would rather make it obsolete so you have to buy it again.
i've had that convo about my not eating meat before, cause i would eat leftovers that were not my own that contained meat. i've always weighed preventing food waste to be a higher priority than my diet restrictions in the matter of what i buy and prepare for myself. a stance that sometimes confuses
There's an interesting ethical Vegan question about communal meals, for example a group of friends order a pizza and one of them is vegan, is it worth the expenditure of extra resources to get a second Vegan friendly pizza or just partake with the common order.
Tough, there's a practical solution to my hypothetical, flipping a coin to decide if the common pizza is meat or Vegan.
From an Irish / British POV, I think the term you mean for Joyce is, "Thatherite" / "Thatcherism" I think you use, "Thatchism". She certainly evokes her in her portrait
That's exactly accurate
6:48 kurwa wrocław
Cool video, I don't think I would ever deduce which "Evrart" is which. Such a great game.
In Poland for the holidays with my partner! The shot of the buildings is also from the wrocław square close to konspira! Thanks for commenting
@@HidinginPrivate I wondered why would anyone choose such a place to be shown in a Disco Elysium video. It all makes sense now. Enjoy your stay in these godforsaken lands I call home!
defending hasan lmao awww nawww baby what is you doin!? the point is you don't need money to have a voice and you most certainly don't need AS MUCH MONEY AS HASAN HAS. literally anyone can start a protest or a movement against the status quo as long as their beliefs aren't completely regarded and enough people are captivated by your personal ability to convey your thoughts articulately. this idea that you need a paid-for marketing campaign and/or an excess of systemic power to create meaningful systemic change is patently false. if the system itself is the only way to claw your way up and create change, then why did the system create social media, essentially giving everyone with internet access "a voice", when there are MUCH easier ways of making money if that is the goal? the fact that I'm able to even write this comment completely dismantles your stance. not every answer lies within the philosophy section of your local community college library, sometimes all you need is a little common sense.
Really good analysis so far, but the point you make at 25:30 or so about planned obsolescence in lightbulbs is a patently false conspiracy theory, there’s a technology connections video about if you wanna know all the specifics but basically lightbulbs have to be rated for hours used under certain luminosities. The better comparison would probably be the whole John deer tractor situation with the company locking down the firmware so farmers can’t repair things themselves.
So that;s why I can't mention Vaush in any other leftist circle without being immediately crucified.
Good video, although you got a bit off track with the long rant regarding Joyce. Also, it's a bit funny how you call for dialogue and understanding towards the end... Except towards the nebulous entity "fascists", which nowadays has no real meaning other than as a slur to discredit opposition.
Fascists aren't nebulous. Fascism is Ultra nationalist populism that harkens back to a past time period, a myth of decadence once had but now lost or being lost. I know what the word refers to and who I am using it against.
I don't think that was necessarily the point Joyce was trying to make, I understood it as a reference to capital profiting off the critique of capital by e.g. selling Che Guevara merch, "fuck capitalism sent from my iPhone" style. By broadcasting critique of itself, capitalism banalises and disempowers said critique.
Its amazing how high you can climb when youre born near the top
Hi Hiding in private
Hello
12:45 that never happened like that. Technology Connections made a video about lightbulbs, very recommended
silly political commentary
Surprisingly, this video makes much more sense now that I have played the game. Who would have thought!
Doubtful!
It's not fascism though, it's called "Traditionalism". What's wrong with that?
Is this a satire comment?
@@HidinginPrivate yes lmao, that's from the game. When you get the fascist quest and you say you don't like the sound of it, endurance says something like "let's call it traditionalism instead, that sounds better"
My only critique is that you're playing with a beardless Harry.
I should really give this game another play. I've gone through it once and it was fantastic but hearing what other people go through, it lets me know that there's still so much to experience.
Unlike most people I agree with your take on the Joyce quote. If she said it in isolation, the common interpretations would make sense, but she says it when criticizing Cindy the Skull of all people.
i loved the video, it was super interesting hearing you talk about all the political stuff and dynamics, as someone who hasn't played the game it was still very entertaining and not confusing. I would be leaned to checking the game out too cause it looks interesting and different from the stuff i play
Thank you sir. It was fun being more overtly political tbh
To me Disco Elysium is an anti political game. People living in Revanchole are clinging to ideologies while everything falls apart as a cope. Actively getting into political debates with strangers on the streets results in you wasting in game time. Instead of fixing their war torn houses people are playing backstab politics and hold onto non existing grudges. All systems in the game are inherently corrupt with their power. Even doing communist quest, the students youre with agree that communism to them represents nothing more than a religious hope. It treats politics as a game of backstabbing, and political theory as a means of escapism from the world around you, instead of engaging with it
I firmly believe that all ideologies that Harry can adopt are just ways that he copes with Dora leaving him. Fascism's core is hating women, ultraliberalism is about pushing everyone away for yourself, communism is introduced as killing all rich(er) people, and moralism is centered about Dolores, whom Harry remembers Dora's appearance as.
The only winning move is not playing (or semi-opting into ultraliberalism, I guess).
personally I always understood Joyce's statement about capital as being about recuperation
There's nothing, only warm, primordial blackness...
Damn, I never even caught the connection between Everart being the drug don and Harry's addition struggles, nice observation!
Also, thank you for calling Joyce's smart-sounding quote for being as meaningless as it is.
Edit: Okay, I do sort of agree with everyone in the comments pointing out that Joyce's statement isn't about hypocrisy. She's basically saying, "all of your futile attempts to stand against the system will just be bought and sold as the newest trend." However, I'm still not super sure if I agree with that either, like I'm not naive enough to act like mass-produced Che Guevara t-shirts aren't a thing that happens a lot. But I also just don't know how I feel about the idea suddenly socialism means nothing being rich jerks can co-opt the aesthetic, like, I think that a shitty capitalist company making a movie with left-wing themes doesn't mean that the movie's themes are themselves incorrect, even if the suits in charge didn't believe in them.
I also think it's worth noting that Joyce was talking about Cindy the SKULL and her counterculture fashion when she said that. Cindy probably does dress like that because it means something to her ideologically, but I think it's interesting how Joyce doesn't even consider the idea that someone might want to dye their hair and wear their grandma's old coat purely because... they just like it?
At the end of Scrap Take's excellent DE essay (ua-cam.com/video/vJkamriBQT0/v-deo.html), he talks about his reading of the Pale. To him, it represents ideology and politics itself, and I really like that reading and it resonates with me a lot. I am a leftist, and I hate how this sounds, but I think that human connection and understanding are both more important than ideological purity in real life and the moments thereof in DE are the best and most meaningful parts. I dunno if this makes sense or not, but Joyce not considering the idea that some people just dress a certain way because they like it fits with the idea of being born into a world burdened by the actions and beliefs of humans in the past and being told that you need to figure out how to feel about it and take a stance- like every action must be a statement, or a stance. And I think that is true, everything is political to some degree, even unconsciously. And there's no room for just not being sure about who you are or what you believe... it's all so overwhelming. Just like the Pale.
Sorry if that got kinda rambly towards the end, but I think I'm just irritated that people hear Joyce's proclamation that there's no resisting capital and simply grimly nod their heads and submit to it. I know it's the ultimate irony because of how the devs lost the IP rights to Disco Elysium, and that sucks. But also, I don't think that DE is a failure or that it's message is suddenly meaningless because of that, or that every politically outspoken indie studio is doomed to the same fate. I think it was Octavia Butler who said something like, "hundreds of years ago, the Divine Right of Kings probably felt as unchangeable and overwhelming as capitalism does today"?
I loved the talk about Disco Elysium and do want to see more. If you're also looking for other games, I'd love to hear any of your thoughts or a topic on a part of Yakuza:Like a Dragon
I'm sure Hasan's giant mansion, luxury sports cars, high-end clothing, and private parties are very important to promote noble causes like From the River to the Sea.
I don't like Hassan. I just think arguments from hypocrisy don't address core ideology but an individual person's personal failings.
Rich people should like Zionism?
Interesting perspective on things, I don't really agree with the vast majority of your analyzes, but it really stands out compared to most other Disco Elysium videos.
vowsh
Based
@crypt5129 threatening people with rape is based apparently.
Well this comment section certainly explains the lack of engaging political commentary in this video rather than personal fantasies based of misunderstandings of a video game.
what @@jvh4438
@@jvh4438 What are you on about, who mentioned rape
love your analyses, and just finished a disco elysium run.... can't wait to watch this
Being forced to ‘optimize’ your time as a kid is bullshit.
Sure, for a task, an individual event or item it’s a valuable skill to learn or be aware of.
Being forced to day in and day out optimize every moment so you can stay on a ‘grind set’ as a kid though?
That’s just cannibalism masquerading as an origin story.
Feel you at the end about the Left. I consider myself Leftist, but I don't get along with a majority of Leftists.
Sound analysis, only note is stylistic- every time you say a redundancy like "self-flagellate himself" or "self-hate for himself" i taste blood. One self-flagellates; one cannot self-flagellate anyone *but* oneself. Do with this info what you will.
To not talk about the framing of the man in the chair misses why he's so unsettling. It's more than confined, it's a confused world around him.
I don't want to type more about what isn't your video, but the framing... that's immediately everything.
At the end of the game you can figure out Evrart had his political rival assassinated, which reminds you of how Stalin got into power and it's very interesting to see it being portrayed because he was written by some Estonian communists. It perfectly represents a feeling that is common in eastern europe, "yeah, he is corrupt, but at least he's doing something", which after experiencing this for over 20 years, I can say that this attitude shouldn't be tolerated, especially when the people in power don't even have to do that much to get this excuse, that argument only works when they actually achieve something.
We in Eastern Europe also recognise this when we ally with the West, Romania and Lithuania allowed US black sites in our capitals and joined in the US invasion of Afghanistan because we wanted to join NATO to defend ourselves against the real and proven threat of a Russian invasion. This is why we Eastern European leftists hate Hasan, after Russia invaded Ukraine Hasan and his community always made fun of "NATO leftists" like it's impossible to come to this conclusion and every time we would try to argue our position we were met with derision. He called NATO a mafia protection racket, but the main point about those rackets is that they were involuntary and that if you refused their protection the mafia themselves will come to destroy your shop, not Russia. I left Hasan's community when he bought Chapo's Felix Biederman on after the invasion and they said they wanted for the dissolution of NATO.
Actually, it is a lot of Hassan's rhetoric around exactly what you mentioned that I dislike. The framing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good litmus test for those who are actually anti-imperialist and those who do so just to oppose the US. The flattening of the narrative by many ML's purely because Russia's Soviet history is awful. I'm in Poland for Christmas with my GF right now and it's very much the sentiment here. It's rare to find left leaning people who agree with Stalin, but in places like the US it is so common I think primarily bc of the abstraction from real events. Happy New Year! Thanks for the comment
@@HidinginPrivate Thanks for sharing your feelings on the matter, hope you had a merry christmas and will have a happy new year too
It is easy for me to make this critique from over 1000 miles as someone who will only ever have to deal with the most abstract consequences of these choices (barring the possibility of nuclear war), but I also believe it possible to be too close to the forrest to see the trees.
You paint the Russian threat of force as a concrete threat and I'd be insane to dispute that, but dismiss NATO's very record of military and economic coercion and political subterfuge so thoroughly you don't even bring it up to dismiss. I understand the perspective, NATO's carrot and stick dimplomacy certainly looks better at a glance than Russia's just stick approach, but I find little difference in how they weild the stick. If Romania and Lithuania had followed the alternative path to avoiding a hypothetical Russian military incursion by politically capitulating to Moscow, do you believe NATO would simply accept the choice and leave them be?
I also find your justication of allowing American black sites and participation in the war in Afghanistan plainly disturbing. You don't even paint it as some unfortunate necessity and only offer the concrete political motivation for doing so as justification, and I'm sorry but that's simply not good enough. Stalin had concrete political motivation. Bin Laden had concrete political motivation. Putin has concrete political motivation. Are these actors justified by the mere virtue of thinking they have a good reason?
All this said, I do find the willingness of some Marxists to believe Russia as some sort of benevolent, good faith force for anti-imperialism as disturbing as anyone else here. The Impulse comes from the belief that the world needs a counterbalance to NATO dominion, not some delusion that the Soviet Union never fell. No, they suffer from a different delusion: The counterbalance they wanted is emerging, and the fact that it took the form of a deeply regressive power like Russia is too hard a pill to swallow. I can't get on board with such nonsense, but I do sympathize with them. It seems to me that two competing evil empires is preferable to one acting without repercussion or accountability of any sort, but the situation is still lightyears away from not being an abject nightmare.
@@gonzoengineering4894 "You paint the Russian threat of force as a concrete threat and I'd be insane to dispute that, but dismiss NATO's very record of military and economic coercion and political subterfuge so thoroughly you don't even bring it up to dismiss." That's because I don't dismiss them, they're consequences of living with world powers, it's a constant in history, the US, USSR and China are comparable, with the US being worse historically on a global scale. Also NATO was never invoked to invade a single country, only Turkey invoked article 4, not article 5, to protect its border against Iraq and Syria, but we all know it's used to attack our Kurdish allies in the region which they see as terrorists because they're the same ethnicity as the terrorists in their own country.
"If Romania and Lithuania had followed the alternative path to avoiding a hypothetical Russian military incursion by politically capitulating to Moscow, do you believe NATO would simply accept the choice and leave them be?" We left Ukraine and Belarus be, Euromaidan happened because Yanukovich lied and has done the exact opposite of what he promised to his electorate and because of this Ukraine got invaded twice.
As a Romanian, I live in a country that's been surrounded by war, Serbia because of their genocide, Moldova and Ukraine because of Russia and vis-à-vis on the Black Sea we have Georgia and Armenia-Azerbaijan because of Russia. Our decision was already made for us.
"It seems to me that two competing evil empires is preferable to one acting without repercussion or accountability of any sort, but the situation is still lightyears away from not being an abject nightmare." You prefer the Cold War and now Chinese geopolitical situation compared to the short period after the USSR fell and before China started seeing itself as the new global superpower?
@@Bobogdan258 All fair perspectives, but to answer your last question: Yes. Unquestionably and without flinching.
You’re becoming my favorite video essayist out there,, and disco elysium is one of my favorite games!!! It feels like a Christmas gift honestly 😭💖
I hope I do!! I try my best! Merry Christmas and happy New Year
Why has this game suddenly become a trending thing? I love it, it's just years old. Can anyone explain?
You're connections to OUR system are very wrong. However you get the game pretty good.
I’d love to watch more Disco Elysium content from yiy
Vegans also love avoiding the fact that plants can communicate and feel pain.
Look at the drawings!!! Such a cool video!!!
29:40 excellent background music choice, blue flow from haibane renmei : D
Goated anime
"Buy my product to critique capitalism" is what Joyce roasted.
Id like to both applaud and critique your refusal to summarise the plot. I’m a huge fan of the game and listen to any video essay I can find of it, most of them spend around 70% of their script just repeating key events in the story. Focusing on this or that aspect of it without necessarily explicating how this is what all the games events are “about” can make as an interesting consideration as the whole of the game if not more, as it allows more focus on this or that particular side of it. To let the viewer digest it for what it portrays and not try to swallow the 15 layer sandwich of story in one bite. I agree with your final words that this video spoils everything and nothing. Like Inland empire telling you all the answers with zero explanation of the extremely nuanced circumstances of them, a spoiler brutal enough removes little surprise in the first experience of a story. Communism killed the hanged man Coppo.
Though there are some points in this video I feel are a bit detached from the portrayal within the game. Joyce isn’t particularly passionate about lasse fare capitalism being the dominant economical system through martinase and the world of Elysium in general. She doesn’t deem it just, through ethical or strength values which make it stronger than other ideas in the struggle to manifest in the world. She’s mostly a capital realist. Meaning she considers anything outside the behaviour of the free market can’t resist the invisible unguided hand of it. Not as a principle to follow and adhere too, she just assumes that’s how everything runs. Everyone wants money, everyone will do what they can to make money. What the heck, let’s hire some death squads to break the union strike. Her saying capital has a tendency to sublimate critiques of it to make them support itself isn’t a triumphant call in favour of it. She sees it as a sociological observation. Which is the ultraliberal bread and butter. People say there’s an issue with capitalism? Awesome let’s sell a solution. People can’t afford living off the wages capitalists are willing to share with them from all the surplus value their labor adds to raw materials&services? Companies can offer workers company towns to alleviate that issue AND make use of the workers living under their care to surveil and make sure the worker is more work focused. The issue is that the solutions capital can think of can’t resist the sneakiest ways to squeeze as much as they can from anyone desperate enough or unaware enough to recognise any squeezing possible of more money. We can’t buy our way out of the system of everyone squeezing everything possible to make higher profits, but you, like Joyce here, insist that that’s the only way to be at the moment. And it’s possible that both of you are right, while it is possible that Joyce could’ve also not hired a deathsquad to break a strike, and not give up on said deathsquad as not worth holding back after the death of their leader. And she might be correct on both these issues. Edgar eventually claims to have hoped to leverage the death of Lely to push through and spark a new revolution with outrage at the reactive violence. And Krenel won’t back down from their vengeance under any dialog option at least available to the player, it’s not unreasonable to assume the people used to unrestrained brutality without any regard to anyone wouldn’t be reacted to Joyce’s commands to stop. It’s not unthinkable that they’d shot her too. It’s a big game of poker. Joyce and Edgar are trying to play chicken and peek to see if the other is going to fold at continually increasing stakes. Joyce isn’t a passionate believer in capital. She is a resigned believer in it. Which effectively is no less if not even more dangerous than insisting it’s the best way to live, as trying to justify it can allow clearer understanding of problems with insisting on its inevitability than simply giving up on anything else.
Leftists do have something to lose from bad alliances. Bernie giving support to Biden gave the US many of Trump’s policies with a more polite face. Though you are 100% correct in recognising the petty fights between leftists tend to fracture in places beyond actual practical possibilities. Focusing on what can and should be done with as many parts of society as possible is the best course of action.
There is a potential in accepting the resisted meal already made in reinforcing the understanding in the unaware maker that this habit does not require more consideration, beyond for the maker themselves, that it does not require more consideration of the values of the offered opposer to the meal. My parents need reminders often that i will not eat non free range meat, but eventually the message sorta sticks and at certain meals I do not have to reject a meal as opposing my values, preemptively preventing minimal support of the institution I oppose. Most meals can also be refrigerated and heated later, but that assumes both a refrigerator and an oven which are not necessarily accessible to the maker of the meal. Thank you for the ethical thought experiment it’s been fun to ponder
I would love to hear aboht the hardie boys
I really like Noah Gervais’ read of Evrart where he is a true believer that every single worker deserves a seat on the board, and naturally he’ll be chairman. Natural as breathing.
21:05 idk why i feel the need to thank you for saying this, but i do. coincidentally enough, i would liken this principle going over most surprised heads like turkeys. I know I was dumbfounded when I saw tens of them take off for the first time.
Great video from a leftist perspective. I hadn’t even realized you were the same guy making those amazing Steven universe video essays- I really love your stuff!
you start spinning your wheels and missing the point past a little bit after the halfway point