A Brief Introduction to Disco Elysium's Ideology

Join this channel to get access to perks: @ratattalks This is a long video essay on the themes and ideology of Disco Elysium, pulling heavily from leftist political theory and the writings of Robert Kurvitz to shape an overview of this genre-defining classic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCES Bukharin, Nikolai, Crisis of Capitalist Culture, 1934 Debord, Guy, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967 Dennett, Daniel C., Higher Order Truths About Chmess, 2006 Eco, Umberto, Ur-Fascism, 1995 Engels, Freidrich, The Principles of Communism, 1914 Gramsci, Antonio, Against Pessimism, 1924 ERR, 'Disco Elysium' creators win President's Young Cultural Figure award, 2020 Hayek, Friedrich, The Road to Serfdom, 1944 Hegel, Georg, The Encyclopaedia Logic: The Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences 1 with the Zusätze, 1812 Jackson, Andrew, Social Democracy from the Golden Age to the Great Recession, 2024 Kello, Katrin, Identity and Othering in Past and Present: Representations of the Soviet Era in Estonian Post-Soviet Textbooks, 2017 Kennedy, Kevan, Review: ‘Disco Elysium’ – Political, Poignant, but Pessimistic, 2020 Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine, 2007 Kurvitz, Robert, Sacred and Terrible Air, 2013 Kurvitz, Robert, Outro to Disco Elysium Art Book, 2020 Laird, Skylar, SC Board of Education Member Calls for Review of PragerU in Schools, 2024 Mattick, Paul, Anti-Bolshevik Communism, 1978 Marx, Karl, Capital Volume 1, 1867 Martinez, Francisco, Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia: An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces, 2018 McCarthy, Caty, How the "Last Living Soviet Video Game Developers" Recruited Chapo Trap House for Disco Elysium, 2019 Norberg, Devi, Estonia's “Return to Europe”: The Relationship Between Neoliberalism, Statelessness, and Westward Integration in Post-Independence Estonia, 2024 Obedkov, Evgeny, ‘Involuntary’ departures of key Disco Elysium devs: what it means for ZA/UM and game’s sequel, 2022 Parenti, Michael, Blackshirts & Reds, 1997 Parenti, Michael, Dirty Truths, 1996 Prager, Dennis, Is Communism Moral?, 2021 Tomberg, Jaak, Sirp, Jaak Tomberg Robert Kurvitza romaanist, 2014 Trotsky, Leon, Fascism: What Is It?, 1932 Varoufakis, Yanis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 2023 Ventura, Luca, Poorest Countries in the World 2025, 2025 Whitney, Rich, US Provides Military Aid to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships, 2017 ZA/UM, The Political Alignment System, 2019 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Introduction 00:05:19 Post-Sovietism 00:14:24 The World of Elysium 00:21:55 On 'Traditionalism' 00:34:40 Neoliberalism 00:43:02 Moralism 00:53:06 Communism Explained 01:02:42 Principles of Inframaterialism 01:09:43 Miserable Nostalgia 01:15:14 Revolutionary Optimism 01:22:57 Life Gets Hard, But We Go On ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MUSIC Blackwell Academy - Life is Strange OST Lost Haven - Termina OST Usugurai Residence: Houses - Yume 2kki OST Dark is the night (old soviet song) Everything else from Disco Elysium OST ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GENERIC TAGS Ratat, Disco Elysium, Scared & Terrible Air, Zero Parades, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, ZA/UM, Measurehead, Lore, History, Sleep, Socialism, Robert Kurvitz, Sea Power, Gaming, Running out of words tbh, unsure what to put, hopefully the algo don't mind too much