Disco Elysium: The Cryptofascist in the Mirror

Disco Elysium allows Harry Du Bois to develop a political ideology through the Thought Cabinet. The Ultraliberal and Moralist ideologies are familiar; the Fascist and Communist paths are designed with similar structural weight. One specific Fascist thought — ‘Mazovian Socioeconomics’ reverse — contains a line where Harry’s internal voice describes his reflection and finds it ‘necessary’ in a specific, political sense.

ZA/UM built this moment to be uncomfortable and coherent: the logic of the fascist internal voice is consistent within its own premises, and it arrives at conclusions that are internally valid. Players who pursued the fascist ideology to completion reported that the game gave the path enough intellectual credibility to be genuinely disturbing rather than cartoonishly evil.

The game’s refusal to make fascism stupid — its insistence on giving the fascist thoughts the same verbal sophistication as all other ideology branches — was a deliberate political choice by ZA/UM. An ideology cannot be argued with if it is only presented as obviously wrong. The fascist branch represents ZA/UM’s engagement with the actual appeal of the ideology, which is the only basis on which it can be critically interrogated.