A Critique of Centrist Politics Through the Lens of Disco Elysium
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don’t really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child’s toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn’t change -- not even incremental change. It is *control*. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
This is the text Disco Elysium presents its players with after they have spent nearly an hour-and-a-half of in-game time contemplating centrist politics. The grand end state of the centrist political projects is, as the game states, normalcy. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be and better things aren’t possible. Nothing sinister to see here.
Key Art from Disco Elysium from Aleksander Rostov of ZA/UM
Disco Elysium is a role-playing game known for its politics. The player must solve a murder set in a world much like our own, but set in a country that underwent a communist revolution before having its government overthrown by liberal foreign powers. The game can be comedic and over the top in its portrayal of politics and government, but, through those extremes and comedic jabs, we can look at our own world with a fresh perspective. We can take in the game’s critiques, jabs, and embraces of its political factions and use that to better understand our current political climate.
Thought Cabinet Art from Disco Elysium from Aleksander Rostov of ZA/UM
The four political affiliations represented in the game are the Communards, the Ultraliberals, the Fascists, and the Moral International (Moral-Intern for short, the centrists). The game has critiques of all these points of view, and includes optional side quests for all four paths in the Final Cut. Critics of the game’s politics come from across the political spectrum, but most argue that it is too far left, despite its critiques of the Communards, who are depicted in game as a book club that has managed to purity test itself down to two members. Fascists argue that the game’s portrayal of them is too cartoonishly racist, but what is Fascism if not the game’s portrayal of men fearful of competition in the sexual marketplace. Ultraliberals, the game’s stand-in for neoliberals, got their revenge on the game in the most free-market of ways: buying the rights to the game out from under its creators and pushing them out. “Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead,” as stated by the game’s most prominent Ultra, Joyce Messier. But Disco Elysium saves its sharpest sword for the Moral-Intern.
The Moral-Intern is an international organization that claims to uphold humanist values, believing themselves to be the inheritors of the legacy of one of the game’s key religious figures. Their stated values are the preservation of humanity, democracy, and incremental progress. It is the dominant political ideology, governing the game’s setting, Revachol, after having toppled the Communist government that formed there previously. They are the political center, composed of center-left and center-right parties. The Moral Intern are shown to value order, stability, and the status quo above all else. They are also portrayed as frustrating, obstinate, and evasive, much like their real-life counterparts. They are personified in-game by an exasperating bureaucrat known as The Sunday Friend. The Sunday Friend is a witness to key events surrounding the game’s central murder mystery, but only because he was engaging in sex tourism at the time (“The Sunday Friend” being a moniker given to him by a local). When a player asks him about his ideals, they run headfirst into a fortress of obfuscation and talking in circles as if they had asked the most polished real-world Democratic Party operative. Their only consistent beliefs are the rejection of all other factions and the maintenance of inflation at a stable two percent.
Screenshot from Disco Elysium from ZA/UM
So what does it look like when centrists govern? The Moralists came to power by toppling a communist power accused of human rights violations. They did so by indiscriminately bombing a city and invading. They carved the city up and handed zones of control to their member nations. Free market capitalism was imposed on the former commune, and the rich were once again allowed to prey on the poor, making record profits off of cheap labor. Stronger nations carving up the weaker and bourgeois exploitation of the poor are viewed as the natural way of things. Any improvement in conditions must come at a snail’s pace. A police force, the Revachol Citizen’s Militia, was established under the coalition government to keep order. Additionally, the Coalition Government maintains an airship that is constantly hovering over Revachol. “You see, in addition to being an airborne artillery platform, Coalition Warship Archer is also the linchpin of the Coalition’s surveillance and communications infrastructure in Revachol,” The Sunday Friend explains to the player as if a surveillance state with a gun to the head of every citizen were completely normal.
The game takes place in Martinaise, a slum district of Revachol. It was largely destroyed in the overthrow of the previous government and was left in that state as a cruel reminder of their misdeeds. Bullet holes and artillery craters scar the city four decades later. Its citizens are impoverished and regularly turn to drugs and alcohol to escape the harsh realities of their material conditions. The drug problem is so pervasive even the children are portrayed as using and attempting to sell them. Labor actions are met with mercenaries acting as armed strike breakers. The coalition government oversees this all, and even employs the Citizen’s Militia, the peace keeping force that acts as police, but to the centrists, this is all so…normal.
Art from Disco Elysium Mobile by MoonColony from ZA/UM
The player can choose to embrace this centrist worldview. Doing so allows players to internalize the aforementioned “Kingdom of Conscience” thought, which boosts the player’s morale for choosing centrist dialogue options, protecting the player’s frail psyche so long as they defend the politics of doing nothing about our problems. If you dismiss all other worldviews enough times, you earn the achievement “The World’s Most Laughable Centrist,” much to the chagrin of players and streamers that try to play the game without engaging in politics.
Through The Sunday Friend and the laughably centrist dialogue options available to the player, the game is yelling the same message the left has been saying for years: centrists have no values. They claim to be the extremely normal in the face of extremes. They claim the moral high ground by avoiding any moral argument. The status quo is put on a pedestal. They do occasionally pay lip service to their claimed humanist values, but reform comes only incrementally. Minor changes to tax code, toothless policies, and strongly worded letters are all that’s on offer for a struggling working class.
The centrists’ goal is ultimately the maintenance of the status quo, and it affects how they relate to other political ideologies in a variety of ways. Ultraliberals extracting wealth from the working class are perceived as normal, so Centrists give them free reign. Fascists trying to appeal to a sense of tradition, albeit one that never truly existed, are normal to centrists and therefore tolerated, so long as they don’t get too openly violent. The only true threat to the status quo is from the left. The left of the United States and the Communards of Revachol are united in their goal of upturning the status quo and shifting the balance of power—both economic power and political power—back to the workers, so centrists work to silence them and prevent their movements from ever getting off the ground.
Art from Disco Elysium Mobile by MoonColony from ZA/UM
Much like our situation here in the United States pre-Trump era, the workers of Revachol were governed by centrists and preyed upon by Ultra/Neoliberals. Wars, both militaristic and economic, were normalized, but only if it was the dominant power smashing the poor. Troop deployments and arms shipments were normal so long as the victims were poor nonwhites abroad. Economic disparities were normal so long as the victims were poor nonwhites at home, but once that poverty came for whites and nonwhites alike, the working class began clamoring for a solution. Here in the US the working class can’t even turn to labor organizing. Existing trade unions are entrenched in the existing power structures, and they will do nothing to upset the status quo. New labor unions are slow to form and get crushed before they get off the ground by Ultraliberals who refuse to even meet them at the negotiating table. The only solution allowed to develop under Centrist rule was fascism.
With the only existing labor movement firmly in their pocket, US Centrists, faced with no real opposition, have sat back to watch as the US descends into fascism. In the 2024 election, the Democrats tried to sell us normal. Inflation was coming down. The economic situation was fine, we just couldn’t see it. We just had to vote for normal, and normal things would continue to happen. They chose to ignore how much the workers were struggling, but those struggling workers knew their situation was bad and getting worse. The fascists were offering them solutions, mostly by scapegoating nonwhites and social minorities, while the left was being choked by the center. Regardless of what corporate owned media will tell you, the left has not had a foothold in US politics. Anything to the left of total corporate capture is labeled radical and unelectable. So the working class, desperate to escape its current normal, tried to return to a mythical normal of the past.
Key Art from Disco Elysium from Aleksander Rostov of ZA/UM
In the current election cycle, we see the pendulum swinging leftward, but the Centrists are working harder to stop it than they ever did to fight fascism. They see the workers fed up with the way things are and are back at it pitching a return to normality. Vote them in and everything—gas prices, food costs, and genocides—will go right back to normal.
The working class must reject this call back to old norms and dare to build a better world. The old normal, centrist rule by aristocrats who talk in circles about how fine things are, got us into this mess. Persecuting minorities and immigrants has done nothing to address the absurd amount of wealth inequality we’re facing. More tax cuts for the rich are never going to get the workers to prosperity. Spending all the money in the world on the police will never address the issues that lead people to addiction and crime.
Only the left is talking about actual meaningful solutions to our problems. It is gaining traction in the current political climate, but the corporations and their bought-and-paid-for centrist politicians would go back to siding with fascists before they ever consider allowing a leftist movement to come to power. The “Workers Deserve More” platform put forth by the DSA is under constant attack by both mainstream and far right news outlets. It offers a basis for real solutions to our problems instead of the scapegoating of the right and the lip service of the Ultraliberals. As such, it is derided by Ultraliberal-owned media, which gives it air time nearly every morning to rally its viewers against it. A democratic workplace is a utopian fever dream. Public ownership of the largest corporations would lead to authoritarian communism. A world without a senate full of aristocrats would be anarchy. They want us to believe that better things aren’t possible. These people aren’t your friends.
Key Art from Disco Elysium from Aleksander Rostov of ZA/UM
It is time for the working class to build power on the left. The fight is uphill and against giants, but the contradictions of capital have exposed their weaknesses. Now is the time to join a leftist organization in your area. Every politician that tries to tell you that better things aren’t possible should have a working-class primary opponent. The Fascists will scream at you for siding with minorities. The Ultraliberals will look down on you for daring to dream. The Moralists will call you an extremist for engaging with politics at all.
But these people aren’t your friends, and they’re certainly not your comrades.
Get involved today.
The easiest way is to join the DSA at DSAUSA.org/join and get plugged in with the people fighting against normal for a better world.