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(hexbear.net)
this silly little post managed to make the redditors over at the disco elysium sub drop bangers like
''Orwell is cursed to be misunderstood by both left and right 
''
''How dare the Union do [CRIME] to fund their militant activities?? Don't they know [CRIME] is BAD!??''
This ain't even a media literacy issue, this is a literacy skill issue.
Look at my communists dawg! We're never getting anywhere! 
It’s entirely intentional that Joyce is one of the more affable people you come across juxtaposed to Evrart who is an unscrupulous sleazeball; yet one is knowingly an agent of Capital perpetuating misery (and eventually death) in Revachol while the other represents a net good for Martinaise and potentially a force for positive change, however messy and flawed. The game isn't even subtle about it.
People hung up on his amoral actions in that thread are apparently missing the wider context about how bleak things are in a city where Corpos feel comfortable enough to hire bloodthirsty, racist mercenaries to break strikes. Or how every little bit of organized struggle on the ground is what revolutions (“The Return”) are made of.
i think a lot of liberals completely miss that most people talk to the main character like a cop, because that's what he is. Joyce is warm and welcoming to HDB because he's a cop. Evrart is smarmy and sends HDB on wild goose chases because he's a cop who collaborates with the board of directors of the very company who Evrart is striking against. The entire game takes place from the perspective of a dumbass alcoholic amnesiac cop and that colors every encounter you have with people. Like I've heard liberals try to say the game actually mocks all political ideologies, including communism, because the communist characters are rude to you, or they waste your time, or they're mistrustful of you. Yeah no shit, because every one of them looks at you and sees a pig.
It's as if you don't believe a cop could be a socialist revolutionary
spoilers
well it's not just me. The only person who takes Harry seriously by the end of the communist vision quest is Kim. That's either because Kim's got a good read on people, or he trusts Harry, or maybe it's because Kim's spent the most time with Harry so he realizes all the socialist stuff isn't an act. He'll describe you a "Mazovian socio-economist" to your colleagues at the end of the game, adding something like "He wants to liquidate the capitalist class, which is highly unusual for a police officer."
No one else believes Harry is an actual socialist. Mañana humors Harry briefly, but that guy has a very chill attitude and I could never get a good idea on what he's actually thinking.
Someone here once said something to me like "the deserter and Harry are both bad communists for opposite reasons." The deserter because he's lost all connection with the public, and Harry because he's a goofy amnesiac cop who's never read a single sentence of theory and lives off vibes. Harry's got his heart in the right place though by the end of the game, which is shown as being way more important
I think that was a reference to when you ask Elizabeth when they’re moving on to armed revolution and she laughs it off
The two student communists seem convinced of Harry’s genuineness by the end of the quest, even if they still acknowledge him as “gendarme”. Helps when you’ve accrued enough commie points and read through some theory to get the better ending.
Yeah, you're right. I didn't mention those two because I interpreted the students as representing very young, western armchair leftists. Or ultras. Who knows what they'll find genuine next week
Or they represent the very common experience of wanting to connect with leftists in your area, you hype yourself up to get a revolution started, then discover the local party is two guys who hang out in an attic and argue over three sentences of theory. This game is too real.
The RCM is literally a remnant of the former ICM, the "Black and White Army" of the Communards, so the line is blurry.
And yeah, Revachol and some other parts of the Insulinde were colonized by Sur-la-Clef/Suresne, a not-so-subtle French analogue and the name itself is inspired by a famous French anarchist. I assume Robert Kurvitz just took inspiration from the Paris Commune and let worldbuilding take it from there.
The other element to this is it illustrates that politeness is a function of power and privilege. Joyce can afford to be affable to whomever she wants because she has nigh unlimited resources and a private army and is capable of doing whatever dirty work needs done out of the collective eye (Capital only has to drop the mask for an instant). Claire also dissembles and uses people to accomplish his goals, but it's because he has to outmaneuver an opponent with superior resources and institutional power. He's easier to "see through" than Joyce because he works out of a shipping container rather than a fancy boat and would look silly trying to talk and act like Joyce. He has to fit into his milieu.
There's something that's removedled at me ever since I wised up to the fact that politeness is used as a weapon to stifle dissent. At first I thought it arose as an unconscious reaction because people instinctively realize that it reinforces the status quo, but seeing politicians constantly harp on politeness (even otherwise abrasive assholes like many republicans), I've come around to the idea that the wealthy have always understood its role as a weapon. I know most politicians come across as idiotic and tone deaf, but you don't get to national office without understanding that people are malleable and tend to reflect whatever energy you put out. Smarm is kind of a poor man's version of that, the double bluff where you can't fake sincerity but you can come across like you're acting like you're faking. The game does a good job of illustrating it by putting you on your back foot with the negotiations if you accept the giant novelty check.
When it comes down to it Evrart and Joyce are converging on similar psychological principles but from opposite ends of the sociopolitical spectrum.
That's a pretty interesting point. I kind of wish there was an option to make the communist rant you can give Joyce more coherent.
if it came coherent out of a cop's mouth, it would be realistic