Build Your Political Tower in Disco Elysium
An edited version of this blog post was published on 02-07-25 in Dutch socialist magazine Paraat.
Capitalism, centrism, and fascism walk into a bar.
The bartender asks, “What’ll it be?”
And they all order the same fucking drink.
Different glass. Same poison.
It’s a joke. But it also isn't. Try placing all three ideologies in a Venn diagram. It works horrifically beautifully.
Exploitation, control, hierarchy—three distinct elements of the same regressive ideology. One has a stock market, the other sees that stock market as the natural order for a stable world, and the third has a dictator or king with a funny little hat. But the outcome is always the same: you own nothing, you control nothing, and if you try to push back, the boot comes down. Hard. On the back of the proletariat.
This article centers on two elements: the role-playing video game Disco Elysium (2019), and the philosophical concept it introduces: Nilsen’s Tower of History.
Towers of Babel
We all dream—or low-key hope—for a utopia. Even if we don’t call it that, most of us carry some idea of how the world could be better. Politically, personally, or instinctively, we each have a blueprint—shaped by the ideologies we've inherited or chosen—for how we might get there. Each of these blueprints builds a Tower, a structure reaching toward that imagined better life. Some rise higher than others, but we all have our own Tower (of Babel).
In Disco Elysium, Nilsen’s Tower of History is an impossible structure, built from revolutionary faith rather than engineering. The “leaning tower wrapped in a helix” symbolizes the dialectical nature of history—a spiral motion balancing between hope and collapse. Constructed from “collective revolutionary plasm,” it doesn’t rest on concrete, but on the willpower of a people who believe in the utopia they’re building together.
But the storms always come—low-pressure systems that tear through the fragile tarpaulins shielding our towers from collapse. And so, the Towers fall like houses of cards—or matchboxes.
Thus, Nilsen’s Tower of History is both a metaphor for revolutionary possibility and a tragic reminder of how promised justice repeatedly crumbles under the pressure of reality. A reality where people of opposing ideologies seem to speak different languages. The divine intervention of the Tower of Babel still curses us.
And yet, we keep building. Again and again.
Disco Elysium intertwines political ideologies not just thematically, but mechanically within gameplay. Through biting satire and philosophical reflection, the game reveals how capitalism, centrism, and fascism (and everything in between) are merely variations of the same oppression—and why the anwer is socialism, and yes, communism. It remains worth dreaming about and building up as the only political Tower that's not structurally flawed.
Disco's Game Mechanics
Disco Elysium is a story-driven role-playing game, released in 2019 by Estonian studio ZA/UM. Inspired by classic isometric RPGs like Planescape: Torment, it trades swords, magic, and xenophobic fantasy allegories for beer cans, the hangover that follows, and the alt-right pipeline.
You play as a completely wrecked detective waking up in a trashed hostel room after drinking yourself into oblivion. You don’t remember your own name, your lost love, or your political beliefs—and the game gives you the space to rebuild (or utterly obliterate) all of that.
There’s no combat system. You’re not some cop superhero with a 30-round revolver - you’ve lost it (and your badge too). The gameplay loop revolves around dialogues with NPCs, internal monologues, and skill checks. Skills stem from four core attributes: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics—each branching into 24 unique skills, all with voices of their own. High Drama makes you theatrical, Sire. High Electrochemistry makes you crave sex and drugs (Harry Hornbug). Inland Empire lets you talk to your necktie (and he's Irish). Your thoughts become characters debating what you—the player—should do and decide (that’s so me fr fr).
Another key mechanic is the Thought Cabinet—a system that stores your political beliefs and personal delusions, internalizes them, and eventually turns them into gameplay modifiers. As you explore the world, you explore yourself. Slowly, a worldview forms—sometimes contradictory, sometimes terrifying, sometimes beautiful.
The game was written and designed by a team led by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz. And yes—Disco Elysium is an explicitly leftist game (in case the text didn’t already make that clear). During their acceptance speech for Best Narrative at the 2019 Video Game Awards, the developers gave a shout-out to Marx and Engels. The gaming press noticed—Vice called it “brave” to “come out as Marxist.” And online, you’ll find countless forum posts from gamers confusedly asking: “Wait, Disco Elysium is leftist?!?!?!?”
Not Like Other Detective Games
The game takes place in Martinaise, a broken district in the occupied city of Revachol. Once the site of a failed communist revolution, it’s now a neoliberal debt colony ruled by the Moralintern—a faceless coalition of global powers that crushed the Revacholian Commune and “restored order.” Five decades later, they’re still there. Their imperial hand hangs over the city in the form of airships with massive fuck-off cannons to quell any sign of resistance.
Visually, the game uses a painterly art style—a mix of surrealism, expressionism, and neo-noir. The workers’ struggle has never looked so dreamlike in its decay.
The soundtrack, composed by Sea Power (formerly British Sea Power), blends post-rock with ambient and orchestral elements—it’s deeply melancholic (those horns, those echoing horns). It recalls the dream of that communist revolution, violently shattered by the Moralintern, leaving behind only pockmarked ruins, bullet holes, and collective trauma. The Tower of Communism in pieces, and no one dares to rebuild it.
Your task? Solve a murder. After all, you’re a detective (right?). A member of the Revachol Citizens Militia, the de facto police force. But you don’t serve the people (no police force really does). You serve the Moralintern, keeping their dominion stable.
But that’s just the surface. You can play the “Boring Cop,” enforce the law as the obedient, bootlicking officer the Moralintern trained you to be. Or...
Four Political Towers
You say fuck it. Go full Homo-Sexual Underground Commie hobocop that throws finger-guns at racist fascists and grinds the bourgeoisie into paste to feed to the pigs! Viva la revolución, motherfuckers!!!
In Disco, ideology seeps into your thoughts, your language, your bloodstream. The game offers four distinct ideological directions: Communism, Fascism, Moralism, and Ultraliberalism. You don’t “choose” them. You slide toward them, dialogue by dialogue, until they become something noble, horrifying—or boring. The ideological pipeline made manifest in a vidya gaem.
As you talk to people, some choices are tagged as political. Advocate for collective ownership? +1 Communism. Brag about your sigma-male hustle-grindset? +1 Ultraliberalism. Say something nationalist (and racist)? +1 Fascism. Avoid politics altogether? Congrats, you’re a model Moralist—headpats for the good little centrist.
An (extreme, yet fitting) example from the game:
RHETORIC [Easy: Success]
You feel something... rising through you — a familiar feeling. AN OPINION taking form...
- "We should ground the workers into fine paste and feed them to the pigs."
- "We should ground the owners into fine paste and feed them to the pigs."
- "With this little foreknowledge I am unsure which side to grind into pigsfeed. The decision must ferment in me. Also -- nationalism."
- "I don't think grounding one or the other side into pigsfeed will do anyone favours. I am really, really smart."
- "I've spent the last 20 seconds deciding on which side to ground into pigfeed — why?"
After reading the sections on ideology below, come back to these dialogue options and ask yourself:
Which ideology fits which answer?
Every ideology is a corpse, dragged out from history. The game lays the body in your hands, looks you dead in the eye, and asks:
“You. Do you believe in this?”
If you don’t, you pick the final option and ask yourself: why? Why should I even think about this?
I have no opinion. Opinions are for extremists.
Tower of Communism — Mazovian Socio-Economics
"0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world."
This is communism as eulogy. The barricades where you once heard the people sing are ashes. The chairs and tables where the revolution was planned are empty. The blood has long dried and been wiped away by the shattered survivors. The symbols of the commune and of solidarity have faded—pasted over with ads for cigarettes and fossil-fueled cars. The class traitors have long executed the idealists. What remains are books on communist theory, collective traumas, and you—hungover in your underwear, trying to remember where it all went wrong.
But Disco does not mock communism for its ambition. It mocks the audacity to still believe—because belief in a better future for Les Misérables is the only thing the game truly respects.
"Maybe with your help, it will be 0.001%."
This is what revolutionary memory looks like under capitalism: degraded, ghostly, ironic. The tragedy isn't that communism failed. The tragedy is that those who tried to build it were lined up against the wall or buried during the Red Scare.
And yet, the game dares to ask: What if?
Even if the answer is a sorrowful, crooked maybe.
Tower of Fascism — Revacholian Nationhood
"The Revacholian State will be a serene place. (You should get a drink.) A beautiful, serene place of mystery and peace. It will not be a place for women to infect with their frailty and hysterics. Or where the Semenese will be allowed to wear their pants around their ankles. All of that will go. (Once you get a drink.) The socialist professors at the École Supérieure will be fired, the editors of Trompe le Monde will have to beg in the streets. You'll pour your beer into their begging hats and laugh. (You should get a beer.)"
Fascism in Disco Elysium isn’t an ideology. It’s hormonal. A reflex of fragile, wounded masculinity in need of a gun and a (different skin-colored) scapegoat. Its “vision” is a delusion—a state of racial purity, female obedience, and lukewarm beer. The game wraps it in absurdity and punishes you if you follow this path.
Your Morale score drops every time you choose to be a racist fascist when your gut whispers it to you:
“Your gut gurgles solemnly and a wind passes: them filthy foreigners took your job, your women and made your beer warm.”
This is fascism stripped of grandeur. No grand parades, no tight uniforms—just incel-rage, alcoholism, xenophobia, and uncontroll.ed flatulence.
As Antonio Gramsci said: fascism is a “crisis of authority”—when capitalism fails and workers aren’t organized enough to fight back.
Fascism always ends with you shitting your pants.
Tower of Centrism — Moralism
"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."
Centrists believe in nothing—except the illusion of belief. Just act normal. Don’t overthink it. Trust the invisible hand of capital hanging above you. Trust the airships.
No coincidence that Moralism’s official color in Disco Elysium is signal blue, represented by the slogan:
“A blue forget-me-not; a piece of the grey sky.”
It doesn't seem cruel. It doesn’t shock. Order, safety, law enforcement don’t necessarily feel oppressive. They’re bureaucratically polite. Morally hollow.
This is the ideology of the post-political era—capitalism with a concerned smile. It’s the system that butchered the communards of Revachol, and now funds NGOs to memorialize them.
Disco tears off the blue flower to reveal an imperial warship—its cannon aimed at anyone who dares to dream of radical change.
Centrism is the most normalized ideology of all. It rules through numbness. Who doesn't know a centrist?
Tower of Capitalism — Ultraliberalism
"Business loves silence, the second loudest sound in the world, eclipsed only by the collective screams of market crash victims. So let me whisper to you: do you feel the veil of the sun-god slipping? Are the better days gone, are we entering bankruptcy? Is the company gonna go down and leave you in the gutter with the rest of the dredges, delivering parcels for soup money? You need to crisis-manage your way out of this."
This is the ideology of influencers, consultants, and CEOs who say “work-life integration” instead of “I sleep in my office.”
Ultraliberalism is capitalism without shame (or taxes). Its only moral language is efficiency and profit margin. It will say anything, sell anything, become anyone—as long as the spreadsheet balances. All for the upward curve. It'll only cost you your soul.
Ask yourself: do you believe any of this?
Do you think money is freedom? That brands are identities? That selling out means growing up?
This is the logical endpoint of unfettered capital: laissez-faire wet dreams. You walk around with a picture of Ayn Rand in your wallet, you neoliberal sack of shit?
The joke in-game is that going ultra-lib doesn’t even make you money. You can hustle-grind your bad ass all you want (i.e. fraud and embezzlement), but you earn jack shit in the hellscape of Martinaise. There’s nothing to invest in. You don't have money. You can’t even afford your hostel.
Disco knows: capitalism doesn’t need your belief. It just needs you to need it.
And in the end, you always do.
Disco Elysium is Proletarian Literature
What makes Disco so powerful is its refusal to offer easy answers.
It doesn’t waste time arguing with centrism.
It doesn’t beg for acceptance from (laissez-faire) capitalism.
It doesn’t sell you a fantasy where the market magically heals itself if we all hustle harder, or where salvation trickles down from the golden shitters of the bourgeoisie to poor little workers.
No.
It sets the whole thing on fire.
It treats centrism as the numbing drug it is. It drags fascism into the light and exposes how hollow and broken it is.
And the only ideology it truly critiques is socialism—not because it claims it’ll work, but because it’s the only ideology that still deserves serious critique and reconstruction.
All the other Towers are crumbling. Their foundations were never solid, and will never be.
You meet grizzled social-democrats, infra-culture anarchists, basement-dwelling commies arguing about esoteric literature in secret book clubs, and a political commissar from the killed Commune of Revachol— now traumatized, bitter and looked down upon by class traitors, while leaving him in a ditch.
They still have the answers, even when beaten and scarred.
The strength still left in them? It might just let you dream again.
“In dark times, should the stars also go out?”
Echoes in the Pale
In Disco Elysium, Nilsen’s Tower of History is the dream of a better world—an idea people build toward, bleed for, and watch collapse again and again.
The game shows us a world where the dream of a Tower of Communism has already been crushed, where the past is nothing but faded red stars and bullet-hole scars.
But Disco doesn’t wallow in pessimism or melancholy.
Failure doesn’t mean the dream is dead.
Fascism is hollow rage.
Centrism is just keeping things as they are.
Capitalism doesn’t care if you believe—it just forces you to play along.
But Socialism, with all its divergent currents, its internal debates and criticisms?
That’s still the only thing worth arguing about. Because it tries to build something for everyone.
And yes, it’s okay to mock and tease your fellow socialists.
Because we know that, at the end of the day, we must awaken together:
"Brave workers, ‘tis no time for bed
Fight till there’s no slaves below, and no masters o’erhead."
So let’s build that Tower.
And together, keep it standing.
Further Reading & Sources
- Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (2021). ZA/UM.
- The Miracle Animal and the Pale: Inside Existential Thought in Disco Elysium – Haywire Magazine
- Blake Hester and Jacob Geller. Something Rotten Podcast.
- Social Skill and Disco Elysium – Ighton, Serene Library
- Disco Elysium – Best Narrative Speech @ The Game Awards 2019 (YouTube)
Postscript: TikTokficating Disco
ZA/UM recently announced a mobile version of Disco Elysium, “intended to captivate the TikTok user.”
Fortunately, most of the (core) developers from the studio have long since left (the real ones have integrity).
The game that once held a steamy mirror to Mr. Cap A. Lism to show his "Expression" is now being reissued to appeal to our most lizard-brained impulses:
Open wide, papa made your favorite.
Upcoming Part 2 on Monolith TTRPG campaign
What Disco Elysium did through its narrative and virtual dice, I tried to replicate at the table with pen-and-paper and physical dice. House of the Rising Sun is a tabletop roleplaying campaign I'm running for Monolith (the sci-fi Cairn hack). It's about a corporate colony ship sent to TRAPPIST-1e as Earth collapsed. Players took on the role of chosen colonists, handpicked by the fictional Purefoy-Amun Corporation, and its esoteric CEO and were tasked with building a new society from limited resources. The campaign asked players to engage directly with real-world ideologies: capitalism (the American way), communism (the Ortho-Marxist way), fascism (the Nazi way), theocracy (the Ancient-Egyptian way), and more. There were no real clean slates—only recycled ideologies and the same collapsing structures dressed up as solutions. It was up to them to build their own Tower, and keep humanity alive for another few millenia (and maybe finally build true Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism?).
In this upcoming Part 2, I’ll explain how I used this campaign to turn political ideology into a gameplay loop, and how my players responded when asked to decide not what sounded good—but what kind of Tower was actually worth building.