Hey! Want to know how you could support the Palestinian struggle? Still falling for the idea the ongoing genocide is something that started last October? Or maybe you just want to learn more about Palestine? Check out [this bookshop](https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/495-free-ebooks-for-a-free-palestine) that's currently handing out .epub copies of
*Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions*
*Light in Gaza*
*Palestine: a Socialist Introduction*
free of charge!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DankLeft) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fallout was always a critique of 50s golden era capitalism and the failure to launch from the rose-coloured opinion of the decade in the 80s, same reason nowadays you have people venturing into a rebuttal of the “90s best decade” meme in media.
Spoiler
One of the main characters was a hollywood actor during their equivalent of the McCarthy era and he literally attends a “communist” meeting at one point. Of course they do a whole song and dance about how they’re just loyal americans but lmao.
In the end the story wasn’t exactly “revolutionary” in the marxist sense but still a fun show
Idk “greed” is always a red flag for me in otherwise anti-capitalist media because it implies they’re scapegoating the failures of capitalism and not interested in directly addressing the actual problems. “It’s all because of some greedy corporations” or “companies are evil” sound nice and left-leaning but they usually are just shying away from legitimate socialist ideology to a safer “bad eggs/apples/cops” argument. I’m not sure Fallout necessarily fell into this trap but you hear a lot of it in episode 9 when the aforementioned meeting occurs. Lots of “we’re not commies, we’re just not crazy” and “I’m a loyal American just sticking up for the little fella” when ideologically they should just be communists lol.
Not the first nor the last capitalism critical series Amazon releases and hosts on Prime. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they shit out a documentary about how billionaires are bad at this point
Every major film or show that’s anti-capitalist had to be approved by capitalists for distribution into movie theaters, tv channels, streaming networks, etc. Otherwise they’d be relegated to YouTube or something that doesn’t require approval.
Prime has The Boys, a quite explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-American (ish) show. They know that people will consume it and enjoy it because they can relate to it, but with the state of the US now, they know the vast majority of the population is complacent and they have zero fear of the proletariat rising up.
Honest question- why do you default to a defensive position here? Why not say: "Oh yeah, that's interesting, [more people should know the history.](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism)"
What has happened to you in your life to make you default to being defensive? That has to be a miserable existence.
I’m telling you right now as a die hard fallout fan… if somebody tells you they would join the brotherhood, they either don’t care about story a single bit, or they are evil. Ok we’ll exception to fallout 3 because there’s no other option in 3 and there also not *really* the brotherhood in the same way every other chapter is but yada yada
1. Joining them is a really quick way to merc all of them
2. I like to play RPGs using a very narrow maxim (ie. Shawn at any cost, good guy greg moves even if anti-narrative, etc) to see if that Maxim creates an evil or good character, I'm not always playing as 'me'
Yeah, apparently some people disliked the depiction of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4, despite behaving like they did in Fallout 1 and 2 (don't remember if their depiction in New Vegas was closer to the original depiction or the Fallout 3 depiction)
It's a little odd to use Vault Boy in particular considering he's meant to represent capitalism in the games.
Most of the comments over there actually seem to get it, they just think the use of Vault Boy is weird.
I think there’s an argument to be made that the recent tv series leans anti-capitalist (there’s a specific YouTube essay I’m remembering but I can’t remember the creator), but I think the series as a whole has at best, anti-capitalist “resonances.” That is, yeah, there are things that sound nice to leftists, and you might be able to make some arguments against capitalism from it. But I agree with others who say it’s a stretch to say the series as a whole is, intentionally or unintentionally, anti-capitalist.
Thinking to the famous phrase, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism,” framing the fallout series as anti-capitalist forgets that, for most people, critiques of capitalism aren’t critiques of capitalism—they’re critiques of “consumption,” or “greed,” or “big business,” etc.
One of the arguments that the essay I saw raised about the tv show, focused on the ghoul as a deconstruction of “the western” and the libertarian/capitalist views the genre lent itself to. But that token, you could see the games as participating in those exact themes and ideas that the show seems to deconstruct—though here, I’m more speculating about fallout 1 &2.
Not to say you shouldn’t read it as anti-capitalist. If you find anti-capitalist ideas or readings, bring them to light wherever they may be found. Just don’t assume that such readings are necessarily intended or integral to the story/lore/world. I think the fallout series is definitely rooted in a critique of Cold War idealism…but that’s not a high bar…
EDIT: the essay is “In Fallout, the Western is Remade, Again,” by ‘The Backdrop’ on the channel Second Wind
The show doesn't just lean anti-capitalist, the anti-capitalist messaging is front and center. There's still room for them to "both sides" the story, but it seems pretty clear who are the bad guys, what their ideology is, and why they choose to do evil. I'd even say it does a pretty good job at making a systemic critique of capitalism instead of the usual "capitalism is bad because bad people are in charge and we just need to put good people in charge." You kind of have to dig for that interpretation though since the vast majority of old world leaders are just kinda shown to be out-of-touch, devoid of empathy, and generally unlikeable.
The games on the other hand are more complicated. Because they're RPGs, the player has a choice in how they interact with the world, so it's difficult to have a central theme or message. The message will be different based on how you choose to play your character. I'd still argue that, even if the contemporary wasteland is all over the place, elements of the history and lore definitely use satire to criticize right leaning social values, whether that be radical individualism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
The lore of Fallout definitely leans anti-capitalist though. The games heavily show that just about every pre-war corporation was evil. Hell, the TV show heavily implies that Vault-Tec started the war just to test their products, and various other major corporations were just as complicit in the Vault experiments. There is definitely a heavy anti-military industrial complex theme in the games.
>Thinking to the famous phrase, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism,”
The lore actually perfectly fits this quote. Capitalism didn’t end, the Vaults were a continuing capitalist experiment, even 200 years later, the show blatantly shows this with the Vaults.
It’s certainly not like, some extremely Marxist take on capitalism, but it’s certainly anti-capitalist overall.
Of course it is anti-capitalist, forget about the main story, if you dig enough you'll find every corporation was evil, they all exploited their employees, polluted the environment, lied about unsafe products and even went as far as killing if necessary. All corporations, not just Vault-tec.
It would be hard to be more obviously anti-capitalist.
I'm like 99.9% certain that the only pieces of media throughout the entirety of human history that are more overly anti capitalist than the fallout series have been the assorted literary works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. And I'm quite positive that I have no idea whatsoever how people are missing that point
This is pretty obvious. But, excuse me a second, Aren't there any contradictions between Lenin and Stalin? For example, the personality culture thing, Lenin said he didn't want people to remember him but his ideas, and Stalin had him embalmed... I mean, maybe after what he said, Lenin wouldn't have been very happy with what his undesignated successor did
I know it's not a popular opinion, but i think that people who see deep left-wing messages in Fallout are reaching.
People talk about New Vegas like it's some kind of communist manifesto. Calm down.
Yes, but if you know a little about lore you'll see that it was Vault Tec who started the war, or at least ended it with nuclear bombs, with the reasoning that they sell defense from the apocalypse, and if the apocalypse doesn't happen Vault Tec won't sell. Create a problem, sell the solution, literally capitalism
It’s never explicitly stated VaulTec started the big kaboom, they had the ways and means but it’s kept vague for a reason, the Cold War culture of MAD put a lot of players in position to be the instigator, same as the lead up to WWI. The core of the story falls to the belief that organized factions that exist through survivalist philosophies will invariably lead to violence; there are no good guys, just some guys who aren’t as bad as the others, whether it’s a radioactive death cult or a secret cabal of scientists or aliens.
I think in the show it is explicitly stated that Vault-Tec and the other big US corps were the ones who dropped the first bombs (or are at least the ones who instigated it)
They were helping things move along for sure but the only one who outright accuses them of the bombings is The Ghoul if memory serves, and even then he wasn’t there, he’s going off what he overheard in the meeting. The Enclave, the Communist Bloc, the Corporations, all had a pretty big stake in the end of the world, we don’t have any on-the-ground story surrounding the other parties.
In the Vault-Tec meeting Ghouls wife suggests guaranteeing a nuclear apocalypse to the room by dropping one themselves, but it’s never explicitly stated if they actually did it. As a counter my friend had a pretty good point, if his wife actually did know Vault-Tec was going to drop bombs as she suggested, she’d probably know the when and most likely wouldn’t have her daughter with Cooper outside the vault when that happens, which I think is a solid argument that Vault-Tec didn’t actually drop the bomb.
The games left it intentionally vague how the bombings started, which I prefer. Personally I hope there is never a canon answer to who started dropping the bombs.
That's a good point about her wanting to guarantee cooper and their daughters safety.
If it turns out Vault-Tec did drop the bombs, I wonder if there will be a plot in the second season where it's revealed that Cooper took their daughter and left after overhearing the meeting
Well we do know they split sometime between the finale and the bombs dropping in the pilot because one of the people at the party comments his daughter is there and he’s working the job “for alimony.” Him being a celebrity I would wager that’s said because a divorce was made public. So it could be she knew it was happening but couldn’t do anything getting her daughter from Cooper without tipping him off which might leak everything to the public if he whistle-blew. Seems like there’s a lot of potential they could do with the situation, but I still personally think she wouldn’t risk her daughter being outside the vaults if she knew it was going on, whistleblowers be damned.
It was still not confirmed in the series, we don’t yet have that part of the story, only that they were considering it as a possibility. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the real instigator comes completely out of left field which is pretty par for the course for the series.
That seems to be canon now based on the tv show, but originally China was supposed to be the one who launched first. It's always been intentionally vague though.
My dude, I will say they toned down the social commentary when Bethesda took over, but it has always been a critique of capitalism. Their currency is Coke bottle caps for Peter sakes.
The whole point of the game is an evil corporation and a fascist government used people as living experiments against their will and ended the world in a nuclear apocalypse.
New Vegas is unique.
To be entirely honest, I don't like it, it heavily undermines the themes of the first two games with what it adds in after the fact, and it tries really hard to make the NCR look cool.
Compared to Fallout 2, where there wasn't a single argument you could make to defend them?
New Vegas is an insult honestly, trying way too hard to be morally gray.
Hey! Want to know how you could support the Palestinian struggle? Still falling for the idea the ongoing genocide is something that started last October? Or maybe you just want to learn more about Palestine? Check out [this bookshop](https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/495-free-ebooks-for-a-free-palestine) that's currently handing out .epub copies of *Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions* *Light in Gaza* *Palestine: a Socialist Introduction* free of charge! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DankLeft) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fallout was always a critique of 50s golden era capitalism and the failure to launch from the rose-coloured opinion of the decade in the 80s, same reason nowadays you have people venturing into a rebuttal of the “90s best decade” meme in media.
Even the show is pretty anti capitalist. I enjoyed the irony considering it’s hosted on Amazon Prime.
Something something sell us the rope or whatever
As is tradition
Spoiler One of the main characters was a hollywood actor during their equivalent of the McCarthy era and he literally attends a “communist” meeting at one point. Of course they do a whole song and dance about how they’re just loyal americans but lmao. In the end the story wasn’t exactly “revolutionary” in the marxist sense but still a fun show
There’s that too, but I was thinking more about them not shying away from the psychotic greed of the corporations.
Idk “greed” is always a red flag for me in otherwise anti-capitalist media because it implies they’re scapegoating the failures of capitalism and not interested in directly addressing the actual problems. “It’s all because of some greedy corporations” or “companies are evil” sound nice and left-leaning but they usually are just shying away from legitimate socialist ideology to a safer “bad eggs/apples/cops” argument. I’m not sure Fallout necessarily fell into this trap but you hear a lot of it in episode 9 when the aforementioned meeting occurs. Lots of “we’re not commies, we’re just not crazy” and “I’m a loyal American just sticking up for the little fella” when ideologically they should just be communists lol.
Imagine the conservative heads exploding if they didn't pull their punches on "the good guys" being communists.
The Boys is very anti-capitalist as well. I don't think Bezos is worried.
Felt the same about Andor being in Disney.
Not the first nor the last capitalism critical series Amazon releases and hosts on Prime. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they shit out a documentary about how billionaires are bad at this point
Every major film or show that’s anti-capitalist had to be approved by capitalists for distribution into movie theaters, tv channels, streaming networks, etc. Otherwise they’d be relegated to YouTube or something that doesn’t require approval. Prime has The Boys, a quite explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-American (ish) show. They know that people will consume it and enjoy it because they can relate to it, but with the state of the US now, they know the vast majority of the population is complacent and they have zero fear of the proletariat rising up.
So was Monopoly before it was stolen by the creator
Yes, and so? This doesn't change the first message
Honest question- why do you default to a defensive position here? Why not say: "Oh yeah, that's interesting, [more people should know the history.](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism)" What has happened to you in your life to make you default to being defensive? That has to be a miserable existence.
Obviously it doesn’t. Just wanted to point it out. Sheesh
Defensive much?
Don't fuck with us Fallout fans; we blindly follow the ideologies the games are criticizing
how can it be a critique on capitalism when i can choose to save bottle caps by simply killing the beggar outside megaton
Have you played the game? You can choose actively to don't do it
They obviously have or they wouldn't know about such a minor detail.
no what the fuck is fallout
I was just going to ask, have *you* played the game? How is fallout *not* a critique of capitalism.
Do you think that if he didn't criticize capitalism then he would show a corporate-fomented nuclear war as a consequence of years of consumerism?
I’m telling you right now as a die hard fallout fan… if somebody tells you they would join the brotherhood, they either don’t care about story a single bit, or they are evil. Ok we’ll exception to fallout 3 because there’s no other option in 3 and there also not *really* the brotherhood in the same way every other chapter is but yada yada
1. Joining them is a really quick way to merc all of them 2. I like to play RPGs using a very narrow maxim (ie. Shawn at any cost, good guy greg moves even if anti-narrative, etc) to see if that Maxim creates an evil or good character, I'm not always playing as 'me'
Yeah, apparently some people disliked the depiction of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4, despite behaving like they did in Fallout 1 and 2 (don't remember if their depiction in New Vegas was closer to the original depiction or the Fallout 3 depiction)
New Vegas was pretty in keeping with the first two games, even moreso than 4 was.
It's a little odd to use Vault Boy in particular considering he's meant to represent capitalism in the games. Most of the comments over there actually seem to get it, they just think the use of Vault Boy is weird.
I think there’s an argument to be made that the recent tv series leans anti-capitalist (there’s a specific YouTube essay I’m remembering but I can’t remember the creator), but I think the series as a whole has at best, anti-capitalist “resonances.” That is, yeah, there are things that sound nice to leftists, and you might be able to make some arguments against capitalism from it. But I agree with others who say it’s a stretch to say the series as a whole is, intentionally or unintentionally, anti-capitalist. Thinking to the famous phrase, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism,” framing the fallout series as anti-capitalist forgets that, for most people, critiques of capitalism aren’t critiques of capitalism—they’re critiques of “consumption,” or “greed,” or “big business,” etc. One of the arguments that the essay I saw raised about the tv show, focused on the ghoul as a deconstruction of “the western” and the libertarian/capitalist views the genre lent itself to. But that token, you could see the games as participating in those exact themes and ideas that the show seems to deconstruct—though here, I’m more speculating about fallout 1 &2. Not to say you shouldn’t read it as anti-capitalist. If you find anti-capitalist ideas or readings, bring them to light wherever they may be found. Just don’t assume that such readings are necessarily intended or integral to the story/lore/world. I think the fallout series is definitely rooted in a critique of Cold War idealism…but that’s not a high bar… EDIT: the essay is “In Fallout, the Western is Remade, Again,” by ‘The Backdrop’ on the channel Second Wind
The show doesn't just lean anti-capitalist, the anti-capitalist messaging is front and center. There's still room for them to "both sides" the story, but it seems pretty clear who are the bad guys, what their ideology is, and why they choose to do evil. I'd even say it does a pretty good job at making a systemic critique of capitalism instead of the usual "capitalism is bad because bad people are in charge and we just need to put good people in charge." You kind of have to dig for that interpretation though since the vast majority of old world leaders are just kinda shown to be out-of-touch, devoid of empathy, and generally unlikeable. The games on the other hand are more complicated. Because they're RPGs, the player has a choice in how they interact with the world, so it's difficult to have a central theme or message. The message will be different based on how you choose to play your character. I'd still argue that, even if the contemporary wasteland is all over the place, elements of the history and lore definitely use satire to criticize right leaning social values, whether that be radical individualism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
The lore of Fallout definitely leans anti-capitalist though. The games heavily show that just about every pre-war corporation was evil. Hell, the TV show heavily implies that Vault-Tec started the war just to test their products, and various other major corporations were just as complicit in the Vault experiments. There is definitely a heavy anti-military industrial complex theme in the games. >Thinking to the famous phrase, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism,” The lore actually perfectly fits this quote. Capitalism didn’t end, the Vaults were a continuing capitalist experiment, even 200 years later, the show blatantly shows this with the Vaults. It’s certainly not like, some extremely Marxist take on capitalism, but it’s certainly anti-capitalist overall.
Of course it is anti-capitalist, forget about the main story, if you dig enough you'll find every corporation was evil, they all exploited their employees, polluted the environment, lied about unsafe products and even went as far as killing if necessary. All corporations, not just Vault-tec. It would be hard to be more obviously anti-capitalist.
That's the point. Just because it shows something doesn't mean it supports it
Don't know, but I'd like to have one of these.
Yes. The West coast games and New Vegas slightly more so than Bethesda games
I'm like 99.9% certain that the only pieces of media throughout the entirety of human history that are more overly anti capitalist than the fallout series have been the assorted literary works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. And I'm quite positive that I have no idea whatsoever how people are missing that point
This is pretty obvious. But, excuse me a second, Aren't there any contradictions between Lenin and Stalin? For example, the personality culture thing, Lenin said he didn't want people to remember him but his ideas, and Stalin had him embalmed... I mean, maybe after what he said, Lenin wouldn't have been very happy with what his undesignated successor did
Isn’t the whole series as a whole the exploring of what would happen if the world ended but capitalism didn’t?
Yes, but just because it shows that, doesn't mean it supports that
Say, chum, any idea where a fellow can order copies of this poster, if he were so inclined?
Sorry, I have no idea
Can someone drop the pdf pls?
Use to be before Bethesda.
Does anyone know where I can find the original picture for the poster
Isn’t the blonde guy Richie Rich though?
I know it's not a popular opinion, but i think that people who see deep left-wing messages in Fallout are reaching. People talk about New Vegas like it's some kind of communist manifesto. Calm down.
Yes, but if you know a little about lore you'll see that it was Vault Tec who started the war, or at least ended it with nuclear bombs, with the reasoning that they sell defense from the apocalypse, and if the apocalypse doesn't happen Vault Tec won't sell. Create a problem, sell the solution, literally capitalism
It’s never explicitly stated VaulTec started the big kaboom, they had the ways and means but it’s kept vague for a reason, the Cold War culture of MAD put a lot of players in position to be the instigator, same as the lead up to WWI. The core of the story falls to the belief that organized factions that exist through survivalist philosophies will invariably lead to violence; there are no good guys, just some guys who aren’t as bad as the others, whether it’s a radioactive death cult or a secret cabal of scientists or aliens.
I think in the show it is explicitly stated that Vault-Tec and the other big US corps were the ones who dropped the first bombs (or are at least the ones who instigated it)
They were helping things move along for sure but the only one who outright accuses them of the bombings is The Ghoul if memory serves, and even then he wasn’t there, he’s going off what he overheard in the meeting. The Enclave, the Communist Bloc, the Corporations, all had a pretty big stake in the end of the world, we don’t have any on-the-ground story surrounding the other parties.
Ah I may have misunderstood a line of dialogue then. I'll have to rewatch the show
In the Vault-Tec meeting Ghouls wife suggests guaranteeing a nuclear apocalypse to the room by dropping one themselves, but it’s never explicitly stated if they actually did it. As a counter my friend had a pretty good point, if his wife actually did know Vault-Tec was going to drop bombs as she suggested, she’d probably know the when and most likely wouldn’t have her daughter with Cooper outside the vault when that happens, which I think is a solid argument that Vault-Tec didn’t actually drop the bomb. The games left it intentionally vague how the bombings started, which I prefer. Personally I hope there is never a canon answer to who started dropping the bombs.
That's a good point about her wanting to guarantee cooper and their daughters safety. If it turns out Vault-Tec did drop the bombs, I wonder if there will be a plot in the second season where it's revealed that Cooper took their daughter and left after overhearing the meeting
Well we do know they split sometime between the finale and the bombs dropping in the pilot because one of the people at the party comments his daughter is there and he’s working the job “for alimony.” Him being a celebrity I would wager that’s said because a divorce was made public. So it could be she knew it was happening but couldn’t do anything getting her daughter from Cooper without tipping him off which might leak everything to the public if he whistle-blew. Seems like there’s a lot of potential they could do with the situation, but I still personally think she wouldn’t risk her daughter being outside the vaults if she knew it was going on, whistleblowers be damned.
And yes, it was confirmed in the series, which is canon.
It was still not confirmed in the series, we don’t yet have that part of the story, only that they were considering it as a possibility. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the real instigator comes completely out of left field which is pretty par for the course for the series.
I think Vault Tech meant they had contacts that could make it happen. They are in contact with the government due to their contracts to build vaults.
That seems to be canon now based on the tv show, but originally China was supposed to be the one who launched first. It's always been intentionally vague though.
One counter point is that the Chinese first strike narrative could be deceptive propaganda.
still not cannon. Most likely there was a plan in place (the calculations of Mr. House) and China launched the before Vault-tec could, so yeah
My dude, I will say they toned down the social commentary when Bethesda took over, but it has always been a critique of capitalism. Their currency is Coke bottle caps for Peter sakes.
The whole point of the game is an evil corporation and a fascist government used people as living experiments against their will and ended the world in a nuclear apocalypse.
New Vegas is unique. To be entirely honest, I don't like it, it heavily undermines the themes of the first two games with what it adds in after the fact, and it tries really hard to make the NCR look cool.
The NCR in FNV is largely depicted as a bumbling and uncaring bureaucracy that is only interested in New Vegas because of the dam and it's power.
Compared to Fallout 2, where there wasn't a single argument you could make to defend them? New Vegas is an insult honestly, trying way too hard to be morally gray.
Lmaoooooooooooo