Helldivers II and Making Art about Fascism without Making Fascist Art

Everybody's Talking at Once

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 179.

Helldivers II is a wildly popular co-op shooter. It’s also extremely funny. It’s also very much about fascism, both in the sense that its satirical lens is aimed at fascist tendencies in moribund democracies, and in the sense that its core pleasures are… sort of fascist?

The music makes you feel like a hero as you do your space violence on behalf of Super Earth, and let’s be honest, the capes are rather dashing. Here’s a game that wants to have its cake and eat it too, and we’re inclined to say it pulls it off. So let’s dig into how it’s doing what it’s doing, and the slipperiness of making art about fascism that isn’t useful to fascists.
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• The clip about Super Earth is from this Helldivers II ad. The in-game propaganda and advertising are fairly consistent in tone, and so far, in terms of world-building as well.

• If you’d like to keep entirely Joel mysterious in your mind, then we can respect that—but if you’d like to know more (to coin a phrase), then Aftermath has you covered (kind of).

• Here’s my piece on moon, and one where I talked more about “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in contrast to “Springtime for Hitler.”

• Here’s Umberto Eco’s essay on “Ur-Fascism” and Ruben Ferdinand and Elliⓞt’s essay on Attack on Titan (a classic pairing).

• We use bits of Lindsay Ellis’ video on Mel Brooks, F.D Signifier’s video about Hajime Isayama’s New York Times interview, and Mark Brown’s recent video on Spec Ops: The Line.

• We don’t think there’s anywhere to (legally) hear the full Starship Troopers commentary other than the physical releases of the film, unfortunately.

• The Freud quote is from The Ego and the Id, and the Truffaut quote is from this interview.

• The intrusive thought at the end is from this clip.

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“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Guren no Yumiya” by Linked Horizon, from the first season of Attack on Titan.
“My Heart Leaps Up” from Mack and Mabel by Jerry Herman.
The extraction and victory music from Helldivers II.

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