Each Attribute has an associated political leaning, with Endurance being a Fascist, Rhetoric being a Communist, Empathy being a Moralist/Centrist and Savoir Faire being Capitalist/Libertarian. This fits well for the following reasons.
Physical Skills are often associated with the concept of Might Makes Right, and a fascist would believe only the strong can decide the course of society, relying heavily on paranoia and being a physically superior human being.
Endurance, the most explicitly fascist skill, is also associated with the gut, as in "gut feeling". Populism/fascism are near-universally associated with appeals to emotion and "common sense" as opposed to rationality and academic knowledge.
If you bring up various contradictions in being a fascist, your gut will suggest it's best to let it do the thinking about such things.
It's not a coincidence that to represent Fascism, the developers chose an organ that is literally full of shit.
Intellect Skills align themselves to Communist and left-wing ideals, as they were born out of intellectual philosophy. Like a pure thinker, they believe their ideas would work, even though human nature is irrational.
However, the specific intellect skill that's chosen to represent Communism is Rhetoric, which is literally all talk.
Motorics Skills aligns themselves with capitalism, as they are often the inventors and creative thinkers and the opportunists. Justifying their rule by selling skills normally without value but made valuable, much like Savoir Faire's slimy charms, allowing them to convince the communists into thinking they are right and trying to overthrow the fascists, only to allow the nation to fall so they profit.
Psyche Skills aligns themselves with Moralism/Centrism, as it focuses on empathy and idealism. Even though in reality, it is blind idealism that led to Revachol being under the oppressive thumb of foreign countries.
Harry's parallels to Ellis Kortenaer, the murdered man, and Iosef Lilianovich Dros, the Deserter, who murdered him:
When you go to examine the body, the opening bars of Sea Power's "Burn, Baby, Burn" begin to play; the final melody of the song (the mournful piano tune) is what plays when Harry wakes up; and it plays in full as you travel to the island. The song is the through-line of the investigation - it begins with Ellis' body, goes on through Harry's dreams, and ends at Iosef's island.
Harry post-amnesia can't help but notice he's hired to solve problems and kill people. Ellis, a Krenel mercenary, did the same. Iosef joined the Insulindian Citizens Militia for that same purpose, and more or less never stopped killing.
The very first person Harry encounters when the game begins is Klaasje, the woman with whom Ellis was having a relationship. That relationship (and the Deserter's jealousy) led to his death. Depending on how you play it, Harry almost immediately upon seeing Klaasje tries to hit on her.
If you succeed in your Inland Empire check to "talk" to Ellis, his voice actor is Mikee Goodman - who also voices (among others), Harry's "Reptilian Brain", his "Limbic Centre"...and the Deserter. Perhaps reflecting on the fact that deep down, Harry sees himself (his old self) as no different from either of them.
After an exhausting search over many days, Harry ultimately finds that the killer was Iosef - an old man, bitter and alone, abandoned by friends, hooked on substances, obsessed with a girl who's never going to love him back. The most important thing that separates Harry from the Deserter is that he's wiped his mind so completely as to be able to reinvent himself from scratch, while the Deserter has stoically persisted, letting his personality fester.
The Deserter refers to "the mask of humanity" that falls from the face of capital:
The Deserter: It has to take it off to kill everyone — everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed.
This is in reference to his deserting during "Operation Death Blow", the vicious attack that came from the Moralintern in response to the communist uprising. Depending on the choices you make as a player, you may already have forced Harry to wipe away a mask of his own - "The Expression" - leaving him looking more sober and world-weary. If the player chooses fascism as a political quest, this becomes necessary, Harry becoming the grim-faced "Icebreaker", sworn to cut through everything in his path.
If Harry replies to the Deserter's above assertion that he is in fact an Ultraliberal, a Moralist or a Fascist, he will be told that Moralists and/or police are merely the "Meat Shield" protecting the fascists (he does not see any real difference between the clean-hands centrism of the Moralintern and fascism). If he claims to be a Communist, he will dismiss Harry's version of Communism as a mere intellectual pursuit, insisting he is really "a liberal and a pederast". No matter what ideology Harry subscribes to, the Deserter still associates him with the "Mask of Humanity" that drove him to his current state of being.
Interestingly enough, if Harry is a communist himself and agrees with the Deserter that the bourgeois, liberals and artists should be deported to a labor camp in Yekokataa (the zone of geological catastrophe), the Deserter suddenly admits he may have been wrong about Harry and that he might be an actual communist after all. He then adds that he wouldn't mind being transported to Yekokataa himself, revealing his self-loathing similar to Harry's ("At last — atonement for my sins: revisionism, reactionary ideation, desertion..."), and is more at peace for being arrested by a fellow communist. As is well known, Soviet communists were very fond of forcibly relocating people, which the Deserter himself commends as redistributing workforce where it's most needed and defensively adds that everyone does that anyway, revealing (without acknowledging it himself) the irony of communists hiding behind the "Mask of Humanity" just like the Moralintern.
It's easy to note that Kim's portrait has a proper white halo on a black background, denoting his saint-like patience and overall position as a moral compass. It's harder to notice that your original partner also has a halo — a square (yes, historically halos could be square) black one over a bluish police background.
NTM this parallels with the halo-like effect that occurs when Harry develops a "thought" from his surroundings.
The two verses from the Communard song "La Revacholiere" shown in the game are taken from the song "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" by Manic Street Preachers. Not only was that song inspired by fighting fascism (specifically the Spanish Civil War), but you learn the verses when meeting the Deserter, who comes to mind if you recall a certain other verse from the original song:
And on the streets tonight/An old man plays/With newspaper cuttings/Of his glory days...
Though it also reflects on Harry - another old man keeping clippings of his "Glory Days" in his clipboard...
Of all the people Harry interviews, the "Sunday Friend" is the one who reacts most strongly to accusations that he is the murderer - if Harry pushes it, he will become outraged, threaten Harry's job, and refuse to talk further. This is not a mere breach of etiquette. The Sunday Friend is a Moralist politician. He strongly resents the implication that he took an active hand in anything!
Which also explains why he didn't call the RCM when he observed the "lynching" - he describes his reaction as shock, but it's far likelier he merely felt reluctant to do anything but passively observe, as is his custom...
All the available ideologies turn Harry into a Strawman Political character of some sort because, instead of legitimately believing in them, he's actually using them to cope with the end of his relationship with his ex:
If Harry's a communist, it's implied that she got him into communism when they were young, during the time she thought Harry was cool. That's why communist dialogue options consist mostly of charged, intellectual-sounding words and obsession with violent revolution, and why its associated skill is Rhetoric.
It's also implied that she left him to be with a rich man in Graad, thus ultraliberalism and most of its dialogue options consist of hustling and making money in general, in a feeble attempt to win her back.
Fascism deals with Harry coping with resentment and the need to feel superior. That's why sexist "women, am I right?" options give points toward it. It also somewhat explains why its related thought raises the bonus for consuming alcohol.
Finally, moralism relates to how Harry became an officer of the RCM because of her (the RCM role is to enforce the Moralintern law, after all) and also how his confused mind idealizes her as Dolores Dei, the historical figure from whose life the ideology is based on.
The coda of the ending demonstrates that the political exploration of the game has helped Harry - and the player - to appreciate his true, possibly apolitical, motivation beneath it all. In a flashforward, Captain Ptolemaios Pryce of Precinct 41 counts Harry as one of the officers he can rely on when a planned future revolution begins. When questioned about Harry's stability he replies "Harry's our man, he'll pull through — and when he does he'll side with Revachol." No matter what, Harry's priority is doing the right thing for the RCM, and for Revachol's people.
The nickname of Kras Mazov is 'Kak Ras', analogous to the Russian idiom 'Kak Raz', i.e. "Just Right", used in reference to clothing. A clever connection, perhaps, to the game mechanics allowing certain clothing items to give Harry a stat boost...
Some Fridge Brilliance in the "Political Vision Quests":
The Communism Quest involves Harry getting close to the local socialist club and learning specifically that they believe that the more people subscribe to Communism (or "Mazovian Socio-Economics"), the more reality will literally warp to accommodate that belief, with crops becoming more plentiful and technology becoming more efficient. This culminates in them inviting Harry to help rebuild a model tower out of matchboxes. The invitation is only extended if Harry has already read the Infra-Materialism book all the way through; and if Harry has said fewer than 30 explicitly "Communist" lines up to that point, the tower will collapse halfway through reconstruction. Following this, the equestrian statue will become covered in pro-socialism posters and invitations to the next meeting.
Communism is still a purely intellectual pursuit. If Harry doesn't believe enough, then the cause is doomed. However, as noted in the completed "Mazovian Socio-Economics" thought, while failing to build Communism has made him extremely depressed, it has also made him more intellectually aware. Notably, out of all the "Political Vision Quest" thoughts, Communism is the only one which provides extra experience points, perhaps suggesting that it is the only thought which contributes positively to Harry's development as a character.
"Mazovian Socio-Economics" also ends in saying that "Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world", suggesting that it is also the only political philosophy which allows him to understand the world as it is - which is true, even if only in that an understanding of the political revolution is key to understanding the motivations of The Deserter.
The Moralism quest is one which can, unlike the other three, actually end the game for Harry: after collecting the right radio broadcasting equipment, he becomes able to contact the Warship of the politically centrist Moralist International government, that which is in control of Revachol via a mixture of tepid compromise when it comes to social issues...and command over a large arsenal of super-destructive weaponry. Harry tells them about the hole in reality found in the church, and they give him the opportunity to report his findings to them in-person. In order to get to this point, Harry will have had to swallow Moralist doctrine to the point that he would prefer to join them permanently, hovering aloof over humanity in quiet judgement. In point of fact, to even contact them he had to take the radio antenna to the top of the equestrian statue, so he's literally put himself above everyone else! He will tell Kim he no longer thinks the case matters; Kim will point out that he's abandoning reality, and/or his responsibilities as a police officer, in order to chase an impossible ideal - or to run away from a trauma that is *inside* him. If Harry ignores him and chooses to go, the game ends, with no closure on the murder investigation or on Harry's trauma. In point of fact, the "Kill Screen" newspaper headline following Harry being spirited away shows that his disappearance has worsened the situation.
In becoming a centrist, Harry abandons the tangible difference he can make in favor of chasing empty idealism. The Moralist thought ("Kingdom of Conscience") provides mechanical benefits but only in that they make Harry feel better about himself as he is, rather than incentivising him to change.
The Ultraliberal quest: after some chat with Cindy the Skull and the Mega-Rich Light-Bending Guy (if you're able to get into the locked storage crate), Harry becomes convinced he needs to become a 'hustler'. The rich guy gives him a set of stocks and the game's UI is updated with a "Net Worth" tracker. He engages the services of Idiot Doom Spiral in becoming his new "Personal Brand Manager", and they agree the perfect way to get his brand recognised is to redecorate the equestrian statue. Depending on which "Copotype" that Harry has opted into, the statue will be redecorated in that style following the Mercenary Tribunal - Apocalypse Cop gets cardboard signs with slogans of doom; Boring Cop gets an array of parking tickets; Sorry Cop gets wreaths of flowers (like the ones Klaasje found in her room) and a black veil on the rider's face; Superstar Cop gives the rider a new sceptre and saddlebags made of disco balls. Whatever the display, Kim will be impressed, and express gratitude that the two are alive to see it...but will question Harry as to what inspired his quest, and point out that in trying to become a "better" man, he has underpaid both Cindy and Idiot Doom Spiral in order to line his own pocket. Harry will insist he's done the right thing, but his inner thoughts continue to insist on hustling, forever. Further examination of the 'stocks' he has been given will also expose that they are in fact a photocopy.
Pursuing wealth, Harry has allowed himself to become conned, and to try and con others. The lack of gains which the player can achieve through this quest expose that the pursuit of wealth is almost impossible for someone who did not inherit it, and despite the fringe benefits, ultimately causes more suffering than it alleviates (in that Harry exploited two vulnerable people for the sake of his personal brand, and will be unable to actually pay them).
The Fascist quest: becoming obsessed with "turning back the wheels of time", Harry pursues the idea of somehow returning to the past. Unlike the other quests, in talking to various characters, Harry will be rebuffed again and again - Gary, the Racist Lorry Driver, René, Measurehead and the Paledriver all tell him that he would be a fool to try. Eventually, following the natural course of fascism, Harry cannot reconcile the various contradictory aspects of his new philosophy and just decides that “Love… time… Revachol… It’s all shit.” The quest ends in front of the mirror, where he wipes off "The Expression" and replaces it with a cynical grimace, embracing the identity of "The Icebreaker" (named after a small boat that cuts a path through the ice for larger craft), a "noble sufferer" defined by his coldness and his unstoppable path. However, if you try to explain this to Kim (who has become horrified at Harry's facial paralysis), he replies "Are you fucking insane?!" and loses his cool for the first and only time in the game. Following this outburst, Harry instantly loses any sense that being "The Icebreaker" is the right thing, and the concept seems "lame".
The fascism quest is not about building or promoting fascism but about demonstrating how someone who is alone and traumatised - just as Harry is - can become easily radicalised all on his own. Harry's turn is entirely self-serving, and falls apart when held up to external scrutiny; it's a shallow mask for his inability to deal with the pain he feels inside. Mechanically, completing the fascist thought only encourages Harry to get deeper into his drinking habit and thus degrade further as a person.
If Harry ends up communicating with the Moralintern's representative via Warship Archer, he can learn more about their philosophy, mission and ultimate goals (as well as their disappointed, patronising thoughts on other political philosophies). At a certain point, she describes (with pride), the sunset over the town of Advesperascit (which means "Evening Comes"): as the sun sets, the columns of the city form a lattice of shadows, of such intricacy that the shadow of those who walk through the plaza becomes "interwoven" with it. As much as Warship Archer takes pride in the idea, she forgets that the question she is answering is "What awaits us at the end of the road?". Her answer to Harry is something that is made of nothing but shadows, beautiful but insubstantial. She even admits that it was built "[b]y thousands of people over many centuries, in keeping with a precise plan each believed in but never expected to see the final completion of." The Moralist mission is to "preserve" humanity and the status quo in order to create something that only they and people like them could enjoy, at the expense of all the people whose lives they sacrifice in order to build it.
Harry's immediate next thought is of an "Egret", which his Encylopedia skill tells him is "a heron with white plumage. At various times its feathers have been prised for ladies' hats." Questioning Warship Archer reveals this is also the name of the Warship's coordinated artillery system. The first image reinforces the idea of ordinary people (especially working-class people like Revacholians) being "plucked" to create a pleasing image for the aloof political upper class; the second reminds the player that the beautiful fate the Moralintern has envisioned for humanity is bought with blood and threats.
Alternatively, Harry can ask "How much time does humanity need to achieve its potential?", to which Archer will frankly reply "[a]bout 3000 years."; if Harry thinks that's too long, she is evasive, but if he thinks it's not enough time she replies "It is in all senses the most moderate and reasonable projection possible based on current science." Another reinforcement of the unfairness of the Moralist vision: the blunt reminder that even if he participates in it, Harry will never see it come to fruition. Even if he asks when "true democracy" will come to Revachol, she provides only noncommittal answers and reiterates that the Moralintern plans only in terms of centuries and millennia. Continuing to insist on getting democracy ASAP will be answered with "Well, that isn't very realistic, is it?", that democracy is something that must be built only with gradual change, allowed to preserve and endure - which prompts Harry to compare to Advesperascit again. Harry has gone to great lengths to achieve this meeting, but all that Moralism can promise him is complicated bureaucracy and insubstantial ideals.
The Pale is related to human thought and implied to be misery as a whole. Combating it seems to require having strong beliefs and dreams. The Doreans built churches over weak spots in reality and kept them at bay before they were burned down. Its implied that building a dance club over the old one may actually "cure" the Pale issue. Indeed, the Whirling-In-Rags is still functional despite being built over the same doomed commercial district? Why? Because it's bringing in joy.
The ultimate resolution of the case doesn't have anything to do with the interviews you do, examining the motivations of people involved, or the dramatic police show detective works. Instead, it's actually solved entirely by forensics. You just locate the bullet and follow its trajectory to where it's found from to find the murder weapon before arresting its owner. In real life, a lot of cases are never solved by anything other than physical evidence with things like motive determined after the fact.
Moralism is actually hard to explain as it's vaguely democratic (but not supporting Revachol being self-ruled), vaguely progressive (but not too quickly), vaguely capitalist, and vaguely authoritarian. Which makes perfect sense as it is the argument of not being too much of any ideology, which makes it a bit of all of them—and not their best qualities either.
The track that plays for the ending meeting with Harry's old squad sounds very similar to the theme that plays when entering the Military Tribunal; both having a guitar as a consistent part of the song for instance. However, the Tribunal theme has the guitar play over the rest of the instruments for most of the track, while the track for the old squad is more subdued and blends in more consistently. This serves to highlight how the two events are similar in how important they are, but also how the tone and situation for both are different. The Tribunal theme is tense, and the guitar is persistent in a way that indicates the amount of time you have before things escalate into unavoidable violence is up and you only have time to keep the conversation going to think of what to do. The track for the meeting with the old squad lets the guitar blend in more to highlight how the situation is more controlled and peaceful, but still has a layer of tension as it reviews your actions, and determines your future, reflecting how the two situations aren't that different, yet still are.
Early on, when Harry discovers that he's lost his gun, Kim attempts to reassure him by saying that guns can be replaced, while people can't. If Harry doesn't acquire some kind of weapon and have it equipped before he confronts the Tribunal, his only option once all others are exhausted will be to lament that he didn't recover his lost gun. This causes the Tribunal to end with the deaths of multiple people, including Titus Hardie, Theo, Fat Angus, and Elizabeth.
Furthermore, if Harry does not either get his gun from The Pigs by helping Evrart get two signatures or pursue the hidden "Spirit Is Eternal" quest to get the Spirit Bomb, the only way for Harry to show up armed at the Tribunal is, when confronting Ruby, to destroy the Pale Latitude Compressor, allow Ruby to kill herself and then pick up her gun. Hand-Eye Coordination even makes note of this when Ruby presses the gun to her head.
Hand-Eye Coordination: [Formidable: Success] If she kills herself you'll get her gun...
It makes sense that Harry would be especially distraught over his break up with Dora. As "The Human Can Opener" Harry is an expert at figuring out what makes people tick and manipulating them, being unable to understand why Dora was leaving him and being unable to stop her probably drove Harry's detective brain insane(r).
The reason Revachol can seemingly never move past history, why the world can never move past history, is because of the Pale. In our world, memories fade and wounds close, until even the worst tragedies are forgotten. In theirs, the memories are forever bouncing around in the Pale, always ready to re-emerge and rip open old wounds.
It's also all but stated by the game that the Moralist government will never, ever actually arrive at their end goal of Utopia, which probably doesn't help.
The Moralintern's solution to the Pale matter is implied to be endless meetings and science when the probable solution was probably just building a church (or dance club) around it. It also means completing the Moralist quest is the worst solution for everyone.
Tiago is possibly not remotely insane when he talks about meeting "The Mother of Silence" since he is communicating to something beyond the Pale. Given the rumors about Doroles Dei, it's possible he could be talking with her as well.
Harry can give up alcohol, drugs, and do his best to atone. He can even internalize thoughts about giving up drinking and cleaning up his mental headspace. Unfortunately, the police will then inform him this is his third attempt to do so.
If you go to the island with Cuno rather than Kim, the final moments of the game have a horrifying irony - despite hearing the Deserter's haunting story of being recruited young into the Insulindian Citizen's Militia, losing his nerve and spending the majority of his life homeless and paranoid...Cuno is still eager to sign up to the Revachol Citizens Militia, the ICM's successor, at an even younger age.
Because, like Harry and the Deserter, he's lonely and hung up over a girl.
After spending most of the game dreading the "Mercenary Tribunal" Harry lives through it and solves the case...only to run into a personal tribunal of his own, the three 'Judges' being Jean, Judit and Trant.
When Harry is mortally wounded, his dialogue options include:
"Kim...I lied. About not remembering who I am. I made it up...I remember everything."
...followed by the options of:
"I'm a fucking failure and the love of my life left me."
Or:
"Everyone knows I made it up. I'm just a drunk. A stupid dead drunk."
While some have seen the humour in this (esp. in that Kim does not seem to register it and can't recall it later), it can also be read as a bit of Fridge Horror. Why would Harry say that when he thought he was dying? Was he lying to Kim so that Kim would think he'd achieved some closure in his last moments? Or was he telling the truth? Is the version of Harry that the game shows the player over so many hours - the amnesiac cop reinventing himself from scratch - all a front for a self-pitying intelligence of frightening intensity? A side of him the player could never access?
The refrain of Sea Power's "Burn, Baby, Burn", in the context of Harry's dream, seems to be an expression of the tug-of-war in his psyche, and in the political spheres of Revachol.
The struggle between Harry's desire to move on from his grief/Revachol's desire for democracy:
"Want to be free/Want to be free..."
...and Dora in Harry's head telling him he'll always be mourning her/the Moralintern insisting they'll always be in power:
, which the Deserter himself commends as redistributing workforce where it's most needed and defensively adds that everyone does that anyway, revealing (without acknowledging it himself) the irony of communists hiding behind the "Mask of Humanity" just like the Moralintern.