Talk: Enclave

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Absurdly long introduction section

The "introduction" section preceding the table of contents and the main body of the article is currently 356 words long and large enough that on default display settings it exceeds the length of the window even when viewed at full screen on a 1920x1080 monitor (see image); smaller displays require an increasingly large amount of scrolling the smaller the display gets.

At the risk of giving out useless information I tried to get a metric that would quantify how much scrolling is required and came up with the number of presses of the down key/clicks of the down button on the scroll bar it takes to reach the main content of the article from the very top of the page.

At full screen it takes 12/13 just to reach the very top of the table of contents box. At my personal preferred window size for web browsing it takes 26/27 to do the same. Viewing the site in mobile mode with the window adjusted to roughly the proportions of a phone screen brings the number up to 43/44 for, again, the same action.

For comparison, doing the same on Brotherhood of Steel takes 2 presses at full-screen, 12/13 at my personal preferred size, and 33/34 in my mobile mockup. It is worth noting that my browser will not actually allow me to resize it to the exact proportions of my phone screen; on an actual mobile device the text is even more compressed and requires even more scrolling.

This problem of absurdly lengthy introductions is one that a lot of the wiki's faction articles have, but this is perhaps the most egregious example I notice in my everyday use of the wiki. I understand the importance of conveying a summary of important, relevant information in the introductory section, but I feel that this and many other articles go for a needlessly lengthy and detailed "summary" that borders on a short essay in its length and writing style. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but to me the brief introductory summary that leads into the main article should be a brief introductory summary that leads into the main article.

I'd like to revise this article's introduction section to condense it down into one or two paragraphs that conveys the actually important information about the faction, and nearly just went ahead and did it, but realized while thinking about it that I'd likely just get reverted and chastised for "removing information from the article" or whatever (honestly a hilarious thought, since the point of this section is supposed to be summarizing information that already exists elsewhere in the article), so I decided to make this post explaining my reasoning first to see if anyone actually cares about this other than me.

If nobody responds then... I guess I won't do it, because odds are I'll just get reverted and chastised. I'll post my suggested revision here in a minute after I've written it up. -- DirtyBlue929 (talk) 17:16, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Suggested revision, rough draft with no links or refs:

The Enclave is the self-proclaimed continuation of, and successor to, the United States of America, laying claim to all of its pre-war territory. Originating as a secretive deep state within the pre-war federal government, the Enclave’s original leadership consisted of powerful politicians, representatives from major corporations, and high-ranking military officials, with rank-and-file members drawn from the military and federal law enforcement. Through careful planning, the organization subverted the nation’s continuity of government to ensure they would be among the only government officials to survive a nuclear war.

Following the Great War, the Enclave operated in near-total isolation, with the bulk of its power and personnel concentrated at Control Station Enclave off the coast of California. During this time, they developed an extremely xenophobic, nationalist culture, making multiple attempts to conquer the wasteland and enact mass extermination campaigns against those they considered “mutants.” Following numerous defeats at the hands of other factions, including the New California Republic and the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave suffered severe disruptions to their command structure and ability to project power over the wasteland, effectively ending their ambitions of conquest.

Roughly half the length of current and IMO still conveys everything that's actually important about the Enclave, at least for "introduction to an entire article about them" purposes.

-- DirtyBlue929 (talk) 17:43, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

As final note while I'm thinking about it I'll add that I ran the current intro through Grammarly; it got a grammar score of 82% and a readability score of 18%. The above draft has a grammar score of 100% and a readability score of 5%. I'm not certain about the reliability of the readability score (in both cases it says "college graduates" will find it easy to read but "many" won't) but I figure it's worth noting. --DirtyBlue929 (talk) 18:13, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Anything after the first paragraph seems like it belongs in the Background section, and it might make sense to design a tabbed infobox specifically for factions like this with visually disruptive infoboxes. Or, take the large sections out of the infobox and move them into the article. For example, the locations could be removed, made into a section of the article, and we could add "See [[:Locations]]" to the infobox.

intrepid3598/4/22 1:30pm CT

I'll note that I have as much issue with how it's worded as it's length and contents. I see terms like "quasi-state", "enigmatic alliance of private interests", "informal secret cabal type organization", "coalesced into a coherent entity", etc etc, and all I can really think to myself is "Jesus, whoever wrote this was really proud of how many big and/or fancy words they know, and how "academic" their writing is." I can only imagine how difficult this is to read for someone who speaks English as a second language, or has a short attention span, or is a teen or younger, etc. --DirtyBlue929 (talk) 18:42, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

English is my second language. But yeah, it could be simplified. Generally, the paragraph's idea was to provide a summary of the Enclave, a byte-sized intro, but I agree that it's overly long. Тагазиэль 12:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Fair, perhaps would have been better worded as "for people who aren't fluent in English"; my point there is that we probably have a fair number of users whose native language is not English, and who aren't 100% fluent in it, but who prefer to use the English-language wiki either because they're trying to learn English or because their language's Fallout Wiki has less information or detail - and in those cases this kind of obtuse language would make it difficult to parse at a glance. Hell it may even be difficult to parse at a glance for some native English speakers, as I pointed out.

I showed it to a friend and they laughed, not only because it's so absurdly long for an intro to the article, but because as they described it, it's written in a way that would make them roll their eyes and scroll past without reading it if they were trying to find useful information in this article. IE they'd assume that this information is conveyed in a manner that's faster to read and understand somewhere else in the article, which. Isn't how you should construct a wiki article IMO? The introductory paragraph(s) should be the simplest and easiest to understand part of the article if you ask me. A bite-sized intro, like you said. -- DirtyBlue929 (talk) 00:05, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Since there's been nothing more on this in almost a week I'm going to go ahead with a major trimming. I'm probably setting my sights on Caesar's Legion next; they have a similarly absurd essay-length intro. -- DirtyBlue929 (talk) 22:24, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

"Autocratic democracy"

This makes no sense at all. Autocracy is the ideological antithesis to democracy. Also on another related note, it seems quite presumptuous to label the Enclave's ideology as Fascism, when nothing they do beyond utilizing authoritarianism(which is not even mutually exclusive) is fascist ideologically. Arcade saying one passive aggressive line in reference to is not evidence of their beliefs. Much like the editor who also doesn't understand, he's ignorantly using it as a pejorative for authoritarianism, not ideology.

This needs correcting. ToUniek (talk) 08:25, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Gotcha, removed it. Given what we know, it was a military dictatorship pretty much, and mentions of elections don't change that - if a group of fascists vote for the biggest fascists to lead them, that doesn't make them democratic. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 16:38, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Fascist paramilitary organization?

In the footnotes section, it is stated that Arcade Gannon says: "Only to obfuscate my past association with a fascist paramilitary organization. I'm joking, of course. I will deflect personal questions at any opportunity." He has affiliations with former Enclave personnel. He’s clearly joking, when you hear it, his tone is playful. I don’t think Gannon would think that the people that he would admire would be something as stupid as “fascists.” I think changing the line in the Enclave page would be very beneficial.—Preceding unsigned comment added by PharaohPhoenixI (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

Not quite sure what you're trying to say here. Acknowledging that you personally liked people who were part of a fascist organisation doesn't make them not fascists. Aiden4017 (talk) 06:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

The Enclave are not Fascist.

There are two sources cited primarily for apparently labelling the Enclave as fascist, one is Arcade Gannons comments and another Three-Dogs. In the former case, Gannon is likely referring solely and exclusively to the Enclave Remnants as he was born after the Chosen One destroyed the West Coast Enclave, this is further reinforced by his use of the word "paramilitary", the Enclave itself was not a paramilitary, but the Enclave Remnants could fit that description, Arcade also has no first-hand knowledge of the Enclave prior to it's destruction, but he has plenty with the Remnants afterwards, which may have evolved into something which may be considered fascist-adjacent or quasi-adjacent after the Rigs destruction; a warlord military junta of sorts trying to bitterly continue the Enclaves own genocidal mission, partially supported by the fact that Arcades father and Judah Kreger were leaders of the Remnants and both were military officers. This quote by him should also not be taken as seriously, since he was obviously making a joke, he uses "fascist" again to call the Courier a fascist for supporting Caesar, in someway, he's not actually using the term correctly as he's equivocating it as Bad = Fascist, though Caesar would be much closer to fascism than the Enclave.

To move on to Three-Dogs quote he is speaking as a person in large opposition to the Enclave and their attempts to take control of the Capital Wasteland, while a quote such as this can be important, to take it alone at face-value is a mistake, it needs to be investigated and determined if Three-Dogs quote (and Arcades) compares with what is known of the Enclaves ideology and with what we know of fascist ideology accurately.

In short; it does not. While the Enclave is certainly genocidal, that aspect is neither exclusive to fascism nor even a fundamental aspect to fascism, for an entity to be fascist it needs to support ultranationalism, totalitarianism, militarism, autocracy and national syndicalism while opposing liberalism, pluralism, democracy and Marxism. While The Enclave can be said to be opposed to Marxism (given the main enemy of America were or is godless Chinese communists), and be nationalistic (though fall short of being ultranationalistic, which seek to establish a hegemony or supremacy over other nations), they fail at being a fascist state in several ways:

Democracy: Fascism is inherently anti-democratic, all examples of fascist states in history have suspended elections or gone into a one-party solution, while we can't know for sure if the GOP and Dems still exist within the Enclave, the presence of an election and electoral cycle with term limits suggests that, at the least, democracy was preserved within the Enclave.

Pluralism: Fascism despises the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, the Enclave demonstrates pluralistic traits with Colonel Autumn and John Henry Eden disagreeing on how they should treat the Capital Wasteland, John Henry Eden wanted purification; the genocide plan, Colonel Autumn objected on moral grounds and wanted to help the people of the Capital Wasteland, though John Henry Eden eventually tried to go forward with the plan behind Colonel Autumns back. Another example of pluralism existing within the Enclave is the presence of a congress.

Totalitarianism: Obviously a no-brainer, fascism advocates for totalitarianism, where-as the Enclave doesn't have much or any evidence that they do.

Autocracy: Obviously not if the leader is elected with term limits and has checks and balances to their power in the form a congress. Raven Rock Enclave may be described as an autocracy with John Henry Eden.

National Syndicalism: Also, obviously not

Militarism: This, yes, though it's worth noting that the only part of the Enclave we have real exposure to is their military and significant civilian and scientific bodies exist, in fact, one might argue the military is less important to the Enclave than their scientific corps, at least those on the Rig are, they maintain a limited military presence in the Wasteland, mainly to pursue their objectives needed to fulfill their plans with the FEV virus. As I stated before, while the Enclave are certainly genocidal, they also only adopted this stance quite late, about 150 years after the great war and their stated mission is to rebuild Old America; a federal presidential constitutional republic.

So what would I call the Enclave? That depends, I don't believe there's evidence that they're continuing to abide by or follow the American constitution, but they do have elections, a congress so they may very well do. I think the simplest answer is often the best and that we have the most evidence for; They continue to function largely as a Presidential Republic, primarily focused or preoccupied on an ideology of American nationalism and revanchism

It would also be worth examining the Enclave as different distinct identities, the West Coast Enclave is quite different from the East Coast Enclave, while both are quite different from the Appalachian Enclave and the Enclave Remnants, but I do believe they all share the same ideals of trying to rebirth the Republic, but whatever the case, I can definitively say that The Enclave are not Fascist nor do they have a military dictatorship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MordredC (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

See #Enclave and fascism. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 14:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Trivialization of Fascism

In last few days the starting line for the "Enclave" reads it as being a "fascist paramilitary organization". Aside from it being a self-evidently wrong description (you cannot have a paramilitary organization in a failed state, post-apocalyptic society, or a paramilitary organization made up of a standing or formerly standing military that has retained its rank and organization), I am incensed and disgusted by the trivialization of the term "fascism".

Any military-orientated society or leadership group (which is what the Enclave is) is not fascist. USSR was not fascist. America is not fascist. America fought fascism in World War 2. If your claim is that America and Nazi Germany were equivalent, you're an extremely stupid person and we do not need to take your opinions seriously. Israel is not fascist. All the countries I described were extremely military focused and committed serious resources to military expansion and support.

I am asking and persuading anybody who sees fascist propaganda lay claim to every organization as being fascist to rebuke this term, so as to not normalize it, or trivialize the existence of Fascism. I will be changing back the description of Enclave away from this trash to a description that was literally just there a month ago (and would recommend you do the same if you see this trash pop up again).—Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamlin41 (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

See #Enclave and fascism. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 14:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Splitting this page up might be a good idea

I think we should split up this page like the Brotherhood's pages are. The current set-up is a bit of a mess if you're trying to find original information from Fallout 2 due to how this wiki treats Bethesda lore. This is generally not an issue for the BoS, all of the chapters get their own pages so you can find what you're looking for. My proposal would be to create three new pages, "Enclave (California)", "Enclave (Washington D.C.)" and "Enclave (Appalachia)".

That was kind of the long term goal, but there's always moles popping up that need whacking. See Enclave (Fallout 2), Enclave (Fallout 3), and Enclave (Fallout 76). 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 14:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Enclave and fascism

While I can understand the appeal of sleek uniforms and the ideology of unbridled American supremacy, repeated attempts to whitewash the Enclave are honestly disappointing (though reflective of the current political climate and sadly not uncommon in this fanbase).

The Enclave is absolutely fascist. Attempts at lawyering the various definitions of fascism would be hilarious if they weren't dangerous. To elaborate:

• The Enclave is ultranationalist. It honestly boggles the mind how the constant invocations of American exceptionalism and supremacy can come across as anything but - especially when the Enclave excludes entire sections of society, both before the war (labor unions, communists, people of Chinese descent, insufficiently patriotic citizens, hungry people) and after the Great War (when anyone outside the Enclave was condemned to die in genocide carried out by the self-styled United States). All in the name of the nation.
• The Enclave is not democratic. The idea that a couple of mentions of the Congress (all from the Fallout Bible and none in the game) somehow make it a democracy, rather than an autocracy is nothing short of ridiculous. Was Nazi Germany a democracy because it had a Reichstag? Was fascist Italy because the Parliament was never completely dissolved? To make things worse, the Enclave does not represent the American people. After all, murdering actual elected representatives was standard procedure in the event of the Great War, to leave only Enclave loyalists in place, followed by policies completely disregarding the demos: Eckhart unleashing a progressively worse array of disasters on US citizens in his anti-communist obsession, enough to disgust even the most vengeful and loyal of American soldiers, then arbitrarily denying citizenship to everyone on the mainland outside the Enclave (as per the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution they'd be considered citizens on top of birthright citizenship), and planning to execute them all for the crime of merely existing.
• The Enclave is incredibly racist. This makes it comparable to the aforementioned Nazi Germany (not just in this aspect, Eckhart gassing his political opponents for disagreeing with him on continuing the Sino-American War is reminiscent of the Night of the Long Knives). The pseudo-scientific concepts outlined by Charles Curling are similar to various attempts to prove scientifically the superiority of X race over another. Of note is how easily they can be torpedoed by the Chosen One.
• The Enclave is totalitarian. See above for Eckhart murdering other Enclave members - after executing Congressmen and other non-Enclave personnel after Whitespring was sealed - and see Richardson's culture of secrecy and literally permanently reassigning people to mainland duties as punishment for complaining. Attempts to pass Autumn disagreeing with Eden as evidence of pluralism are... Well, Goering and Himmler disagreeing on how to divide the spoils of conquered Eastern Europe didn't make the Nazi Party pluralist and neither does this. Especially since Autumn does not make a single statement in favor of democracy or independent thought - and soldiers operating under his authority happily making genetic compliance checks and executing everyone, then throwing their corpses into holes to be burned show what kind of future he has in store.
• The Enclave is militarist, revanchist, and irredentist. It's anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-individual rights, anti-equality, and pretty much anti-everything that consitutes a modern state.

This makes some people uncomfortable, the Enclave is the United States after all, and they can't be the bad guys, can they? Sure, it was a land of concentration camps, horrific abuse, pervasive surveillance, and total war waged with no regard for sovereign neighbors, but it stood for FREEDOM, right?

Sure, as long as you ignore the context and the actions of the Enclave, exclusively focusing on the bold claims made. This is perhaps the most subversive part of Fallout: It depicts how villains are heroes in their own stories and how horrific fascists literally planning global genocide based on nonsensical pseudo-science can wrap themselves in the American flag, throw out slogans about freedom and prosperity, and a non-trivial amount of players will then spent years trying to introduce weasel words or splitting hairs endlessly to defend them and mass genocide because - apparently - they like the uniforms...?

And yes, not everyone in the Enclave was necessarily a puppy-kicking, baby-gassing mass murderer. Some, like Orion Moreno perhaps genuinely believed that they were fighting for Old America. That is a consistent feature of totalitarian states: Nazi soldiers didn't have to believe in Nazism, all that sufficed was a love of Germany, Christianity, and a firm conviction that the victims of Nazi imperialism and genocide were subhumans threatening European Civilization(tm). All they had to do was turn a blind eye and pretend everything was all right.

Modern fascism will rarely tell you it's fascism. They'll tell you about democracy, about the good old times, promise everything they can and feed your prejudices. Especially in gaming and nerd communities.

The Enclave is fascist. There's zero actual evidence they're anything but across the past quarter of a century. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 14:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Hard to not read this with bias when you have a hammer and sickle userbox on your profile. You're the last individual that can have an opinion on this while remaining neutral, much less discuss matters of morality. XLRHD (talk) 07:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

The Enclave is fascist, full-stop. However, I understand the concerns that some people may have in directly describing them this way in the first words of the very first sentence of the article, since it is such a contentious topic, and characters differ in how they describe the Enclave. Would this changed be contested at all?

“The Enclave is a secretive military and governmental faction operating before and after the Great War, considering themselves the direct continuation of the United States government; other denizens of the wasteland have identified them as a fascist paramilitary organization.”

LaymansReign (talk) 19:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a step in the right direction, if calling fascists fascist is objectionable. However, I think it puts undue emphasis on how the Enclave sees itself vs. how it is seen by others. I've fiddled with it a bit:

The Enclave is a paramilitary organization claiming to be the direct continuation of the United States government with the stated goal of restoring the United States in support of freedom and democracy. Outside its ranks, its considered a fascist group, due to its authoritarian structure, numerous atrocities including the capture and use of slaves, human experimentation, pseudo-scientific racism, social Darwinism, and the resulting attempt at global genocide that would wipe out all non-Enclave humans, As a result, all Enclave members are considered war criminals by the New California Republic, Followers of the Apocalypse, and the Brotherhood of Steel, and ruthlessly pursued.

The Enclave roots stretch back to before the Great War, to it being the deep state within the pre-War federal government. The Enclave's original leadership consisted of high-ranking political, military, and corporate figures, with rank-and-file members drawn from the military and federal law enforcement. Through careful planning, they subverted the nation's continuity of government protocols to ensure their survival over that of other government officials.

The idea is to:

1. Identify what it is (paramilitary organization fits neatly, since it has its own military forces, but is not part of the government nor appearing under its aegis),
2. State what it considers itself to be (US government),
3. What it claims to be (US government, freedom, democracy, apple pie)
4. What the outside sees it as (fascists)
5. What crimes it committed to justify that (crimes against humanity on par with the Nazis)
6. How it's treated by the other major factions (war criminals to be pursued mercilessly, lest they try genocide again)

It's not perfect. I've checked Wikipedia to see how it covers the historical Nazis and I do like how it provides a succint summary. Hm, might actually rewrite it in that spirit. Tagaziel ☏ 19:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Alternate:

“The Enclave, officially the Enclave of the United States,(ref) is a paramilitary organization(ref) originating from the deep state within the pre-War federal government, consisting of high-ranking political, military, and corporate figures.(ref) It claims to be the direct continuation of the United States government,(ref) after seizing power by subverting continuity of government protocols and killing non-Enclave government survivors to continue the war against communism.(ref) Enclave ideology eventually evolved into pseudo-scientific racism and social Darwinism,(ref) deeming all non-Enclave humans to be inferior, near-human mutants to be exterminated.(ref) The resulting genocide attempts in order to establish a racially pure state of "true humans", its authoritarian structure and numerous other atrocities, including slavery(ref) human experimentation,(ref) and unprovoked attacks on American citizens,(ref) resulted in the Enclave being seen by the rest of humanity as a fascist(ref) remnant of the pre-War government.(ref) All Enclave members are considered war criminals and ruthlessly pursued, including by the New California Republic and the Brotherhood of Steel.(ref)”

If there's no objections, I'll add it to the lede. Tagaziel ☏ 13:29, 11 February 2024 (UTC)